The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I do not propose today to link up with what I was saying here last Sunday in the manner usually intended when people speak of continuing a subject. On that occasion I tried , as far as this was possible in a mere outline, to show in a general pedagogical and introductory way how we are to conceive the organisation of a life of spirit, a life instruction, independent of either the economic life of that of the State. I tried, too, to show how, once this independence is established, the various branches of instruction have to be applied in a new way, in order to give what must reveal itself to teacher and educa tor some kind of anthropological and pedagogical form or, perhaps it is better to say, a kind of anthropologically pedagogical activity. On the same occasion I remarked that one essential in the future will be the training and particularly the examining of a prospective teacher or educator to discover whether his personality is fitted for the task.

I will reserve the direct continuation of these matters for a later occasion and try to pursue my main subject in quite another way. I shall try to put before you clearly how it is necessary for me to think out of the evolutionary forces of the age—and how today we should have to speak at teachers' conferences, for example, or at somethigg of the sort, where people really desire to serve their times. At present it is a fact that, if we want to emerge from utter confusion and chaos, many things will have to be spoken of quite differently from how the present thinking habits prompt us to do.

Today even at teachers' conferences people talk—as can be proved by striking examples—on the old hackneyed lines, whereas it would be possible to introduce a really liberal education for the future, only if educators and teachers were able to rise to the level from which they could survey the very great task s at present facing us, insof ar as, out of the very nature of education and instruction, these tasks lend themselves to logical development. True, the manner in which I shall speak to you today will not be what I should like to hold up as a standard or even a pattern. But what I want to do is to indicate the angle from which we should speak to teachers so that they may themselves receive the impulse to get to work on an education having free play. It is just those who do the teaching who must rise to the level of the great and all-embracirg tasks of the age; they must be first to gain insight into the nature of the forces concealed behind present world events; they must see which forces have to be recognised as coming from the past and therefore needing to be superseded, which forces need to be specially cherished as having their roots in our present existence. These matters must be looked at today culturally and politically, in the best and most ideal sense, if we are to create a foundation for the impulses which will have to exist in those who are teachers. Above all, people must become aware that at every stage of instruction and guidance our education has suffered impoverishment and the reasons for this must be understood. The principal reason is that education has lost its direct connection with life. The educationalist today talks of many things which have to do with method, above all of the tremendous benefits that education is to derive from State control. Apparently, in his almost automatic way, he will still be speaking of these benefits when in theory he will in part have accepted the concept of the necessary threefold social organism. There has never been an age when thinking has been so automatic as it is now, and this is particularly evident where ideas on education are in question. These ideas on education have suffered under something that up to now we have been unable to escape; we must, however, escape from it. There are indeed questions today that cannot find so easy a solution as the following: Judging from past experience this or that will be possible. Then doubt will immediately take possession of the hearts and minds of men. Today there are innumerable questions which will have to be answered by: Is it not imperative that something should happen if we are to extricate ourselves from confusion and chaos? Here we have to do with questions of will, where the often apparently justified intellectual doubt regarding the validity of experience can settle nothing. For experience has value only when worked upon in a suitable way by the will. Today, though very little worked upon thus by the will, there is much in the way of experience. In the educational sphere itself a great deal is said against which, from the purely intellectual and scientific point of view, not much objection is to be made, and which from its own point of view is quite clever. But today it is important to understand the real issue—above all to understand how alien from real life our education has become.

I should here like again to refer to a personal incident. In Berlin about twenty-three years ago a society was formed concerned with college education. Its President was the astronomer Wilhelm Forster. I too belonged to this society. We had to hold a course of lectures most of which were given on the assumption that all it was necessary to know were certain stereotyped things about dealing with the various branches of science, about grouping these into faculties, and so on. I tried—though at the time I was little understood—to draw attention to the fact that a college should be a department of life in general, that whoever wants to speak about college education ought to start with the question: From the standpoint of world history, in what situations are we in life at present in all its different spheres, and what impulses have we to observe in these various spheres of life in order to let these impulsesstream into the college, thus linking it with the common life? When we work out such things, not in the abstract but concretely, countless points of view are revealed which, for example, help to reduce the time to be expended on any particular subject, and new ways of dealing with the various subjects are discovered. The moment any proposal is made for this reduction simply out of the ideas with which education works today, everything falls to the ground; the educational centres in question become mere institution s for training people who have no real connection with the world.

Now what are the intrinsic reasons, the deep lying reasons, for all this? Whereas in recent times thinking on the lines of natural science has made such wonderful progress, this fine method of thinking, which on the one hand has come to look upon man as purely a being of nature, has—to speak truly—cut off all knowledge of the real man. We have spoken quite recently of the tremendous importance of this knowledge of man's being for the right kind of teacher—the knowledge that recognises the real nature of the living human being, not in the formal way in which he is so often represented today, but in accordance with his inner being, particularly in accordance with the evolution of that being. There is a symptom, to which I have often referred here, showing how dreadfully foreign man's real being is to the modern educational movement. When a thing of this kind is said it may perhaps be considered paradoxical; it must be said today, however, for it is of the utmost importance. The loss of any real knowledge of man has produced that dreary, barren effort that is a branch of what is called experimental psychology against which, as such, I have no complaint. The so-called intelligence tests are a horrible travesty of what is really beneficial in the sphere of education. I have perhaps often described how, by certain physical contrivances, experiments are made with the avowed object of testing the memory, the understanding, of a human being, in order to register whether the particular person's memory and understanding are good or bad. In a purely mechanical manner, by giving part of a sentence and demanding its completion, or by some other device, it is sought to form an idea of the abilities of a growing human being. This is a symptom of how the direct relation between people—which alone is profitable—is a forgotten factor in our culture. It is a symptom of something cheerless which has been allowed to develop; but today it is admired as being remarkable progress—this testing of intelligence, this offspring of what are called in modern universities psychological laboratories. Until people see how necessary it is to return to a direct intuitive knowledge of man by studying the human being himself, particularly the growing human being, until we get rid of the unhappy gulf in this sphere between man and man, we shall never be able to understand how to lay the foundations for an education that is really alive and for a life of the spirit that is free. We shall have to purge all our educational establishments of this desire to experiment on the human being in order to satisfy the pedagogues. As groundwork for a reasonable psychology, I consider experimental psychology of value; in the form in which it has crept into education and even into the courts, however, it is a pervesion of the sound development of the evolving human being, between whom and his equally evolving fellow there is no yawning chasm. We have brought matters to such a pa ss that from what we strive after culturally we have excluded everything human; we must retrace our steps and once again unfold what belongs to man. We have also to find the courage to make an energetic stand against much of what in recent times has aroused growing admiration as a great achievement; otherwise we shall never make any advance. This explains how those today, who leave college with the intention of teaching, and proceed to educate human beings, have the most misguided conceptions about the real nature of man, and do not acquire the true conceptions because, in place of them, the kind of superficiality has arisen which we see in these intelligence tests. This will have to be recognised as a symptom of decline. We must seek within ourselves the capacity for judging the abilities of a human being, since he is a man and we ourselves are men. It must be understood that, because of this, every other method is unsound, for it destroys the fulness of what is immediately and vitally human—so necessary a factor in beneficial progress.

Now today these things are not seen at all. It is of primary importance that they should be seen if we are to progress. How often these things have been spoken of here; sometimes they have provoked a smile. But people have no notion that the reason for speaking of these things so frequently today is that they are an essential part of our life of spirit. There is nothing to be gained today by listening to what is said here as if it were a novelette; the important thing is to learn to distinguish between what is merely perceived, observed, and what may contain within it the seed to action. The culminating point of all the anthroposophical endeavors here is the building up of the idea of man, the passing on of the knowledge of man. It is this that we need. We need it because, from the very nature of the times, we have to overcome three forms of compulsion, the survivals of earlier days. First, the most ancient compulsion which masquerades today in various forms—the compulsion of the priesthood. We should make more progress in our study of the present situation were we today to recognise these disguises of certain obsolete facts and of the ideas and impulses unfortunately still living on in the thinking of the peoples of Europe, America and even in Asia—the modern disguises of the old priestly compulsion.

As our second compulsion we have something that develops later in man's historical evolution, also disguised in various ways today—the political compulsion.

And thirdly, coming comparatively late, there is the economic compulsion.

Out of these three compelling impulses men have to work their way; this is their task for the immediate present. They can get free today only if, to begin with, they clearly perceive the masks which in various ways disguise what is living in our midst, the masks which conceal the three compelling impulses among us.

Above all today the teacher must look to the level on which these things can be discussed, where, by means of the light gained from these things, we can illuminate contemporary evolution and thus become aware how one or other of these compulsions is lurking in some contemporary fact. Only when we find the courage to say: It is because teachers have isolated themselves, withdrawn into their schools, that such ill-judged ideas have been thought out as this testing of human efficiency by experiment—which is merely a symptom of much else... But everywhere today, where either general or special educational methods are spoken of, we see the result of this withdrawal behind the school walls where teachers have been banished by the State; we see this remoteness from real life. None of the principal branches of life, namely, the spiritual, the rights or political, and the economic, can develop fully at the present time—I say expressly at the present time, and particularly in this part of Europe—if these three branches do not stand each on its own ground. For the extreme west, America, and for the extreme east, it is rather different but, just because this is so, we ourselves must be aware of this. We shall have to think ultimately in concrete terms and not in abstract ones; otherwise, where space is concerned, we shall arrive at some theoretical Utopia for mankind throughout the entire earth, which is nonsense, or a kind of millennium in historical evolution—also nonsense. Thinking concretely in this sphere means thinking for a definite place and a definite time. We shall have something more to say about this today.

The attention of the teacher must be directed towards the great world phenomena; he must be able to survey what is there in our present spiritual life, and what changes have to be made in this present life by bringing out of the growing human being something different from what has been cultivated in him of late years. What has been cultivated of late years has, among those in educational circles who should have been active as teachers, led to terrible specialisation. On occasions such as speech-days, gatherings of scientists and other meetings of experts, we have often heard the praises of this specialisation vociferously sung. Naturally it would be foolish on my part were I unable to see the necessity for this specialisation in scientific spheres; but it needs to be balanced or we just create a gulf between man and man, no longer meeting our fellow men with understanding, but as a specialist confronting him helplessly as another kind of specialist. This gives us nothing on which to bare our belief in a specialist but the fact that he bears the stamp of some existing body of knowledge. We have been very near bringing this specialisation from the school into life. Whether the present vicissitudes will preserve us from the unhappy fate of having psychologists brought into the courts in addition to all the other experts, as many people wish, so that experiments can be made on criminals in the same way as they are made on our young people—this remains to be seen. I have less to say against the matter itself than against the way in which up to now it has been dealt with.

This is how things are under State control in the sphere of education, of school instruction.

Now after the short time in which people were talking of the inherent rights of manor, as they were then called, natural rights—no matter whether these were contestable or not—after this comparatively short time, came the age when people began to be shy of discussing these natural rights. It was taken for granted that whoever did so was a dilettante; in other words anyone was a dilettante who assumed the existence of something that established rights for man as an individual human being; the only professional way was to speak of historical rights, that is, of those rights which had developed in the course of history. People had not the courage to go into the question of the actual rights and on that account confined themselves to a study of the so-called historical ones. This especially is something that a teacher must know. Teachers must have their attention drawn, particularly during their conferences, to how in the course of the nineteenth century the concept of natural rights has been lost, or lives on in rights today in disguise, and how a certain wavering, a certain inner doubt, has persisted in face of what is merely historical. Whoever is acquainted with the conditions knows that the principal impulse today goes in the direction of historical rights, that people are at pains—to use Goethe's words—not to speak of inherent rights. In my lectures here I have frequently focus sed attention on how we must openly and honestly come to a final settlement in this matter. Hence we should not shrink from giving a true account of what has to be abolished, for nothing new can ever be set up unless there is a clear concept of what has impaired man's habits of thinking and perceiving.

It may well be said that our mid-European culture is a particularly forcible example of how a really positive idea of the State has broken down. There was an attempt to build it up again in the nineteenth century. It foundered, under the influence of the idea of purely historical rights, which made their impulses felt without this being noticed by those concerned. Whereas these people believed they were pursuing science in a way that was free from all prejudice, it really amounted to their pursuing it in the interest of the State or for some economic purpose. Not only into the carrying on of science but also into its content, and especially into all that has became practical science, there has flowed what has come from the influence of the State. Hence today we have practically no national economy because a free thinking, established on its own basis, has been unable to develop. Hence, too just where the most important laws of the economic life are concerned, there is today an utter lack of understanding given laws relating to genuine political economy are mentioned. We can see especially clearly into what confusion education has been thrown—education on a grand scale—for it has no connection with life, it has withdrawn from life into the schoolroom. A really living study of anything can never arise if we show merely what is to be experienced outwardly, without showing the way in which it should be experienced. The one thing cultivated today, namely, the worship of merely outward experience, leads simply to confusion, especially when it is a conscientious worship. We need the capacity to cultivate the inner impulses which lead us to the right experiences.

You will remember that last Friday I called your attention, in the necessarily brief way for lectures such as these, to how, by studying the conditions of European economy at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century, we were able to gain a clear idea of the forming of associations in future from impulses arising out of production and consumption. But to this point of observation, which underlies the whole of European life and proceeds from what is so clearly to be learnt in the general change-over to our modern age at the end of the fourteenth century, we come with the right point of view only by studying anthroposophy in its deepest aspects. The essential facts are not falsified by this, but we are directed to that point in evolution where is revealed in clear symptoms what lies rather beneath the superficial stream of evolution, and what is to be looked upon as the actual driving element. For this reason, what is inherent in the scientific method has been hidden from modern pedagogy and scientific didactics; pedagogy and didactics were thrown back upon chance and chance dictated in what sphere they were to be found. What we need is inner guiding lines to direct us to important truths; the directing lines which can be found by studying Goethe's world conception, through which such an infinite amount may be learnt. This is not just to be built up nor looked for intellectually, it must be sought in an inter-weaving of man with the world. This is something lost to us, as may indeed be seen in our present wish to fathom the individual being of man in the superficial way this is done in the educational side-line we call experimental psychology.

What is pre-eminently necessary today is for a light to be kindled in those who are responsible for the education of children concerning the very root of our modern development. If we now stand at a point where the main direction of life has to be changed, it is absolutely necessary to see into what has happened in the course of evolution up to now. The first thing to go under was the elementary impulse towards a free economic life of the state; then in the last third of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth,—particularly in Central Europe, we trampled on our life of spirit, made it into something of secondary importance. How much, for instance, of the great impulse of Goetheanism has flowed into the kind of life of spirit we want today? Nothing, or practically nothing! People talk in a superficial way of Goethe; of the immensities concealed in the very way Goethe perceived the world, nothing has sunk into the general consciousness. As I have frequently told you the Goethe Society at Weimar showed themselves lacking in all sense of responsibility by placing at their head not a man who had understanding of Goethe, but a superannuated Prussian Minister of Finance!

Thus have we let ourselves sink into utter forgetfulness of our spiritual past. Nowhere in present day consciousness do we find what, through Goethe, gave the German life of spirit its characteristic stamp. It is all effaced, reduced to the level of a parasite. Editions of Goethe have followed one upon another, but nowhere do we meet with Goethe's spirit. Whoever sees through all this must say: In the realm of economy this is bad, in that of politics it is bad, but it is worst of all in the spiritual realm. In this way we have begun by ruining our political consciousness; after that we have ruined all connection with our own life of spirit. I do not say this from pessimism, I say it because, out of insight into what has happened in the past, there must arise what is to happen in the future.

Then—well, then came what is called the world war. After the collapse of the political life, which in its collapsed condition was nevertheless kept going, after the collapse of the life of spirit comes the economic collapse, the magnitude and intensity of which is even today not realised, because it is believed that we are at the end or at any rate in the middle of it, whereas we are merely at the beginning. This economic collapse—it can be studied in everything that played a part in producing the world catastrophe. If we would go into the pertinent details of the question of the Baghdad railway before the world war, for example, you would see there the most unhappy consequences of linking the political with the economic life. If you follow the single stages of the Baghdad transactions, with which the unfortunate Helfferich is specially connected, you see economic capitalism on the one hand forming combination on combination, on the other hand the interference of the national-political machinations of chauvinists, machinations which differ according to whether they work in from the east or from the west. In Germany, my dear friends, we observe the loss of all sense of action as the lifo of the spirit has been lost; the sense of action has disappeared with the real life of the State, and what remains is merely the economic life. Everywhere from the West we see economical-political aspirations playing in, wearing the mask of chauvinism or nationalism, the mask of the economical-political; whereas from the East we have the spiritual-political masquerading in various forms. All this is united in a confusion of threads which then lose themselves in the absurdity, in the impossible situation, of the Baghdad question. This question of the Baghdad railway, this whole procedure shows clearly the impossibility of any further development of the old imperialism, of any further development of the old political system.

Now what in the will to build this railway we see here as a great political problem of world importance, is seen again in incidents during the war. Things, however, have never been observed so that, guided on the right lines, people have come to the point where outer events can betray their inner connections. So Kapp squealed, Bethmann Hollweg raised an outcry while there was silence on the part of the spiritual leaders of Germany. That was indeed the situation. Kapp who represented agriculture squealed, not knowing which way to turn between war economy and the problems of the land. Bethmann Hollweg, who had no head for politics, raised an outcry, no longer having anything reasonable to say on the matter; and those Germans who were at the head of the spiritual life were silent because they had withdrawn into the schoolrooms of Germany and were no longer in touch with real life, having no notion of how in real life things should be managed.

I don't know how many of you remember all this. What I am giving you is no highly painted version but the situation in its actual colors. Kapp did squeal, Bethmann Hollweg really raised an outcry against the terrible way in which he, poor man, was attacked in the Reichstag; and those who were supposed to know something of the matter in question said either nothing or what, because it had no connection with life, amounted to nothing. The lines on which economy was developing could be shown up in all their absurdity only by a great, conspicuous world affair. Indeed, many people have never noticed the pass to which we have come also in what concerns the State. They had their Hohenzollerns, their Hahsburgs, their Romanoff Czars. That because of their impracticability, already in a most decided form the elements of disintegration were present within the empires of Hohenzollems, Habsburgs and Romanoffs, could be ignored, for it was possible for these empires to be held together in an umatural frame, already in process of disintegration because, within the State, there was no longer any real impulse.—On the part of the socialists today we frequently hear it emphasised that the State must cease. No one has done more to prevent a judicious administration of the State than those who represented the European dynasties in the nineteenth century. By deluding ourselves, and refusing to be conscious in various ways, it is possible to ignore the fact that we have trodden the life of spirit underfoot, as far as its achievements in the nineteenth century are concerned. This cannot be done to the economic life. When the State is starved people are offered the consolation of public holiday and royalty is feted with paper flowers. For example, it is no fabrication but an ascertainable fact that on the Hamburg bridges well-dressed women, souvenir mad, violently precipitated themselves on the cigarette ends William II had thrown away. Neither is it an idle tale that this same William II was not averse to such flattery but that it tickled his vanity; he delighted in such displays.

Thus, in the sphere of the economic life we have ultimately experienced the remarkable phenomenon which can be characterised only by saying that agriculture squealed, that there was an outcry on the part of the political life, and industry preened itself with satisfaction, workers included—to the extent to which they formed part of industry—until they arrived at the front, where they learned another tune and spread abroad other views on returning to their homes. It is obviously untrue when today it is said that collapse started in the home. Collapse started at the front because the men there could no longer endure the conditions. Such things must be known, especially by those who want to educate others. Henceforward they dare not sit in a comer without any understanding of life; they have to know what must happen. Far more important than keeping to any school time-table today would it be for the instructors of youth to hear discussions about this cultural and historical phenomenon, and to have revealed to them what shows itself so clearly in the sphere of the economic life under capitalism.

You know the saying ascribed to a certain society—a saying approved on one side, disputed on the other—“The end justifies the means.” In the economic life under capitalism another impulse has shown itself during the world catastrophe, and that is: The end has desecrated the means. For everywhere among the declared ends and aims—this is revealed also in that very question of the Baghdad railway—the means were desecrated, or, again the means desecrated the ends.

These matters must be known today and must be studied unreservedly. My present observations have an educational purpose insofar as I believe that from the aspect from which I am speaking today—not perhaps in accordance with the way in which I speak—teachers must, above all, have each stage elucidated. We have to outgrow what previously has prevented teachers hearing of these great world events. Because of this we are experiencing today the comfortless fact of how entirely ignorant a great part of the population were politically. Today we meet people—in this instance I cannot politely say “present company excepted”, at least not in all cases—who do not know what has been going on for decades in the most external affairs, for instance in the workers' movement; these people have no notion what form the struggles of the proletariat have taken during these decades. Now an educational system that turns out into the world men who pass one another by, and know nothing of each other, must surely be a factor leading to collapse. Are there not in the middle class today those who scarcely know more about the workers than the fact that they wear different clothes, and details of that description; who know nothing of the struggles going on in trades unions, in associations, in political parties, and have never taken the trouble to look into what is taking place all around them? Now why is this? It is because people have never learnt to take lessons from life, because they always learn some particular thing. They think: Ah, I know that, I am a specialist in that sphere; you know something else and are a specialist in some other sphere.—People have become accustomed to this without ever getting beyond what they have absorbed as knowledge at school, considering this as an end in itself, whereas the important thing is learning to learn,—Learning to learn, so that, however old one is, one can remain, up to the very year of one's death, a student of life. Today even when people have taken their degree, as a rule they have exhausted their powers of learning by the time they are out of their twenties. They are unable to learn anything more from life; parrot­wise they reel off what they have absorbed up to then. At most they have, now and again, an inkling of what is going on. Those who are different are exceptional. It is important that we should discover an educational method where people learn to learn, and go on learning from life their whole life long. There is nothing in life from which we cannot learn. We should have different ground beneath our feet today if people had learnt how to learn. Why nowadays are we socially so helpless? It is because facts are confronting us on a level to which men have not grown. They are unable to learn from these facts because they have always to confine themselves to externals. In future there will be no education that bears fruit if people will not trouble to rise to the great points of view in human culture.

Now whoever views the world today out of a certain anthroposophical back ground frequently discussed here, knows how to think concretely about all that is in it. He looks to the West, he looks to the East, and out of this concrete observation he can set himself problems. He looks towards the West into the Anglo-American world in which for many decades, perhaps even longer, there have played the great political impulses so damaging at present to central Europeans. Nevertheless these impulses are on a grand scale; and all the great impulses in the political life of the present time have originated from the Anglo-American peoples, for they have always known how to reckon with the historical forces. When during the war I tried to bring this to the notice of certain people sayinq: The forces coming from there can be withstood only by forces arising in the same way from historical impulses,—I was ridiculed because there is no belief, among us here, in great historical impulses. Whoever knows how to study the West rightly, insofar as it is Anglo-American, finds there a number of human instincts and impulses coming from the historical life. All these are of a political-economic nature. There are important impulses in an elementary form within Anglo-Americanism, which all have a political economic coloring; ever one there thinks so politically that this political thinking is extended into economics. But in all this there is one peculiar feature. You know that when we talk of economy we are demanding that, in the economy of the future, fraternity should hold sway; it was driven out of the imperialist-political economic strivings of the West. Fraternity was left out, eliminated; hence what lived there assumed its strongly capitalist trend.

Fraternity was developed in the East. Whoever studies the East in accordance with its nature, so entirely of soul and spirit, knows that out of the people there really springs a sense of brotherliness. Whereas what was characteristic of the West was a boom of the economic life destitute of brotherliness and tending therefore to capitalism, in the East there was brotherliness without economy, these two being held apart by us in Central Europe. We have the task—a thing the teacher must know—the task of synthesising the brotherliness of the East with the non-brotherly but economic way of thinking belonging to the West. We shall be socialists in a world-embracing sense if we bring this about. Let us now bring the East into a right line of vision. You find there, from very ancient times, a highly spiritual life. That it should have died out can be maintained only by those who have no understanding for Rabindranath Tagore. Men there, in the East, live a spiritual political life; and what of the opposite pole? It is to be found in the West. For this spiritual-political life of the East lacks something—it lacks freedom. It is a subjection that leads to the renunciation of the human self in Brahma or Nirvana. It is the reverse of all freedom. On the other hand, the West has made a conquest of freedom. Standing between East and West it is we who have to unite these in a synthesis, which is possible only by keeping freedom and fraternity quite distinct in life, but at the same time preserving balance between them. We must not understand our task, however, in such a way that what is suitable for one is suitable for everyone; for abstract thinking of that kind is the ruin of all striving after reality. All thinking in accordance with reality comes to grief when people believe that one kind of abstract ideal can be set up over the whole earth, or that an ordering of society holding good today will do so to all eternity. This is not only nonsense, it is a sin against reality, for each part of space, each section of time, has its own task, and this must be realised. But then we must not refuse through laziness to gain knowledge of the true, concrete human relations; and we must recognise our task by learning to study facts in accordance with their meaning. The primary and secondary education of recent days has led us very far from this kind of study; it has no wish to know anything of this concrete approach to phenomena, for at this point the region begins where men today feel uncertain of themselves. Instead of describing they would rather define. They would like today to take up images of the facts instead of accepting images of the facts as mere symptoms of what is expressed in the deeper lying impulses.

I am speaking today in such a way that the content of all I say is meant to be drawn from the region out of which anything about education must issue. Those who can best enter into what is said from this region make the best educators and teachers; not those who are asked what they know of any particular subject—knowledge of that kind can be found in a textbook and read up before a lesson. The important thing in future examinations must be to discover what those who aspire to be teachers are as men. A life of spirit of this kind applied to education, out of its very nature, creates the necessity of not being trained for cultural life one-sidedly but as spiritual workers standing fully within the three branches of the nature of man. I am not saying that anyone who has never worked with his hands is unable to see the truth rightly and never ta ke s a right stand in the life of the spirit. The following should be the aim—for man to go in and out of the three spheres of the threefold social organism, that he should form real relations with all three, that he should work, actually work, in all three. We need have no fear that the possibilities for this will remain hidden. A feeling for this, however, must arise particularly in the heads of those who in future will be teachers of the young. Then another feeling will come to life, a tendency to go beyond specialisation to what we try here to bring about through anthroposophy. We must come to the point of never breaking the thread of our study of the universally human, of our insight into what man actually is; we must never be submerged in specialisation in spite of having our specialists. This, it is true, demands a much more active life than most people today find pleasant.

I have often experienced an extraordinarily discordant note at conferences of specialists or technical conferences. People foregather there with the express purpose of furthering their special subject. Now this frequently is done for hours, with great diligence and keenness. But I have repeatedly heard a very strange expression—the expression "talking shop". Time is requested when shop is no longer to be talked, when no one is to speak any longer on his special subject. Then, for the most part, the silliest rubbish is talked, the most boring rubbish, but no shop. There is a certain amount of malicious gossip; many subjects are discussed, sometimes very interesting subjects—though that is looked at askance—in short, everyone is relieved when the talking of shop is over. Doesn't it show how little connection people really have with what they actually do, and what they are supposed to do, for mankind, if they are so pleased to get away from it? Now, I ask you: Will leaders of men who want to esca pe their particular profession as soon as possible ever be able to face up to a population of manual workers who enjoy their work? When today in their complacent way, they talk about the wrongs existing among the manual workers, you must not question the manual workers, you must question the bourgeoisie who have created the wrongs—these are the real sinners. Those who as manual workers are tied to the desolation of capitalism cannot attain joy in their work, when above them stands a class who perpetually have the wish to escape from what should make for their happiness. These are the ethical by-products of recent educational methods. It is something which must above all be realised and above all undergo change. There is much here that will have to become different in the customary thinking of those who teach.

What am I wanting to tell you in these remarks? I want to make clear to you how thorough-going today we have to be in our indications of what is to come about; how thoroughly necessary it is to leave the realm of the trivial, the terribly trivial content to which we have confined our thinking, and not only our thinking but also our life of feeling and will. How should the will prosper—and we need our will for the future—if it has to remain in the light of this petty habit of thinking, this petty quality of our ordinary thinking and feeling?

How much is entirely lacking that we must have for the future? For one thing we must have a real people's psychology. We must know what there is in the growing human being. We have blotted out this knowledge and in its stead have acquired tests that experiment with human beings because of the inability to apprehend their characteristics intuitively. All kinds of apparatus are supposed to reveal what the human being has in the way of abilities. We do not trust in ourselves to discover these things. And why? Because we do not approach them with interest; because we go through the world with our soul asleep. Our soul must wake up and we must look into these things. Then we shall see that much of what today is looked upon as great progress is really absurd. This poor pedagogue of the primary and secondary school is sent out like a human tame rabbit unable to see what is really going on in the world. The rabbit then proceeds to educate human beings, who because of this very education pass by their fellow men without any feeling for what lives in their souls. Thus, it is today, irrespective of the fact that among many of the middle class there is obviously no will to enter into the great contemporary questions and impulses, and that those today who have any will are not of much use because they know absolutely nothing about what is necessary, having slept through the time during which the proletariat day by day, for decades, have been schooling themselves politically. It is indeed very seldom that, when it is a matter of discussing the great questions of the day, we find proletarians making the excuse of not being able to afford the time to look into them; they make the time. But if you inquire of any bourgeois group, they have so much to do that they cannot afford the time to study contemporary matters—they all have far too much to do. That, however, is not the real reason; as a matter of fact they have no notion at all what it is they are supposed to study. They do not know how to go to work beca use this was never included in their education.

Now these are not just so many pessimistic remarks, nor are they intended as a sermon; they are a pure statement of fact. What is more, we have experienced that, when men have been forced to it by life, they have educated themselves in this matter. In cases where people should have been able to educate themselves out of their own impulse, it has all come to nothing, nothing at all has happened. It is on this account that we find ourselves in our present wretched condition, on this account that we hear about anything tried-out today not only expressions of ill-will, which are frequent enough, but all the unintelligent nonsense arising from ignorance of life, because no school has ever thought of teaching its pupils how to learn. Knowledge in individual cases always trickles to people through the protecting walls of comfort, but this does not have the same result as when the human being has free access to the phenomena of life with unimpeded senses.

The sad events of the present time might show us an infinite amount in that very sphere where people go on talking in the old way, and where it appears as if the clockwork of the brain had been wound up and was obliged to go on ticking. Conferences on external matters proceed today still in the same way as they proceeded before the war catastrophe. A great proportion of the people have learnt practically nothing from these terrible events, because they have never learnt how to learn. Now they will have to learn from dire necessity what fear has not taught them. In the past I have referred here to an utterance, quoted in what I wrote on the social question, of a most unassuming but cultured observer of life, Herman Grimm. “In the nineties of last century this man said: When we contemplate the life around us today and consider whither it is heading, whither it is rushing headlong, particularly in these ceaseless preparations for war, it is as if the chief desire was to fix the day for general suicide—so utterly hopeless does this life appear.” People are wanting, rather, to live in dreams, in illusion, those above all who think themselves practical. But today necessity is calling us to wake up; and those who do not wake will not be able to take part in what is essential, essential for every single man. Many do not even know how to put their hand to the plough in this matter.

This is what I wanted to say as a kind of exposition of what should be discussed today at teachers' meetings. It is what should be developed particularly by those who have the task of educating youth, those who should be looking towards what the future is to bring. When we continue these studies we shall go more into the details of education, details of primary and secondary education.

What I have to say today will be somewhat related to the remarks I was allowed to present here last time, and will therefore also have to tie in with some of the ideas presented then. Today I would like to speak about the materialism of present-day religious creeds, but I would like to do so in connection with a certain aspect of the Christ problem. It is precisely with the Christ problem that a whole series of misunderstandings about anthroposophical research work begins. Although the dispelling of these misunderstandings is not to be expected from those who reveal them with a certain interest, a great deal may depend on it with others.

In the latest phases of the development of Western civilization, we have seen all sorts of inclinations towards distinctly atheistic views of the world. It cannot be my task today to point out the various nuances of the atheism that has emerged; but I would like to draw attention to something that is a common basis of every atheistic world view. This is the failure to look at the source of the content of the consciousness of God. The consciousness of God cannot come from the contemplation of external nature alone, but from the whole of man's coexistence with external nature, with the world of the senses. It may seem paradoxical that I say that the consciousness of God must come from man's coexistence with the world of the senses. But this God-consciousness must not be taken as the fulfillment of a moment, so to speak, but as the content of earthly life from birth to death. In this earthly life, we feel ourselves to belong to nature through heredity. We entered this earthly existence as physical human beings through purely natural processes. As we go through this earthly existence, we perceive a certain development of what we have received through our birth into this existence. Now it is a matter of whether we are careful enough - of course I do not mean this only intellectually, but also in terms of feeling and from the will impulses that we also have and must experience - whether we gain a certain awareness of our consciousness for living together with the outer world of the senses in the course of our earthly existence. If we summarize purely through popular experience what the world of the senses can give us, we will certainly never come to feel our full human nature if we do not think spiritually about the world of the senses and what it can be with us. No matter how carefully we examine all the secrets that the external sense world can give us through sensory perception, we can never come to understand that the human being is also placed in this sense world. But since we, as physical beings on earth, have nevertheless emerged from this sense world, but can never find ourselves as human beings in its ingredients, it simply follows that for a healthy consciousness, this consciousness is filled with the divine being, or rather, with the contemplation of the divine being.

This is precisely what modern natural science, despite its great and comprehensive achievements, has brought to humanity: that because it refuses to recognize a spiritual element within the world of sense-perception, it effectively excludes the human being from the totality of existence that it seeks to embrace. I have already expressed this before you by saying: If we consider, for example, the in many respects tremendous theory of evolution of modern times, we do not actually find it treated of man as 'man', but as the conclusion, as it were, the crowning of the animal world. If we ask natural science, as it is constituted today, about the essence of man, it does not actually answer us, if we understand it correctly. It only answers the question: What is the highest of the animals? That is, it only considers man in relation to his animality. In many respects she is right in what she has to say about this, but in so doing she places man, as it were, outside the sphere of her consideration. She cannot answer the question about the essence of man with her means; indeed, she can only understand herself correctly if she declares this question about the essence of man as being outside her realm.

This is, of course, only an indication of the feeling that arises from the wholeness of a healthy person, that precisely in so far as he regards himself in connection with the whole of nature, he must actually come to the consciousness of God, but only to the consciousness of God, not to the consciousness of Christ.

Thus, by applying his healthy understanding and healthy intuitive perception, man can by no means be an atheist. I have already expressed this here by saying that even if, of course, not every slight illness can be diagnosed by ordinary means, it is nevertheless clear to anyone who can distinguish the healthy person from the sick person that, first of all, atheism can only find its place in a morbid disposition of human nature as a whole. Therefore, one could say that denying God is actually the result of being sick. But now the following applies: We arrive at this awareness of God in the present epoch of human development, I would say, only in a wavering, doubting way when we survey everything; for here attention must be drawn to a significant defect in our present pedagogy, the defect that the Waldorf school movement, for example, seeks to correct. When one speaks of the decline of present-day civilization, one cannot actually ignore the present youth movement. This youth movement means much more than is usually thought, and I consider it to be something extraordinarily significant that, at a number of events of our anthroposophical movement in recent times, including the last Stuttgart congress, a impressive number of members of the youth movement had actually come and made the very positive decision, from the point of view of the youth movement, to join forces with what is intended by the anthroposophical spiritual movement. Whatever one may think of the details of this youth movement, one must recognize that in a large part of our youth the authority of the older generation has faded, and that someone must guide the young. No matter how much one may criticize today's youth, one cannot ignore the fact that when young people say that they can no longer recognize any authority, then it is not only the youth who can be blamed for it, but also the older generation, who should be the guides of the youth. Recently, during a lecture I gave in Aarau, Switzerland, the very question of the lack of authority among today's youth was discussed. After the lecture, a religious representative appeared who thoroughly scolded the current youth. But scolding does not really achieve much when dealing with something that is so elementary. You have to understand things. It was interesting when a very young lad from the cantonal school stood up afterwards — the cantonal school there is definitely a secondary modern school — who, in my opinion, actually gave the best speech in the discussion. He spoke with great fire and said: We want authority, we actually crave authority, but when we look to the old people, do we see anything other than that no authority can come from these old people? We see how they quarrel with each other at every opportunity, how they fight. – And then he listed all sorts of things that today's youth notice about their elders, and in the end he said: We do crave authority, but we cannot have it!

But if you look at what it is about, you find that today's civilization has become highly intellectualistic, that actually everything that considers itself to be leading and authoritative today has become intellectualistic, purely intellectual. Basically, natural science and intellectual culture belong together. Natural science is the objective, intellectual culture is the subjective. But intellectualism only occurs naturally at a certain age. You cannot be an intellectual as a child. Children are not intellectuals. Intellectualism can only occur after sexual maturity. And since humanity has now fully grown into intellectualism, everything is dominated by it today. Those aspirations that often reject intellectualism today and grumble about it do so only out of a different intellectualism. Today, all those who claim intellectualism are abstract beings. But one only grows into intellectualism at a later age, and because we are overwhelmed by it, children no longer understand us and cannot have anything left for the forms of thought that we adopt under the influence of intellectualism. We ourselves no longer feel what we took in when we were children. Childhood is no longer fully alive in us. We have become so terribly intellectually clever that childhood no longer plays any role in us. But we cannot be educators or teachers if we have been thoroughly abandoned by what we ourselves experienced as children. So we no longer have anything to say to children, and they grow up without any special care for their being. We declaim that we have to be vivid, but the vivid is only the objective side of intellectualism. Thus we create an abyss between us and the youth, and this is what we encounter in the youth movement. But again, nothing is done by just scolding intellectualism. For it has now entered Western civilization as a necessary phenomenon since the last three to five centuries, actually since the 13th to 15th century. It had to arise so that humanity could truly live into the impulse of freedom. So it is not a matter of merely criticizing the intellectual impulse, but of understanding it in the right way, in order to be able to strive for further development through understanding in a way other than the intellectualistic one.

And now we must say: What is the essence of this intellectualism? It is actually already indicated by the fact that one points to the connection of this intellectualism with the feeling of freedom. And the feeling of freedom is in turn inconceivable without the full development of the human ego. It is actually the development of the ego that has emerged in a certain way in modern times in humanity and takes hold of the ego from the consciousness soul. This is the essential factor that provides the impulse for modern Western civilization. However, this I, of which human beings have become fully aware over the past three, four, five hundred years, can initially only come from the human body. The experience of the I between birth and death can only come from the human body; this can be examined in particular through anthroposophical spiritual research.

One of the most significant moments for the whole of life after death is the moment of dying itself. This moment of dying is, of course, only known to the earthly human being on the outside. It must be recognized from the inside out of the consciousness that the dead person has between death and a new birth. Whether this occurs more or less later after death is not our concern now. Today we want to consider in general the consciousness that a person has between death and a new birth. This consciousness depends entirely on whether the person has an extraordinarily significant impression at the moment of dying. Consider, for a moment, that during the whole of life between birth and death, the human being only comes out of his physical and etheric body with his ego and his astral body, and that is in a state of sleep; so that during life between birth and death there is a constant, uninterrupted connection between the physical body and the etheric body. At death, the human being leaves his physical body with his etheric body – you know that he remains with his etheric body for days – so that he only has this experience of his full physical body at the moment of dying. If you want to have knowledge of something, you cannot have it otherwise than by having what you want to know outside of you. What they have in mind, you do not see, you only see what is outside the eye. So you also do not see spiritually-mentally anything that you have within you. You must first go out of yourself with the spiritual-mental part of your being, then you see the outside of your body. This happens in the moment of dying in relation to the separation of the etheric body and the physical body. When falling asleep, the human being never has a conscious, complete view of his physical and etheric bodies. These two remain behind when falling asleep. This is why, when one attains the conscious view during sleep, one can only see the human head and part of the trunk, and that one cannot actually see the limb-human being in ordinary sleep. Only in death, in dying, is the moment when man, in relation to his physical body, has himself completely as an object before him, and the whole time from death to the new birth, this impression remains, I might say, as the end of perspective, to which one looks back after death. One sees this moment of dying, for one would not recognize an ego for oneself if one were no longer, if one did not have the ego as an object in that one has before one, as the object of knowledge at the moment of dying, that which one brings to consciousness here in the physical world, namely the full physical body. This tremendous impression, that one can say to oneself: What your ego-consciousness has given you, your whole, your total physical body, you have seen that at the moment of dying! — that remains and forms the content of the ego-consciousness between death and the new birth, where everything becomes temporal, where the spatial, in a certain respect, is no longer there. After death, one looks back from that point and sees, as an important point, the direction then continues, but the rays cross at the moment of the final death, that moment of dying. This is what, as a “time element”, I would like to say, has the same effect after death as the spatial physical organism gives the sense of self between birth and death. So that we can say: The sense of self here in earthly life actually comes from the physical body.

Now the following is present. You look out through your senses into the external nature. You see the three kingdoms of external nature, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and in addition the physical human kingdom. You see clouds, rivers, mountains, stars and so on. Everything you can see can be considered 'nature', and what you cannot see is continually supplying the elements that also penetrate the human organism, both in the physical and in the etheric. With food, you take in substances from the physical and sensory world. These substances unfold their physical and chemical forces and activities even when they are in the human organism. In terms of his physical organism, the human being is, so to speak, what he takes in from the outside world. The minerals, plants and animals are, if I may put it this way, allowed to be “nature”. They have the right to be nature. But when what is present in them enters the human organism with food, breathing and so on, it becomes something other than nature. Then, in the human organism, it can be said that What lives in nature must not, if man is to remain 'human', allow itself to remain nature. Nature beings have the right to be only outside of man; within man, nature becomes a destructive element. It seeks to continually dissolve the human being and to bring about a state in which the soul can also acquire powers that work towards destruction.

In this respect, the older instinctive consciousnesses of men saw much more correctly than today's intellectualism. Today's intellectualism starts from concepts, not from facts, and when the facts do not agree with the concepts, it reinterprets the phenomena according to its concepts. Today, people do not talk about the fact that plants, animals and humans come to an end, but they say that death should be examined. The fact that the end of plants, the end of animals, the end of humans could be something completely different, that cannot be grasped under the common concept of the “dead”, is not considered by anyone today. You become grotesque for today's world, you become paradoxical when you draw attention to such things. But it is absolutely the case in this regard. Today someone says: a knife is a knife – and then he gets a razor and wants to carve his meat with it, because – a knife is a knife! Today, when we believe that we have both feet firmly planted in reality, it is important to realize that reality cannot be grasped through abstract concepts. Intellectualism does not take this into account, starting only from concepts instead of from facts. It therefore also fails to recognize how justified it was from older levels of consciousness to speak of the fact that nature, in its effects and processes, by continuing its existence in man, no longer has the right to remain nature, but that it should be transformed, and that in man, if it is to retain its validity as nature, it becomes “sin”. The concept of sin in connection with natural phenomena is no longer understood at all. The connection between the natural and that which is rooted in the human being as spiritual-soul is not considered. The animals, plants and minerals have the right to be outside in nature; that which moves from them into the human being must be transformed by the human being, because if it remains nature, it would be transformed into destruction. That is to say, if it is mere nature and man has not the strength to transform it, it becomes illness, and in imparting itself to the soul, sin.

If now man, who looks at his relationship to the world of the senses without prejudice, consults with himself and takes into account everything that can be taken into account, he must say the following to himself: When I look out into nature and first consider my origin from it, I cannot be an atheist. But on the other hand, precisely as a man of the present, as a man of the newer epoch, I cannot but attribute my ego-consciousness to the mere physical body, to the natural existence in me. What I express here in thought is present in feeling and emotion in every healthy person who is not afraid of coming to self-knowledge today. He comes, if only he does not avoid it out of fear or comfort, to look into his own soul, to this conflict, that he says to himself: If I consider myself as a being of nature, emerging from nature, then a divine being must underlie the whole world, which also contains me. But this healthy sense is actually contradicted by the modern development of the ego, because this can only come from the natural existence of the physical body and - as I have even shown you - through the impression that dying makes on a person. Thus nothing less follows from this than that modern man must instinctively come into doubt about God-consciousness, not because something in the observation of nature leads away from God-consciousness, but because in the present epoch, when one considers his entire being in terms of body, soul and spirit, man cannot be completely healthy because of his ego-consciousness. Because: nature in man, if it remains as it is and has an influence on the soul, means something that causes illness, and on the soul it has the influence of aberration, of sinning.

Of course, this should not be viewed in a philistine way, but rather, one must keep in mind the facts as they speak from existence. In other words, if we go back to ancient times, when the sense of self did not yet exist, the divine being — regardless of whether it was imagined as modified in one way or another — was always conceived under the concept of the Father. One could not imagine the divine essence other than as a unified divine essence, which more or less embraced the world, which one sought to grasp from the concept of the Father; and since the sense of self was not yet there, since it can only arise from the natural, nothing disturbed this Father-consciousness. Modern man can only have this father consciousness if he perhaps through moral reinforcement, but nevertheless dampens his ego and withdraws somewhat, but which must arise through the development of freedom, with the development of modern humanity. Therefore, man as he lives today cannot be satisfied with the one consciousness, the father consciousness. He must say: I would have this father-consciousness if I could still be instinctive like that humanity that existed before the heightened sense of self developed. But as a person of the present, this sense of self prevents me from fully confronting myself in dependence on the father-consciousness.

This is where what the modern human being can very well experience by reflecting on his ego comes into play, when he is clear that the ego, if it does not have the body, extinguishes itself. It extinguishes itself when falling asleep; in death, it only maintains itself by having the contemplation of the dying body. The human being knows that it is precisely through his consciousness of self that he is turned away from the divine consciousness of the Father. But he must feel this as a sickness, and when he feels this in the right way as a sickness, the impulse arises for him that leads him to the Christ present today. The consciousness of the Son must arise out of the inner soul experience to the consciousness of the Father. This son-consciousness can only come into us through an act of freedom. And we must always bear this in mind: if atheism is actually a manifestation of illness, then what can be called agnosticism in the face of the mystery of Golgotha, agnosticism in the face of the present Christ in particular, is a misfortune, a stroke of fate! You don't have to be completely healthy if you are abandoned by the Father-consciousness – but in this respect, modern humanity is not completely healthy –; but you need an act of freely finding the Christ-spirit if you want to come to the Christ.

Two experiences are absolutely necessary: First, the consciousness of the Father, but I would like to say that in the present development of humanity, there is a clouded consciousness of the Father. If I had not acquired the consciousness of the I in the course of the development of humanity, the divine consciousness of the Father would be there; but because the consciousness of the I actually wells up and must well up from that which, is left to itself, is ill in the human being, therefore the divine Father-consciousness is clouded for the present, and one must come to the consciousness of the Christ through a free deed that is different from finding the Father.

These two experiences are not distinguished from each other in Western civilization, as I have already indicated here. Solowjow, in particular, strictly distinguishes the Father-consciousness from the Son-consciousness, which arises from a different kind of consciousness. In the West, the two are so little distinguished that a presentation of the essence of Christianity, which is decisive for many, could even say: The gospels do not belong to the Son, but only to the Father, the Son actually only as the teacher of the Father. - So there is no awareness that one can have two acts of experience: one in relation to the experience of the Father, which is clouded today, and the other in relation to the Son. Now, if one has this experience in relation to the son, one would initially only come to a present encounter with the Christ, and to this present encounter with the Christ, so to speak to the eternal Christ, everyone can come from the subjective relationship of the present. But anyone who rejects the present encounter with the Christ and lives dull, as in the earlier times of humanity, will not gain that inner constitution that leads him to the encounter with the Christ. But he who truly feels what the newer time can give him, comes to this inner deed of the meeting with the Christ and thereby proves that the Christ is there.

But the historical Christ still remains to be investigated. There one must also have the possibility of looking at history from a different point of view than is possible today in the age of materialism for outer consciousness. I must draw your attention to something here that should be strictly observed. This upward shining into higher worlds is usually taken too much for granted. People still do not listen enough to how the one who speaks of the higher worlds must actually speak in a different style than one speaks of the physical world, and not just in a different external style, but in a different inner style. When we live here in the physical world and let this world have its effect on us, we distinguish, for today's consciousness, what is logical, I might say, right and wrong; we also call it true and false. And we test whether something is right or wrong, true or false, according to logical or external principles of reality. But in doing so, we enter into abstraction, into an intellectualistic life. For all logical distinguishing of whether something is true or false moves precisely in abstract concepts, if one only takes external sense perception, in observation or in experiment, as a basis. Nevertheless, with our cognition we still move in abstract concepts. We cannot retain the same abstractness of concepts when we go up into the higher worlds. There everything becomes much more alive and is perceived as something living, not merely as something thought. Therefore, he who beholds the higher worlds must not speak merely of true or false, right or wrong — of course one must do that too! But one must speak, for example, of something that is right here in its reflection in the physical world as something healthy, and of something that is wrong here in its reflection as something unhealthy. One is not quite right when speaking of true and false for the next higher world; one has to deal everywhere with healthy and unhealthy, wholesome or unwholesome. Therefore, anyone who speaks of the higher worlds with reference to abstract logic as if they were the physical world shows that he does not have a real conception of the higher worlds.

Now, however, something very peculiar occurs in relation to the historical development of mankind. If we look at it impartially, it shows us ancient epochs full of wisdom, and if we have a healthy feeling, we will feel deep reverence for the ancient wisdom of these older epochs. If, for example, we consider the reflection of this in the Vedas and Vedanta philosophy, we find that the reasons for which this wisdom was revealed are so profound that one must have the deepest reverence for them. We approach this primal wisdom of humanity differently than the abstract scholarship of today is able to. But this primal wisdom is, as it were, increasingly dulled the further humanity advances in its development, and we see that the greatest dulling of this most original human consciousness, so full of wisdom, comes in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha takes place. There is no need to take into account the external records, insofar as these records, such as the Gospels, speak literally of the Mystery of Golgotha. One need only look impartially, but now with a higher gaze, at the historical development of humanity to find this primal wisdom becoming darker and darker in the human soul the further back one looks. What was fully expressed in the 15th century is already hinted at in the Greek, in the Latin-Roman epoch. Humanity basically only still has traditions of primordial wisdom; it no longer experiences them, and what is slowly emerging is the full consciousness of the self. In this respect, our external science has actually come up against little of what is to be studied in this epoch, which on the other hand includes the mystery of Golgotha. Enormous problems arise when, for example, we look at the Greek alphabet today, where the letters still have names, alpha, beta, gamma, and follow the path to the later Latin alphabet, where they no longer have names. These transitions, which point deeply to historical developmental states, are not at all taken into account. For example, no attention is paid to what our word “alphabet”, which is still taken from Greek, actually means. If we look into this, and a real linguist will be able to follow up these things, it will turn out that the Greek alpha basically expresses the same thing as is expressed in the Old Testament with the words: “The living breath was breathed into man” - so that in the breath, in the breathing, one will see that which first makes man. When the word Alpha, which is a word, is properly examined, it will be found that That is man! The first letter of the alphabet is nothing other than the expression of the human being. And the Beta is the “house”, and the beginning of the alphabet means: man in his house. — This view of the alphabet was completely lost in later times, when intellectualism developed more and more. Letters came to be used merely as a means of distinguishing external objects. What lay in the revelation of Primordial Wisdom was lost sight of; the “Word” of the Primordial Revelation was externalized, and people no longer understand what was revealed to humanity in the letters — and specifically in the words. In the traditional lodges and orders of today, people do talk about the “hidden word”; but little do people know of what this hidden word had as a reality, how the alphabet itself spoke of the hidden word, and how it has been atomized, divided.

I could, of course, also start from something else to show what a deeply incisive developmental impulse was present at the time of Greek and Latin culture. How Greek culture tried to help itself through a special art to overcome this, I would say, illness that occurred in humanity, is palpable for those who want to see. I would just like to draw attention to one thing.

Today, when people hear about drama, for example, they think: it is something to watch, something that belongs to the luxuries of life. You watch it and then call it beautiful. But the Greeks had the idea of catharsis for the most important thing that takes place in drama, the purification, the cleansing. This was something that not only meant an external, fantastic process, but also clearly pointed to its medical origin. Catharsis is the crisis that one overcomes, and through the tragedy of the Greeks, the soul was brought to the crisis, so that it underwent a purification in the experience of fear and compassion, in that it was surrendered to the effects of these opposing forces through the course of the drama. The Greeks did not think of their art in a banal sense, but rather as something healing. For they still perceived the rule of an ancient wisdom in it. For them, a healthy ancient wisdom still existed, but it was paralyzed in the course of time, and a kind of disease process then occurred. With his art, the Greek wanted to express something, and Nietzsche sensed this. You can read about it in his book The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. He said something like the following: There is something in humanity that can be healed. And the therapists, the Essenes, assumed everywhere that there was something in humanity that could be healed. And if the Mystery of Golgotha had not occurred in humanity, we would live today in such a way that I would have to speak as if the Mystery of Golgotha had never occurred, so we could only point to a process of illness in humanity. So that in view of the Mystery of Golgotha, something dawns on us when we apply the concepts of healthy and sick in relation to human history. That is the significant thing: you can apply all concepts in relation to right and wrong, but you come to a point in the course of development where you have to look at things differently. For when you enter the Greek epoch, you enter a time when humanity has become ill, and from which health emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha. Therapists have pointed this out and said: “There arises the great therapist, the savior, who in the literal sense has to heal humanity.” — It is only a matter of delving deeply enough into the course of human development and not stopping at the usual abstract concepts, but grasping historical life with medical concepts, according to the categories of healthy and sick. Then one will understand the necessity of a healing process and will also understand how the “Savior” - it is no other word than the “therapist” - intervenes in humanity. One will then understand how something must intervene in the development of humanity on earth that could not intervene through the forces that were present in humanity earlier. A new impulse from outside had to come to heal humanity.

This is how one can and must look at historical development if one looks only at the configuration of how humanity has developed, without getting involved in the content of the historical documents. Then one comes to the concept of the extraterrestrial Christ, who connected with the evolution of the earth from extraterrestrial regions through the Mystery of Golgotha. This perspective must be adopted if we want to understand history. Those who do not want to apply this perspective to the development of history, according to the concepts of healthy and sick, should simply admit that history remains incomprehensible to them. They cannot understand how that which once lived in the Orient came to Africa and then became Greco-Roman. We see the Greek development, and rightly so, as an extraordinarily healthy one. And why? Because the Greek had the feeling that one has to fight disease and that he wanted to shape his life accordingly. And there is a particularly remarkable harmony between the individual Greek personalities in that they felt: here there is something to fight. And this feeling of no longer feeling and the ever-increasing descent into the abstract, which even makes the gods abstract, is the peculiarity of Romanism and remains its peculiarity. Europe was educated by Romanism until the 15th century, when it came to accepting the cosmic Christ into consciousness; before that, Christ was carried into the Occident through Romanism.

I just wanted to contribute a few things today so that we can gradually come to understand what is written in the Mystery of Golgotha: how we cannot actually stop at something that has developed from ancient times to the Mystery of Golgotha. One then finds that, if one proceeds in this way, there is actually no longer any difference between what certain theologians have in their Jesus-logia and what a secular historian, such as Ranke, has. What certain theologians have in terms of the story of Jesus can no longer be distinguished from what a man like Ranke, for example, presents about it. But everything depends on our being able to see how the Christ, as an extra-terrestrial being, united with Jesus of Nazareth, who was born as a human being in the course of time. It is precisely here that something occurs which has led to the greatest misunderstandings with regard to this necessary path of anthroposophy to the Mystery of Golgotha. It was characteristic of all ancient instinctive wisdom that it did not separate the spiritual and the physical. For if one separates the two, one arrives at an impossible concept of matter in the physical and, in the spiritual, that is, in the spiritual experience of man, one arrives at abstraction, at the lifeless system of concepts. It has only become characteristic of more recent humanity to separate the material and the spiritual in this way. And so anthroposophy leads us back to an understanding of how we have to look at the whole of nature, I would even say, how we look at a physiognomy. We look at a physiognomy in such a way that we think of it as ensouled. We read from it the soul-imbued quality. This was once the case in ancient wisdom, and in the same way, today, the newer, light-imbued wisdom also leads us to a physiognomic view of the world of the stars, for example. This leads to something that allows us to speak of Christ as the being of the sun, although this means just as little that Christ is the physical being of the sun as man is the physical being of the body. But only in this way can it be recognized how something extraterrestrial was able to live in Jesus of Nazareth, who lived in Palestine. But this is shrouded in the greatest misunderstanding, especially among theologians. They even find it 'offensive' that anthroposophy connects the Christ with the sun and with the outer cosmic world in general. Why do they find this offensive? It is extremely characteristic. Anthroposophy says that it leads from the Christ back to the sun. But for these people, the sun is only the burning ball of fog out there; so it is offensive to associate this burning solar nebula with the Christ. But we know that theology has become materialistic, and therefore it can only see the material world in the cosmos. But anthroposophy shows how this material world is spiritualized everywhere. However, theology is unable to detach itself from the material, and therefore it feels offended when anthroposophy speaks of Christ as a being of the sun. From materialism, from the deepest materialism about the world building, precisely this point about Christology is found offensive. Here you can see how materialism permeates everything. It has now taken hold of theology, and because theology has become materialistic, it leads to misunderstandings about anthroposophy. Coming from the ordinary world, we can only be materialists, and when someone from this world talks about Christ in a materialistic way, it is bound to be taken in that way, and that is offensive. At this point, one must point out the materialization of the whole culture, which is only afraid of admitting its underpinnings. But we will not emerge from decline to a new ascent if we do not face these underpinnings quite impartially, fearlessly, without fear. We must get out of what European and Western humanity has brought into this movement of decline in the first place, what has led to these terrible catastrophes. For this, only fearless knowledge of everything that man can learn from the world is suitable. For this it is also necessary to approach the subject in an unprejudiced way, and to discard whatever is really useless from the sphere of intellectualism when entering into the higher worlds.

Many people still say today: Yes, what is communicated from the higher worlds is strange; one must enter into these worlds oneself, otherwise one cannot understand it. — But it is not like that. People believe that it is so only because they absolutely want to abandon those concepts that only apply to the physical world, which we have between birth and death. For example, the belief prevails today, precisely because people everywhere develop everything out of concepts, despite believing that they are being inductive and empirical, that they think they can express themselves absolutely at all. Of course, we have to say: when a person falls asleep, the I and the astral body emerge from the physical and etheric bodies, and the person remains unconscious until awakening occurs. This is a very healthy message for present-day humanity, but it does not apply to the entire development of humanity. If we look back, for example, to the times from which Indian and ancient Persian culture emerged, we find that a different idea was prevalent everywhere, namely that when a person falls asleep, his ego and astral body descend deeper into his physical and etheric bodies than is the case when he is awake during the day. The old Indian did not say: Man goes out of his physical and etheric body with his ego and astral body when he falls asleep. Only the Theosophists try to make people believe that the Indian spoke in this way. He said: When people fall asleep, they go deeper into their physical and etheric bodies. And that is basically quite correct, because the situation is actually the same as if one were to say in an absolute sense that for the earth the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But that is not the case, because for the other half of the earth the process takes place in reverse. You can also call it east and west, but the directions are different. Therefore, it is quite possible that for a certain period of time the I and the astral body plunged deeper into the physical body and ether body, and that therefore the impression was quite different. That is why the Indian speaks quite differently, because the person was in a different state of consciousness, namely in that of which the modern person also has no full consciousness, in his rhythmic and metabolic functions. He has no consciousness of these, because it is quite the case, in terms of consciousness, for the modern person that he dreams his rhythmic functions, but sleeps through his metabolic functions.

Therefore, one can say: It must be understandable that people at different times had to experience different things about something that people today believe they can speak about absolutely; and one only understands the development of history if one also lets the facts speak about these things, not the concepts that one has constructed for oneself. Today, when East and West, Occident and Orient, are confronting each other in such a burning way that a balance must be found, today humanity must be able to go back to these backgrounds; otherwise you can experience as many Washington conferences as you like, they will all end in failure if the fundamental impulses of human development are not taken into account. People today do not yet believe this, but it is true that if one wants to move from decline to ascent, one must address the issues that are most deeply moving humanity. What is demanded here seems impractical today. But people do not realize how impractical that is, which has proven itself as such, which has developed in its extreme, has become impractical from 1914 to 1918 and continues to be impractical. But in addition to all this, one must familiarize oneself with how religious consciousness can be illuminated and deepened by what anthroposophical insight is.

Today I could only sketch one of the paths to the cosmic, extraterrestrial Christ. But you will see how a deeper understanding of history can develop from it later on, but one that regards humanity as a living being. And just as one otherwise speaks of a healthy and a sick being in the case of a living being, so one must also speak of a healthy and a sick humanity if one does not want to stop at materialism. One cannot say that it is difficult to come to the Christ when one sees how the corresponding paths have not been followed. A concrete, realistic view of history will try to approach the Mystery of Golgotha from the most diverse sides. Today, however, since one cannot come up with reasons against spiritual science, everything possible is used to denigrate its bearers: they become personal. And it is indeed - and I say this without rancor - a terrible indictment of those who today oppose anthroposophical spiritual science that they actually refrain from addressing the spiritual science, that they always approach it only from the outside, for example, portray the Christ event and the Christ experience as if anthroposophy rationalized the mysterious, as if it were to approach it in shy awe, in the sphere of ordinary rationalist knowledge. But just think: when you are face to face with another person and look at him, the mystery that every person is to us does not have to be lost just because you not only hear about him but are also able to look at him. The individual human being cannot be measured with rationalistic concepts, so how much less can we do so with that which confronts us as the highest meaning of earthly development: the Mystery of Golgotha! But the mysterious is not lost by being brought to view; and anthroposophy aims to lead from that which is only communicated or believed to that which makes itself understood in contemplation. Nothing is taken away from what constitutes the mystery. The mystery remains, but it is not merely to be 'spoken' of, but is to be presented to contemplative humanity.

Thus today's criticism is rambling, instead of going into what is so literally contained in the anthroposophical literature itself. It is not necessary to get involved in every issue that comes from such quarters, but within anthroposophical circles there should be a strong awareness that the hatred for the anthroposophical movement will increase all the more the more it asserts itself. What they have done so far is quite a feat in terms of opposition; but you can be assured that it will be surpassed. And even if there is as much grumbling as there has been in recent days about eurythmy, then it seems to me that the only thing necessary is to say to yourself: It would only be worrying if there were praise from this quarter. I would then begin to ask myself: What needs to be done differently now? That is something those who want to be in the right way in the Anthroposophical Movement should acquire as a healthy feeling.

What I wanted to present today is something that, in a certain respect, appears to be a supplement to what I was allowed to speak about during my last visit. Of course, that does not mean that it is finished. What I have hinted at today will also help you to make some progress in Christology.

Today's meeting provides a further opportunity for me to speak to you who are friends of the anthroposophical movement before I leave. I wish to do something which in a way is particularly close to my heart, to discuss some of the things that really need to be discussed. It is possible that most of what I have to say today is a repetition of things that have been discussed on a number of occasions from all kinds of different aspects, things now also taken into consideration in public lectures. There are reasons, however, why it is necessary for us to consider some of them once again today.

I have often stressed that it is necessary for a sufficient number of people to fully understand the following. To prevent the decline into which we have got ourselves in the civilized world from continuing into utter ruin, certain impulses must be brought into modern civilization that can only arise if spiritual science reveals the nature of the world to its fullest extent.

Materialism has come to Europe over the last three or four centuries, coming to a crest in the 19th and then tumbling over in the 20th century. It has a peculiarity that seems paradoxical, particularly if one fails to realize the true causes. The peculiar thing about materialism is that it has no possibility of recognizing the material world as it really is. I think I have already given you an example of this. The materialistic way of thinking has in more recent times given rise to an idea that is believed by a great many people, namely that the heart is a kind of pump in the human organism that pumps the blood through the organism. This idea of the human heart being a pump comes up in all kinds of variations nowadays. The facts are rather different, however, and should be seen like this: The whole of our rhythmical circulatory system is something alive. It cannot be compared with a system of channels or the like with water flowing through them, water kept circulating with the aid of a pump. Our rhythmical circulatory system, our blood system, is something alive. It is kept alive by a number of factors, the major factors being breathing, hunger, thirst and so on. These clearly function at the level of soul and spirit. Our blood system is set in motion by entirely primary causes, and the movement of the heart arises when this spiritual principle enters into the rhythm of the blood. The rhythm of the blood is the primary, living principle, and the heart is caught up in this rhythm. The facts are therefore entirely the opposite of what every professor of physiology is teaching today, with the result that it is dinned into people's heads at school and indeed from their earliest childhood.

It therefore has to be said that materialism has not even managed to get a real understanding of the physical processes relating to the heart in the human organism. The material aspect in particular is completely misunderstood. This is just one of many examples. Material things in particular have found no explanation whatsoever under the influence of materialism. The heart is not a pump. It it something we might regard more as a sense organ incorporated within the human organism to give human individuals a kind of subconscious perception of their circulation, just as the eye perceives colour in the world outside. Basically the heart is a sense organ within the circulatory system, yet exactly the opposite is taught nowadays.

This would appear to be an example of limited relevance. I can imagine some philistine saying: ‘Well, it can't do much harm if people have entirely the wrong idea about the nature of the human heart. Of course, if doctors had the wrong idea about the nature of the human heart that would be cause for general alarm. After all, it does make quite a difference in human life if doctors have the right or the wrong idea about the heart.’ But this also holds true for other things. Everything is connected with everything else in life, and because of this humankind is absolutely full of wrong ideas, completely upside-down ideas. One might well think, if one was serious about it, that being hung up on wrong ideas would cause real havoc in our thinking processes. It certainly does. Our thinking is utterly ruined because it has been dinned into us and we have become used to thinking that things are the opposite of what they really are. That is why we never acquire the habit of steady, purposeful thinking. How can our thinking grow purposeful in social life, for example, if in areas where truth should be sought above all else we are in fact going in the opposite direction?

You see, some things that are important to know are a closed book for People today. When the human organism is investigated in conventional institutes nowadays, in physiological and biological laboratories, in hospitals and similar institutions, the brain for instance is examined by analyzing it bit by bit as it presents itself to the eye. The liver is examined by the same kind of analysis. In doing so, people never consider one thing that is absolutely essential if one wishes to understand the human being: The whole of the head organization as We have it today and everything it governs is entirely different from the rest of the human organism.

Let me show you what lies behind this. You can draw it like this. I intend to lead up gradually to what I really want to say. You can say that the human being has two organs of perception, and the direction in which they perceive is approximately like this [see (a) in the diagram]. Two other directions in which we perceive show a certain relationship to these. In diagrammatic form I would draw them like this (b):

I deliberately did not tell you where these organs are to be found in the human organism. If I draw nothing but two arrows to indicate direction (a) here, where one stretches out, as it were, to perceive, and two others here, (b), where we perceive sideways, it makes no difference at all if these are the directions in which feeling and sensation pass through my legs and these where they pass through my arms. Here we have something that is in accord. I perceive my own gravity, as it were, I stand with my two feet on the ground. I really perceive something. And I also perceive something when I stretch out my hand, stretch out my arm, even if I do not actually touch anything. I can draw it like this (a). The same drawing can also stand for something different. Imagine this is the horizontal plane. The two arrows could represent the two visual axes; I could draw the two visual axes like this. And these arrows (b) could indicate the directions of my ears. The same diagram would serve to indicate perception by the eyes and ears. On the one occasion I have the whole organism within the head, though the plane has turned through a 90° angle, on the other within the rest of the organism. There is a higher point of view where both are the same. Our two legs are merely directions in which we perceive that have become flesh. The same directions exist in a less physical form where they extend from the brain through the eyes to perceive colour. Elsewhere we perceive gravity and everything connected with it. We see our weight and we step on colour, we could say, if we were to change the two things over, entirely in organic terms, of course. I hear the blackboard chalk, I touch a C or C sharp that is sounding. The difference is merely one of degree. In the head everything has gone through a 90° angle and is less physical; the other is in the vertical plane, and is physical. In the final instance both are the same. It is only that I am aware of the way my eyes step on colours, my ears touch sounds; I know about it, it is part of my ordinary conscious life. Everything my legs see with regard to gravity and all kinds of other things that my arms hear—all these are in the subconscious sphere. Conditions belonging to the cosmic sphere are present in the subconscious. With the whole of my subconscious I have knowledge of the cosmic sphere, knowledge of the way the earth relates to other bodies in the universe, knowledge of the universal background to gravity. I hear the music of the spheres with my arms and not with my ears.

Thus we may say that we have a lower organism, as it is called, with subconscious cosmic awareness, and we have a head with early awareness; this however is a ‘conscious’ awareness. The whole of the human being is organized on the basis of these differences. Our outer form and configuration depends entirely on these differences. You know that the head we carry today is the transformed body of our previous incarnation, our previous earth life, and that the rest of our present organism will be the head in our next life. The head, then, is the rest of the organism which has undergone a transformation. It is more perfect, more finished in a way. As a result the legs have become fine visual threads extending beyond the eye and stepping on the colours in a very lively way. The arms of our former life have become so ethereal that they now extend from our ears and touch the sounds we hear.

These are concrete facts about the human being. It does not get People anywhere to know about repeated earth lives and so on. Those after all are dogmas and it makes no difference if you have the dogmas of the Catholic or Protestant church or the dogma of repeated earth lives. Real thinking only starts when you enter into concrete events, when you come to realize that looking at the human head you are looking at the transformed body of your previous earth life, and that the head you had then was the transformed body of the preceding life—you must imagine it without the head, of course. The head you see now is the transformed organism of the last life lived on earth. The rest of the organism as you see it now will be the head in the next life. Then the arms will have metamorphosed and become ears, and the legs will have become eyes. We must look at the physical world and understand it in its transformed non-physical form, our intellect must illumine the material world in this way. Then at last we shall have what humankind is much in need of today. Once the human mind has been organized so that it no longer produces the kind of folly that has been put forward as a potential social theory, particularly in the second half of the 19th century, human beings will indeed be ready to develop social ideas that can be put into effect in this world. It is necessary to gain a thorough understanding of this today. It is a serious matter when people say today: Something else will have to take the place of the science which has evolved and is so highly respected, of all the things that are generally disseminated. There can be no other way.

It is nonsense, and I also said so recently in a public lecture,³⁰ to talk about setting up adult education thinking that the same kind of work can be done there as at ordinary universities. It is the work done at the universities that has brought us to these disastrous situations, because it has become the materialistic view of a few leading personalities. This is now to be presented to the masses; that is, millions are to head for the disasters that so far have come about because the wrong lead was given by a few. Something that proved useless for a few is now to be spread among many. It is not as easy as that, however. Popular education cannot be introduced simply by teaching outside the universities what until now has been alive inside them. It would mean teaching something that is altogether unsuitable for human beings. This may sound radical, but it is absolutely essential that it is fully understood if there is to be even the least hope of the decline being halted and something new and positive developing. These are the things one wishes one could speak of in words that truly go to the heart. These concrete truths must reach as many hearts as possible. It was therefore important to me to point out in my public lectures that something has been achieved in the Waldorf School, that anthroposophy has positively influenced the history lessons in some places. I was also able to refer to the teaching of anthropology in class 5. There, too, anthroposophy was effective. Not that one would teach anthroposophy to the children—we would never think of doing such a thing—but lessons come to life if anthroposophy is the foundation, if the inspiration of anthroposophy is there in what we teach. This brings the souls of the children to life; they are quite different when this influence is there. It would be taking the easy way simply to teach anthroposophy in our schools. No, that is not what we are about, but rather to use anthroposophy to enliven the subject matter. It will of course be necessary for anthroposophy to come alive in oneself first of all, and that is something that really comes hard, to let anthroposophy come alive in human beings. Otherwise the potential is there today for all kinds of disciplines, not only in science but all kinds of disciplines in life, to have the full benefit of what life in anthroposophy is able to give.

That is a general way of looking at it. Let me go on to something specific, so that you can see the things we are considering in their proper context.

Marxist philosophy, Marxist views are widespread today. They have their most radical expression in Leninism and Trotskyism, which are destroying the world. A view of history known as ‘historical materialism’ plays a great role in Marxist philosophy, particularly the dogma of the fundamental importance of the modes and relations of production. Millions of proletarians have accepted this dogma according to which tradition, law, science, religion and so on are like smoke, like an ideology rising from the modes and relations of Production—you will find further details in my book Towards Social Renewal³¹—and that the modes and relations of production are the Only reality on which to base one's view of history.

It was very important to me on past occasions—this has to do with the feeling I have that I was really able to achieve something and create a potential basis at the Worker's Education Institute in Berlin³²—to speak in proletarian circles about the view that the modes and relations of production are the only effective element, and to present a clear picture. My aim therefore was not to teach historical materialism but the truth. That was of course also the reason why I was thrown °in, for it offended those in charge at the time just as much as the idea of a threefold social order offends people today. Authoritarian thinking and belief in authority were and still are as great in the socialist movement as in the Catholic church.

What really matters is to gain a clear understanding of social relations in this world. Real understanding of the natural threefold order of the human organism, of the way the human organism is an organism of nerves and senses, rhythmical organism and a metabolic organism, as shown in my book Von Seelenrätseln,³³ leads to a way of thinking that can also apply to social life. People of little understanding will say: ‘You are using analogy in applying the threefold order of the human body to the social organism’. This is nonsense of course. Analogy is not the method used in Towards Social Renewal. All I said was that if people succeeded in letting their thinking escape from the strait jacket put on it by modern scholarship and particularly public opinion, they would free their thinking to the extent that it will be possible to think sensible thoughts concerning social issues. The kind of thinking that puts the human brain side by side with the liver, examining everything as though it were of the same substance, will never come to sensible conclusions.

Using external analogies we might say: The social organism is threefold by nature and so is the human organism. The head is the organ of mind and intellect; it should therefore be compared with the cultural and intellectual life in the threefold organism. The rhythmical system establishes harmony between different functions in the action of the heart, in respiration—that would be the rights sphere in the social organism. Metabolism, the most physical, material aspect—something mystics tend to look down on to some extent, though they say they also have to eat and drink--would be compared to the sphere of economics.

This is definitely not the case, however. I have repeatedly pointed out on other occasions that in reality things are very different than mere analogy would make them to be. It cannot be said, for instance, that summer is comparable to the waking state for the earth and winter to a state of sleep. The reality is different. In summer the earth is asleep, in winter it is awake. I have gone into this in detail.

The same applies if we consider the real situation in comparing the social and the human organism. The economic sphere of the social organism actually compares to the activities of the human head. As to the sphere of rights, the legal sphere, people were quite rightly comparing this, the middle realm, with rhythmical activities in the human organism. The life of mind and intellect however has to be compared with the metabolism. This means that economic life has to be compared with the organs that serve the mind and intellect, and the cultural and intellectual sphere of the social organism with the metabolic organs. There is no way round this. Economic life is the head of the social organism; cultural life is the stomach, liver and spleen of the social organism but not of the individual human being. It is of course too much of an effort for anyone whose thinking is in a strait-jacket to make distinction between social life and the life of an individual person.

Again the essential point is that spiritual science prepares us to see things as they really are and not to produce analogies and elaborate symbolism. We will then arrive at important conclusions. We shall find, for example, that we can say: But in that case economic life, if it really is the head in the social organism, will have to live on the rest of the organism, just as the head does in the human organism. In that case we cannot say morality, religious life and the search for knowledge are ideological elements arising from economic life. Quite the contrary, in fact. Economic life is dependent on cultural life, on the metabolism of the social organism, just as the human head depends on respiration, on stomach, liver and spleen. We then come to see that economic life arises out of cultural and religious life. If we did not have a stomach we could not have a head. Of course we also could not have a stomach if we did not have a head, but it is the head after all that is fed by the stomach, and in the same way economic life is fed by cultural life and not the other way round. The socialist theories that now threaten to spread through the whole of the civilized world are therefore quite erroneous, a dreadful superstition. No one has thought to look for the truth in recent centuries; on a purely emotional basis everyone has been promulgating the kind of truth their class and point of view suggested to them. Now at last it is realized that it is a total delusion to see historical evolution as the product of the modes and relations of production. The idea is now to compare the actual facts and not to talk in analogies. Now a realistic view is taken and it is realized that if the stomach is undermined in the human organism, the head will suffer. In the same way there can be no sound metabolism in the social organism and economic life must fall into decline if morality, religious life and intelligent thought are undermined in the social organism. Nothing in fact depends on economic life; primarily everything depends on the views, the ideas, the cultural life of humankind.

The head is always dying—I have spoken of this in other lectures—and we only maintain the head organism because it is constantly dying and the rest of the organism rebels against this. The same applies in the sphere of economics. Economic life is constantly bringing death and decay into the progress of history; rather than generating everything else it brings about the death of everything. This element of death constantly has to be counterbalanced by what the cultural organism is able to produce. The situation is therefore exactly the other way round. Anyone speaking in materialistic terms and saying economic life is the basis for progress is not speaking the truth. The truth is that economic life is the basis of something that is always dying in stages, and the mind and spirit have to make up for this dying process. To proceed the way people are now proceeding in Russia is to help the world to its death. The only possible outcome of proceeding in this way is to help the world to its death, for the simple reason that the laws of death are inherent in the things that are being done there.

You can see the eminent social importance of these things. We have now been working in anthroposophy for twenty years, and all the time I have tried to make it utterly clear and apparent in all kinds of lectures that what matters to us is not the cultivation of a philosophy full of inner self-gratification, a kind of spiritual snobbery, but to develop the most important impulse that is needed in the present age.

I wanted to present this to you again today in a slightly different form in connection with a number of things that can help us understand the essential nature of the human being. It is important that those who call themselves friends of the anthroposophical movement clearly perceive the connection between this anthroposophical movement and other events as we know them.

The ideas put forward by myself and other friends are often seriously distorted. It is therefore difficult to speak freely to such a large audience, even if it is anthroposophical. As there is no immediate opportunity, however, to discuss these things at a more intimate level and yet it is necessary to speak of them, let me draw your attention to a few things. We must be aware, particularly here in Stuttgart, that the anthroposophical movement we have now had for twenty Years has indeed reached a new stage. If we are serious about the movement this means we have accepted the obligation to follow this change, to adapt to this change. You must properly understand that because our friends Molt, Kühn, Unger, Leinhas³⁴ and others have attempted to take the anthroposophical approach to its practical conclusion something has happened that concerns us all. It concerns us all and we must take account of it in everything we say and do. The fact is—and let us be very clear about this—that until then the anthroposophical movement was a current in the life of the mind and spirit. Such things continue on their way, cliques and closed groups, however objectionable, that go by personal and heaven knows what other interests, may form; a spiritual movement may even proceed by the agency of privy councillors like Max Seiling.³⁵ One does of course have to approach it properly in view of what is called for, but for as long as it is a purely spiritual or cultural movement it can be ignored. Now, however, three things have grown out of this spiritual movement.

The first followed the appeal I made last year.³⁶ It now forms part of the struggling threefold movement, the Association for a Threefold Social Organism. This has not yet been able to get anywhere near the real objectives. What the appeal had to say has in a sense met with rejection, and it would be a good thing to be fully aware that there has been this rejection, that only very little of what was intended has come to fruition.

This does of course mean that I have many requests made to me. The idea has come up in Dornach, for example, of issuing a further appeal that would make it known internationally what Dornach means to the world. I had to explain to our friends that in the ordinary life outside that is now heading for a breakdown, appeal usually follows appeal, programme on programme. We cannot do this if we work out of anthroposophy. It is important to realize that, in a way, it is not at all healthy if something is undertaken that does not come off. It is important to make a careful assessment of the chances of success, and not just do what comes to mind but only the things that have a chance of success. This is why I then said—it is important and I must ask you to consider it carefully—that I would not dream of making a similar appeal again, for what has happened to the first appeal should not happen a second time. It was possible to let the appeal for a Cultural Council³⁷ go out, for that was not my work, but we must be very clear that things are getting a great deal more serious than people are inclined to think if something like the anthroposophical movement stands behind them.

Three things have now evolved out of the anthroposophical movement, in a way, each of them quite distinct. A threefold order following that appeal—we will have to work at it, for it partly meets with rejection; secondly the Waldorf School;³⁸ thirdly the financial, commercial and industrial enterprise called Der Kommende Tag (Dawn of Tomorrow).³⁹

Coming to Stuttgart in the past, when we only had the anthroPosophical movement—I am referring only to Stuttgart—I would spend three or four days here and you know how many personal interviews I managed. These things have had some effect, as is now becoming apparent. It was not without significance that whatever had happened in the meantime—people will understand what I mean if they want to—could be put to rights again in those personal interviews. Events could then proceed until the next time. Now the position is such that following those outer developments one has to attend meetings from morning till night, and indeed well into the night, and there is no question of continuing in the ways we got used to when we were only an anthroposophical movement. Now there are many people who feel that it is a nuisance that things are no longer the way they were. It is necessary, however, to look at all the changes and really say to oneself: Things have changed since the spring of last year and this will have to be taken into account.

The situation cannot remain as it is, but a united effort must be made to see that it does not remain this way. It cannot remain as it is because everything that is done—be it for the Waldorf School or the Kommende Tag—has its basis in spiritual work. Without the spiritual work that has been done and must continue to be done there is no point to it all. The spiritual work must give form, vigour and content to the whole. To continue the way we are going would mean that the institutions which have now been established would swallow up the original spiritual movement. We would be taking away the original basis. Nothing growing out of the anthroposophical movement should be allowed to swallow up the movement as such.

You see, these are serious matters we have to discuss today, and I think at least some of you will understand what I mean. Things will not be different unless we accept it as a reality that anthroposophical work has been done for many years, for decades. This work must be seen as something real.

I would ask you also to consider the following. There is much conflict in the world, but where is most of this conflict to be found? It takes a certain form and people fail to notice, but most of it takes place in the sphere of spiritual endeavour. There is no end to the conflict within the body we call the anthroposophical movement, for example. When our movement evolved out of older practices—it was necessary to start from these, you know the reasons—that is, when many people familiar with the old theosophical practices joined our movement, I had the feeling that a gentleman, who at the time was particularly vehement in his defense of the line we were following, would very soon be in conflict with various other people. Conflict is likely to be particularly bad in this sphere. In fact I always made it quite clear that the gentleman in question, a theosophist of the purest Water, would not only come in conflict with others, but that his right side and his left would be involved in a desperate struggle. People Will find that the left side of this individual will have the most dreadful quarrel with his right side.

It will of course be necessary to develop the other extreme, where the conflicts that constantly arise are overcome. Such conflicts are due to the very nature of spiritual movements, because they all aim to develop the human individuality. The other pole, the other extreme, of human understanding, must be there as well; it is the pole of human understanding where it is possible to enter into a human individual, to go deeply into the life impulses of another person, and so on. It must be possible for the Kommende Tag and the Waldorf School we are now running to be given a sound moral basis by the anthroposophical movement here in Stuttgart, the moral basis that is the work of decades, or at least should have been such. That has to be the foundation, for it is the only way in which we can go ahead and restore the balance between a life consisting of meetings and the necessary spiritual work which after all should be the basis. We cannot achieve this, of course, if things go on all the time where one is told, for instance, that dreadful things have been going on again, with someone causing trouble all the time, someone upsetting all the rest. Well, that may be so. To date—and on this visit such things have come up again countless times—I have not been able, however, to pursue such an affair to the point where the second person, when approached, told the same story as the first. When it came to the fifth or sixth person, I would hear the absolute opposite of what the first had told me. I do not want to criticize, to apportion praise or blame, really, not even the latter, but that is how it is. What is needed, particularly among anthroposophists, and I have said this on many occasions, is an absolute and unerring feeling for the truth. It is very difficult to continue working in all these areas unless there is a basis of truth, of genuine, immediate truth. If there is this basis of genuine truth, surely it must happen that when something comes up and one pursues the matter further a fifth or sixth person would still present the same facts. Yet it happens that I am told about something ‘dreadful’ and everybody I ask tells me something different. I cannot, of course, apply the things I have from other sources to external life; I have said this many times. It is not a question of whether I know about it, know who is right and who is wrong. The question is whether the first says the same as the sixth or seventh. What I know has nothing to do with it. As a rule I do not allow people to pull the wool over my eyes, and that is not why I ask people. The reasons are quite different. As a rule it does not interest me very much what people tell me. The point is that I hear what the first person says and then the seventh, only to find on many occasions that one person says one thing and the seventh says the opposite. It evidently follows that one of the two things cannot be true. It seems to me that this does follow.

In outer physical life which for this very reason is going into a decline people have always wanted to shut their eyes to the function, the crucial significance, of untruths. Even unintentional untruths are destructive in their effects. In spiritual science working towards anthroposophy it is absolutely essential to realize that an untruth in the life of mind and spirit is the same as a devastating bomb in physical life. It is a devastating force, an instrument of destruction, and this in very real terms. It would certainly be possible to do important and fruitful work in the spiritual sphere again, in spite of the many new developments, providing these things are given some attention—objective attention, however, not subjective attention.

You know I do not normally go in for tirades; it is not my habit to moralize. Just for once, however, I really must discuss the facts that have become very obvious at this time, because the situation is serious. We are looking at undertakings that must not fail, that will have to succeed, and there can be no question of any kind of failure; we have to say today that they shall succeed. They must not however swallow up the original anthroposophical movement, and this means that everybody must do his share to ensure that the moral foundation established in the work of many years really exists. Everybody must do his part. It is really necessary for everybody to to their part.

It saddens my heart that I am unable to respond to almost all the many requests that are made to me. I had to keep refusing to help my friends because time cannot be used twice, and meetings go on not only from morning till night, but even well into the night. Quite obviously I cannot use the same time to talk to individuals. The membership in the widest sense must come to its senses and get rid of the things that play a role in all aspects of life here, the kind of thing I have just been mentioning. Every single member must reflect and see that here in this very place these things have to be done away With Unless this is done—and these things are connected—it will not be possible to find the time to do real fundamental spiritual work. Everything arising out of anthroposophy will succeed. Yet unless some things change the original spiritual movement will be swallowed up. The will impulses of those who consider themselves the bearers of this spiritual movement would then lead to a new materialism, as the original spiritual movement will have been aborted. The spirit needs to be nurtured or it will die. Materialism does not arise of its own accord; you cannot create materialism, just as you cannot create a corpse. A corpse is produced when the soul leaves the organism. In the same way everything created here on a spiritual basis, out of something that has soul, will become entirely material unless there is a genuine desire to nurture the spirit. It means that above all the moral and ethical basis which we have been able to establish is given careful attention. It is necessary above all to ensure that we do not become subject to illusion, that we do not think it is enough to accept Certain views just because they are easy to accept. We must look at life without flinching.

It is really very bad for people to say things like: ‘The threefold order is a good thing; we must take it up.’ Feeling rather good about it they will say: ‘I am getting something organized and it is very much in accord with the threefold order; aren't I good! It makes me really feel good getting something organized that is a nucleus of threefoldness’. Licking your lips morally speaking, full of inner self gratification—you may feel like this when you are doing such things, but it does not mean that you have a sense of reality. The threefold idea is true to reality because it requires genuine effort to bring it to realization. Many people's ideas are however so unrealistic that the idea of threefoldness goes against the grain with them. The first and most essential thing is for this idea to be taken up by a sufficiently large number of people. We must have the necessary sense of reality and practical common sense.

Eight days ago I had to speak here in Stuttgart about the consequences the threefold order has for the management of landed property.⁴⁰ I said that the threefold order obviously aims to achieve a situation where social exchange, social conditions relating to landed property, are such that land cannot be bought and sold like other goods That is entirely based on reality; to say the opposite would be unrealistic. I had to discuss the subject on a day when I actually got here late because we had been going round the countryside all day trying to buy land. If we have a sense of reality we cannot base ourselves on the threefold order and say: ‘I must be good; I am forming a nucleus for the threefold order.’ No, it has to be accepted, and there can be no illusions, that in a certain respect the only possible way in which we can work for a threefold order is by working on the most important aspect, not basing our work on the immediate present.

It is not a question of morally licking our lips as we say that we follow a particular idea. This would make it unfruitful and abstract. It is a question of really seeing the reality, seeing what is necessary. This is the difference between people whose approach is utopian and dogmatic and those who take a practical view. The latter will take an idea as far as it can go, but they are not unworldly people living for some private pleasure; they take hold of the reality. We really only give ourselves up to illusion for our own private pleasure. This must be realized. It is also necessary to realize that many other things go in the same direction. I am sorry, it could not be helped. There were quite a number of things that I could have talked about on this last occasion before my departure. I might have drawn your attention to many things that were put to me more or less in passing, things that do have an effect on the fruitful activities. One of the main problems with those fruitful activities is that there is a constant need to have endless discussions on matters that should be dealt with in half an hour, because things are thrown into the pool that really should not be there. If you have sound thinking habits—and those are the habits we must acquire if spiritual science as it is presented here is to come about—and then find yourself—I am not speaking theoretically—right in the middle of what is nowadays called business practice, the best way of defining what goes on is that people kill as much time as possible, that time is wasted. There are practical people today who boast of being busy all day long. If they did not waste so much time, their work, which let us say takes ten hours, could be easily done in one hour. Time is killed particularly in what is called active life today. This killing of time causes thoughts to be drawn out. Entering into practical life as it goes on today one really gets the feeling that one is in a noodle factory where thoughts that ought to be concentrated are drawn out, pulled apart like strudel or noodle dough; everything is pulled well apart. It is dreadful to come across those spread-apart thoughts that are cultivated in practical life. If you wanted to use thoughts like these to get a clear understanding of the world, of the things I have spoken of today by way of an introduction, you would not get anywhere. All this ‘strudel-dough thinking’ has arisen in the process of killing time. Thoughts that ought to be concentrated, for that is the only way for them to be effective, simply come to nothing by being drawn out. Something which functions properly at a certain density will of course be useless once it has become thin and worn. Many of the things that play a large role in modern economics are quite useless when it comes to making world affairs progress. Our particular task would thus be to grow concise in our thinking also with regard to practical things, and not to kill time. However, time still has to be killed these days, unless the anthroposophical movement, which after all supports our enterprises, becomes what it ought to be: A movement based on truth in every respect, a movement where all untruth eliminates itself because we have no use for it and because it would immediately show itself to be what it is.

This is what I wanted to say to you today. It is not addressed to anyone in particular. Please do not continue to go around saying that I was aiming at one thing or another in particular. I wanted to give you a clear picture of the facts as they are in general. The world situation is serious today and the things that have been going on among us here in Stuttgart really reflect the serious situation that exists for the whole of civilization. The things that haunt us in our community here can teach us a lot about the things that haunt the world as a whole.

I do not wish to hurt anyone's feelings. Nor do I want to moralize, to preach at you. The intention has been to discuss the things that have been obvious to the eye and to the soul on so many occasions over the last two weeks.

• 30. ‘Die Erziehung und der Unterricht gegenüber der Weltlage der Gegenwart’ (Education and teaching in the light of the present world situation), Stuttgart 10 June 1920. Published in Geisteswissenschaft und die Lebensforderungen der Gegenwart 6, Dornach 1950. To be published in GA 335. No record of translation into English.
• 31. Die Kernpunkte der Sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft (1919) GA 23. English translation: Towards Social Renewal. F.T. Smith tr. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1977.
• 32. See Rudolf Steiner's Mein Lebensgang (1923–25) GA. 28. English translation: Rudolf Steiner: An Autobiography. R. Stebbing tr. New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1977.
• 33. Von Seelenrätseln (Riddles of the soul) (1917) GA. 21. Parts translated into English in The Case for Anthroposophy. Owen Barfield tr. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1970.
• 34. Molt, Emil, see ref. 37.
  
  Kühn, Hans, writer and publisher.
  
  Unger, Carl, grad. engineer, owner of machine tool works, member of Council of the German Anthroposophical Society from 1905, lecturer and writer. Shot by a mentally sick individual in Nuremberg in 1929.
  
  Leinhas, Emil, businessman, managing director of Der Kommende Tag AG (see ref. 39), writer.
• 35. Seiling, Max, first a follower then an opponent of Rudolf Steiner. Bore the title Privy Councillor.
  
  TN. Rudolf Steiner used word-play here, calling Hofrat (Privy Councillor) Seiling an Un-Rat. The word Unrat means garbage, refuse, ordure.
• 36. An das deutsche Volk und an die Kultunvelt! (Appeal to the German nation and the civilized world), pamphlet, 1919, reprinted a.o. in Towards Social Renewal (ref. 31).
• 37. Appeal to establish a Council for Culture. Whitsun 1919, signed by many well-known figures in cultural life.
• 38. Waldorf School: intergrated primary and secondary school established by Emil Molt in 1919 for the children of workers in the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory and the general public. This was done under the guidance of Rudolf Steiner who also appointed the teachers and himself gave the preparatory teachers' seminars.
• 39. Der Konunende Tag, Aktiengesellschaft zur F6rderung wirtschaftlicher and geistiger Werte (join-stock company for the promotion of economic and cultural values), established in Stuttgart in March 1920. Rudolf Steiner was Chairman of the Board until 1923. The company became a victim of post-war inflation in Germany and had to be dissolved in 1925.
• 40. Stuttgart 16 June 1920; published in Landwirtschafi und Industrie/Neuordnung des Bodenrechtes als soziale Forderung der Gegenwart (Agriculture and industry/New proposals for land ownership as a social requirement for the present age); quoted from the writings and lectures of Rudolf Steiner, Roman Boos ed., Stuttgart 1957, S. 84 ff. (to be published in GA 335). No record of translation into English.

I felt the need to speak to you about an anthroposophical topic this evening, despite the fact that my stay in Stuttgart should be devoted to other things. Today I would like to share with you something about the relationship between the human being and the world around that person, insofar as this world environment plays a role in the nature of the human being. I would like to shape this theme in such a way that its content can be particularly relevant to many things that need to be considered in the face of the decline of civilization in our time.

If we take together what we have learned over the years from anthroposophical spiritual science about the human being, then much can be summarized for us in that threefold nature of the human being, which has indeed already often appeared before our souls, in the threefold nature of spirit, soul and body. If we look at our present education from the spiritual-scientific point of view, at that which is penetrating more and more into our education today, then we must say that the development of humanity has gradually come to subject only the physical part of the human being to observation. In relation to this consideration of the bodily, we certainly have comprehensive knowledge today and even more endeavor to get to know the bodily in its relationship to the other phenomena of the world. But we live at a time when more and more attention must be paid to the soul and the spirit. Precisely when one looks at the physical so carefully, as is the case with today's usual knowledge, one must actually be led by this consideration of the physical to the consideration of the soul and the spiritual.

I would like to start from phenomena that cannot really be understood today because only the physical is considered, and which nevertheless, I would like to say, are there as great questions before man. When we consider the human body, it fits into the whole order of nature, and knowledge has gradually endeavored to piece this order of nature together from necessarily interrelated causes and effects. The human body is also thought of as being integrated into this chain of causes and effects and is explained from it. This is the materialistic character of our present-day knowledge in the broader and actual sense, that one only looks at natural causes and effects and the way in which the human body is derived from these causes and effects with a kind of mechanical necessity.

But then certain phenomena immediately present themselves to man, which are indeed abnormal phenomena in a certain sense, but which stand there like great riddles, like question marks, if one merely stops at the purely natural explanation according to cause and effect. We see how human corporeality unfolds. The natural scientist comes and seeks the same laws in the human body that he seeks in the rest of nature. He may say that they are only more complicated in the human body, but they are the same laws that are also found in nature. And lo and behold, we see individual laws from which certain phenomena arise, albeit in an abnormal way, which cannot possibly be incorporated into the course of natural events. The materialistic thinker endeavors – he has not yet achieved it, but he regards it as an ideal – to explain ordinary human volition, ordinary human feeling, human thinking or imagining as effects of bodily processes, in the same way that we explain a flame through the combustion of fuel. And it can certainly be said, even if, of course, such explanations have not yet been achieved today, that in a certain way the natural scientist may say that the time will come when thinking, feeling and willing will also be explained from the human body, just as the flame is explained from the burning of fuel. But how should we relate to human imagination, for example, if this view were completely correct? We distinguish between ideas in life that we accept because we can describe them as correct and ideas that we reject because we describe them as incorrect, because we say they are an error. But in the natural order, everything can only follow from the causes and be the proper effect of the causes. Thus, in accordance with the natural order, we can say that error and deception arise from necessary causes in the same way as the correct and justified conception. But here we are confronted with a riddle: why do the phenomena of nature, which are supposed to be all necessary, give rise in man to the true in one instance and the false in another?

But we are even more mystified when we see what we call deceptive visions and false hallucinations arising in individual human beings, which we know to be something that vividly suggests reality without being rooted in it. How can we possibly claim that something is an unjustified hallucination when everything that takes place in a human being necessarily arises from the natural order that is also in him? We would have to ascribe just as much justification to hallucinations as to what we call true impressions and true perceptions. And yet, we are – and we can feel and sense this – justifiably convinced that hallucinations must be rejected as such. Why must they be rejected? Why may they not be recognized as legitimate content of human consciousness? And how can we recognize them as hallucinations at all?

We will only be able to shed light on these mysteries if we look at something else that may initially remind us of hallucinations, but which, according to our perception, cannot be recognized by us in the same sense as hallucinations, and that is the products of human imagination. These products of human imagination arise first from the unfathomable depths of the human soul; they express themselves in images that magically present themselves to the human soul, and they are the source of many things that beautify and uplift life. All art would be inconceivable without the products of the imagination. Nevertheless, we are aware that these products of the imagination are not rooted in a solid reality, that we have to look at them as something that deceives us if we ascribe reality to them in the usual sense of the word. But then we come to something else.

We know the first stage of supersensible knowledge from our spiritual science. There we speak of imagination, there we speak of imaginative knowledge, there we describe how the soul, through certain exercises, comes to have a pictorial content in its contemplation, but which, although it appears as a pictorial content, is not seen by the spiritual researcher as a dream, but is seen as something that refers to a reality, that depicts a reality.

We have, so to speak, three stages of the soul's life before us: the hallucination, which we recognize as a complete deception; the fantasy, which we know that we have somehow brought out of reality, but which nevertheless does not, as it arises in us as a figment of the imagination, have anything directly to do with reality. Thirdly, we have the imagination, which also arises in our soul life as an image or as a collection of images and which we relate to a reality. The spiritual researcher knows how to relate this imagination to a reality through life, just as he relates the secure perception of color or sound to a reality. And to those who say that imagination, real imagination, cannot be proved in its reality, that it could also be an illusion, one must reply: He who has immersed himself in the things of the soul says: You also cannot know whether a hot piece of steel is a real hot piece of steel or merely a thought, a mere mental image. You cannot prove it through thoughts, but you can through life. Everyone knows how to distinguish in life, through the way he comes into contact with external physical reality, the merely imagined hot iron that does not burn you from the real hot iron. And so, in life, the spiritual researcher knows how to distinguish between what is merely imagined in this spiritual world and what points to a reality of this spiritual world through imagination, precisely because of the contact he comes into with the spiritual world through imagination.

Now, one does not understand the relationship of this threefold system, hallucination, fantasy, imagination, if one is not able to penetrate the essence of man in relation to his entire world environment in a spiritual scientific way. The human being is, after all, a being that is divided into spirit, soul and body. If we first consider the human being as he presents himself to us between birth, or let's say conception, and death, then, in terms of our immediate experiences, we have him before us in his corporeality. This corporeality of the human being is only understood to a very small extent, even by today's science. This corporeality is a very, very complicated one. The more one is able to follow it down to its details, the more it becomes a wonderful structure. But the answer to the question: How do we understand this corporeality? - it must come from another side and it only comes to us from the side that spiritual science offers us when it points to the spirit.

But if you take many of the things that have been said in the various lectures of the past years together, you will actually be able to say to yourself: Just as we have the human being's corporeality before us between birth and death, so we have his spirituality, his spirit, before us in the life that the human being accomplishes between death and a new birth. And if we consider the life of a human being between death and a new birth, as I did in the lecture series I gave in Vienna in the spring of 1914, we observe the growth and development of the human spirit in the same way as we observe the growth and development of the human body when we follow the human being from birth to death. It is really so: when we look at the newly born child and then follow the development of the human being, how he develops out of childhood, how he becomes more and more mature, how then decay comes, how then death occurs: we follow the human body in its becoming with our outer senses and combine our outer sense impressions with the intellect. In the same way, we can follow the human spirit in its development if we observe the growth and maturing of the spirit, if we arrive at what I have called in Occult Science the midnight hour of existence between death and a new birth, when we then see its approach to physical life; we then contemplate the spirit, and we must then look at the relationship of this spirit, which actually appears to us in its original form between death and a new birth, to what appears to us here in the physical world as its body in its becoming.

Now, through spiritual research, we are confronted with the significant and important fact that what we experience here as the body, what reveals itself to us as the body, is in a certain respect an image, an external image, a true image of what we observe as spirit between death and a new birth, and what we see as spirit in the way just now indicated is the model for what we see here in the physical life as a body. This is how we must imagine the relationship between the spiritual and the physical. Someone who knows nothing of the life between death and a new birth knows basically nothing of the human spirit.

But when we stand before a human being, as he presents himself to us in the corporeality that reveals itself to us between birth and death, and we then equip ourselves with the awareness that this is an image of the prenatal spiritual, then we ask ourselves: What mediates between the model and the image? What makes the model, which of course precedes the image in time, what makes this model develop in the image? We could perhaps do without such mediation if the human being were to appear completely perfect, if he were to be born in such a way that his spiritual model would immediately transform into the perfect human being and he would no longer have to grow and develop, but would stand before us in perfection. Then we could say: In a spiritual world beyond lies the spirit of man, here in the physical world is the physical image. We relate the physical image to the spiritual model. But it is not like that, as we know, but through birth, the human being first enters into sensual existence as an imperfect being and only gradually, slowly does the human being become similar to his model. Since the spirit only has an effect up to the moment of conception or even a little further into the embryonic life, that is, up to birth, and since the spirit then, so to speak, releases the human being, there must be a mediator, something must be there that, for example, in the twentieth year, takes what had not yet fully corresponded to its spiritual model and shapes it so that it corresponds more and more to its spiritual model. And that which reproduces the spiritual model in the physical is the soul.

And so we find man placed in his entire world environment. We then follow his spiritual existence between death and a new birth, his physical existence between birth and death, and we look at his soul existence as that which the model gradually develops in the physical body, in the bodily image. Then, so to speak, the midpoint of a person's development on earth comes around the age of thirty-five. Then decline sets in. Then, so to speak, the person becomes more and more hardened in terms of his physicality. But that which develops in him is already preparing itself to be absorbed again in its spiritual, purely spiritual, form at death, so that the human being can then live out again in the spiritual form between death and the next birth. What is it, again, that prepares the physical more and more so that it can become spiritual again in death? It is again the soul. This soul-life thus prepares us to be an image of our spirit in the first half of our life. It prepares us to become spirit again in the second half of our life. And so we get the human trinity of spirit, soul and body. This gives us a concrete idea of the relationship between spirit, soul and body. But we also get an idea of the physical, which is clear in itself, which is without contradiction in the sense that it must be. Because if the physical is a true reflection of the spiritual, then all spiritual activities must also be reflected in the physical; then what is spiritual must be traceable in the body in material form. And we need not be surprised that materialism has emerged in the newer knowledge and said that the bodily is the origin of the spiritual. If one takes only that which develops in man between birth and death, namely as imagination, then one finds everything that lives in the life of imagination in the images of the human body. One can follow the human being in the body up to his thinking, and one can come to the delusion of the materialistic view, because one must indeed find those fine ramifications of the bodily organization that come to light in thinking, in imagining.

So one can become a materialist in this way. One can become a materialist because the physical is a true reflection of the spiritual. And when one knows nothing of the spiritual, then one can be satisfied with the bodily, limit oneself to the bodily, then one can believe that the whole human being is contained in the bodily. But this bodily comes into being with the life of the embryo, dissolves after death. This bodily is transient, and all that we also develop as the life of imagination, bound to this bodily, is transient. And yet, it is a true reflection of the spiritual. This corporeality is a particularly true reflection of the spiritual when we look at the activity of this corporeality. We carry out an activity in the fine organizations of our nervous and sensory systems, and this fine activity is absolutely a reflection of a spiritual activity that has taken place between death and a new birth.

And when we now look at this physical activity, when we realize how it is - as I have indicated - mediated by the soul, we have to say: This physicality is an image, a reflection, and we only find the spiritual in the associated spiritual world. Here in this physical world, man, insofar as he is in this physical world, is quite a material being, and in the organization of his materiality, the true image of the spiritual is expressed at the same time. The soul certainly lives in him, which imparts the spiritual, but what belongs to the whole human being is that which lives right up to the embryonic life, which then transforms into that into which the human being in turn transforms after death: the spiritual. The spiritual, the soul and the physical are thus connected.

But if we look at this correctly – just try to see clearly what I have put before you – you will say to yourself: what the human being develops as the power of thinking must, even if only in reverberation, mediate through the soul what has gone before, from the embryo life. In other words, when I have ideas now, a certain power lives in my imaginative life, but this power is not only developed from the body; in the body there is only its afterimage. This power resonates, so to speak, it is a resonance of the life that I spent between death and a new birth before my embryonic life. This life must play a part in my present life. When the ordinary man of today imagines, it is indeed the case that in his imagining lives the echo, the reverberation of his prenatal life.

And how does a person come to ascribe a being to himself? He comes to ascribe a being to himself through the fact that he unconsciously has a realization of it: By imagining, my prenatal being lives on in me, resonates in me, and my body is an afterimage of this prenatal being. If he now begins to develop such an activity himself, which should actually only be developed through the resonance of prenatal existence, what then? Then, in this physical existence, the body, because it is an afterimage, develops something out of itself that is similar to the imaginative activity, but is not justified to do so. And that can indeed occur. When we live and think and imagine in our normal lives, our prenatal life resonates within us. And because the human being is tripartite, the nerve-sense life can be eliminated and each of the other parts can begin to imitate the activity from the purely physical realm that should actually resonate from our prenatal existence. When the rhythmic person or the metabolic-limb person develops such an activity out of themselves without justification, which is similar to the justified imagination that resonates from prenatal life, then hallucination arises. And you can, with absolute precision, if you look at the matter spiritually, distinguish the justified perception, which at the same time, by recognizing it as a justified perception, is living proof of the pre-existent life. You can distinguish it from the hallucination, which, by virtue of the fact that it can be there, that it is the imitation is a living proof that the original it apes also exists, but that it is cooked up entirely by the body and therefore stands there as something unauthorized. For in physical life the body has no right to ape out of itself the way of thinking that should be born out of the spiritual life of prenatal man.

Such considerations must indeed be made if one wants to get beyond those foolish ideas that are now considered definitions of hallucinations and the like. One must look into the structure of the whole human being if one wants to distinguish the hallucinatory life from the real life of imagination. And when the real life of imagination is further developed, when it is consciously taken up and when this consciousness is added to it, so that one not only experiences the echo in the imagination of prenatal life, but when one now quite consciously makes this echo into an image and thereby looks back from the echo to reality, then one comes to imagination. Thus the true spiritual scientist differentiates between hallucination, which is a boiled-out of the physical body, and imagination, which points to the spiritual, which projects itself back into the spiritual, so that one can say: In the hallucinating person the body combines, in the imagining person, who transports himself back from the echo into the prenatal world, the spirit combines; he extends his life beyond the physical existence and lets the spirit combine. In him the spirit combines. Those people who out of prejudice or, as is already happening today, out of ill will, repeat over and over again that the imagination of spiritual science could also be hallucination, they deliberately overlook the fact that the spiritual researcher knows how to strictly differentiate between hallucination and imagination, that it is he who, in the strictest sense of the word, can firmly distinguish one from the other, whereas what is said today in conventional science about hallucinations is everywhere without foundation and ground, everywhere arbitrary definitions. And it is actually only proof that present-day science does not know what hallucinations are, that it cannot distinguish what it encounters as imagination from the hallucinatory life.

Given the character of the insinuations made in this field, one must today already speak of conscious slander. It is only due to the fact that our scientists are lazy about what spiritual-scientific research is that they even bring such things into the world. If they would not be too lazy to go into spiritual science, they would see how strict distinctions are made between hallucinatory and imaginative life in spiritual science.

But one must take this into one's consciousness if one honestly wants to profess our movement, that in our contemporaneity there is the malevolence that comes from laziness, and one must pursue the laziness, which then leads to mendacity, in our contemporary culture to its hiding places; there is no other way for spiritual science today. So that we can say: In the hallucinatory life the body combines, in the imaginative life the spirit combines, and the human being feels completely removed from the world between birth and death when they feel fully immersed in the imaginative life.

The soul stands between the two. The soul is the mediator, so to speak, the spiritual fluid that mediates from the spirit, the model, to the body, the afterimage. This must not be sharply contoured on either side, it must have fluid contours, blurred contours; in contrast to this, one cannot say in a definite way that it is rooted in reality or that it is not rooted in reality. In the case of hallucinations, because they are only cooked up by the body, which however cannot cook up anything real unless it is living in the echoes of prenatal life, in the case of the body and its hallucinations one can say that they are not rooted in reality. In the case of the imaginations and their abstract images, the thoughts, one can say that they are rooted in reality.

With the images that arise from the combination of the soul, with the fantasy images, we now have something blurry; they are real-unreal. They are taken from reality, the sharp contours of reality are toned down, made to fade, made to blur. We feel ourselves to be lifted out of reality, but at the same time we feel that it is something that means something for our inner life, for our whole life in the world. We feel the intermediate state between hallucination, between deceptive hallucination and real imagination in the mediating fantasy, and we may say: in hallucination the body combines, in fantasies in the case of imagination, of which abstract thoughts are the ordinary-life reflection, the soul combines, in the case of inspiration, the mind combines. Here we have the threefold nature of man in his activity and in his relation to his environment. We may say: When we are in the spirit, whether in the shadowy image of thoughts or in imagination, through which we then rise to the higher levels of knowledge, we combine reality;

When we are within the soul and its figments of the imagination, we combine something that floats back and forth between reality and unreality; when the body combines, the hallucinations suggest to us something that may actually correspond to an unreality.

If you take what I have developed now, then you will say to yourself: Yes, an unbiased consideration of the human being provides us with this trinity of spirit, soul and body. And even with regard to what is activated by the human being, we can distinguish in three ways: hallucination, fantasy and imagination, and we are referred to body, soul and spirit. You see, with Anthroposophy you have to penetrate deeper and deeper into its essence to see how it covers the details from its wholeness.

We see how one must first present the division of the human being into body, soul and spirit in a more abstract way, and then how it is filled more and more with concrete content. If you look for the relationships between something that you have presented in this way and the other, you get more and more evidence. But that is necessary in anthroposophical life, that you keep pushing forward and forward. But that is what today's man, who feels so terribly clever, does not love. Modern man does not like to say to himself: I have now read an anthroposophical essay, I have heard an anthroposophical lecture, yes, it is not yet clear to me, but I will wait, I will see what else comes. If he would wait, he would see that progress is constantly being made on other things, and that in the end everything is certain to be true, that one thing will become proof of the other. And to the one who says: If one thing proves the other, then the whole universe is without reason and ground, then one thing always holds the other – to the one who makes this objection, you just say that he cannot accept the description that astronomy gives him of the earth. He is also told that one part of the earth supports the whole and that the whole stands without ground or base. The one who wants other proofs than this support of the one by the other does not take into account that in the case where one comes to totalities, this is precisely the characteristic, that one part supports the other.

What is necessary in order to present anything like what we have developed today before our soul is that people not only talk about the spirit – of course, one can easily talk about the spirit and actually mean blue smoke), but that one speaks spiritually of the spirit, that one is actually grasped by the spirit and that one arranges the one in the world in such a way that the work of the spirit comes to the fore. Someone who only thinks materially cannot distinguish hallucination from imagination and from figments of the imagination when he juxtaposes them. But the one who sees the living spirit in the mediation of the three pulls the threads from one to the other, is filled with living soul content in his way of looking at things, and speaks in such a way that the spirit lives in his words. One should not only speak of the spirit in science, one should let the spirit speak in spiritual science. Please reflect on this sentence, which is indeed very important if the essence of spiritual science is to be understood: One should not only speak about the spirit or of the spirit, one should let the spirit speak in a spiritual way. In this way one becomes free, for the spirit receives one freely and one expresses the nature of the spirit through one's own spirit. One must speak about the spirit in a spiritual way, that is, with fluid thinking, not with hardened thoughts, which correspond to a materialistically thinking science.

But if we take this, then it is, I would say, the very point that leads to the innermost task of our time, and which alone can save us from the decay that is such a strong impulse in our entire present-day civilization. We can say: If we feel completely at ease today with genuine, real devotion to knowing in the world within, then we are led, as if by a world grace pouring over us, to think in such a way that we think spiritually about the world. This is the one that, as a property of world evolution, only came about at the end of the 19th century. Anyone who follows the development of humanity with an open mind will see that the evolution of the world was different before the last third of the 19th century, but that, one might say, the gates of the spiritual have opened and that today, after the materialistic view of nature has celebrated great triumphs, we are faced with the task of looking at the world spiritually again. For rhythmic movement is also the human becoming, through which the individual human being passes in the rhythm of repeated earthly lives. This life is rhythmic. In rhythmic recurrence, man goes through that which once lived out in such spiritual striving of mankind, as it had its peak, for example, in the middle of the 19th century, when man only directed his mind to the material and wanted to explain everything materially , and our present time, when we must return to spiritual contemplation, because if we allow the world to fill our souls without reservation, that soul will be filled with the urge for spiritual contemplation of the world.

That is the secret of our time, I would say. Those who live with the spirit today must realize that the gates between the supersensible and the sensory world are open for earthly existence. Just as the things of the material external world speak to us through colors and sounds, so today a spiritual world speaks clearly to people. But people are still accustomed to letting the old, merely representative material world speak to them, and so they have opened the battle in all forms against the influx of the spiritual way of looking at things. This conflict manifests itself in the materialistic scientific point of view; it manifests itself in the terrible materialistic struggles that convulsed the beginning of the twentieth century. But just as in an earlier period of human development people once aspired too strongly to the spiritual and therefore fell into illusions and enthusiasms that wanted to express the spiritual in their bodies , so he who fights against the spiritual, as basically the majority of civilized people still do, falls into the clutches of the power that today resists the descent of the spiritual into the physical world. And so we have seen looming that which must come to those souls who resist the influx of the spiritual: we come to that which is the appearance of falsehood, which we have seen streaming in so terribly during the time of the world war. It was, however, already prepared beforehand, and we live today in a time when not only does the world resist knowledge, but the world is developing an inclination to tell untruths in a truly dreadful way. And basically, most of what is being said today by opponents of anthroposophy and everything associated with it is untrue. What profound dishonesty is evident in those who today virtually present themselves as the bearers of truth, who call themselves the proclaimers of truth!

Let me give you an example – I always have to use examples that are close at hand, I'm sorry to say: A paper called Stuttgarter Evangelisches Sonntagsblatt (Stuttgart Protestant Sunday Paper) is published in Stuttgart. In issue 19, page 149, the Stuttgarter Evangelisches Sonntagsblatt published a few sentences that included the following, among other things. Someone, a retired pastor named Jehle, had presented something about the anti-church currents of the present day. Much valuable information had been said about monism and freethinking, and then the retired pastor Jehle explained the deeper reasons for the bitterly fought battle against the historicity of Jesus, as waged by A. Drews. He then shed light on Christian Science, which, in the sharpest contrast to the materialistic world view, declares everything material to be unreal, and further: “Steiner's Theosophy, which, in gratitude for his allegiance to the returned Bernhard of Clairvaux, declares Pastor Rittelmeyer to be so.”

Now, my dear friends, a friend of ours has tried to get this matter rectified. The matter was also brought to Pastor Rittelmeyer, and Pastor Rittelmeyer then wrote the following letter to those who had made such a claim:

Well, you see, the Stuttgarter Evangelische Sonntagsblatt did not print the last words at all, about the low mentality and so on, but only the first words, and added:

So it is not admitted that one has spread a lie, but regrets that readers have understood it as if one had counted on the vanity. And now it continues: “As much as we regret, for factual reasons, the promotion of Rudolf Steiner's cause by a representative of the church, the thought of personal disparagement was far from our minds. We also have no doubt that Pastor Rittelmeyer was unpleasantly surprised by the thought of such an appointment by Rudolf Steiner.

So they create the impression that Pastor Rittelmeyer was unpleasantly surprised when he heard that I had appointed him, whereas he explicitly states that he was unpleasantly surprised that such a lie was spread by the Evangelisches Sonntagsblatt.

“Besides, I think our regular readers know us too well to suspect us of intending to personally disparage or even defame them. They also know that we have plenty to do with better and more beautiful work.” – I leave it to the readers of the Evangelisches Sonntagsblatt to judge this.

You see, this is how those who call themselves representatives, the official representatives of the truth, and those whom numerous people consider obliged to represent the truth, work today. One only has to point this out to draw attention to where the tendency towards untruthfulness is today. But there is not yet enough widespread revulsion, not enough widespread disgust for such immorality, for such an anti-religion, which calls itself Christian Sunday worship.

One need only point to a single such symptom, of which hundreds could be demonstrated today, to show where today - and this will get much worse, because we are living in our time - the starting points are that then accumulate into those rabble-rousing performances like the ones that took place at our last eurythmy performances in Frankfurt and Baden-Baden. The same eurythmy performance that was seen here with full sympathy last Sunday was jeered at and whistled at in Frankfurt and Baden-Baden with all kinds of keys and similar instruments, not, of course, out of objective judgment, but out of the coincidence of two things. Firstly, the battle that is being waged on a large scale for reasons that you have probably heard me speak of on many occasions. This battle is being waged against the assertion of the influx of spiritual life into our physical world and is being waged out of the tendency towards untruthfulness. People do not have much time for it, but it must be pursued to its very last hiding place. And the other is the inability that is in league with laziness, with discomfort. When a well-known local newspaper, as I have already mentioned here, wants to pass judgment for its readers, it turns to one of the current authorities, for example Professor Traub in Tübingen; and in one of these articles, as I have already mentioned here, one found very strange words. This university professor, who still has the right today to prepare as many young souls, as they say, for their profession, writes: In Rudolf Steiner's world view, spiritual things and spiritual beings move in the spiritual world like tables and chairs in the physical world! Well, has anyone ever seen tables and chairs moving in the physical world with a sober mind? Professor Traub in Tübingen has the style of writing now that I talk about in my writings that in the spiritual world the entities move like tables and chairs in the physical world. Since he probably does not admit to being a spiritualist, Professor Traub, I at least will not be so rude as to impute to him the other state while he wrote this article, in which one usually sees the tables and chairs moved.

But these are the authorities to whom one turns when one demands a judgment about what presents itself as spiritual science today. These things are just not always stated with sufficient sharpness, and above all they are not thought about and felt with sufficient sharpness by many of our friends either. And again and again we experience it happening that when someone says something against us and we describe him in his whole character, one does not take it badly that he is a liar, but one takes it badly that we say he is a liar. We have experienced this in the last few weeks, one might say, from day to day, here and elsewhere.

One may well speak of an inability when such nonsense is written, as Professor Traub wrote in Tübingen, who also wrote in the same essay: Secret science cannot be a science, simply because the terms “secret” and “science” are mutually exclusive; what is secret is not a science. Now I ask you, if someone writes a scientific book and someone else has the quirk of keeping it secret for a hundred years, is it any less scientific because it was kept secret? It is certainly not scientific because it is kept secret or public, but because of its scientific character! One must really be abandoned by all the spirits of healthy thinking if one can just write such a sentence.

And another thing: here, among ourselves, it is permissible to say that there are some things I must say because, unfortunately, they are not being said enough from other quarters. For many years now, we have been striving to develop an art of recitation and declamation in eurythmy, which in turn goes back to the old good principles of art, again reminding us of what poetry actually is, the art of rhythm, beat, sound, imagery, while in our unartistic time poetry is actually only recited in a prosaic way. They recite the prosaic, the literal, they do not go back to the rhythmic, the metrical basis; and because in our eurythmy we seek what Goethe meant when he rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors with a baton like a conductor, pointing to the truly artistic in poetry, because we go back from an return from the unartistic to the artistic, that is why the protectors or the people themselves, who today, while pretending to recite poetry, croak and bleat all sorts of prosaic things, they rise croaking and bleating out of their inability and insult those who devote themselves to reciting, who in turn want to bring out the real art of reciting.

I regret that I have to say this myself, but what use is it; if things are not formulated by others, then they must be formulated by me. And I can't help but see in this struggle another form of the struggle of inability, as can be seen, for example, in Traub's thoughtlessness, a struggle of inability of the bleaters against what attempts to be a real recitation. It is understandable that what works out of inability bleats itself or makes its protectors bleat, but we have the obligation to protect spiritual knowledge, and we must, even if it is resented, point out in strong words what is the fundamental damage of our time. Today I have spoken to you about a topic that corresponds to spiritual science, and I had to – well, it was already past our hour, so it was an encore – let my reflections end with something that, in terms of contemporary history, is very much connected to the purely spiritual-scientific main topic. I regret that I have to let my reflections run into such arguments, but we do not live in a cloud-cuckoo-land, we live in the world within, and if we have the necessary enthusiasm, if we feel the sacred obligation to stand up today for the cause of anthroposophical knowledge and its effects, then we must see clearly where the opposition lies, and then, by communicating with each other about these things, we must develop within ourselves the strong will to shine a light into this opposition. For only in this way will we join that which, in the face of decline, leads to a new dawn, which are the impulses that, in the face of the struggle against spirit and soul, want to bring about the assertion of spirit and soul in earthly life. In order to be able to feel together in the right sense in the strong assertion of the power that wants to bring spirit and soul into play, can bring them into play, we must come to an understanding about everything that is against spirit and soul.

I did not want to complain or grumble about the opponents, but I wanted to speak to you to make clear what is necessary for our souls to resonate in the work for mind and soul. I will say more about this when we meet again.

I spoke yesterday of the great Polish drama “The Undivine Comedy” by Krasinski and of its very special significance. One can truly say that it was consciously brought into the world as the outcome of a dialogue with the Spirits working in the evolution of humanity, who in the middle of the 19th century spoke to those who were willing to listen to them.

Let us for a moment hold in our minds the thoughts that came to us from the realisation that what was astir in the inmost depths of the evolutionary process made its way into the external literary culture of the time. From Gutzkow's novel “The Mahaguru” as well as from “The Undivine Comedy”—I chose only two particularly striking examples from many that might be quoted—we see that as it were behind the scenes of external happenings, significant impulses are at work in the cultural life of mankind. From many sources we have gained knowledge that directs our minds and hearts to the great moment of world-evolution in which we are living, the moment when it is essential to be mindful of the new element that must be received into the evolution of humanity—but with the co-operation of human souls who are able to understand it. There are different ways of characterising the importance of the present time, but perhaps one thing only need be said and this will be sufficient to bring home the significance of the point of time at which we are standing.

In ages of antiquity men received a heritage consisting of wisdom yielded by atavistic clairvoyance and of knowledge gained atavistically. But this heritage petered away and the tide of materialism arose—particularly since the last three or four centuries and reaching a peak in the 19th century. This tide of materialism veiled all possibilities of vision into the spiritual world—and a new path, a new method, is now appearing in spiritual science. As I have often said, this development ultimately becomes a natural process in the souls of men. The situation today still is that the vast majority of souls have yet to learn that there are many earthly lives. But when the souls now living are re-incarnated, for the most part they will know, not merely as a theory, that there are many earthly lives; they will live on into an age when it will be known quite as a natural matter of course: there are many earthly lives. Just as human souls now remember back to a certain point in childhood, and thoughts from childhood constantly arise, so it will be natural one day for the living impression to well up from within: “We have been here many times.” Human souls will evolve to this stage just as they have evolved from primitive stages of life. This development will come about of itself but the following is inevitable.—

The souls who have learnt nothing from spiritual science today will die and return in new incarnations. Then, having learnt nothing from spiritual science, they will not know what to make of the impression that will rise up from within them of the truth of repeated earthly lives, and they may well be driven to despair. For this inner impression that will arise quite naturally in the soul must be grasped through thoughts, and the thoughts that are necessary before it can be understood are those yielded by spiritual science. These thoughts should make the whole history of the Ego and the fact of its existence in man intelligible to us; and he alone who has within him the force of these thoughts will be able to understand the impression that will come of itself, as a kind of remembrance.

But the foundation for understanding this remembrance will from now onwards have to be laid through spiritual science; knowledge of the continued existence of the Ego will have to be acquired. And those who have not acquired it will have to admit, when these remembrances well up in them: “I do not understand my own self.” This will be a terrible cry of despair in future times. It must be realised that only through knowledge and understanding of what will inevitably come in the future can human souls be kept from falling into despair. When the Ego which passes from incarnation to incarnation asserts itself in the future—and this means in our future incarnations—men must be able to understand this Ego. And they will do so if they have worked on their souls through the thoughts of spiritual science.

The Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled in order that the Ego might be fully understood, and this can never happen if—as in the case of the Polish Count described yesterday—men preserve in their souls nothing but feelings of the Past—sacred though these feelings may be and connected with the events centred in the Mystery of Golgotha. Such feelings will enable these events to be grasped as matters of history, but that cannot lead to any true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. True understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha depends upon the fulfilment of the words; “Not I but Christ in me.” It will then be possible for Christ in His living activity within earth-evolution not to remain inaudible to men. He must be made audible through that which, under his inspiration, spiritual science has to say, no sentiments or feelings tied to remembrances, can lead mankind to future well-being. But neither can the interests of the future be furthered by one who lives only in and for the Present—the tyrant described in the lecture yesterday. The tyrant does indeed, assert the Ego, but not Christ within the Ego. A deep riddle is presented to us in this Polish drama: two personalities stand in contrast to one another, one of whom has the Christ of tradition, of history, but runs the risk of falling away from Him. And what comes to expression in the wife and in the child of the Count relapses into a purely atavistic connection with the spiritual world.

A great danger for our time is indicated here. It is that those who are not willing to assimilate in a new way the knowledge of mankind's connection with the spiritual worlds, although they feel that such connection exists, will cause part of their being to lose the requisite link with the spiritual world. Mankind would fall asunder into those who—like the old Count—must necessarily despair and die because they cling exclusively to the Past, and those who rise into the spiritual worlds in an atavistic way—like the Count's wife and child. Because they have not received the Christ into their inmost being in full reality, they pass into the spiritual world without finding in themselves a point of anchorage.

What is it that the members of the Count's family have not fully developed? They have not fully developed the Ego: they are remains from the age which in the regular course of the evolution of humanity has been at an end since the Mystery of Golgotha, but markedly so since the last few centuries. They are remains from an age of antiquity when the Ego had not yet completely taken root in man; they are Ego-less human beings who, because they cannot take the Christ into the Ego which has not developed into the necessary intensity, lose the Christ. And standing in contrast to them is the tyrant, who has developed the Ego and bears it in himself with all strength; without taking the Christ into the Ego, he desires to bring happiness to the world but is incapable of doing so. At the point of death—out of the vision which the tyrant understands as little as he understands how to resign himself to death—there breaks from his lips the cry: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!”—This is an indication of the fact that for those human beings who have, it is true, acquired the Ego but have not taken Christ into this Ego, there is one moment only when it is possible for them to come into relationship with Christ: it is the moment when they pass from this world into the other world. But because Christ came from that other world into this world in order there to find the way to human hearts, men must inevitably lose Him when, after the moment of death, they arrive in that other world. All the deeper impulses at work in our time belong to a sphere where momentous issues are at stake—I can say no more than that they “are at stake.”

But now we must go rather more deeply into things that are already known to us but must be studied in a certain setting if we are to understand them in the light of the conditions prevailing in our time. We know that, properly speaking, the evolution of the earth must be divided into an epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha and an epoch following the Mystery of Golgotha. We know, too, that in the epoch before the Mystery of Golgotha, Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits also worked into the souls of men. Particularly in considering the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha it must be realised that foolish chatter about avoiding Ahriman and Lucifer at all costs will get us nowhere. For Ahriman and Lucifer were allowed by the normal, progressive spiritual Beings to work in the earthly evolution of men.

Now we know that there are spiritual Beings actually ranking higher than men but who during the Old Moon period of evolution did not reach the height that would have been possible for them; they did not reach it, but for all that they rank higher than men. So that bearing in mind the intervention of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings, we can now understand better what is called the ancient, primeval wisdom in earth-evolution. For example, the ancient wisdom that was misused in the Lemurian epoch and perished with the Lemurians; the wisdom that was then misused in the Atlantean epoch and brought about the destruction of Atlantis. What was it that was then among men? What was it, in reality? To say that the great wisdom then existing was misused, applied in practices of black magic and so forth, is a very abstract way of speaking and leads to no very definite idea. Let us think, for example, of the character of this wisdom in the last periods of the Lemurian epoch. Whence had it come? Spiritual Beings who had not completed their full development during the Old Moon epoch but who were nevertheless at a higher level than men, had mingled with the earthly evolution of humanity. Man was already there—but, as you can well imagine, in his most primitive state. What was subsequently developed by human beings during the Atlantean and Post-Atlantean epochs did not yet exist. In those Lemurian times, man was a being wholly devoid of intelligence, for intelligence was to develop only gradually during the course of earth-evolution. Man was primitive in his will, in his actions, in his soul-development—altogether like a child. Now had there existed only bodies of men with the higher members of those bodies that had been developed for them by the progressive spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies, men would not have been capable at that time of evolving any outstanding wisdom. But in that Lemurian age a very lofty altogether extraordinary wisdom existed. For example, among those primitive men there was widespread knowledge of how to handle a child during the period between birth and the seventh year so that as the result of a certain transformation of his etheric body which then worked back upon the brain, he could be made extremely clever. Radical educational methods have to be applied today if this result is desired—and everyone is aware how very often these efforts are unsuccessful. But in any case the art of affecting the brain itself by exercising a certain influence on the etheric body of the brain, so that the child in question becomes extremely clever, is entirely lost today. Furthermore—and I hasten to emphasise it—this art is in no circumstances whatever legitimate in our time, for if it became at all general, even in its most elementary form, it would lead to terrible abuses.

How is the existence of such an art in Lemurian times to be explained? It is explained by the fact that Beings who had not completed their development on the Old Moon, but had evolved only the first six of their seven members, incorporated in men who otherwise would have been utterly primitive. The spiritual Beings who on the Old Moon were at a higher level than men but had not attained the apex of their development, took on these primitive human bodies and went to work with arts which far transcended all earthly knowledge. You can imagine what such Beings in human bodies were capable of accomplishing,—Beings who at a level higher than the human had developed the sixth member—the Life-Spirit—entered into these primitive, flexible, pliant bodies. And they became terrible magicians, dread magicians!

And again, what kind of arts were general in the Atlantean epoch? First and foremost there was the wisdom which must be applied in order to cause talents in ancestors to be transmitted, purely through heredity, to their descendants and actually to be enhanced in these descendants. The Beings whose development had not been completed on the Moon but who for all that were of a higher rank than earthly man, were deeply versed in this art—with most significant effect. Let me put it like this: it was as if by methods connected with star-constellations and the like, one were to lead over the qualities of a genius to his descendants, but in such a way that these spiritual qualities were not merely inherited, but intensified, enhanced. These higher Beings working in human bodies were capable of mighty achievements. All this was swept out of existence. Very many things were connected with these particular arts. For example, it was possible by their means to observe the course of spiritual evolution and to guide the spiritual forces into the stream of heredity.

And so even superficial observation will show that there is a very great deal in world-evolution which in an earlier age had its justification but which in the form it now bears is no more than a relic that has been preserved. Both in unimportant and important domains it is so. In his novel “The Mahaguru” Gutzkow wanted to indicate something of the kind in an important domain. He wanted to give emphasis to the question: In what form does something that had great significance in ancient times—in the Atlantean epoch, when it was still possible for men to regulate the stream of heredity—in what form does it appear when it is carried over into an age and into a community where the traditions of it had indeed been preserved but where nothing more was known of the earlier art than an inferior form of it called in occultism “Occult Chemistry?” Gutzkow showed that something of the kind existed in Tibet. Naturally, the priesthood in Tibet had no knowledge of how through forces of heredity they could produce a body for the individuality whom they believed should pass from one body into another—but they preserved the old customs. So there we have an example of the external reality presenting an aspect utterly different from what it had been in conditions once prevailing in the evolution of humanity. Reading “The Mahaguru” makes one want to cry out: Oh, how reality itself can become a maya in face of the prevailing conditions!

And now think of something else.—You can well imagine that the men of Lemurian and Atlantean times did not resemble the men of today, for what developed, inwardly in the soul at that time also gave configuration to the outer form; the whole outer form of man was different—it was pliant and flexible. The human form in the times of Lemuria and Atlantis was not ape-like; the bodies of the actual ancestors of men were not ape-like.—It would seem, therefore, that world-evolution must have made an exception in the case of certain people who have written of themselves that they can remember having descended from apes!¹—But we will not go into that now.—Men did not resemble apes, but if you picture our children presenting a much, much more infantile appearance, with an elemental quality of being extending over the whole body, you may be able to get an idea of the character of the human body in those times. As you can read in the book “From the Akasha Chronicle,” because Beings surviving from the Old Moon evolution had incarnated in these pliant, flexible bodies, these bodies became animal-like rather than human. Distorted forms arose, with strangely contorted limbs.—And there you have the origin of the figures of gods to be found among certain peoples. These curious figures with non-human faces and huge limbs, originate from the knowledge that the incarnating Moon-Beings were united with human bodies.

If in the Atlantean epoch there had been painters and sculptors, they would have been able to portray or model these figures of Moon-Beings incarnated in human bodies. But in Tibet this was no longer possible. Hence the canon must be strictly obeyed, for the artists would otherwise have made figures with whatever terms they liked. If a man did not obey the canon but created something out of his own play of fancy, he incurred the death-penalty. Naturally, one may ask: Is there any justification for condemning to death someone who makes only one tiny change in the figure of a god? Is there really any justification for it? In Tibet, of course, there is no longer any justification, but once upon a time there was, for as you have heard, these Beings were actually present in bodies, and if they were not faithfully portrayed, any deviation amounted to a lie. In those ancient times a lie had infinitely greater power than it has nowadays. If at the present time everyone who tells a lie were to suffocate as the result—well, I prefer to leave it at that, for I think that the fear of suffocation would be too great to allow people to risk telling lies! I assume that nowadays people will not suffocate—but at that time a lie would have caused actual suffocation. For the thought expressed in the word contained a power to give form to the air in the larynx, and then suffocated the man—and anyone who had incorrectly portrayed on earth a Being who had not fully completed his development on the Old Moon would have suffocated, in other words, a process of nature would have caused his death.

The evolution of humanity is an exceedingly complicated matter and to understand it one must go deeply into spiritual science. To find the right approach to world-evolution it is essential to study what it is the mission of spiritual science to make known from spiritual worlds. For spiritual science is, as it were, a first impulse to which other impulses must increasingly be added, in order that humanity in the future may advance along the right path. You will have realised from what I have been saying recently² that a course must be steered between a Scylla and a Charybdis, that a very definite path must be laid down in spiritual science.—This must be taken with the deepest earnestness. Our modern natural science is developed by materialistic methods. During these last weeks I have tried to describe its characteristics to you. I have said that a materialistic method in natural science is fully justified. It can be characterized by saying that it is adapted to cloak the spiritual reality lying behind. Why, then, must this materialistic method be there in our present time?

In our present time an earlier knowledge of nature must be superseded by a new knowledge of nature. I have told you something about this earlier knowledge of nature. Just think what kind of knowledge it was! To be able to mould a human head into an instrument editable for genius, through specific measures applied scientifically in the old sense of the word—this signified colossal knowledge!—or again, so to regulate heredity that qualities of genius were transmitted to descendants—the knowledge required for this was even more penetrating and comprehensive, far, far surpassing all the theories of evolution, the physics, chemistry and so on, of today. But that ancient knowledge was to be veiled and obscured by the materialistic method employed in natural science today—which is fully justified in the purely physical domain. It must be remembered that at the time when that lofty knowledge of nature existed, man was not a free being; he was only at the beginning of the gradual evolution of freedom. He was led and guided and what came to pass in the process of his guidance was for the most part brought about by the higher Hierarchies. And it was single individuals who deviated from the regular course, who advanced too far along the path to freedom, who were responsible for the fall into the abyss and the inevitable destruction of Atlantis. But with the constantly increasing freedom of will, man would have been unfit for knowledge of this kind. To possess knowledge such as once existed on the earth is unthinkable today because man's will has attained freedom to an extent that would enable him still to misuse this knowledge. How, then, is this free will guided into the right channel?

From indications I have given recently you will have gathered that by adopting the method employed in natural science, with all its scrupulous exactitude, the free will is directed into the right channel; moreover, this method is a wonderfully effective pedagogical means for the development of the free will. We have therefore no cause whatever to quarrel with the method employed in natural science, the justification of which for our present time we fully acknowledge. You will find that what is contained in our lecture-courses and books completely refutes the allegations of individual opponents—to the effect, for example, that we repudiate natural science. It is sometimes necessary to take exception to the pretensions of certain investigators and so-called scientific authorities; but nothing derogatory to the achievements of natural science will ever be found in our literature. To say that anything in our literature is a repudiation of natural science would be sheer calumny, for among us there can be no question of such repudiation. But at the same time it must be realised that attacks upon us may well be made from the side of so-called natural science—and if necessary, we must then repel the attack. But true adherents of spiritual science must become more and more conscious of the necessity to understand the natural-scientific method and to protect this method from being tainted by all kinds of non-scientific concepts—for example concepts of the atom and movement of the atom, of which I have recently spoken. These are fantasies of natural science, and the difference must be clearly seen.

Efforts must be made to distinguish between genuine natural science and scientific fantasy. How often do we not hear it said today that one thing or another is scientifically established—whereas it is nothing of the kind, because words are simply accepted as facts. Never was blind belief in authority greater than it is at the present time in the domain of science, for everyone allows things to be determined entirely by those in whom they happen to believe. The purpose of the Mystery of Golgotha was that what came into the world through Lucifer might gradually be corrected in a certain way—it is indicated symbolically in the Bible: “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil”—that is to say, ye shall know good and evil from outside. But when in the sphere of perceptions one perceives from outside, it is impossible to receive from that world anything other than perceptions. As soon as one begins to reflect about the perceptions, to speculate about them and derive all kinds of ideas from them, one is on the way to finding what has been imbued into them by Ahriman and Lucifer. The ideas must come out of the spiritual world and be united with the perceptions: then these ideas are in the real sense divine! In human life there must be a marriage between the ideas which are given to men from out of the Spiritual and what he perceives in the outer world through his senses. But this union must first be achieved. How this principle applies in the scientific domain you can gather from my essay “Truth and Science.” The belief that in the scientific sense, ideas, thoughts, could also be found from outside, from the perceptions, is based on illusion, on illusion caused by Ahriman and Lucifer. But as long as the Powers associated with the words “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil” (which means to search for the ideas in the outer world) were sanctioned, that is to say, until the Mystery of Golgotha—as long as Lucifer and Ahriman were allowed to work in this sphere, there was no objection to be made. But that state of things is now over. Now, in the matter of the permeation of perceptions from outside, they are all the more unjustified.

This too was brought into evidence in the middle of the 19th century through a crisis of a particular kind. This crisis announced itself in great and outstanding achievements: spectral-analysis, for example, came on the scene, swept away the conception that when one looks upwards to the stars one has to do with spiritual Beings—and showed that substances to be found everywhere in the universe also exist on the earth. The old union between ideas and perceptions is no longer possible, for such discoveries make it essential that the ideas shall again find the spiritual path into our souls. The same applies to Darwinism. To reason entirely on the basis of what is found by outer perception—that is to say, to seek for the ideas in the outer world—can only lead to a purely materialistic conception and interpretation of the world. In short, the crisis is in evidence everywhere and there is also widespread rebellion against the fact that the ideas must flow out of the spirit-realm into the souls of men if humanity is to make progress. In other words: we must understand the nature of Ahriman and Lucifer and be on the alert when they try to make us continue the principle indicated in the words; “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil.” We must learn to observe both Ahriman and Lucifer. And we shall be able to do this if we permeate the Ego, as it has now unfolded, with Christ.

But something else too resounded through the world in primeval times, resounded from a different side, after man had acquired the power to distinguish good and evil, to direct his gaze outwards, that is to say, to use his senses and through them to acquire ideas based on sense-perceptions. The decree went forth: Man must be driven out of the spirit-realm in which he has hitherto been living, in order that he may not also eat “of the Tree of Life.” But Christ will forever give men to eat of the Tree of Life, and the ideas which stream directly out of the spirit-realm into human souls must be inwardly experienced. But they can be experienced in the real sense only when the human soul takes Christ into itself. Then we have something quite different from the concept of Knowledge; then we have the concept of Life. Just as a strict eye must be kept on Lucifer and Ahriman in order that when they allow knowledge derived from the outer world to penetrate into us we may perceive that this knowledge is coming from them, so we must realise that through the impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha, ideas were to flow into men to be the substance of life—the substance not of knowledge alone, but of life. And when from this standpoint of life we study the different religions of the world, it will be far, far from our minds to investigate these religions with the object of discovering whether they are or are not in keeping with our own view of the world. To apply only the concept of knowledge to these religions is not our task; we must apply the concept of life.

There are definite forms of religion in the world. We should not set out to discover whether we can consider these forms to be true, but whether through their ritual and ceremonies they are able to give nourishment and life to the souls of men, and—as the souls of men differ—it follows that their life can be sustained by different forms of nourishment. If we grasp this truth we shall realise that we can never lend ourselves to quarreling with any form of religion but that we must endeavour to understand it in so far as it is life-nourishment for human souls to whom it is given as life not as knowledge only, but as very life. Then we shall see that the standpoint from which a religion begins to quarrel with some branch of science is entirely misplaced. We shall also realise that religion will inevitably adopt a hostile attitude towards progress in natural science and spiritual science alike. For the religions are still unwilling to get away from the old Tempter, they still want to invoke only that God Who said to man that He will give them life, that they themselves are not to eat of the Tree of Life. The representatives of religions do not want to invoke God alone but also the Luciferic Spirit and the Ahrimanic Spirit; they want the eyes for distinguishing good and evil to be opened through religion. Religion wants to be “knowledge.” But it cannot be “knowledge” because it is life-substance. And under the sway of this temptation which still whispers in their ears, the representatives of the different religions believe they possess facts of knowledge in their religions, whereas the question of knowledge cannot, in reality, come into consideration between religion and science. We have no cause whatever to combat religious bodies, because we ask them about the sustenance they provide for life, not about what knowledge they possess. Religious communities will always be tempted to ask whether science as it advances is in keeping with what they regard as knowledge. But because life is in process of constant evolution, advancing science can never be in keeping with religions which invariably tend towards conservatism.

And now you can picture the whole conflict which in the nature of things will ever and again be urged. I should like you to think rightly about this conflict and to realize that as a matter of course the representatives of religious bodies, because they are under the sway of temptation, will always, from their standpoint, combat spiritual science, just as they combat natural science. But you must also realise that these opponents fight because they lack understanding. This does not excuse them at all, but it must none the less be realised that they fight because of lack of understanding; they cannot take the right standpoint. As a sign and symptom, let me bring to your notice words written by a man who perceived the inevitable approach of the natural-scientific age and the natural-scientific way of thinking, and who was told by a friend that one should not be concerned with knowledge that is not contained in the Bible or preserved in the traditions of the Church. Since the 14th century, of course, things have changed in this connection.—Dante's “Divine Comedy” is a great, world-embracing poem. But Dante lived at the time when the epoch during which men confined themselves to purely historical Christianity was passing away. For Dante, Virgil was simply the exile banished to hell. Dante did not know much about anything that differed from the Christianity confronting him as a great system and régime. But in the case of Petrarch it was different, 1 century later, in the 14th century, Petrarch read Virgil with far greater credence. He turned not only to Greek but also to Roman spiritual culture. When one of his friends wrote to Petrarch saying that there had appeared to him in a dream a spiritual Being who exhorted him to avoid all non-Christian literature, he (Petrarch) gave a very significant answer. I stress the importance of this incident because it shows how the friend—and through him, Petrarch—was enjoined from the spiritual world to concern himself only with what the Christianity of that time regarded as truly Christian. Petrarch wrote the following beautiful words which held good at that time for the approaching epoch and still hold good today. Petrarch replied to his friend Boccaccio in momentous words, affirming his standpoint, why he read this non-Christian literature, and what it meant to him (Petrarch: Letter to Boccaccio (“Epistolae seniles” I. 5):

“Why then should we shun the pagan poets and writers who do not use the name of Christ simply because they have never heard it? Surely there is greater danger in the books of sceptics who speak of Christ and at the same time dispute Him—but those who claim to be the defenders of the true faith read these writings with the greatest eagerness. Believe me: much that is simply the product of sloth and timidity is attributed to thoughtful deliberation. Men often cast scorn on what is out of their reach; it is characteristic of ignorance to condemn what it cannot comprehend and nobody will concede to it strivings of which it is incapable.

“Here lies the root of the misguided judgments of what is unknown; it is not so much the blindness of those who pass judgment as their laziness that is in evidence. We, however, should not allow ourselves to be frightened away from the sciences by any pious admonitions, or by indications of the near approach to death. If the sciences are imbibed with inner sincerity they quicken the love of morality and take from us, or at least diminish, the fear of death; if we abandon them, this will excite the suspicion that disbelief lays claim to be knowledge. The sciences are not a hindrance to one who has the right mastery of them, but they are a help to him; they level his path of life and do not thwart him.

“For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind. ...

“I know well that many have achieved great sanctity without culture, but I know too that nobody has been kept from sanctity by culture. ... If I am to tell you my own opinion, it is this: The path to holiness via ignorance may possibly be smooth, but it is faint-hearted. All good things have a single goal but many paths lead thither and fellow-travelers along these paths differ greatly; the one moves more slowly, the other more quickly, the one in obscurity, the other visibly, the one bowed with humility, the other buoyant with exultation. All journeying is blessed; but the noblest is that which proceeds freely and openly before the world. The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far superior to naive simplicity, be it never so pious; and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness.”

The same could be said about our spiritual science! And not only to X³ but to all the others who fight against us, one could rejoin with the words written by Petrarch to his friend; “For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind.”

And when people harp on the “contradiction in the first and third Gospels” and refuse to admit that the contradiction disappears as soon as the existence of two Jesus boys is taken into account; when they insist upon “simplicity” and say that the fantastic statements of “the one up there” (on the Goetheanum hill) can well be ignored; when they will not admit that all the forms of life are incorporated in our Building, but talk about “distorted, fantastic forms,” one must quote the words of Petrarch: “The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far superior to naive simplicity; be it never so pious, and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness.”

Such thoughts make us realise that it can never be our principle to combat any religious body and that it is sheer calumny when anyone accuses us of being an enemy of religious Movements. The very fact of such an accusation proves that there is no willingness even to try to understand us. This at least we must know; and we must resist every tendency to adopt an aggressive attitude to any religious community just as we must keep ourselves free from the same kind of attitude to natural science because that will soon disclose its attitude to spiritual science! There is no reason whatever for us to combat any religious body. Combat cannot be begun by us because it does not lie in our nature to attack. And it must be taken as an axiom that if peace is denied us, it is because the hostile neighbour is not inclined for peace. Let the principle of leaving us in peace be put to the test and then see whether peace is maintained! Let it be put to the test! But naturally, we ourselves must be permeated with the right feeling and attitude. For example, much wrong is also done when from our side, too, dogmas or rites of one kind or another are attacked, often without having been understood; but if we rightly understand them, the principle referred to holds good. I would therefore enjoin you to understand the principle of peace. Just as I was obliged to enjoin you to have forbearance with conditions prevailing at the present time, so must I enjoin you to be alert and watchful, in order that we may do what is necessary to guard the holy treasure entrusted to us. For more and more we shall have to wend our way through the world with an unwavering inner strength if we are to stand firmly on the ground where spiritual science would have us stand.

The Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ Principle are intimately connected with the need to see spiritual reality in the world. Mere looking will never suffice even to understand the Mystery of Golgotha purely as an historical event. The Mystery of Golgotha must be comprehended spiritually; and those who devote themselves to knowledge where everything is derived from outside and will not open their eyes to the new revelations of the Mystery of Golgotha which can ever and again flow to us, will not grasp the import of a poem sung by yet another voice in the middle of the 19th century concerning that which—ever changing yet ever present—holds good in earthly humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. Let me read you a section of this poem which describes how one who cannot grasp the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha confronts this Mystery:⁴

Here is another example of how a human soul feels impelled to give expression to what has come to pass. And now that we have let these pictures pass through our souls, let me remind you of something that I have already said here: that we must change our mode of perception if we are to look with true vision into the spiritual world. We must not believe that the spiritual world can be seen as we see the material world of sense. We must even accustom ourselves to different modes of expression,—In the physical world we see trees, rivers, mountains. But of spiritual being we must say: they see us, they perceive us. To understand the Mystery of Golgotha truly, it is necessary to know this, because the Mystery of Golgotha can be understood only in the Spiritual. But that is how we aspire to understand it.

The time must come when through a true understanding of the words “Not I, but Christ in me,” it will be possible to rise into the spiritual worlds with the right knowledge. This epic poem “Ahasver” by Julius Mosen was published in the year 1838, and the fact that he was able to put the legend into such a form also indicates that the tragic destiny by which Mosen was overtaken profoundly affected him. He was bedridden nearly all his life, for his physical body was almost totally paralysed; this was precisely what enabled him to grasp such lofty ideas. We are reminded of the sinner in the novel “The Mahaguru” who, when he was already out of his mind, discovered the true nature of his art; and we are reminded, too, of the Count's wife in the Polish drama, who had to fall into a pathological state in order to find the connection with the spiritual world. It is the task of spiritual science today to help human beings to rise into the spiritual world in the healthy, normal state of consciousness.—All these things are signs of the task and of the value to be attached to the task of the spiritual-scientific Movement. Compressed into a few brief words, this is the truth that can inspire us as a source of strength: “The Mystery of Golgotha itself reveals that it must be understood spiritually, that we must seek for Christ as Spirit.” And then we must also say: “Christ is seeing us, Christ is perceiving us.”

We will inscribe this deeply in our hearts, keep it constantly in our minds, and our conscience must be satisfied when, in presenting our spiritual-scientific knowledge, we are saying with inner sincerity: May Christ be a witness of what we promulgate as Spiritual Science. We believe that this may indeed be so—and it can inspire us as men were once inspired by the cry of Bernard of Clairvaux: “It is God's Will!” These words became deeds. May it be the same among us—for we may believe that we understand Christ truly when we live under the inspiration of the words: Christ knows us.—And if you understand it aright, to a soul that sees our spiritual science in the true light, to a heart that feels it in its true light, I can impart no more esoteric saying than this: Christ is seeing us.

May these words live in our souls: “Christ is seeing us”—for so we may believe if we rightly understand spiritual science.—Christ is seeing us.

• 1. Statements to this effect are made in the book “Man: How, Whence and Whither” by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. (Theosophical Publishing Company)
• 2. See “The Occult Movement In the 19th Century”—notably Lectures IX and X.
• 3. A newspaper article had been written by a priest living in the vicinity of the Goetheanum.
• 4. Dr. Steiner now read part of the epic poem on Ahasver, or Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew, by Julius Mosen. The Wandering Jew is the legendary figure of a Jerusalem shoemaker who, taunting Christ on the way to the Crucifixion, was told by Him to “go on forever till I return.”—Note by Translator.
  
  In a lecture entitled. “Elemental Beings” (Berlin, 16th May, 1908), Dr. Steiner speaks as follows of the legend of Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew: “An important legend sets before us what a man must experience who descends too deeply into the temporary, transitory nature of the one incarnation. If we think of an extreme case, we can imagine it like this: ‘What is it to me that I should carry over something to later incarnations? I live in this incarnation, I like it, it suits me very well. I am not concerned with what I am supposed to make of it.’ Where does this thought lead? It leads to a man who sits at the wayside when a great Leader of humanity passes by. He, however, rejects the ideas of the Leader of humanity; he repulses him and thinks: ‘I will know nothing of thee, who wouldst guide the kernel of my being into future incarnations where mankind will be outwardly more perfect. I wish to remain united with my present form.’—A man who thrusts from him such a Leader of mankind will appear again in the same form. And if this attitude hardens, then he shall also thrust from him the Leader in the next incarnation. He will appear again and again as the same figure. ... Those who listen to the great Leader of humanity will preserve the soul with its eternal life-kernel. Mankind will have gone forward but they too will appear in an ever-progressive form. He, however, who thrusts the Leader of humanity from him must reappear again and again in the same form. This is the legend of Ahasueris who has thrust from himself the Christ, the Leader of humanity. ...”

My dear Friends,

For the dramatist the play is finished when he has composed it, when he has put it into words. If he intends it for the stage, then while composing it he must all the time hear and see it taking place. A play that may truthfully be called a work of art has been seen by the author; he has had it before his mind's eye just as it should unfold when performed on the stage. If this is not so, if the dramatist has not the power continually to ‘behold’ the stage, to feel beating within him, as he writes, the life-blood of the stage—then the actor can do very little with that play. And now when the dramatist has finished his work, the written play is for the actor what the score is for the musician. The poem, the work of art, has in a sense disappeared; the written text is like a musical score. From the text the actor has to re-create the poem in his performance on the stage, even as the musician re-creates the music from the score. For the score is a kind of zero-point between composer and performer; there they meet. It should be the same with the text of the drama. But in order to attain his goal, the actor will have to prepare himself in two directions.

The first thing needed is that the characters in the play are thoroughly understood. That the individual actor must have a thorough grasp of his own part goes without saying; but no part can be rehearsed except in conjunction with the other parts, and the producer has to see that all the parts play into one another in the right way. Thus, besides being studied individually, the characters will have to be brought into right relation with one another, so that the play, as it takes its course on the stage, shall in this respect present a rightly coloured, a well-integrated whole. And this it will do if we have first of all practised the art of delineation of character. It is an art that can be studied from what we have already seen to be the essential elements of drama. Let me show you how this can be done. Again I will proceed by taking an example.

In an earlier lecture we had a play under consideration that can once more be helpful to us here; for it is excellent material for the study of delineation of character, and also for the other necessary study which I will explain later. Particularly striking, however, is the skill in the delineation of character that is evinced in this play. I refer to Hamerling's Danton and Robespierre.

If it is our aim to achieve a complete and true delineation of character, in other words so to place each separate character on the stage that in the working out of their mutual relationships a whole is attained, an inwardly integrated whole, then we must before all else set out to study the play just from this point of view. In the play we are considering we shall find four characters whom we can well single out for particular study. There are of course many others we could choose, but for our present purpose we cannot do better than concentrate on these four: Robespierre, Hébert, Chaumette, Danton.

A full study of the drama as a whole would naturally have to include also the rest of the cast. As far as our immediate study is concerned, we shall require to come to the point where we can take a survey of the complete drama with its various characters; and then, having done this, we shall be in a position to give to some particular character its right performance, allowing it to be neither isolated from the others nor eclipsed by them.

Assuming therefore that you have worked through Hamerling's Danton and Robespierre in this way and have also made yourselves thoroughly familiar with all that we have been considering in these last days, you will be able to go forward with clarity and confidence, and place these four characters on the stage, showing up the varying shades of their several qualities and dispositions, in their relation to one another.

Take first Danton. We shall find, if we have understood the play aright, that Danton will express his own inner soul best if we connect with him the sound-feelings: ä (ay in ‘say’), i (ee); ä, i.

Danton: ä i

To act the part with this sound-feeling will bring the jovial side of his nature to expression; there will then be something large and generous about his manner as he comes on to the stage. And when Danton has to move about on the stage, then, if you have come to a really deep understanding of him, you will instinctively be tempted to let him walk like this: knees held rather stiff, and feet firmly planted on the ground. You will even feel that his arms too should be a little stiff at the elbow; he will move them as though he could not bend them right up, but only at a rather obtuse angle. Yes, you could very well have the impression that Danton is a man who would never be able to sing either a major or a minor third!¹

If this is the feeling you have about his character, then you may be sure the true Danton will be there on the stage, taking his right place among the other characters. And you will be impelled to let him be constantly making gestures with the mouth that help to produce the right tone of voice—pressing the lips forcefully into the corners of the mouth. Danton should, in fact, be spoken with lips nearly closed and stretched to their utmost, but as if there at the corners of the mouth they met with some powerful resistance.

All this is a direct and perfectly natural outcome of a serious study of the part. And that is how it should be. Then, when Danton has to speak, we shall have a Danton there ready. I will now illustrate this for you, taking for the purpose the second scene of the play, where he steps out in front of the people and speaks to them in true Danton manner

(DANTON und ROBESPIERRE treten auf. Robespierre in einfacher, aber pedantisch sorgfältiger Frisur und Tracht, Danton in mehr prunkhafter, doch burschikoser Gewandung, eine gewaltige Halsschleife hängt über seine Brust herab.)

VOLK. Es lebe Danton! Es lebe Robespierre!

DANTON. (den Hut lüftend und dem Volke zunickend, jovial)
Guten Morgen, Sansculotten!
Was soll denn das Gedräng'? Was gibt's? Ein Fest?
Mit weissgeputzten Jungfern, schönen Reden
Und Blechmusik? Verdammt! Gibt's wirklich keine
Bastille mehr zu stürmen? Keinen Ausflug
Mehr nach Versailles zu machen? Alle Wetter,
Das waren andre Zeiten! Denkt ihr's noch
Wie's war, als rings um uns zum ersten
Mal Losbrach die Kriegsfurie, und die Ohren
Ihr an den Boden legtet, um zu horchen,
Ob man nicht schon Kanonendonner höre,
Vorboten jener Haufen, die sich wälzten
Her auf Paris—und wie dann wirklich mancher
Zu hören meint‘ein fernes dumpfes Rollen,
Und auffuhr, bis ein Nachbar zu ihm sagte:
Lass gut sein—Danton ist's, der eben donnert
Im Club der Cordeliers!

VOLK. (in Enthusiasmus geratend) Es lebe Danton! ca ira! ca ira!

(Enter DANTON and ROBESPIERRE—Robespierre plainly dressed but
both his hair and clothes showing meticulous care; Danton in more showy,
unconventional garments, and with a flowing cravat.)

PEOPLE. Long live Danton! Long live Robespierre!

DANTON. (raising his hat and nodding in a jovial way to the people)
Good Morrow, Sansculottes!
What means this crowd? What is there, then, a fete?
With maidens all in white, with splendid speeches,
And with brass bands? Deuce take it! is there not
A Bastille still to storm? No further trip
To Versailles still to take? By Jupiter
Those times were different! Do you ever think
Of how it was when first around us all
War fury did break loose, and down you laid
Your ears upon the ground to try and hear
Whether already cannon-thunder roared—
Forbidden now those swarms who danced around
Our Paris streets—and how then many thought
To hear a deadened rolling from afar
And started up, until a neighbour said:
Don't be disturbed—it's Danton thundering
At the Cordelier's Club!

PEOPLE. (beside themselves with enthusiasm)
Long live Danton! ça ira, ça ira!

Do you see? There you have Danton's large—and yet at the same time revolutionary—manner. I want you to understand that I am accentuating what is characteristic of Danton, but that this accentuation has its particular value; I do it on purpose to show you how you can find your own way to a true delineation of character. And you will furthermore discover, if you are prepared to carry your expression of the character so far, that Danton will have to speak every j² and every l, (and whatever sounds resemble them) in a manner that is all his own. So we have for

Danton: ä i j l

And now let us look at Hebert. When the character of Hebert begins to come alive for us, we shall find he is not a man of action like Danton. Nor has Hebert been endowed with Danton's jovial disposition. Danton with his big, broad mouth gives us the impression that he will be large and liberal in his actions too, and we shall even feel inclined to choose a broad-shouldered person to play him, should it happen that one is available. We could of course also adapt the clothes to give more breadth. Danton's outward appearance would then be in accord with his speaking.

Hebert on the other hand will have to be of medium size; he must not look big and stout. With Hebert we get the impression that he is continually on the point of stepping forward, but suddenly hangs back and goes no farther. Whenever he has to move on the stage, the actor will have to show this hesitation. He will begin to step out, but then always stand still again. For Hebert is a man who only denounces and scolds, he is not a man to get things done. And this trait the actor will have to reveal by continually starting to walk and then stopping short.

You will find that Hebert is particularly at home in g and k; the utterance of these sounds gives him a feeling of satisfaction. The actor will take care to note where these sounds occur and will attune his whole speaking accordingly. He will see that Hebert gröhlt and jühlt (bawls and howls) when he is cross—ö ü (French eu in `feu', French u in ‘du’)—and that with g (hard) and k he is as pleased and happy as Danton is with j and l.

Hebert: ö ü g k

As the audience leaves the theatre, you ought to catch them saying to one another: ‘By Jove, how that fellow who plays Danton says ‘Ja’! No one else in the world could say Ja as he does. And did you hear the way Hebert hacks at the words with his k and g? It's simply marvellous! ’

Hamerling prepares us well beforehand for the situation in the scene. A citizen steps forward to announce the approach of the Goddess of Reason, whose festival is now about to be celebrated.

(Der Festzug erscheint unter den Klängen der Musih. Voraus HENRIOT zu Pferde. Dann eine Schar weissgekleideter, rosenbekränzter Mädchen, dann folgen die wie Feldzeichen erhöht getragenen Büsten Voltaires und Marats. Unmittelbar vor der Göttin wird eine grosse angezündete Fackel hergetragen. Die GÖTTIN selbst ruht auf einem blumengeschmückten Triumphwagen, angetan mit weisser Tunika, darüber eine wallende Chlamys von himmelblauer Farbe. Auf dem Haupte eine rote phrygische Mütze. Hinter ihr HEBERT, CHAUMET rB und andere Mitglieder des Rates der Kommune. Nachdem c/er Zug in der Mitte des Platzes angelangt, macht der Triumphwagen Halt, die Göttin verlässt denselben und wird von Hebert und Chaumette auf das thronartige Gerüst hinaufgeleitet, wo sie Platz nimmt. Die bisher ihr vorgetragene Fackel wird in ihre Hand gegeben. Die Jungfrauen gruppieren sich um den Fuss des Gerüstes. Die Musik verstummt.)

EIN BÜRGER. (im Vordergrund zu seinem Nachbar) Präch?

tige Gestalt, diese Göttin der Vernunft!

DER NACHBAR. Ja, sie ist ein schönes Weib, die Momoro; nur ihre Zähne sollen schon einigermassen defekt sein.

EIN WEIB. (zu ihrer Nachbarin) Seht einmal, was sie für grosse funkelnde Ohrringe trägt!

DIE NACHBARIN. Die hat sie von dem reichen deutschen Baron.

HÉBERT. (besteigt die Bühne, doch nicht ganz zu der Höhe, auf welcher die Göttin sitzt) Mitbürger! Die freche Rebellion der exekutiven und der administrativen Gewalten gegen das souveräne Volk, welche in Frankreich wie allenthalben ihr Wesen trieb, ist niedergeworfen. Der von den ersten Beamten des Staates, den Königen, bisher geübte Amtsmissbrauch ist für immer abgestellt. Seit dem Augenblick, da das Haupt Ludwig Capets fiel und der Staub seiner Ahnen in den Prunkgräbern von St. Denys im Staub der Strassen von Paris seinen Bruder begrüsste, ist der Königsbann und Zauber, der auf den Völkern lastete, gebrochen. Wir zogen nach St. Denys, wir öffneten die kostbaren Schreine der verblichenen Despoten von Frankreich: da lagen sie, die einst allmächtigen Abgötter, vor welchen wir das Knie beugten; da lagen sie in ihren Silbersärgen, Staubphantome, nur noch mit den letzten Resten goldgestickter Gewande zusammengehalten. Wenn man mit den Fingern an die Majestäten tippte, rieselte die Totenasche aus den Gold- und Purpurfetzen hervor, wie der Staub aus einem Staubschwamm, den man in der Hand zerdruckt. In ganzen Wolken stäubte sie empor, die Königsasche, und wer da herumging, dem klopfte sein Diener am nächsten Morgen verweste Potentaten mit dem anderen Staube aus den Kleidern. Es gibt keine geborenen Götzen der Menschheit mehr. Die Menschheit wird künftig nur diejenigen ehren, die ihr gedient, nicht diejenigen, die sie beherrscht haben. (Auf die Büsten deutend.) Da seht das Bild Voltaires, des grossen Vorkämpfers der Gedankenfreiheit; da seht das Bild Marats, des echten glühenden Patrioten, der für die Freiheit darbte, siechte, verhöhnt, und zuletzt gemeuchelt wurde—der die Lauen und die Ehrgeizigen zugleich beschämt, die auch jetzt noch das freie Volk zu eigensüchtigen Zwecken zu umgarnen trachten.—Das seien unsere Genien, das seien unsere Götter für die Zukunft! Vor diesen, Volk, entblösse dein Haupt!

---

(The procession appears amid strains of music, HENRIOT on horseback at the head, then a troop of girls in white and garlanded with roses, after whom, carried on high like regimental colours, the busts of Voltaire and Marat. Immediately before the GODDESS a flaming torch is carried. The goddess herself rests on a flower-bedecked triumphal car. She is clad in a white tunic with, over it, a sky-blue mantle, a red Phrygian cap on her head. Behind her come HEBERT and CHAUMETTE, and other members of the Council of the Commune. The cortege having arrived at the centre of the square the triumphal car is halted, the goddess descends and is led by Hebert and Chaumette to the throne-like scaffolding where she takes her seat. The torch hitherto carried in front of her, is now given into her hand. The maidens group themselves at the foot of the scaffolding. The music ceases.)

A CITIZEN. (in the foreground, to his neighbour) Fine figure of a woman this Goddess of Reason!

NEIGHBOUR. Yes, she's a beauty, Mistress Momoro; only her teeth are none too good.

A WOMAN. (to her neighbour) Just look what great sparkling earrings she's wearing!

HER NEIGHBOUR. She got those from the rich German Baron.

HÉBERT. (mounts the stage but does not go to the level at which the goddess is sitting) Co-citizens! The shameless rebellion of the executive and administrative powers against the sovereign people, which has gone on in France and everywhere else, has been crushed. The abuse of office practised up to now by the leading officers of state, the kings, has been once and for all abolished. From the moment the head of Louis Capet fell, and the dust of his ancestors out of their ostentatious tombs in St. Denys met its brother dust in the streets of Paris, the kingly spell, the kingly magic, has been broken. We proceeded to St. Denys, we opened the costly shrines of the perished despots of France. There they lay, the once all-powerful idols before whom we bent the knee; there they lay in their coffins of silver, phantoms of dust still held together by the last remnants of their gold- embroidered garments. When with gentle fingers one softly touched these majesties, the ashes of the dead showered forth from the gold and purple tatters like the dust out of a crushed puff-ball. They rose up in dusty clouds, these kingly ashes, and those who stood around had, the next morning, decayed potentates brushed with other dirt from their clothes. For mankind there are no more hereditary idols. Mankind in future will honour only those who serve them, not those who are their masters. (Pointing to the busts.) There you see the bust of Voltaire, the great protagonist of freedom of thought; there that of Marat, the genuine, ardent patriot who, for freedom, suffered privation, pined away, was mocked at and finally murdered—who put to shame both the half-hearted and the ambitious who even yet try to incite the free people to selfish ends.—Let such men as Voltaire, as Marat, be our geniuses, our gods, for the future! Before them, 0 people, uncover your heads!

That, then, is Hebert. Let us turn now to Chaumette. If we study the part carefully, we shall feel we can detect in Chaumette a sort of soughing or sighing in ü, indicating a timidity which he conceals under a show of bravado. He tries all the time to stand up to his feeling of fear with ö. And so we have the mood ü ö. Chaumette's will not be a speaking that goes to extremes in any direction; there will be in it a savour of supplication, but of a rather poor and mean kind. The sounds h and sch (sh) will frequently occur, and all the time there will be a sort of insincere heaving and sighing.

Chaumette: ü ö h sch

If we can speak the part with this feeling, then it will be Chaumette.

VOLK. Es lebe die Göttin der Vernunft! (Schwenken der Mützen.) Es lebe die Republik!

DANTON. (zu Robespierre abseits) ‘Er ist verzweifelt wild heute, der Vater Duchesne!'

(Beide verlieren sich unter dem Volk.)

CHAUMETFE. (besteigt die Tribüne, nachdem sie HEBERT

verlassen) Republikaner! Wir haben die Tyrannei nicht bloss vom Throne, wir haben sie auch von der Kanzel geworfen. Seitdem zu des grossen Voltaire Zeiten die Mäuse des Unglaubens zum erstenmal den Speck der Kirche benagt, und seit die Naturforschung aufgestanden vom Faulbett des Begriffs der göttlichen Allmacht, auf dem sie geschlafen, ist Frankreich vorwärts gegangen mit Giganten- schritt. Nur fort auf diesem Wege, Brüder! Streuen wir mit der Asche der Könige auch die Asche der Kalenderheiligen aus den Kirchen in alle vier Winde! Und insofern sie von Metall, diese Heiligen, sollen sie gute Patrioten werden und für die Republik ins Feuer gehen: wir schmelzen sie ein! Reissen wir den Kirchtürmen ihre geschwätzigen Glockenzungen aus, und lassen wir sie im Felde als Kanonen brummen; schneiden wir Patronen aus den Messbüchern! Auf die Friedhöfe lasst uns die Inschrift pflanzen: ‘Ewiger Schlaf!’ Opfern wir nicht mehr das beste unserer Habe dem Himmel! Seien wir klug wie die alten Heiden: die brachten den Göttern von den Opfertieren auch nur die Häute und Knochen dar, das Fleisch assen sie selbst. Unsere Göttin sei die Vernunft, die gesunde Vernunft ohne Grübeleien, ohne Wissenskram, ohne aristokratische Gelehrsamkeit. Und als Franzose und Republikaner füg‘ich hinzu: Die Wissenschaft muss nützlich sein, und die Künste müssen einzig dem Patriotismus dienen; sie sollen keine Werkzeuge aristokratischer Verweichlichung sein. Den alt-ehrwürdigen Prachtbau von Notre Dame, der vor uns ragt, weihen wir von heut an zum Tempel der Vernunft! Vorerst aber, zum Zeichen, dass das Licht allen gemein ist (sich zu den Jungfrauen wendend), entzündet die Fackeln und verteilt sic unter das ganze Volk!

(Die Jungfrauen ergreifen Fackeln, von welchen ein grosser Haufe am Fusse des Gerüstes aufgeschichtet ist, und entzünden sie an der Fackel der Göttin.)

CLOOTS. (sich mit seiner Schar nähernd) Lasst alle Völker die Fackeln an diesem Licht entfachen, das in Frankreich aufgegangen!

---

PEOPLE. Long live the Goddess of Reason! (waving their caps) Long live the Republic!

DANTON. (aside, to Robespierre) ‘He's desperately savage today is Father Duchesne !’

(Both men mingle in the crowd.)

CHAUMETTE. (mounts the tribune on HEBERT leaving it)

Republicans! We have thrown down tyranny not only from the throne but also from the pulpit. Ever since the time of Voltaire, when disbelief for the first time gnawed at the vitals of the Church, and since natural philosophy has arisen from the idle bed where slept the concept of divine omnipotence, since all this, France has progressed with giant strides. But let us go forward on this road, brothers! Let us cast to the four winds not only the ashes of the kings but also those of the calendar saints of the Church! And in as far as they are of metal, these saints, shall they become good patriots and go into the fire for the Republic; we will melt them down! Let us pull down from the Church towers the clamorous tongues of the bells and make them roar as cannon on the field of battle; let us make cartridge cases of their missals! Let us write up ‘eternal sleep‘at the entrance to their graveyards and no longer offer the best of our possessions to the heavens! Let us be as shrewd as the old heathen who brought to their gods only the skins and bones of the sacrificial animals, eating the flesh themselves. Our goddess shall be reason, sound reason, without speculation and unencumbered by knowledge or by the learning of aristocrats. And as Frenchman and republican I add: Science must be made of use, and the arts must serve patriotism alone; they shall be no tools of aristocratic effeminacy. This worthy, noble old pile of Notre Dame we shall dedicate today as the Temple of Reason. But first, as token that light is common property to every one of us, (turning to the maidens) kindle the torches and distribute them among all the people!

(The maidens seize upon the torches, a great heap of which is stacked at the foot of the scaffolding, and light them from the torch held by the goddess.)

CLOOTS. (approaching with his crowd) Let everyone light his torch from this light which has arisen in France!

Chaumette, you see, makes it plain that he wants not only to haul the tyrants down from their thrones but to push them out of their pulpits. This is the character Hamerling gives him. And if you study the part, letting yourself hear Chaumette speak with the voice of a priest who has grown rather insincere, then you will have hit upon the tone that should be maintained for Chaumette throughout.

Robespierre may be said to be the character that interests Hamerling most of all. He should appear rather tall on the stage. Whatever he may have been in real life, here in Hamerling's play Robespierre is a tall man, rather thin and worn, and all the sounds that he utters tend somewhat in the direction of i. There is always a decided contraction at the middle of his palate. He is moreover always ready to talk of great matters—to ‘embrace the world’—in rather grandiloquent phrases. i o, i o; these are the sounds you hear in Robespierre.

Then Robespierre is also very much the schoolmaster whose speaking abounds in d and t. He has a distinct liking for d and t, the pointing sounds.

Robespierre: i o d t

And now there is a passage in the play that can be particularly helpful to us if we want to have a complete picture of the character of Robespierre. Look up the scene that takes place in the house of the carpenter Duplay, where Robespierre has his lodging. The scene is laid in a kind of ante-room which divides Robespierre's apartments from the rooms and workshop of his landlord. Here then we have Robespierre at home.

Hamerling begins the scene by letting Robespierre indulge in a little self-admiration, in the true i o mood. We need to take note of this trait in Robespierre, if we are going to present him on the stage; for it provides us with a key to his character. Robespierre sets great value on what others think about him; but he would not like to admit it—either to himself or to them. And he undoubtedly has at the same time a good deal, as we said, of the schoolmaster in him and even gives the whole Revolution something of that tone. 1 am not of course speaking of the Robespierre of history; all that I am saying refers to the Robespierre of Hamerling's play.

Danton, Billaud-Varenne and the rest are ready to hang people who say anything in favour of the old aristocracy or royalty—or who even dream about them. But Robespierre,—he would like to hang persons who are guilty, for example, of writing an r in the wrong place. He detects in a spelling mistake like this an unforgivable conservatism which hinders the guilty person from taking his place in the new order of things. Schoolmasters, accordingly, whose pupils do not spell correctly—these in particular he is ready to hang.

The two traits are remarkably well brought out by Hamer- ling; and we shall find we can understand the character of Robespierre if we study the part with these traits in mind and with the sound-feelings that belong to them.

ROBESPIERRE. (tritt von einem Fenster zurück) Vorbei die letzten Karren—Hebert flucht—Chaumette macht ein Gesicht wie eine kranke Lerche—der Pöbel, der ihnen vor zwei Wochen zugejauchzt, verhöhnt sie. (Er nimmt Platz an einem Tischchen, durchblättert Zeitungen und öffnet Briefe. Miene, Haltung und Bewegung drücken eine fast pedantische Gemessenheit, Ruhe und anscheinende Gleichgültigkeit gegen den Inhalt der Zuschriften aus.)

‘Robespierre, du Gewaltiger! Seele der Republik—harr‘aus! Geh‘ mutig weiter auf deiner Bahn, entgegen dem Ziele, das dir winkt!’

‘Bürgerrepräsentant Robespierre, ich merke, du strebst nach der Diktatur! Gib sie auf, die volksverräterischen Pläne, oder wisse, dass die Dolche von zweiundzwanzig Brutussen, die sich gegen dein Leben, du Meuchelmörder der Freiheit, verschworen, Tag für Tag über dir gezückt sind—’

‘Robespierre, wahrhafter Freund des Volkes, Unbestechlicher, erhalte dich das Schicksal noch lange, lange für das Wohl Frankreichs und der Welt!’

‘Du lebst noch, Tiger, befleckt mit dem Blute der edelsten Geschlechter von Frankreich? Henker der Menschheit, du lebst noch? Gib acht! ein Sprössling aus edlem Stamme ist noch übrig und sein geschliffenes Schwert lauert—’

‘Robespierre, du teurer, edler, tugendhafter Mann! vergib einer begeisterten Tochter der Republik, die in Bewunderung für dich erglüht, wenn sie dich anfleht um die Gnade, dich sehen, dich sprechen, ihr republikanisches Herz an deinem Anblick laben zu dürfen!’

‘Du Aas, du Madensack, du Würmerfrass, elender Robespierre, hast du keine Scheu vor Gott dem Herrn, dem Beherrscher Himmels und der Erden? Denn wisse, elender Tyrrann’—Tyrann schreibt der Bursche mit einem doppelten r! Dass doch das Volk nie orthographisch schreiben lernt!‘ Elender Tyrrann, dass du samt deinen Spiessgesellen unser Parris’—wieder ein doppeltes r—ich werde den Schulmeister köpfen lassen, zu welchem der Wicht in die Schule ging—

---

Act I, Scene II

ROBESPIERRE. (withdrawing from a window) The last carts

have gone by—Hebert is cursing and swearing, Chaumette is making a face like a sick skylark; the people who two weeks ago loudly acclaimed them now sneer at them.

He seats himself at a little table, turns over newspapers and opens letters. His expression, attitude and movements convey an almost pedantic precision, repose and apparent indifference to what the writings contain.

He takes up a newspaper in which he is referred to.

‘Robespierre, you mighty one! Soul of the Republic—persevere! Continue with courage on the road to the goal which beckons you!’

He smiles, well pleased and satisfied.—Another paper.

‘Robespierre, representative of the citizens, I can see you are aiming at dictatorship! Give up these plans to betray the people, or know that the daggers of twenty-two Brutuses, who are plotting against your life, you murderer of freedom, are pointed at you, day in, day out—’

Puts the paper irritably on one side.—A third paper.

‘Robespierre, true friend of the people, you, the incorruptible, continue long to uphold your destiny for the wellbeing of France and of the world! ’

Lays aside the paper, well pleased.—Another paper.

‘You are still alive, you tiger, stained as you are with the blood of the noblest houses of France ? Butcher of mankind, you still live? Beware! The descendant of an ancient race has survived and his ready sword lies in wait—’

‘Robespierre, you dear, noble, virtuous man ! Forgive an enthusiastic daughter of the Republic, burning with admiration of you, if she pleads for the indulgence of a sight of you, of speech with you, of being allowed to refresh her republican heart by gazing upon you!’

‘You carrion, you miserable carcass, food for the worms, you wretched Robespierre, have you no shame in the sight of God, the Lord and Ruler of heaven and earth? Know then, miserable tyrrant’—why, the fellow spells it with a double r—so the people never learn to spell correctly when they write!—‘Miserable tyrrant, that you and your accomplices in our Parris’—a double r again. I shall have the master beheaded who taught at the school where this creature went.

There you have the tones of mood and voice that need to be carefully studied. As I said just now, I am accentuating the special features of the characters; here I have purposely

exaggerated a little in order to help you to come to a deep and thorough understanding of the whole figure of Robespierre, as portrayed by Hamerling. For nothing less will suffice if you want to act the part; you will need to find your way right into the very heart and being of the character.

And now when you have learned to understand Robespierre in these two aspects of his character, you will continue your study of the part further. I would like you to take what I am saying here rather as giving a description of how these matters can be gradually brought before students in a school of dramatic art. Having then brought your students so far, you may take with them that moment in the play when Robespierre is called upon to account for the fact that he is not willing to be made ‘dictator’, when all the time he definitely wants to be it! His friend St. Just asks him why it is he spurns the title. And now Robespierre is compelled to divulge something of his true character. Yes, it comes out! And at the same time a third trait of his makes its appearance: we are shown Robespierre the dogmatist, the rationalist, perpetually wanting to pose as schoolmaster for the whole world (ready also to be an opportunist for that end), promulgating a theory of which we are to be repeatedly reminded as the play proceeds; for from now on Robespierre makes every endeavour to justify himself by it with subtlety and precision at the bar of reason. St. Just says to him:

ST. JUST. Du verschmähst den Namen—warum nicht auch die Sache?

ST. JUST. You spurn the name—why not the thing itself?

Robespierre is naturally deeply annoyed at such a question; it probes his weaknesses to the quick—those weaknesses of his that are at the same time the things that make him great. He grows restless, walks up and down. St. Just remains standing still. Robespierre does not answer at once. He has, you see, to find a way to justify himself before the tribunal of reason; he walks to and fro to gain time. Then he claps St. Just on the shoulder.

ROBESPIERRE. Hör Inch', St. Just! Das Wort ist mir sonst Werkzeug, Waffe. Dir gegenüber soll es ein vertraulicher Bote meiner Gedanken sein—so weit du sie begreifen magst. Ich bin vielleicht, wie du gesagt, ein heimlicher Schwärmer. Ich liebe die Menschheit, wie Rousseau sie geliebt! Aber was sind mir die einzelnen Menschen? Ich verachte sie. Nimm den Durchschnittsmenschen aus der Masse heraus—sein Wesen ist die bare Unvernunft. Lass ihn in der Masse, an seinem Ort, und er ist Teil eines zwar blinden, aber infalliblen Ganzen. Die Menschheit geht immer den Weg zum Ziel, aber unbewusst, in blindem Drang, wie ein Nachtwandler. Das Schellengeläut der Phrasen, mit welchen sie sich ihren blinden Drang, ihren Weg und ihr Ziel deutlich machen will, hat wenig zu sagen. Die meisten Worte mischen sich in ihren Fortgang ohne Sinn, bloss zur Ermunterung, wie Hundegebell ins Räderrollen. Wahrhaft bewusst gehen den Weg nur wenige Auserwählte. Diese Wenigen sind Regulatoren, Lenker, Förderer, Bahnbrecher—sie haben den grossen Zweck vor Augen—und einzig diesen.—Weisst du, Freund, was eine grosse Idee ist?

ST. JUST. Ich meine es zu wissen.

ROBESPIERRE. Weisst du, was das Wort Konsequenz sagen will ?

ST. JUST. Ich denke.

ROBESPIERRE. Das ist mir lieb.—Der einzelne, sein Wohl und Wehe, sein Leben, ist mir nichts. Ich lasse ihn unbedenklich für den grossen Zweck über die Klinge springen. Bin ich grausam? Mutter Natur macht's ebenso. Ich wünsche, ich will, dass das Vernünftige sich auf Erden verwirkliche. Das ist mein Prinzip—mein Ideal—davon bin ich begeistert oder besessen, wenn du lieber willst, dämonisch besessen.—Das Unvermeidliche stört mich, quält mich, wie ein Missklang im Ohr. Ich kann es nicht ausstehen. Ich will keine Könige, ich will keine Aristokraten, ich will keine Privilegien, ich will keine Priesterherrschaft, ich will keine Säbelherrschaft, ich will auch keine Pöbelherrschaft—nichts von einer Uebermacht, die Zufall, Geburt, eigensüchtige Schlauheit oder rohe Gewalt gewährt—denn das ist alles Unvernunft und ein Greuel auf Erden. Ich will keine andere Uebermacht, als die der Vernunft über den Blödsinn. Wer zu den wahrhaft Bevorzugten gehört, erhält seine Präpotenz über die Menge nur dadurch, dass er dieser Menge gegenüber eine noch grössere Menge vertritt: die Menschheit. Ich halte mich für einen von diesen. Ich fühle die Flamme der Menschheit in mir leuchten und brennen—Fiebergluten entzündet sie in mir—sie leuchtet, aber sie verzehrt auch—das Licht fordert Unterwerfung, Gehorsam—auch von mir—es ist grimmiges verzehrt mein Menschliches—und dann wundern sich die Kleinen, dass ich ein’ Unmensch’ bin. Wer die Fackel dieses Lichtes trägt, ist dieses Lichtes Sklave: aber den Kindern der Finsternis und der Dämmerung gegenüber ist er Herr und König. Könige wird es ewig geben; aber Zepter und Kronen und höfischer Mummenschanz und Trabantenscharen, das ist schnöde Unvernunft! Der bessere Kopf braucht nur hervorzutreten, um zu herrschen. Darum nichts von Diktatur, Freund, nichts von Diktatur! Nichts von Namen und Titeln und Würden, nichts von Mummenschanz und Trabanten und Liktorenbeilen—dergleichen kompromittiert, diskreditiert nur ... Bleiben wir auf republikanisch- gesetzlichem Wege. Wenn Frankreich tut, was ich rate—was brauch‘ich zu befehlen?—Nichts von Diktatur, Freund, verschone mich damit !

---

ROBESPIERRE. Listen to me, St. Just! Words on other occasions are my tools, my weapons. To you they shall be the trusty conveyors of my thoughts—as far as you may grasp my thoughts. Perhaps I am, as you say, in secret a sentimentalist. I love mankind as Rousseau loved them! But what are individual men to me? I despise them. Take the average man out of the mass—in his nature he is utterly devoid of reason. Leave him in the mass, in his place, and he is part of a blind whole, blind, it is true, but a whole that is infallible. Men move always towards the goal, but unconsciously, from a blind urge, like a sleepwalker. All those high-sounding phrases with which they seek to make clear to themselves this blind urge, this path and this goal—say very little. Most of the words they employ in their progress are without sense, spoken merely to cheer them on, like the barking of dogs round the wheels of a passing cart. It is but a few of the elect who go on their way in full consciousness. These few are those who govern, leaders of men, instigators, pioneers—these alone have the great aim before them.—Do you know, friend, what a great idea is ?

ST. JUST. I think I do.

ROBESPIERRE. Do you know what the word ‘consistency’ implies?

ST. JUST. So I believe.

ROBESPIERRE. That is what I hold dear.—To me the individual, his weal and woe, his very life, are nothing. To further the great aim, without hesitation I send him to his death. Am I inhuman? Mother Nature does the same. It is my wish, it is my determined will, that the reasonable should be realised on earth. That is my principle, my ideal, that by which I am inspired—or possessed if you prefer it, demoniacally possessed.—The inevitable disturbs me, torments me, like a discordant note in the ear. I can't suffer it. I will not have kings, I will not have aristocrats, nor will I have privileges, priestly rule, nor the rule of the sabre; I will not even have the people as rulers, I want nothing of any domination conceded to chance, birth, selfish cunning or brute force,—for all that is lacking in reason and is an abomination on the face of the earth. I want no other domination but that of reason over foolishness. Whoever belongs to the specially favoured receives his power over the multitude only because he represents a still greater multitude—mankind. I consider myself to be one of the specially favoured. I feel the flame of mankind shining, burning, within me—it kindles within me the glow of fever—it shines but it also consumes—the light demands subjection, obedience, even from me—it is relentless—it eats up what is human in me—and then the small fry are surprised to find me inhuman. Whoever bears the torch of this light is the slave of this light, but over the children of darkness and dusk he rules as lord and king. Kings there will always be—but sceptre and crown and the masquerade and military splendour of courts are a contemptible lack of reason! The better head has only to come forward in order to rule. Therefore, friend, not a word about dictators, not a word! Have done with names, titles, honours, have done with all mummery, with life-guards and the axes of lictors—things of that kind only compromise and bring discredit... . Let me keep to the path of our republican law. When France carries out what I counsel—what need for me to command?—No word of dictatorship, friend, spare me that!

(Translation by V. E. W.)

There you have Robespierre.

That is then the first way in which we should learn to study our text, namely, from the aspect of delineation of character. When we have made progress in this, we can pass on to the second, which consists in learning to give the relevant colouring to the play in all its scenes from beginning to end, but always so that the fundamental tone of the play as a whole is maintained throughout. today we will begin to consider certain things we shall need to understand for this; then tomorrow we shall be in a position to carry the study further.

You will remember, my dear friends, that I showed you how the vowels can be thought of as forming in their sequence a kind of scale. I want now to write them in a circle, making seven halts or stopping-places in the circle where I will write in the vowels in order, so that the last comes round again to the first. Thus, this time they will not be side by side in a line, but inscribed on a circle so that the series returns upon itself: a e i o ä ö ü make seven, and u is the eighth.

When now we study plays in connection with this circle of vowels, we discover something of extraordinary interest.

Imagine we are studying a play, and find we want to arrange for the play as a whole to have a mood that arises out of the feeling of u; we want to let the audience feel from the beginning that up there on the stage the prevailing general tone corresponds to the feeling one has with u. We shall then get each actor to speak his part in such a way that something of the u mood is present. This may be done by accentuation here and there,. or again by the colouring the actor gives to his voice. Then, as the play goes on, we find we have to pass on from u to a, to e—and now to i (see the arrow in the drawing). The play has thus moved on in respect of mood as far as i. We feel, however, that we cannot now go on from i to o. We have instead to come back, we have to let the mood come back again to e, with a slight tendency of warding something off; and yet after all we allow it to come near us again, we return to a; but before u we call a halt, at most letting u only begin to sound.

When we go through the play in this manner, giving it throughout the right colouring in accordance with the feelings that belong to the several vowels, what have we? We set out from u—that is to say, fear. We go on farther and come to i. With i is associated the experience of compassion. We have now reached the middle of the play. In the remaining acts, we are obliged to retrace our steps; we have to come again, even if warding it off a little (for we must not lose hold of what is happening), we have to come back to a. And that is the mood in which the play ends.

We have thus found in the play this sequence: fear, compassion, wonder. But these are the very moods of soul of which Aristotle speaks, although of course he does not connect them with sounds as we have done, fear as we set out in u, and returning at last to wonder in a; and in a coming to a standstill before reaching u, for of fear only a faint murmur still lingers on at the end of the play.

And now suppose we take the other path, setting out this time from i; but from a special kind of i that does not express veritable deep compassion, but does still suggest entering into another's experience, though perhaps less intensely—the i, namely, that conveys the impression of inquisitiveness, curiosity. Let us say we have a play where we find we have to take our start in this mood. We are curious to know what will happen; we are all expectation. We pass on, as the play proceeds, to ä and ö and come then to ii; that is to say, we begin to find ourselves apprehensive, lest things may perhaps not turn out well. That is then the path that the play takes. But now it is essential that we do not go on from apprehension into fear, we must on no account pass from ii to u; for then our play would have an unhappy ending; and that is not the intention. We must, in fact, now go back. And as we return, we are brought into a mood of relief and satisfaction—ä.

Thus, the circle of the vowels gives us, first the sequence: fear—compassion—wonder ; and then, another time, the sequence: curiosity—apprehension—relief, happy ending!

Fear—Compassion—Wonder Curiosity—Apprehension—Relief.

With the first sequence, we have tragedy, and with the second, comedy.

The terms are of course categorical; you will not find that the course of a play ever exactly fits into them. They can, however, provide an excellent basis upon which you can study how to stage your play.

Thus, in dealing with the text of a play, we have first to study it from the point of view of delineation of character, and then go on to probe to the very heart and essence of its form.

• 1. See Eurhythmy as Visible Song.
• 2. As y in’ yacht', but pronounced so as to emphasise its consonantal character.

Yesterday I pointed out that there is much more involved in learning to walk, speak, and think—the three most important activities of early childhood—than is apparent outwardly. I also indicated that it is impossible to observe the human being completely without distinguishing between what is internal and what is external. When considering the organization of the whole human being, who is made up of body, soul, and spirit, it is especially necessary to develop a refined faculty of discrimination, and this is particularly true in the field of education.

Let us first look at what is very simply called “learning to walk.” I have already mentioned that a part of this activity is connected with how the child establishes equilibrium in the surrounding physical world. The entire, lifelong relationship to static and dynamic forces is involved in this activity. Furthermore, we have seen how this seeking, this striving for balance, this differentiation of arm and hand movements from those of the legs and feet, also forms the basis for the child's faculty of speech. And how, arising out of this faculty, the new faculty of thinking is gradually born. However, in this dynamic system of forces that the child takes hold of in learning how to walk, there lives yet something else that is of a fundamentally different character. I noted this briefly yesterday, but now we must consider it more fully.

You must always bear in mind that, pre-eminently during the first stage of childhood, but also up to the change of teeth, the child is one big sense organ. This is what makes children receptive to everything that comes from their surroundings. But it also causes them to recreate inwardly everything that is going on in their environment. One could say—to choose just one particular sense organ—that a young child is all eye. Just as the eye receives stimuli from the external world and, in keeping with its organization, reproduces what is happening there, so human beings during the first period of life inwardly reproduce everything that happens around them.

But the child takes in what is thus coming from the environment with a specific, characteristic form of inner experience. For example, when seeing the father or the mother moving a hand or an arm, the child will immediately feel an impulse to make a similar movement. And so, by imitating the movements of others in the immediate environment, the usual irregular and fidgety movements of the baby gradually become more purposeful. In this way the child also learns to walk.

But we must not overemphasize the aspect of heredity in the acquisition of this faculty, because this constant reference to heredity is merely a fashion in contemporary natural-scientific circles. Whether a child first puts down the heel or the toes when walking is also is due to imitating the father, mother, or anyone else who is close. Whether a child is more inclined to imitate one parent or the other depends on how close the connection is with the particular person, the affinity “in between the lines” of life, if I may put it this way. An exceedingly fine psychological-physiological process is happening here that cannot be recognized by the blunt tools of today's theories of heredity. To express it more pictorially: Just as the finer particles fall through the meshes of a sieve while the coarser ones are retained, so does the sieve of the modern world-view allow the finer elements of what is actually happening to slip through. In this way only the coarser similarities between child and father, or child and mother, only the “rough and ready” side of life is reckoned with, disregarding life's finer and more subtle points. The teacher and educator, however, need a trained eye for what is specifically human.

Now it would be natural to assume that it must surely be deep love that motivates a child to imitate one particular person. But if one looks at how love is revealed in later life, even in a very loving person, one will come to realize that if one maintains that the child chooses by means of love, then what is actually happening has not been fully appreciated. For in reality, the child chooses to imitate out of an even higher motive than that of love. The child is prompted by what one might, in later life, call religious or pious devotion. Although this may sound paradoxical, it is nevertheless true. The child's entire sentient-physical behavior in imitation flows from a physical yearning to become imbued with feelings found in later life only in deeply religious devotion or during participation in a religious ritual. This soul attitude is strongest during the child's earliest years, and it continues, gradually declining, until the change of teeth. The physical body of a newborn baby is totally permeated by an inner need for deeply religious devotion. What we call love in later life is just a weakened form of this pious and devotional reverence.

It could be said that until the change of teeth the child is fundamentally an imitative being. But the kind of inner experience that pulses through the child's imitation as its very life blood—and here I must ask you not to misunderstand what I am going to say, for sometimes one has to resort to unfamiliar modes of expression to characterize something that has become alien to our culture—this is religion in a physical, bodily guise.

Until the change of teeth, the child lives in a kind of “bodily religion.” We must never underestimate the delicate influences (one could also call them imponderable influences) that, only through a child's powers of perception, emanate from the environment, summoning an urge to imitate. We must in no way underestimate this most fundamental and important aspect of the child's early years. Later on we will see the tremendous significance that this has for both the principles and practical methods of education.

When contemporary natural science examines such matters, the methods used appear very crude, to say the least. To illustrate what I mean, I would like to tell you the case of the mathematician horses that, for awhile, caused a sensation in Germany. I have not seen these Dusseldorf horses myself, but I was in a position to carefully observe the horse belonging to Herr von Osten of Berlin, who played such a prominent part in this affair. It was truly amazing to witness how adept his horse was at simple mathematical calculations. The whole thing caused a great sensation and an extensive treatise dealing with this phenomenon was quickly published by a university lecturer, who came to the following conclusion.

This horse possesses such an unusually fine sensibility that it can perceive the slightest facial expressions of its master, Herr von Osten, as he stands next to it. These facial expressions are so fine that even a human being could not detect them. And when Herr von Osten gives his horse an arithmetical task, he naturally knows the answer in his head. He communicates this answer to the horse with very subtle facial expressions that the horse can perceive. In this way it can “stamp” the answers on the ground.

If, however, one's thinking is even more accurate than that of contemporary mathematical sciences, one might ask this lecturer how he could prove his theory. It would be impossible for him to do so. My own observations, on the other hand, led me to a different conclusion. I noticed that in his grey-brown coat Herr von Osten had large, bulging pockets out of which he took sugar lumps and small sweets that he shoved into the horse's mouth during his demonstrations. This ensured an especially close and intimate relationship, a physically-based affinity between steed and master. And due to this intimate physical relationship, this deep-seated attachment, which was constantly being renewed, a very close soul communication between a man and a horse came about. It was a far more intimate process than the horse's supposedly more intellectual and outward observation of its master's facial expressions. Indeed, a real communication from soul to soul had taken place.

If it is possible to observe such a phenomenon even in an animal, then you can comprehend the kind of soul communication that can exist in a little child, especially if permeated by deeply religious devotion. You must realize how everything the child makes its own grows from this religious mood, which is still fully centered within the physical body. Anyone who can observe how the child, with its inner attitude of religious surrender, surrenders to the influences of the surrounding world, and anyone who can discern in all these processes what the child individually pours into the static and dynamic forces, will discover precisely in this physical response the inherent impulses of its later destiny. However strange it may sound, what Goethe's friend Knebel in his old age once said to Goethe is still true:¹

Anyone who looks back over one's past life will find that, when we have experienced a significant event and then look back at what led up to it, it becomes apparent that we were steered toward it. We find that it was not just one previous step, but a whole series of previous steps, that now make it appear as if we had been striving toward the decisive event from a deep inner soul impulse.

If such an event is connected with someone else, the person concerned will think (provided one can extricate oneself from the turmoil of life and perceive the finer nuances of physical existence): This is not an illusion, or something I have dreamed up; but if, at a decisive moment in life, I have found another human being with whom I am more intimately connected than with other people, then I really have been seeking this person, whom I must have already known long before we met for the first time.

The most intimate matters in life are closely connected with how the child finds its way into the static and dynamic realm. If one can develop a faculty for observing such things, one will find that an individual's destiny already begins to be revealed in a strangely sense-perceptible form by how a child begins to place the feet on the ground, in how a child begins to bend the knees, or in the way a child begins to use the fingers. All of this is not merely outwardly or materially significant, but it reflects what is most spiritual in the human being.

When a child begins to speak, it adapts itself to a wider circle. In learning the mother tongue, this circle embraces all who share the same language. Now the child is no longer restricted to the narrow circle of people who provide a more intimate social background. In living into the mother tongue, the child also adapts to something broader than the static and dynamic forces. One could say that, in learning to speak, the child lives into its folk soul, into the genius of its mother tongue. And since language is thoroughly spiritual, the child still lives in something spiritual, but no longer in a spirituality only connected with the individual human being, something that is a matter of individual destiny, but something that receives the child into the wider circle of life.

When the child learns to think—well, with thinking we do not remain in the realm of the individual at all. In New Zealand, for example, people think exactly the same as we do here today. It is the entire Earth realm that we adapt ourselves to when as children we develop thinking from speech. In speaking we still remain within a smaller circle of life. In thinking, we enter the realm of humanity as a whole. This is how the child's life circles are expanded through walking, speaking, and thinking. And through discrimination one will find the fundamental links between the way a child adapts itself to the of static and dynamic forces, and its future destiny during earthly life.

Here we see the work of what we have been calling in anthroposophy the I-being of the human individual. For us, this term does not imply anything abstract, it merely serves to pinpoint a specifically human feature. Similarly, through the medium of language, we see something emerge in the human being that is entirely different from the individual I. Therefore we say that in language the human astral body is working. This astral body can also be observed in the animal world, but there it does not work in an outward direction. In the animal it is connected more with the inner being, creating the animal's form. We also create our form, but we take away a small part of this formative element and use it to develop language. In speech the astral body is actively engaged. And in thinking, which has this universal quality and is also specifically different from the other two faculties, something is happening where we could say that the human etheric body is working. Only when we come to human sense perception do we find the entire physical body in collaboration.

I do not mind if, for the time being, you treat these statements more or less as definitions. At this point it is not an important issue, for we are not interested in splitting philosophical hairs. We are merely trying to indicate what life itself reveals. And this needs to be based on a knowledge of the human being that can lead us to a true form of education, one that encompasses both theory and practice.

When looking at such a progression of development, we find that the human being's highest member, the I, is the first to emerge, followed by the astral body and etheric body. Furthermore, we can see how the soul and spiritual organization, working in the I, astral, and etheric bodies, is working on the physical body until the change of teeth. All three members are working in the physical body.

The second dentition announces a great change that affects the child's whole life. We can first observe it in a particular phenomenon. What would you say is the most striking factor of early childhood? It is, as I have described it just now, the child's physical-religious devotion to its environment. This is really the most decisive characteristic. Then the child loses the baby teeth, which is followed by years of developing a certain soulspiritual constitution, particularly in the years between the change of teeth and puberty.

You see, what has been working physically during the first period of life will later, after the child has gone through puberty, reappear transformed as thought. The young child cannot in any way yet develop the kind of thinking that leads to an experience of religious devotion. During this time of childhood—first before the change of teeth, but also continuing until puberty—these two things keep each other at a distance, so to speak. The child's thinking, even between the change of teeth and puberty, does not yet take hold of the religious element. One could compare this situation with certain alpine rivers that have their sources high up in the mountains and that, on their way down, suddenly seem to disappear as they flow through underground caves, only to reappear lower down along their further courses. What appears as a natural religious reverence during the years leading to the change of teeth withdraws inward, takes on an entirely transformed soul quality, and seems to disappear altogether. Only later in life, when the human being gains the capacity to consciously experience a religious mood, does it reappear, taking hold of a person's thinking and ideation.

If one can observe such transformations, one will find external observation even more meaningful. As I mentioned already in the first lecture, I am not at all against the more external forms of observation, which are fully justified. Yet, at the same time, we must realize that these methods cannot offer a foundation for the art of education. Experimental child psychology, for example, has discovered the curious phenomenon that children whose parents anxiously try to engender a religious attitude, who try to drum religion into their children, such children achieve poor results in their religion lessons at school. In other words, it has been established that the correlation coefficient between the children's accomplishments in religious instruction and the religious attitude of their parents is very low during the years spent in primary education.

Yet one look at human nature is enough to discover reasons for this phenomenon. No matter how often such parents may talk about their own religious attitude, no matter what beautiful words they may speak, it has no meaning for the child at all. They simply pass the child by. For anything directed to the child's reason, even if formulated in terms intended to appeal to the child's feelings, will fail to have any impact, at least until the time of the change of teeth. The only way of avoiding such heedlessness is for the adults around the child, through their actions and general behavior, to give the child the possibility to imitate and absorb a genuine religious element right into the finest articulation of the vascular system. This is then worked on inwardly, approximately between the seventh and fourteenth year. Like the alpine river flowing underground, it will surface again at puberty in the form of a capacity for conceptualization.

So we should not be surprised if a generous helping of outer piety and religious sentiment aimed at the child's well-being will simply miss the mark. Only the actions performed in the child's vicinity will speak. To express it somewhat paradoxically, the child will ignore words, moral admonitions, and even the parents' attitudes, just as the human eye will ignore something that is colorless. Until the change of teeth, the child is an imitator through and through.

Then, with the change of teeth, the great change occurs. What was formerly a physically based surrender to a religious mood ceases to exist. And so we should not be surprised when the child, who has been totally unaware of any innate religious attitude, becomes a different being between the change of teeth and puberty. But what I have pointed out just now can reveal that, only at puberty, the child reaches an intellectual mode of comprehension. Earlier, its thinking cannot yet comprehend intellectual concepts, because the child's thinking, between the change of teeth and puberty, can only unite with what is pictorial. Pictures work on the senses. Altogether, during the first period of life ending with the change of teeth, pictures of all the activities being performed within its environment work on the child. Then, with the onset of the second set of teeth, the child begins to take in the actual content presented in pictorial form. And we must pour this pictorial element into everything that we approach the child with, into everything we bring to the child through language.

I have characterized what comes toward the child through the element of statics and dynamics. But through the medium of language a much wider, an immensely varied element, comes within reach of the child. After all, language is only a link in a long chain of soul experiences. Every experience belonging to the realm of language has an artistic nature. Language itself is an artistic element, and we have to consider this artistic element above everything else in the time between the change of teeth and puberty.

Don't imagine for a moment that with these words I am advocating a purely esthetic approach to education, or that I want to exchange fundamental elements of learning with all kinds of artificial or esthetically contrived methods, even if these may appear artistically justified. Far from it! I have no intention of replacing the generally uncultured element, so prevalent in our present civilization, with a markedly Bohemian attitude toward life. (For the sake of our Czech friends present, I should like to stress that I do not in any way associate a national or geographical trait with the term Bohemian. I use it only in its generally accepted sense, denoting the happy-golucky attitude of people who shun responsibilities, who disregard accepted rules of conduct, and who do not take life seriously.) The aim is not to replace the pedantic attitude that has crept into our civilization with a disregard of fundamental rules or with a lack of earnestness.

Something entirely different is required when one is faced with children between the change of teeth and puberty. Here one has to consider that at this age their thinking is not yet logical, but has a completely pictorial character. True to nature, such children reject a logical approach. They want to live in pictures. Highly intelligent adults make little impression on children aged seven, nine, eleven, or even thirteen. At that age, they feel indifferent toward intellectual accomplishment. On the other hand, adults with an inner freshness (which does not, however, exclude a sense of discretion), people of a friendly and kindly disposition do make a deep impression on children. People whose voices have a ring of tenderness, as if their words were caressing the child, expressing approval and praise, reach the child's soul. This personal impact is what matters, because with the change of teeth the child no longer surrenders solely to surrounding activities. Now a new openness awakens to what people are actually saying, to what adults say with the natural authority they have developed. This reveals the most characteristic element inherent in the child between the change of teeth and puberty.

Certainly you would not expect me, who more than thirty years ago wrote the book Intuitive Thinking: A Philosophy of Freedom, to stand here and plead authoritarian principles. Nevertheless, insofar as children between the change of teeth and puberty are concerned, authority is absolutely necessary. It is a natural law in the life of the souls of children. Children at this particular stage in life who have not learned to look up with a natural sense of surrender to the authority of the adults who brought them up, the adults who educated them, cannot grow into a free human beings. Freedom is won only through a voluntary surrender to authority during childhood.

Just as during the first period of life children imitate all of the surrounding activities, so also during the second period of life they follow the spoken word. Of course, this has to be understood in a general way. Immensely powerful spiritual substance flows into children through language, which, according to their nature, must remain characteristically pictorial. If one observes how, before the change of teeth, through first learning to speak, children dreamily follow everything that will become fundamental for later life, and how they wake up only after the change of teeth, then one can gain a picture of what meets children through the way we use language in their presence during the second period of life.

Therefore we must take special care in how, right at this stage, we work on children through the medium of language.

Everything we bring must speak to them, and if this does not happen, they will not understand. If, for example, you factually describe a plant to a young child, it is like expecting the eye to understand the word red. The eye can understand only the color red, not the word. A child cannot understand an ordinary description of a plant. But as soon as you tell the child what the plant is saying and doing, there will be immediate understanding. The child also has to be treated with an understanding of human nature. We will hear more about this later when we discuss the practical aspects of teaching. Here I am more concerned with presenting a basic outline.

And so we see how an image-like element pervades and unites what we meet in the child's threefold activity of walking, speaking, and thinking. Likewise, activities occurring around the child, which were at first perceived in a dreamy way, are also transformed, strangely enough, into pictures during this second period between the change of teeth and puberty. The child begins to dream, as it were, about the surrounding activities, whereas during the first period of life these outer activities were followed very soberly and directly, and simply imitated. And the thoughts of the child are not yet abstract, nor yet logical; they are also still pictures. Between the second dentition and puberty, children live in what comes through language, with its artistic and pictorial element. Thus, only what is immersed in imagery will reach the child. This is why the development of a child's memory is particularly strong at this age.

And now, once again, I have to say something that will make learned psychologists shudder inwardly and give them metaphorical goose flesh. That is, children receive their memory only with the change of teeth. The cause for such goose flesh is simply that these things are not observed properly. Someone might say, “What appears as memory in a child after the change of teeth surely must have already existed before, even more strongly, because the child then had an inborn memory, and all kinds of things could be remembered even better than later on.” This would be about as correct as saying that a dog, after all, is really a wolf, and that there is no difference between the two. And if one pointed out that a dog has experienced entirely different living conditions and that, although descended from the wolf, it is no longer a wolf, the reply might be, “Well, a dog is only a domesticated version of a wolf, for the wolf's bite is worse than the dog's bite.” This kind of thing would be somewhat analogous to saying that the memory of a child is stronger prior to the change of teeth than afterward. One must be able to observe actual reality.

What is this special kind of memory in the young child that later memory is descended from? It is still an inner habit. When taking in the spoken word, a refined inner habit is formed in the child, who absorbs everything through imitation. And out of this earlier, specially developed habit—which still has a more physical quality—a soul habit is formed when the child begins the change of teeth. It is this habit, formed in the soul realm, that is called memory. One must differentiate between habit that has entered the soul life and habit in the physical realm, just as one has to distinguish between dog and wolf—otherwise one cannot comprehend what is actually happening.

You can also feel the link between the pictorial element that the child's soul had been living within, as well as the newly emerging ensouled habit, the actual memory, which works mainly through images as well.

Everything depends, in all these matters, on keen observation of human nature. It will open one's eyes to the incisive turning point during the change of teeth. One can see this change especially clearly by observing pathological conditions in children. Anyone who has an eye for these things knows that children's diseases look very different from adult diseases. As a rule, even the same outer symptoms in an ill child have a different origin than those in an adult, where they may appear similar, but are not necessarily the same. In children the characteristic forms of illness all stem from the head, from which they affect the remaining organism. They are caused by a kind of overstimulation of the nerve-sense system. This is true even in cases of children who have measles or scarlet fever.

If one can observe clearly, it will be found that when walking, speaking, and thinking exert their separate influences, these activities also work from the head downward. At the change of teeth, the head has been the most perfectly molded and shaped inwardly. After this, it spreads inner forces to the remaining organism. This is why children's diseases radiate downward from the head. Because of the way these illnesses manifest, one will come to see that they are a reaction to conditions of irritation or overstimulation, particularly in the nervesense system. Only by realizing this will one find the correct pathology in children's illnesses. If you look at the adult you will see that illnesses radiate mainly from the abdominal-motor system—that is, from the opposite pole of the human being.

Between the age when the child is likely to suffer from an overstimulation of the nerve-sense system and in the years following sexual maturity—that is, between the change of teeth and puberty—are the years of compulsory schooling. And amid all of this, a kinship lives between the child's soul life and the pictorial realm, as I have described it to you. Outwardly, this is represented by the rhythmic system with its interweaving of breathing and blood circulation. The way that breathing and blood circulation become inwardly harmonized, the way that the child breathes at school, and the way that the breathing gradually adapts to the blood circulation, all of this generally happens between the ninth and tenth year. At first, until the ninth year, the child's breathing is in the head, until, through an inner struggle within its organism, a kind of harmony between the heartbeat and the breathing is established. This is followed by a time when the blood circulation predominates, and this general change occurs in the physical realm and in the realm of the child's soul.

After the change of teeth is complete, all of the forces working through the child are striving toward inwardly mobile imagery, and we will support this picture-forming element if we use a pictorial approach in whatever we bring to the child. And then, between the ninth and tenth years, something truly remarkable begins to occur; the child feels a greater relationship to the musical element. The child wants to be held by music and rhythms much more than before. We may observe how the child, before the ninth and tenth years, responds to music—how the musical element lives in the child as a shaping force, and how, as a matter of course, the musical forces are active in the inner sculpting of the physical body. Indeed, if we notice how the child's affinity to music is easily expressed in eagerly performed dance-like movements—then we are bound to recognize that the child's real ability to grasp music begins to evolve between the ninth and tenth years. It becomes clearly noticeable at this time. Naturally, these things do not fall into strictly separate categories, and if one can comprehend them completely, one will also cultivate a musical approach before the ninth year, but this will be done in the appropriate way. One will tend in the direction suggested just now. Otherwise the child aged nine to ten would get too great a shock if suddenly exposed to the full force of the musical element, if the child were gripped by musical experiences without the appropriate preparation.

We can see from this that the child responds to particular outer manifestations and phenomena with definite inner demands, through developing certain inner needs. In recognizing these needs, knowledge does not remain theoretical, but becomes pedagogical instinct. One begins to see how here one particular process is in a state of germination and there another is budding within the child. Observing children becomes instinctive, whereas other methods lead to theories that can be applied only externally and that remain alien to the child. There is no need to give the child sweets to foster intimacy. This has to be accomplished through the proper approach to the child's soul conditions. But the most important element is the inner bond between teacher and pupil during the classroom time. It is the crux of the matter.

Now it also needs to be said that any teacher who can see what wants to overflow from within the child with deep inner necessity will become increasingly modest, because such a teacher will realize how difficult it is to reach the child's being with the meager means available. Nevertheless, we shall see that there are good reasons for continuing our efforts as long as we proceed properly, especially since all education is primarily a matter of self-education. We should not be disheartened because the child at each developmental stage reacts specifically to what the external world—that is we, the teachers—wishes to bring, even if this may assume the form of a certain inner opposition. Naturally, since consciousness has not awakened sufficiently at that age, the child is unaware of any inner resistance. In keeping with their own nature, children, having gone through the change of teeth, demand lesson content that has form and coloring that satisfies what is overflowing from their organisms. I will speak more about this later.

But one thing that children do not want—certainly not during the change of teeth—something they will reject with strong inner opposition—is to have to draw on a piece of paper, or on the chalkboard, a peculiar sign that looks like this: A, only to be told that this is supposed to sound the same as what would spontaneously come from one's own mouth [Ah!] when seeing something especially wonderful!² For such a sign has nothing whatever to do with the inner experience of a child. When a child sees a combination of colors, feelings are immediately stimulated. But if one puts something in front of a child that looks like FATHER, expecting an association with what is known and loved as the child's own father, then the inner being of the child can feel only opposition.

How have our written symbols come about? Think about the ancient Egyptians with their hieroglyphs that still retained some similarity to what they were intended to convey. Ancient cuneiform writing also still had some resemblance to what the signs signified, although these were more expressive of the will-nature of the ancient people who used them, whereas the Egyptian hieroglyphs expressed more of a feeling approach. The forms of these ancient writings, especially when meant to be read, brought to mind the likeness of what they represented from the external world. But what would children make of such weird and ornate signs on the chalkboard? What could they have to do with their own fathers? And yet the young pupils are expected to learn and work with these apparently meaningless symbols. No wonder that something in the child becomes resentful.

When children are losing their baby teeth, they feel least connected with the kind of writing and reading prevalent in our present stage of civilization, because it represents the results of stylization and convention. Children, who have only recently come into the world, are suddenly expected to absorb the final results of all of the transformations that writing and reading have gone through. Even though nothing of the many stages of cultural progress that have evolved throughout the ages has yet touched the children, they are suddenly expected to deal with signs that have lost any connection between our modern age and ancient Egypt. Is it any wonder, then, if children feel out of touch?

On the other hand, if you introduce children to the world of number in an appropriate way for their age, you will find that they can enter the new subject very well. They will also be ready to appreciate simple geometric forms. In the first lecture I have already noted how the child's soul prepares to deal with patterns and forms. Numbers can also be introduced now, since with the change of teeth a hardening of the inner system is occurring. Through this hardening, forces are being released and expressed outwardly in how the child works with numbers, drawing, and so on. But reading and writing are activities that are, initially, very alien to children at around the seventh year. Please do not conclude from what I have said that children should not be taught to read and write. Of course they must learn this because, after all, we do not educate the young for our benefit, but for life. The point is, how should this be done without countering human nature? We shall go into this question more thoroughly during the next few days. But, generally speaking, it is good if educators realize how alien many things are to a child's soul, things that we take from contemporary life and teach because we feel it is necessary for the children to know them.

This must not lead us into the opposite error of wanting to create an esthetic form of education, however, or declaring that all learning should be child's play. This is one of the worst slogans, because such an attitude would turn children into the kind of people who only play at life. Only dilettantes in the field of education would allow themselves to be taken in by such a phrase. The point is not to select certain tidbits out of play activities that are pleasing to an adult, but to connect with what is actually happening when a child is playing.

And here I must ask you a pertinent question. Is play mere fun or is it a serious matter for children? To a healthy child, playing is in no way just a pleasurable pastime, but a completely serious activity. Play flows earnestly from a child's entire organism. If your way of teaching can capture the child's seriousness in play, you will not merely teach in a playful way—in the ordinary sense—but you will nurture the earnestness of a child's play. What matters at all times is the accurate observation of life. Therefore it can be rather regrettable if well-meaning people try to introduce their pet ideas into the one branch of life that demands the closest observation of all—that is, education. Our intellectual culture has landed us in a situation where most adults no longer have any understanding of childhood, because a child's soul is entirely different from that of a thoroughly intellectualized adult. We must begin by finding the key to childhood again. This means that we must permeate ourselves with the knowledge that, during the first period of life until the change of teeth, the entire behavior of a child reveals a physically anchored religious quality; and after this, between the change of teeth and puberty, a child's soul life is attuned to all that has a pictorial quality, and it undergoes many artistic and esthetic changes during this period of life.

When a child has reached puberty, the astral body, which has been working through language until this point, now becomes free to work independently. Previously, the forces that work through the medium of language were needed to build up the inner organization of the child's body. But after puberty, these forces (which work also in many other spheres—in everything that gives form, in relation to both plastic and musical forms) become liberated, and are used for the activity of thinking. Only then does the child become an intellectualizing and logically thinking person.

It is clear that what flashes, streams, and surges through language in this way, delivers a final jolt to the physical body before becoming liberated. Look at a boy who is at this age and listen to how his voice changes during puberty. This change is just as decisive as the change of teeth in the seventh year. When the larynx begins to speak with a different vocal undertone, it is the astral body's last thrust—that is, the forces flashing and working through speech—in the physical body. A corresponding change also occurs in the female organism, but in a different way, not in the larynx. It is brought about through other organs. Having gone through these changes, the human being has become sexually mature.

And now the young person enters that period of life when what previously radiated into the body from the nerve-sense system is no longer the determining factor. Now it is the motor system, the will system—so intimately connected with the metabolic system—that takes the leading role. The metabolism lives in physical movements. Pathology in adults can show us how, at this later age, illnesses radiate mainly from the metabolic system. (Even migraine is a metabolic illness.) We can see how in adults illnesses no longer spread from the head, as they do in children. It does not matter so much where an illness manifests, what matters is to know from where it radiates into the body.

But during grade school (from about six to fourteen) the rhythmic system is the most actively engaged. During this time, everything living within the nerve-sense system on the one hand, and within the metabolic-limb system on the other, is balanced by the rhythmic system. This balancing activity of the rhythmic system encompasses what works through our physical movement, where processes of combustion continually occur, and are also balanced by the metabolism. This balancing activity also works in the metabolism's digestion of what will eventually enter the bloodstream and take the form of circulation. This all comes together in the breathing process, which has a rhythmical nature, in order to work back again finally into the nerve-sense process. These are the two polarities in human nature. The nerve-sense system on the one hand, the metabolic-limb system on the other, with the rhythmic system in between.

We have to consider this rhythmic system above all when dealing with children between the change of teeth and puberty. It is fully expressed during these years, and it is the healthiest of the human systems; it would have to be subjected to gross external interference to become ill.

In this respect, modern methods of observation again take the wrong course. Think of the recent scientific tests that study fatigue in children by means of fatigue coefficients. Let me repeat again at this point, to avoid misunderstandings, that I have no intention of running down modern methods of scientific investigation as such, nor of heaping scorn on its methods. In these experiments various degrees of fatigue are measured, for example, in gym or arithmetic classes, and so on. There is nothing wrong in discovering such factors, but they must not form the basis of one's teaching. One cannot arrange a timetable according to these coefficients because the real task of a teacher is very different. At this stage of childhood, the aim should be to work with the one system in the human being that never tires throughout a person's whole life. The only system prone to fatigue is the metabolic and limb system. This system does tire, and it passes its fatigue to the other systems. But I ask you, is it possible for the rhythmic system to tire? No, it must never tire, because if the heart were not tirelessly beating throughout life, without suffering fatigue, and if breathing were not continuous without becoming exhausted, we simply could not live. The rhythmic system does not tire.

If we tire our pupils too much through one or another activity, it shows that, during the age under consideration—between seven and fourteen years—we have not appealed strongly enough to the rhythmic system. This middle system again lives entirely in the pictorial realm and is an outer expression of it. If you fail to present arithmetic or writing lessons imaginatively, you will tire your pupils. But if, out of an inner freshness and at a moment's notice, you can call up powers of imagery in the children, you will not tire them. If they nevertheless begin to droop, the source of their fatigue is in their motor system. For example, the chair that a child sits on might be pressing too hard, or the pen may not fit the hand properly. There is no need to calculate through pedagogical psychology how long a child can engage in arithmetic without undue strain. The important thing is that the teacher knows how to teach the various subjects in harmony with the pupils rhythmic system, and how, through knowledge of the human being, the lesson content can be presented in the appropriate form.

This can become possible only when we recognize that the pupil awakens to the intellectual side of life only with the advent of sexual maturity, and that between the change of teeth and puberty the teachers have to guide through personal example as they bring to their pupils what they wish to unfold within them. Consequently, a pedagogy that springs from a true knowledge of the human being has to be largely a matter of the teachers' own inner attitudes—a pedagogy destined to work on the teachers' own moral attitudes. A more drastic expression of this would be: The children in themselves are all right, but the adults are not! What is needed above all has already been put into words at the end of the first lecture. Instead of talking about how we should treat children, we should strive toward a knowledge of how we, as teachers and educators, ought to conduct ourselves. In our work we need forces of the heart. Yet it is not good enough to simply declare that, instead of addressing ourselves to the intellect of our pupils we now must appeal to their hearts, in both principle and method. What we really need—and this I wish to emphasize once more—is that we ourselves have our hearts in our pedagogy.

• 1. Karl Ludwig von Knebel (1744–1834) German poet and tutor at the Court of Weimar.
• 2. In German, the letter A is pronounced “ah” as in “father” or “star.”—Translator.

In this course of lectures I want in the first place to speak about the way in which the art of education can be furthered and enriched by an understanding of man. I shall therefore approach the subject in the way I indicated in my introductory lecture, when I tried to show how anthroposophy can be a practical help in gaining a true knowledge of man, not merely a knowledge of the child, but a knowledge of the whole human being. I showed how anthroposophy, just because it has an all-embracing knowledge of the whole human being—that is to say a knowledge of the whole of human life from birth to death, in so far as this takes place on earth—how just because of this it can point out in a right way what is essential for the education and instruction of the child.

It is very easy to think that a child can be educated and taught if one observes only what takes place in childhood and youth; but this is not enough. On the contrary, just as with the plant, if you introduce some substance into the growing shoot its effect will be shown in the blossom or the fruit, so it is with human life. The effect of what is implanted into the child in his earliest years, or is drawn out of him during those years, will sometimes appear in the latest years of life; and often it is not realised that, when at about the age of 50 someone develops an illness or infirmity, the cause lies in a wrong education or a wrong method of teaching in the 7th or 8th year. What one usually does today is to study the child—even if this is done in a less external way than I described yesterday—in order to discover how best to help him. This is not enough. So today I should like to lay certain foundations, on the basis of which I shall proceed to show how the whole of human life can be observed by means of spiritual science.

I said yesterday that man should be observed as a being consisting of body, soul and spirit, and in yesterday's public lecture I gave some indication of how it is the super-sensible in man, the higher man within man, that is enduring, that continues from birth until death, while the substances of the external physical body are always changing. It is therefore essential to learn to know human life in such a way that one perceives what is taking place on earth as a development of the pre-earthly life. We have not only those soul qualities within us that had their beginning at birth or at conception, but we bear within us pre-earthly qualities of soul, indeed, we bear within us the results of past earthly lives. All this lives and works and weaves within us, and during earthly life we have to prepare what will then pass through the gate of death and live again after death beyond the earth, in the world of soul and spirit. We must therefore understand how the super-earthly works into earthly life, for it is also present between birth and death. It works, only in a hidden way, in what is of a bodily nature, and one does not understand the body if one has no understanding of the spiritual forces active within it.

Let us now proceed to study further what I have just indicated. We can do so by taking concrete examples. An approach to the knowledge of man is contained in anthroposophical literature, for instance in my book Theosophy, in An Outline Of Occult Science or in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Let us start from what can lead to a real, concrete knowledge of man by taking as a foundation what anthroposophy has to say in general about man and the world. There are two examples which I should like to put before you, two personalities who are certainly well known to you all. I choose them because for many years I made an intensive study of both of them. I am taking two men of genius; later on we shall come down to less gifted personalities. We shall then see that anthroposophy does not only speak in a general, abstract way, but is able to penetrate deeply into real human beings and is able to get to know them in such a way that knowledge of man is shown to be something which has reality in practical life. In choosing these two examples, Goethe and Schiller, and so making an indirect approach, I hope to show how a knowledge of man is acquired under the influence of Spiritual Science.

Let us look at Goethe and Schiller from an outward point of view, as they appeared during the course of their lives, but let us in each case study the whole personality. In Goethe we have an individuality who entered life in a remarkable way. He was born black, or rather dark blue. This shows how extraordinarily difficult it was for his soul-spiritual being to enter into physical incarnation. But once this had taken place, once Goethe had overcome the resistance of this physical body, he was entirely within it. On the one hand it is hard to imagine a more healthy nature than Goethe had as a boy. He was amazingly healthy. He was so healthy that his teachers found him quite difficult; but children who give no trouble are seldom those who enjoy the best health in later life. On the other hand, children who are rather a nuisance to their teachers are those who accomplish more in later life because they have more active, energetic natures. The understanding teacher will therefore be quite glad when the children keep a sharp eye on him. Goethe from his earliest childhood was very much inclined to do this, even in the literal sense of the word. He peeped at the fingers of someone playing the piano and then named one finger “Thumbkin,” another “Pointerkin,” and so on. But it was not only in this sense that he kept a sharp eye on his teachers. Even in his boyhood he was bright and wide-awake; and this at times gave them trouble. Later on in Leipzig Goethe went through a severe illness, but here we must bear in mind that certain hard experiences and some sowing of wild oats were necessary in order to bring about a lowering of his health to the point at which he could be attacked by the illness which he suffered at Leipzig. After this illness we see that Goethe throughout this whole life is a man of robust health, but one who possesses at the same time an extraordinary sensitivity. He reacts strongly to impressions of all kinds, but does not allow them to take hold of him and enter deeply into his organism. He does not suffer from heart trouble when he is deeply moved by some experience, but he feels any such experience intensely; and this sensitivity of soul goes with him throughout life. He suffers, but his suffering does not find expression in physical illness. This shows that his bodily health was exceptionally sound. Moreover, Goethe felt called upon to exercise restraint in his way of looking at things. He did not sink into a sort of hazy mysticism and say, as is so often said: “O, it is not a question of paying heed to the external physical form; that is of small importance. We must turn our gaze to what is spiritual!” On the contrary, to a man with Goethe's healthy outlook the spiritual and the physical are one. And he alone can understand such a personality who is able to behold the spiritual through the image of the physical.

Goethe was tall when he sat, and short when he stood. When he stood you could see that he had short legs. [The German has the word Sitzgrösse for this condition.] This is an especially important characteristic for the observer who is able to regard man as a whole. Why had Goethe short legs? Short legs are the cause of a certain kind of walk. Goethe took short steps because the upper part of his body was heavy—heavy and long—and he placed his foot firmly on the ground. As teachers we must observe such things, so that we can study them in the children. Why is it that a person has short legs and a particularly big upper part of the body? It is the outward sign that such a person is able to bring to harmonious expression in the present earth life what he experienced in a previous life on earth. In this respect also Goethe was extraordinarily harmonious, for right into extreme old age he was able to develop everything that lay in his karma. Indeed he lived to be so old because he was able to bring to fruition the potential gifts with which karma had endowed him. After Goethe had left the physical body, this body was still so beautiful that all who saw him in death were fulfilled with wonder. One has the impression that Goethe had experienced to the full his karmic potentialities; now nothing more is left, and he must begin afresh when again he enters into an earthly body under completely new conditions. All this is expressed in the particular formation of such a body as Goethe's, for the cause of what man brings with him as predisposition from an earlier incarnation is revealed for the most part in the formation of the head. Now Goethe from his youth up had a wonderfully beautiful Apollo head, from which only harmonious forces streamed down into his physical body. This body, however, burdened by the weight of its upper part and with too short legs was the cause of his special kind of walk which lasted throughout his life. The whole man was a wonderfully harmonious expression of karmic predisposition and karmic fulfilment. Every detail of Goethe's life illustrates this.

Such a personality, standing so harmoniously in life and becoming so old, must inevitably have outstanding experiences in his middle years. Goethe was born in 1749 and he died in 1832, so he lived to be 83 years old. He reached middle age, therefore, at about his 41st year in 1790. If we take these years between 1790 and 1800 we have the middle decade of his life. In this decade, before 1800, Goethe did indeed experience the most important events of his life. Before this time he was not able to bring his philosophical and scientific ideas, important as they were, to any very definite formulation. The Metamorphosis of the Plants was first published in 1790; everything connected with it belongs to this decade 1790-1800. In 1790 Goethe was so far from completing his Faust that he brought it out as a Fragment; he had no idea then that he would ever finish it. It was in this decade that under the influence of his friendship with Schiller he conceived the bold idea of continuing his Faust. The great scenes, the Prologue in Heaven among others, belong to this period. So in Goethe we have to do with an exceptionally harmonious life; with a life moreover that runs its quiet course, undisturbed by inner conflict, devoted freely and contemplatively to the outer world.

As a contrast let us look at the life of Schiller. From the outset Schiller is placed into a situation in life which shows a continual disharmony between his life of soul and spirit and his physical body. His head completely lacks the harmonious formation which we find in Goethe. He is even ugly, ugly in a way that does not hide his gifts, but nevertheless ugly. In spite of this a strong personality is shown in the way he holds himself, and this comes to expression in his features also, particularly in the formation of the nose. Schiller is not long-bodied; he has long legs. On the other hand everything that lies between the head and the limbs, in the region of the circulation and breathing is in his case definitely sick, poorly developed from birth, and he suffers throughout his life from cramps. To begin with there are long periods between the attacks, but later they become almost incessant. They become indeed so severe that he is unable to accept any invitation to a meal; but has to make it a condition—as for instance on one occasion when coming to Berlin—that he is invited for the whole day, so that he may be able to choose a time free from such pains. The cause of all this is an imperfect development of the circulatory and breathing systems.

The question therefore arises: What lies karmically, coming from a previous earthly life, in the case of a man who has to suffer in this way from cramping pains? Such pains, when they gain a hold in human life, point quite directly to a man's karma. If, with a sense of earnest scientific responsibility, one attempts to investigate these cramp phenomena from the standpoint of spiritual science, one always finds a definite karmic cause underlying them, the results of deeds, thoughts and feelings coming from an earlier life on earth. Now we have the man before us, and one of two things can happen. Either everything goes as harmoniously as with Goethe, so that one says to oneself: Here we have to do with Karma; here everything appears as the result of Karma. Or the opposite can also happen. Through special conditions which arise when a man descends out of the spiritual world into the physical, he comes into a situation in which he is not able fully to work through the burden of his karma.

Man comes down from the spiritual world with definite karmic predispositions; he bears these within him. Let us assume that A in the diagram represents a place, a definite point of time in the life of a man when he should be able in some way to realise, to fulfil his karma, but for some reason this does not happen. Then the fulfilment of his karma is interrupted and a certain time must pass when, as it were, his karma makes a pause; it has to be postponed until the next life on earth. And so it goes on. Again, at B there comes a place when he should be able to fulfil something of his karma; but once more he has to pause and again postpone this part of his karma until his next incarnation. Now when someone is obliged to interrupt his karma in this way pains of a cramping nature always make their appearance in the course of life. Such a person is unable fully to fashion and shape into his life what he always bears within him. Here we have something which shows the true character of spiritual science. It does not indulge in fantasy, neither does it talk in vague, general terms about the four members of man's being; physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. On the contrary, it penetrates into real life, and is able to point out where the real spiritual causes lie for certain external occurrences. It knows how man represents himself in outer life. This knowledge is what true spiritual science must be able to achieve.

I was now faced with the question: In a life such as Schiller's, how does karma work as the shaper of the whole of life if, as in his case, conditions are such that karma cannot properly operate, so that he has to make continual efforts to achieve what he has the will to achieve? For Goethe it was really comparatively easy to complete his great works. For Schiller the act of creation is always very difficult. He has, as it were, to attack his karma, and the way in which he goes to the attack will only show its results in the following earthly life. So one day I had to put to myself the following question: What is the connection between such a life as Schiller's and the more general conditions of life? If one sets about answering such a question in a superficial way nothing of any significance emerges, even with the help of the investigations of spiritual science. Here one may not spin a web of fantasy; one must observe. Nevertheless if one approaches straight away the first object that presents itself for observation, one will somehow go off on a side track. So I considered the question in the following way: How does a life take its course when karmic hindrances or other pre-earthly conditions are present?

I then proceeded to study certain individuals in whom something of this kind had already happened, and I will now give such an example. I could give many similar examples, but I will take one which I can describe quite exactly. I had an acquaintance, a personality whom I knew very well indeed in his present earthly life. I was able to establish that there were no hindrances in his life connected with the fulfilment of karma, but there were hindrances resulting from what had taken place in his existence between death and a new birth, that is in his super-sensible life between the last earthly life and the one in which I learned to know him. So in this case there were not, as with Schiller, hindrances preventing the fulfilment of karma, but hindrances in the way of bringing down into the physical body what he had experienced between death and a new birth in the super-sensible world. In observing this man one could see that he had experienced much of real significance between death and a new birth, but was not able to give expression to this in life. He had entered into karmic relationships with other people and had incarnated at a time when it was not possible fully to realise on earth what he had, as it were, piled up as the content of his inner soul experience between death and conception. And what were the physical manifestations which appeared as the result of his not being able to realise what had been present in him in the super-sensible world? These showed themselves through the fact that this personality was a stutterer; he had an impediment in his speech. And if one now takes a further step and investigates the causes at work in the soul which result in speech disturbances, then one always finds that there is some hindrance preventing what was experienced between death and a new birth in the super-sensible world from being brought down through the body into the physical world. Now the question arises: How do matters stand in the case of such a personality who has very much in him brought about through his previous karma, but who has it all stored up in the existence between death and a new birth and, because he cannot bring it down becomes a stutterer? What sort of things are bound up with such a personality in his life here on earth?

Again and again one could say to oneself: This man has in him many great qualities that he has gained in pre-earthly life, but he cannot bring them down to earth. He was quite able to bring down what can be developed in the formation of the physical body up to the time of the change of teeth; he could even develop extremely well what takes place between the change of teeth and puberty. He then became a personality with outstanding literary and artistic ability, for he was able to form and fashion what can be developed between puberty and the 30th year of life. Now, however, there arose a deep concern in one versed in a true knowledge of man, a concern which may be expressed in the following question: How will it be with this personality when he enters his thirties and should then develop to an ever increasing degree the spiritual or consciousness soul in addition to the intellectual or mind soul? Anyone who has knowledge of these things feels the deepest concern in such a case, for he cannot think that the consciousness soul—which needs for its unfolding everything that arises in the head, perfect and complete—will be able to come to its full development. For with this personality the fact that he stuttered showed that not everything in the region of his head was in proper order. Now apart from stuttering this man was as sound as a bell, except that in addition to the stutter, (which showed that not everything was in order in the head system) he suffered from a squint. This again was a sign that he had not been able to bring down into the present earthly life all that he had absorbed in the super-sensible life between death and a new birth. Now one day this man came to me and said: “I have made up my mind to be operated on for my squint.” I was not in a position to do more than say, “If I were you, I should not have it done.” I did all I could to dissuade him. I did not at that time see the whole situation as clearly as I do today, for what I am telling you happened more than 20 years ago. But I was greatly concerned about this operation. Well, he did not follow my advice and the operation took place. Now note what happened. Very soon after the operation, which was extremely successful, as such operations often are, he came to me in jubilant mood and said, “Now I shall not squint any more.” He was just a little vain, as many distinguished people often are. But I was very troubled; and only a few days later the man died, having just completed his 30th year. The doctors diagnosed typhoid, but it was not typhoid, he died of meningitis.

There is no need for the spiritual investigator to become heartless when he considers such a life; on the contrary his human sympathy is deepened thereby. But at the same time he sees through life and comprehends it in its manifold aspects and relationships. He perceives that what was experienced spiritually between death and a new birth cannot be brought down into the present life and that this comes to expression in physical defects. Unless the right kind of education can intervene, which was not possible in this case, life cannot be extended beyond certain definite limits. Please do not believe that I am asserting that anybody who squints must die at 30. Negative instances are never intended and it may well be that something else enters karmically into life which enables the person in question to live to a ripe old age. But in the case we are considering there was cause for anxiety because of the demands made on the head, which resulted in squinting and stuttering, and the question arose: How can a man with an organisation of this kind live beyond the 35th year? It is at this point of time that one must look back on a person's karma, and then you will see immediately that it in no way followed that because somebody had a squint he must die at 30. For if we take a man who has so prepared himself in pre-earthly life that he has been able to absorb a great deal between death and a new birth, but is unable to bring down what he has received into physical life, and if we consider every aspect of his karma, we find that this particular personality might quite well have lived beyond the 35th year; but then, besides all other conditions, he would have had to bear within him the impulse leading to a spiritual conception of man and of the world. For this man had a natural disposition for spiritual things which one rarely meets; but in spite of this, because strong spiritual impulses inherent in him from previous earth lives were too one-sided, he could not approach the spiritual.

I assure you that I am in a position to speak about such a matter. I was very friendly with this man and was therefore well aware of the deep cleft that existed between my own conception of the world and his. From the intellectual standpoint we could understand one another very well; we could be on excellent terms in other ways, but it was not possible to speak to him about the things of the spirit. Thus because with his 35th year it would have been necessary for him to find his way to a spiritual life, if his potential gifts up to this age were to be realised on earth, and because he was not able to come to a spiritual life, he died when he did. It is of course perfectly possible to stutter and have a squint and yet continue one's life as an ordinary mortal. There is no need to be afraid of things which must be stated at times if one wishes to describe realities, and not waste one's breath in mere phrases. Moreover from this example you can see how observation, sharpened by spiritual insight, enables one to look deeply into human life.

And now let us return to Schiller. When we consider the life of Schiller two things strike us above all others, for they are quite remarkable. There exists an unfinished drama by Schiller, a mere sketch, called the Malteser. We see from the concept underlying this sketch that if Schiller had wished to complete this drama, he could only have done so as an initiate, as one who had experienced initiation. It could not have been done otherwise. Up to a certain degree at least he possessed the inner qualities necessary for initiation, but owing to other conditions of his karma these qualities could not get through; they were suppressed, cramped. There was a cramping of his soul life too which can be seen in the sketch of the Malteser. There are long powerful sentences which never manage to get to the full stop. What is in him cannot find its way out. Now it is interesting to observe that with Goethe, too, we have such unfinished sketches, but we see that in his case, whenever he left something unfinished, he did so because he was too easy-going to carry it further. He could have finished it. Only in extreme old age, when a certain condition of sclerosis had set in would this have been impossible for him. With Schiller however we have another picture. An iron will is present in him when he makes the effort to develop the Malteser but he cannot do it. He only gets as far as a slight sketch. For this drama, seen in its reality, contains what, since the time of the Crusades, has been preserved in the way of all kinds of occultism, mysticism, and initiation science. And Schiller sets to work on such a drama, for the completion of which he would have had to bear within him the experience of initiation. Truly a life's destiny which is deeply moving for one who is able to see behind these things and look into the real being of this man. And from the time it became known that Schiller had in mind to write a drama such as the Malteser there was a tremendous increase in the opposition to him in Germany. He was feared. People were afraid that in his drama he might betray all kinds of occult secrets.

The second work about which I wish to speak is the following. Schiller is unable to finish the Malteser; he cannot get on with it. He lets some time go by and writes all manner of things which are certainly worthy of admiration, but which can also be admired by so-called philistines. If he could have completed the Malteser, it would have been a drama calling for the attention of men with the most powerful and vigorous minds. But he had to put it aside.

After a while he gets a new impulse which inspires his later work. He cannot think any more about the Malteser, but he begins to compose his Demetrius. This portrays a remarkable problem of destiny, the story of the false Demetrius who takes the place of another man. All the conflicting destinies which enter into the story as though emerging out of the most hidden causes, all the human emotions thereby aroused, would have had to be brought into this drama, if it were to be completed. Schiller sets to work on it with feverish activity. It became generally known—and people were still more afraid that things would be brought into the open which it was to their interest to keep hidden from the rest of mankind for some time yet.

And now certain things take place in the life of Schiller which, for anyone who understands them, cannot be accounted for on the grounds of a normal illness. We have a remarkable picture of this illness of Schiller's. Something tremendous happens—tremendous not only in regard to its greatness, but in regard to its shattering force. Schiller is taken ill while writing his Demetrius. On his sick bed in raging fever he continually repeats almost the whole of Demetrius. It seems as though some alien power is at work in Schiller, expressing itself through his body. There is of course no ground for accusing anyone. But, in spite of everything that has been written in this connection, one cannot do otherwise than come to the conclusion, from the whole picture of the illness, that in some way or another, even if in a quite occult way, something contributed to the rapid termination of Schiller's illness in his death. That people had some suspicion of this may be gathered from the fact that

Goethe, who could do nothing, but suspected much, dared not participate personally in any way during the last days of Schiller's life, not even after his death, although he felt this deeply. He dared not venture to make known the thoughts he bore within him.

With these remarks I only want to point out that for anyone able to see through such things Schiller was undoubtedly pre-destined to create works of a high spiritual order, but on account of inner and outer causes, inner and outer karmic reasons, it was all held back, dammed up, as it were, within him. I venture to say that for the spiritual investigator there is nothing of greater interest than to set himself the problem of studying what Schiller achieved in the last ten years of his life, from the Aesthetic Letters onwards, and then to follow the course of his life after death. A deep penetration into Schiller's soul after death reveals manifold inspirations coming to him from the spiritual world. Here we have the reason why Schiller had to die in his middle forties. His condition of cramp and his whole build, especially the ugly formation of his head, made it impossible for him to bring down into the physical body the content of his soul and spirit, deeply rooted as this was in spiritual existence.

When we bear such things in mind we must admit that the study of human life is deepened if we make use of what anthroposophy can give. We learn to look right into human life. In bringing these examples before you my sole purpose was to show how through anthroposophy one learns to contemplate the life of human beings. But let us now look at the matter as a whole. Can we not deepen our feeling and understanding for everything that is human simply by looking at a single human life in the way that we have done? If at a certain definite moment of life one can say to oneself: Thus it was with Schiller, thus with Goethe; thus it was with another young man—as I have told you—then, will not something be stirred in our souls which will teach us to look upon every child in a deeper way? Will not every human life become a sacred riddle to us? Shall we not learn to contemplate every human life, every human being, with much greater, much more inward attention? And can we not, just because a knowledge of man has been inscribed in this way into our souls, deepen within us a love of mankind? Can we not with this human love, deepened by a study of man which gives such profundity to the most inward, sacred riddle of life—can we not, with this love, enter rightly upon the task of education when life itself has become so sacred to us? Will not the teacher's task be transformed from mere ideological phrases or dream-like mysticism into a truly priestly calling ready for its task when Divine Grace sends human beings down into earthly life?

Everything depends on the development of such feelings. The essential thing about anthroposophy is not mere theoretical teaching, so that we know that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego; that there is a law of karma, of reincarnation and so on. People can be very clever, they can know everything; but they are not anthroposophists in the true sense of the word when they only know these things in an ordinary way, as they might know the content of a cookery book. What matters is that the life of human souls is quickened and deepened by the anthroposophical world conception and that one then learns to work and act out of a soul-life thus deepened and quickened.

This then is the first task to be undertaken in furthering an education based on anthroposophy. From the outset one should work in such a way that teachers and educators may become in the deepest sense “knowers of men,” so that out of their own conviction, as a result of observing human beings in the right way, they approach the child with the love born out of this kind of thinking. It follows therefore that in a training course for teachers wishing to work in an anthroposophical sense the first approach is not to say: you should do it like this or like that, you should employ this or that educational knack, but the first thing is to awaken a true educational sense born out of a knowledge of man. If one has been successful in bringing this to the point of awakening in the teacher a real love of education then one can say that he is now ready to begin his work as an educator.

In education based on a knowledge of man, such for instance as the Waldorf School education, the first thing to be considered is not the imparting of rules, not the giving advice as to how one should educate, but the first thing is to hold Training Courses for Teachers in such a way that one finds the hearts of the teachers and so deepens these hearts that love for the child grows out of them. It is quite natural that every teacher believes that he can, as it were, impose this love on himself, but such an imposed human love can achieve nothing. Much good will may be behind it, but it can achieve nothing. The only human love which can achieve something is that which arises out of a deepened observation of individual cases.

If someone really wishes to develop an understanding of the essential principles of education based on a knowledge of man—whether he has already acquired a knowledge of spiritual science or whether, as can also happen, he has an instinctive understanding of these things—he will observe the child in such a way that he is faced with this question: What is the main trend of a child's development up to the time of the change of teeth? An intimate study of man will show that up to the change of teeth the child is a completely different being from what he becomes later on. A tremendous inner transformation takes place at this time, and there is another tremendous transformation at puberty. Just think what the change of teeth signifies for the growing child. It is only the outer sign for deep changes which are taking place in the whole human being, changes which occur only once, for only once do we get our second teeth, not every seven years. With the change of teeth the formative process taking place in the teeth comes to an end. From now on we have to keep our teeth for the rest of our lives. The most we can do is to have them stopped, or replaced by false ones, for we get no others out of our organism. Why is this? It is because with the change of teeth the organisation of the head is brought to a certain conclusion. If we are aware of this, if in each single case we ask ourselves: What actually is it that is brought to a conclusion with the change of teeth?—we are led, just at this point, to a comprehension of the whole human organisation, body, soul and spirit. And if—with our gaze deepened by a love gained through a knowledge of man such as I have described—we observe the child up to the change of teeth, we shall see that during these years he learns to walk, to speak and to think. These are the three most outstanding faculties to be developed up to the change of teeth.

Walking entails more than just learning to walk. Walking is only one manifestation of what is actually taking place, for it involves learning to adapt oneself to the world through acquiring a sense of balance. Walking is only the crudest expression of this process. Before learning to walk the child is not exposed to the necessity of finding his equilibrium in the world: now he learns to do this. How does it come about? It comes about through the fact that man is born with a head which requires a quite definite position in regard to the forces of balance. The secret of the human head is shown very clearly in the physical body. You must bear in mind that an average human brain weighs between 1,200 and 1,500 grammes. Now if such a weight as this were to press on the delicate veins which lie at the base of the brain they would be crushed immediately. This is prevented by the fact that this heavy brain floats in the cerebral fluid that fills our head. You will doubtless remember from your studies in physics that when a body floats in a fluid it loses as much of its weight as the weight of the fluid it displaces. If you apply this to the brain you will discover that our brain presses on its base with a weight of about 20 grammes only; the rest of the weight is lost in the cerebral fluid. Thus at birth man's brain has to be so placed that its weight can be brought into proper proportion in regard to the displaced cerebral fluid. This adjustment is made when we raise ourselves from the crawling to the upright posture. The position of the head must now be brought into relationship with the rest of the organism. Walking and using the hands make it necessary for the head to be brought into a definite position. Man's sense of balance proceeds from the head.

Let us go further. At birth man's head is relatively highly organised, for up to a point it is already formed in the embryo, although it is not fully developed until the change of teeth. What however is first established during the time up to the change of teeth, what then receives its special outer organisation, is the rhythmic system of man. If people would only observe physical physiological processes more closely they would see how important the establishing of the circulatory and breathing systems is for the first seven years. They would recognise how here above all great damage can be done if the bodily life of the child does not develop in the right way. One must therefore reckon with the fact that in these first years of life something is at work which is only now establishing its own laws in the circulatory and breathing systems. The child feels unconsciously how his life forces are working in his circulation and breathing. And just as a physical organ, the brain, must bring about a state of balance, so must the soul in the first years of life play its part in the development of the breathing and circulatory systems. The physical body must be active in bringing about a state of balance proceeding from the head. The soul, in that it is rightly organised for this purpose, must be active in the changes that take place in the circulation and breathing. And just as the upright carriage and learning to use the hands and arms are connected with what comes to expression in the brain, so the way in which speech develops in man is connected with the systems of circulation and breathing. Through learning to speak man establishes a relationship with his circulation and breathing, just as he establishes a relationship between walking and grasping and the forces of the head by learning to hold the latter in such a way that the brain loses the right amount of weight. If you train yourself to perceive these relationships and then you meet someone with a clear, high-pitched voice particularly well-suited to the recitation of hymns or odes, or even to declamatory moral harangues, you may be sure that this is connected with special conditions of the circulatory system. Or again if you meet someone with a rough, harsh voice, with a voice like the beating together of sheets of brass and tin, you may be sure that this too is connected with the breathing or circulatory systems. But there is more to it than this. When one learns to listen to a child's voice, whether it be harmonious and pleasant, or harsh and discordant, and when one knows that this is connected with movements of the lungs and the circulation of the blood, movements inwardly vibrating through the whole man, right into the fingers and toes, then one knows that what is expressed through speech is imbued with qualities of soul. And now something in the nature of a higher man, so to say, makes its appearance, something which finds its expression in this picture relating speech with the physical processes of circulation and breathing. Taking our start from this point it is possible to look up and see into the pre-natal life of man which is subject to those conditions which we have made our own between death and a new birth. What a man has experienced in pre-earthly conditions plays in here, and so we learn that if we are to comprehend the being of man by means of true human understanding and knowledge we must train our ear to a spiritual hearing and listen to the voices of children. We can then know how to help a child whose strident voice betrays the fact that there is some kind of obstruction in his karma and we can do something to free him from such karmic hindrances.

From all this we can see what is necessary for education. It is nothing less than a knowledge of man; not merely the sort of knowledge that says: “This is a gifted personality, this is a good fellow, this is a bad one,” but the kind of knowledge that follows up what lies in the human being, follows up for instance what is spiritually present in speech and traces this right down into the physical body, so that one is not faced with an abstract spirituality but with a spirituality which comes to expression in the physical image of man. Then, as a teacher, you can set to work in such a way that you take into consideration both spirit and body and are thus able to help the physical provide a right foundation for the spirit. And further, if you observe a child from behind and see that he has short legs, so that the upper part of the body is too heavy a burden and his tread is consequently also heavy, you will know, if you have acquired the right way of looking at these things, that here the former earthly life is speaking, here karma is speaking. Or, for instance if you observe someone who walks in the same way as the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who always walked with his heels well down first, and even when he spoke did so in such a way that the words came out, as it were “heels first,” then you will see in such a man another expression of karma.

In this way we learn to recognise karma in the child through observation based on spiritual science. This is something of the greatest importance which we must look into and understand. Our one and only help as teachers is that we learn to observe human beings, to observe the bodies of the children, the souls of the children and the spirits of the children. In this way a knowledge of man must make itself felt in the sphere of education, but it must be a knowledge which is deepened in soul and spirit.

With this lecture I wanted to call up a picture, to give an idea of what we are trying to achieve in education, and what can arise in the way of practical educational results from what many people consider to be highly unpractical, what they look upon as being merely fantastic day-dreaming.

I must ask my audience to be considerate with me to-day, because I have only just arrived after a very tiring journey and shall probably not feel able to speak to you adequately until tomorrow.

I want this first lecture to be a kind of introduction to the series I am to deliver here. I had not really intended to speak during the Conference, because I think the stimulus given by anthroposophical research to medicine and to scientific thought ought to be worked out by those who are specialists in the various domains. Indeed, all that comes from anthroposophical investigation in regard to medicine and, for instance, physiology, can be nothing more than a stimulus which must then be worked out empirically. Only on the basis of this empirical study can there arise valid and convincing judgments of the matters in question—and this is the kind of judgment that is needed in the domain of therapy.

These lectures, however, are given at the request of doctors who are working with us and I shall try to deal with just those points where Anthroposophy can throw light into the realm of medicine. I shall endeavour to show, first of all, that an understanding of the human being in health and disease can be enriched and deepened through anthroposophical conceptions.

By way of introduction, I may perhaps be permitted to speak of the sense in which the anthroposophical mode of thought should be understood to-day, in our own age. People so readily confuse what is here called Anthroposophy with older traditional ideas. I have no wish to waste words about the value of these old conceptions, or to criticise them in any way. But it must be emphasised that the conceptions put forward by me are founded on a basis quite different from that of the various mystical, theosophical and so-called gnostic ideas which have arisen traditionally in the course of human history. In order to make myself clear, I need mention only the main points of difference between the conceptions which will be put forward here and those of earlier times. Those earlier conceptions arose in human thought at a time when there was no science in our sense; mine have been developed in an age when science has not only come into being but has reached a certain—albeit provisional—perfection. This must always be remembered if we would understand the meaning and significance of our studies, for it applies to all that may be said and discovered by Anthroposophy in regard to the different domains of human knowledge and capacity.

You all know—there is no need to enlarge upon it—that in those earlier times man had a real but non-scientific conception of the super-sensible world. Medicine, too, was permeated with conceptions of the human being that did not originate, as is the case to-day, from empirical research. We need go back only to the age shortly before that of Galen, and, if we are open-minded enough, we shall everywhere find traces of spiritual conceptions of the being of man on which medical thought, too, was based. Permeating these conceptions of the form of man, of his organs and organic functions, were thoughts of the Supersensible. According to the modern empirical way of thinking, there are no grounds for connecting anything super-sensible with the nature and constitution of man, but in those older conceptions the super-sensible was as much a part of man as colours, forms and inorganic forces now seem to us part and parcel of the objects in the outer world.

Only prejudice will speak of those earlier ages in the development of medicine as if its ideas were merely childish, compared with those that have been evolved to-day. Nothing could be more inadequate than what history has to tell in this connection, and anyone who has the slightest understanding of the historical evolution of mankind, who does not take the point of view that perfection has been reached and that everything earlier is mere foolishness, will realise that even now we have arrived only at relative perfection and that there is no need to look back upon what went before with a supercilious eye. Indeed, this is patent when we consider the results that were achieved. On the other hand, a man concerned with any branch of knowledge to-day must never overlook all that science has accomplished for humanity in this age. And when—to use the Goethean expression—a spiritual conception of the human being in sickness and health strives to express itself to-day, it must work with and not against modern scientific research.

After what I have said, you will not accuse me of any desire to rail against the concepts of modern science. Indeed, I must emphasise at the outset that such a thing is out of the question and for a very fundamental reason. When we consider the medical views that were held in an earlier period of civilisation, we find that although they were by no means so childish as many people imagine nowadays, they did lack what modern science has been able to give us, for the simple reason that man's faculty of cognition was not then adapted to the study of objects as we approach them with modern empirical thought, which is assisted, moreover, by all kinds of scientific instruments. The doctor, or I might just as well say the physiologist or biologist of olden times, had an entirely different outlook from the outlook of modern man. In the ages that really came to an end with Galen, medical consciousness had quite another orientation. What Galen saw in his four elements of the human organism, in the black and yellow gall, in the phlegm and in the blood, was utterly different from the modern conception.

When Galen describes all this and we understand the terminology—as a rule, of course, words handed down by tradition are not understood—we get the impression of something vague and nebulous. To Galen, it was a reality; in what he called phlegm he did not see the substance we call phlegm. To him, phlegm was not only a state of fluidity permeated with life, but a state of fluidity permeated with soul. This was as clear a perception to him as our perception of the red or blue colour of some object in front of us. But precisely because he was able to perceive something outside the range of modern scientific perception, Galen was not able to see many things that are brought to light to-day by our scientific consciousness. Suppose, for example, a man with not so very abnormal sight looks through spectacles, and by this means the contours of objects become more definite. As the result of modern empiricism, all that was once seen in a cloud, but none the less permeated by Spirit and soul, has disappeared and given place to the sharp contours of empirical observation. The sharp contours were not there in olden times. Healings were performed out of a kind of instinct which was bound up with a highly developed sensitiveness to one's fellow-men. A sort of participation in the patient's disease, which could even be painful, arose in the doctor of olden times, and on the basis of this he set about his cure.

Now for the reason that the advance to objective empiricism is rooted in the evolutionary process of man, we cannot merely brush it aside and return to the old. Only if we develop certain atavistic faculties shall we perceive Nature as the ancients perceived her, in all domains of knowledge, including that of medicine. When we pass out into modern culture, equipped with the kind of training given in our elementary schools—not to speak of higher education—it is simply impossible to see things as the ancients saw them. It is impossible, and moreover, if such a thing were to happen, a man would be regarded as being if not gravely, at any rate mildly pathological, not quite ‘normal’—and, indeed, not altogether unjustly. For there is something pathological to-day in all instinctive ‘clairvoyance,’ as it is called. Upon that point we must be quite clear. But what lies in our power is to work our way up to a perception of the spiritual by developing inner faculties otherwise latent in our being, just as in the course of generations the eye has worked itself up from indefinite vision to clear, concrete vision.

To-day, then, it is possible to develop faculties of spiritual perception. I have described this development in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It, and in other writings. When these faculties have developed in a man he perceives, to begin with, a world not previously visible to him, a world embracing a spiritual Cosmos as well as the Cosmos revealed to sense-perception to-day, including all the discoveries and calculations of astronomy. To the material Cosmos that is permeated with natural law, a spiritual Cosmos is added. And when we seek to discover what exists in this spiritual Cosmos, we also find man. We contact a spiritual universe, a universe permeated with soul, where man has his rightful place.

If we pursue ordinary science, we begin either with the simplest living being or with the simplest form of life—the cell—and then trace the simple on into the more complex, ascending thus from what most resembles purely physically organised substance to the highly intricate organism of man. If we seriously pursue Spiritual Science, we begin really at the other end. We descend from a comprehension of the spiritual in the universe, regarding this as complex, and the cell as the simplest thing in the organism. Viewed in the light of Spiritual Science, the universe is the summit of complexity, and just as we elaborate our own act of cognition in order, let us say, to pass from the cell to the human being, so do we progressively simplify what the Cosmos reveals and then come to man. We go an opposite way—that is to say, we begin at exactly the opposite starting-point—but when to-day we thus pursue Spiritual Science, we are not led all the way into the regions embraced by material empiricism. I lay great stress upon this point and hope there will be no misunderstanding. That is why I must ask you to-day to forgive certain pedantic ideas.

It is quite conceivable that someone might think it useless to adopt the methods of empirical thought in physiology or biology. What need is there for any specialised branch of science?—he might ask. One develops spiritual sight, looks into the spiritual world, arrives at a conception of man, of the being of man in health and disease, and then it is possible to found a kind of spiritualised medicine. As a matter of fact that is just the kind of thing many people do, but it leads nowhere. They abuse empirical medicine but they are, after all, abusing something which they do not understand in the very least. There can be no question of writing off empirical science as worthless and taking refuge in a spiritualised science brought down from the clouds. That is quite the wrong attitude to adopt.

Now it must be remembered that spiritual-scientific investigation does not lead to the same things that can be examined under the microscope. If anyone tries to pretend that with the methods of Spiritual Science he has found exactly the same things as he finds under a microscope, he may safely be summed up as a charlatan. The results of modern empirical investigation are there and must be reckoned with. Those who seriously pursue Spiritual Science must concern themselves with the phenomena of the world in the sense of ordinary empiricism. From Spiritual Science we discover certain guiding lines for empirical research, certain ruling principles, showing us, for instance, that what exists at some particular place in the organism, must also be studied in reference to its position.

Many people will say: ‘Yes, but a cell is a cell, and purely empirical observation must determine the distinguishing feature of this cell—whether it is a liver-cell or a brain-cell and so on.’ Now that is not correct. Suppose, for example, I walk past a Bank at 9 o'clock in the morning and see two men sitting there side by side. I look at them and form certain ideas about them. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon it happens that I again walk past the Bank. There are the two men, sitting just as before. The empirical state of affairs is exactly the same—allowing for very slight differences. But now, think of it: one of the men may have remained sitting there for the whole six hours. The other may have been sent out on quite a journey directly after I first passed the Bank, and may have only just returned. This changes the picture fundamentally and has nothing to do with what I actually perceive with my senses. So far as my senses are concerned, the same state of things presents itself at 9 o'clock in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but the objective fact must be judged from its connections, its attendant circumstances.

In this sense our conception of a liver-cell must differ essentially from our conception of a cell in the brain or the blood. For only if it were correct to say, for the sake of example, that the basis of everything is a primeval germ-cell which has been fertilised and that the whole organism can be explained by a process of simple fission and differentiation of this primeval germ-cell—only then could we proceed to treat a liver-cell exactly the same as a brain-cell in accordance with the purely empirical facts. Yes, but now suppose that this is by no means correct; that by virtue of its very position in the organism the relation of a liver-cell to forces outside man, outside the bounds of the skin, is not at all the same as the relation of a brain-cell to these forces. In that case it will not be correct to look on what is happening merely as a continuation of the process of fission and subsequent location in the body. We must rather assume that the relation of the brain-cell to the universe outside is quite different from that of the liver-cell.

Suppose a man looks at the needle of a compass, finds it pointing from South to North, from North to South, and then decides that the forces which set the needle in this direction lie in the needle itself. He would certainly not be considered a physicist to-day. A physicist brings the needle of the compass into connection with what is called terrestrial magnetism. No matter what theories may be evolved, it is simply impossible to attribute the direction of the needle to forces lying within the needle itself. It must be brought into relation with the universe.

In the study of organic life to-day, its relations to the universe are usually regarded as quite secondary. But suppose it were indeed true that merely on account of their different positions the liver and the brain are actually related quite differently to cosmic forces outside man. In that case we could never arrive at an explanation of the being of man by way of purely empirical thought. An explanation is possible only if we are able to say what part the whole universe plays in the moulding of the brain and again of the liver, in the same sense as the Earth plays its part in the direction taken by the needle in the compass.

Suppose we are tracing back the stream of heredity. We go to the forefathers, pass on to the present generation and then to the progeny, both in the case of animals and of human beings. We take account of what we find—as naturally we must—but we reckon merely with processes observed to lie immediately within the human being. It hardly ever occurs to us to ask whether under certain conditions it is possible for cosmic forces to work in the most varied ways upon the fertilised germ. Neither do we ask: Is it perhaps, impossible to explain the formation of the fertilised germ-cell if we remain within the confines of the human being himself? Must we not relate this germ-cell to the whole universe? In orthodox science to-day, the forces that work in from the Cosmos are secondary. To a certain limited extent they are taken into consideration, but they are always secondary. And now you may say: ‘Yes, but modern science leads us to a point where such questions no longer arise. It is antiquated to relate the human organs to the Cosmos!’ In the way in which this is often done, it is antiquated. The fact that as a rule such questions do not arise to-day is due entirely to our scientific education. Our education in science confines us to this purely objective and empirical mode of research, and we never come to the point of raising such questions as I have indicated by way of introduction. But the extent to which man is able to advance in knowledge and action in every sphere of life depends upon the raising of questions. If questions never arise, it means that a man is living in a kind of fog. He himself is dimming his free outlook upon reality, and it is only when things will no longer fit into his scheme of thought that he begins to realise the limitations of his conceptions.

Now I think that in the domain of modern medicine there may be a feeling that the processes taking place in the being of man are not wholly reconcilable with the simple, straightforward theories upon which most cures are based. There is a certain feeling that it must somehow be possible to approach the whole subject from another angle. And I think that what I shall have to say in this connection will mean something to those who are specialists in their particular branches of science, who have practical experience of the processes of health and disease and have realised that current conceptions and theories are too limited to grapple with the intricate organism of man.

Let us be quite honest with ourselves. During the nineteenth century a kind of axiom was put forward by nearly every branch of scientific thought. With a persistence that was enough to drive one to despair, it was constantly being said: ‘Explanations must be absolutely simple.’ And indeed they were! Yes, but if facts and processes are complicated it is prejudging the issue to say that the explanations must be simple. The thing is to accustom ourselves to deal with their complexities. Unspeakable harm has been done in the realms of science and art by the insistent demand for simplification. In all her manifestations, small and great, Nature is highly complicated, never simple. We can really grapple with Nature only if we realise from the outset that the most seemingly comprehensive ideas are related to the reality just as photographs of a tree, taken from one side only, are related to the tree. I can photograph the tree from every side and the photographs may be very different. The more photographs I have, the more nearly will my idea approximate to the reality of the tree.

The prevalent opinion to-day is this: such and such a theory is correct. Therefore some other theory—one with which we do not happen to agree—must be wrong. But that is just as if a man were to photograph a tree from one side only. He has his particular photograph. Somebody else takes a photograph from another side and says to the first man: ‘Your photograph is absolutely false; mine, and mine alone, represents the truth. In short, my particular view is correct.’ All controversies about materialism, idealism, realism and the like, have really taken this form. They are by no means dissimilar to the seemingly trivial example I have given. At the very outset of our studies I ask you not to take what I have to say as if it were meant to tend in the direction of materialism, idealism, or mysticism, but merely as an attempt to go straight for reality to the extent which the capacity of human thought permits. Materialistic conceptions often achieve great results when it is a question of mastering reality, but the spiritual aspect must be introduced as well. If it is impossible to keep the various aspects separate, our ideas will appear rather as if one took many different photographs all on the same plate. Indeed, many things are like this to-day. It is as if photographs from many different aspects had been taken on one plate.

Now when the forces lying latent in the soul of man are energised by the methods outlined in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, we rise above the ordinary condition of knowledge—to which the latest phase in biology pays special devotion—and reach what I have described as Imaginative Cognition. A still higher level is that of ‘Knowledge by Inspiration,’ and the highest—if I may use this expression—is that of true Intuition, Intuitive Knowledge. In Imaginative Knowledge one comes to pictures of reality, knowing very well that they are pictures, but also that they are pictures of reality, and not merely dream-pictures. The pictures arising in Imaginative Cognition are true pictures but not the reality itself. At the stage of Knowledge by Inspiration reality begins to stream into these pictures, something lives within them; they tell us more than the picture alone. They themselves bear witness to a spiritual reality. And in acts of Intuitive Knowledge we live within the spiritual reality itself.—These are the three stages described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.

Now these three modes of higher knowledge give us, to begin with, an understanding of spiritual worlds, of a spiritual universe and of man as a being of Spirit and soul; they do not, in the early stages, reveal to us the findings of empirical research in the realm, say of, biology. When Imagination, or Inspiration, or Intuition, is used for gaining understanding of the being of man, a different way is followed.

Take, for instance, the structure of the human brain. It does not perhaps strike physiologists and doctors as very extraordinary, but to those who call themselves psychologists it is remarkable in the extreme. Psychologists are a strange phenomenon in our civilisation because they have managed to develop a science without subject-matter—a psychology without a soul! Think for a moment of a psychologist who takes his start purely from empirical science. In recent times people have really been at a loss to know what to make of philosophy, because it has been impossible to know whether philosophers know anything or not. Scientists, however, are supposed to know something, and so certain scientists who dabble in philosophy have been given Chairs of Philosophy. Current opinion has been this: the scientists must have some knowledge, because although it is quite possible in philosophy to talk round and round a subject, it is not possible in science to talk hot air about something that has been observed under a microscope, through a telescope, or by means of Röntgen rays. All these things can be tested and proved, but in philosophy it is not so easy to prove whether or not a man is talking out of the clouds.

And now, think of how Theodor Ziehen speaks of the structure of the brain. In this connection I once had a very interesting experience, and perhaps I can make the point more concrete by telling you a certain anecdote. Many years ago I once attended a meeting where an eminent doctor was speaking about the structure of the brain. He analysed the structure of the brain in relation to the soul-life of man from a point of view which might justly be called materialistic. He was an out-and-out materialist, one who had analysed the structure of the brain quite well to the extent to which it has been investigated in our times, and he then proceeded to explain the life of soul in connection with the brain and its structure. The chairman of the meeting was a follower of Herbart, and he, therefore, was not concerned with analysing the structure of the brain but the life of conception and ideation, as Herbart, the philosopher, had once done. He—the chairman—then said the following: ‘Here we have something very remarkable. The physiologist or the doctor makes diagrams and figures of the structure of the brain. If I, as a Herbartian, make drawings of the complicated associations of ideas—I mean a picture of the ideas which associate and not of the nerve fibres connecting one nerve-cell with another—if I, as a genuine Herbartian who does not concern himself with the brain as a structure, make symbolic diagrams of what I conceive to be the process underlying the concatenation of ideas, my drawings look exactly the same as the physiologist's sketches of the structure of the brain!’

This comparison is not unjustified. Science has taught us more and more about the structure of the brain. It has been proved in ever greater measure that the physical structure of the brain does, indeed, correspond in a marvelous way with the organisation of our life of ideation. Everything in the life of ideation can be found again in the structure of the brain. It is as if Nature herself had intended to create in the brain a plastic image of man's life of ideation. Something of the kind strikes us forcibly when we read statements like those of Meynert—nowadays they are already considered rather out-of-date. Meynert was a materialist, but an excellent brain-physiologist and psychologist. What he, as a materialist, tells us is a wonderful contribution to what is discovered when the actual brain is left out of account and we deal only with the way in which ideas unite, separate, etc., and then draw figures and diagrams. In short, if anything could make a man a materialist it is the structure of the human brain. At all events this much must be admitted: If, indeed, the Spirit and soul exist, they have in the human brain so perfect an expression that one is almost tempted to ask why the Spirit and soul in themselves are necessary for the life of ideation, even if people still hanker after a soul that can at least think. The brain is such a true mirror-image of the Spirit and soul—why should the brain itself not be able to think?

All these things must of course be taken with reservations. To-day I only want to indicate the tenor of our studies as a whole. The human brain, especially when we begin to make detailed research, is well calculated to make us materialists. The mystery that really underlies all this clears up only when we reach the stage of Imaginative Knowledge, where pictures arise—pictures of the spiritual world not previously visible. The pictures actually remind us of the configurations in the human brain formed by the nerve-fibres and nerve-cells.

What, then, is this Imaginative Knowledge, which functions, of course, entirely in the super-sensible world? If I were to attempt to give you a concrete picture of what Imaginative Knowledge is, in the way that a mathematician uses figures to illustrate a mathematical problem, I should say the following: Imagine that a man, living in the world, knows more than sense-cognition can tell him because he can rise to a world of pictures which express a reality, just as the human brain expresses the life of soul. In the brain, Nature has given us as a real Imagination, an Imagination that is real in the concrete sense, something that is attained in Imaginative Knowledge at a higher level.

This, you see, leads us more deeply into the mysteries of the constitution of man. As we shall find later on, this marvelous structure of the human brain is not an isolated formation. Through Imagination we behold a super-sensible world, and it is as though a part of this world had become real in a lower world; in the human brain a world of Imagination lies there, in concrete fact, before us. I do not believe that anyone can speak adequately about the human brain unless he sees in its structure an Imaginative replica of the life of soul. It is just this that leads us into difficulties when we take our start from ordinary brain-physiology and try to pass to an understanding of the life of soul. If we confine ourselves to the brain itself, a life of soul over and above this does not seem to be necessary. The only persons with a right to speak of a life of soul over and above the brain are those who have a knowledge of it other than that which is acquired by customary methods. For when, in the act of spiritual knowledge, we come to know this life of soul, we realise that it has its complete reflection in the structure of the human brain, and that the brain, moreover, can do everything that the super-sensible organ of soul can do by way of conceptual activity. Down to its very functions the brain is a mirror-image. With brain-physiology, therefore, no one can prove or disprove materialism. It simply cannot be done. If man were merely a being of brain, he would never need to say to himself: ‘Over and above this brain of mine, I possess a soul.’

In contrast to this—and I shall now describe in an introductory way something that will be developed in the subsequent lectures—let us consider a different function of the human organism, not the life of ideation, but the process or function of breathing. Think of the breathing process and of what passes into consciousness with regard to it. When we say to ourselves: ‘I have an idea which reminds me of another idea I had three years ago and I link the one to the other’—we may well be able to make diagrams, especially if we take a series of ideas. Such diagrams will bear a great resemblance, for instance, to Meynert's sketches of the structure of the brain. Now this cannot be done when we try to find an expression in the organism of man of what is contained in the breathing-processes. We can find no adequate expression of the breathing process in the structures and formations of the physical organs. The breathing process is something for which there is no adequate expression in the human organism, in the same sense as the structure of the brain is an adequate expression for the life of ideation and perception.

In Imaginative Knowledge pictures arise before us, but if we rise to knowledge by Inspiration, reality streams through the pictures from behind, as it were. If, then, we rise to Inspiration and gaze into the super-sensible world in such a way that the Imaginations teem with spiritual reality, we suddenly find ourselves standing in a super-sensible process which has its complete analogy in the connection between the breathing process, the structure of lungs and arachnoidal cavity, central canal of the spinal cord and the continuous flow of the breath into the brain. In short, if we rise to Inspiration, we learn to understand the whole meaning of the breathing process, just as Imaginative Knowledge leads to an understanding of the structure of the brain. The brain is an Imagination made concrete; everything connected with the breathing process is an Inspiration made real, an Inspiration brought down into the world of sense. A man who strives to reach the stage of Knowledge by Inspiration enters a world of Spirit and soul, but this world lies there tangibly before him when he observes the whole breathing process and its significance in the human organism.

Imaginative Knowledge, then, is necessary to an understanding of the structure of the brain; Knowledge by Inspiration is necessary before we can understand the rhythm of breathing and everything connected with it. The relation of the breathing process to the Cosmos is quite different from that of the brain. The outer, plastic structure of the brain is so completely a mirror-image of the Spiritual that it is possible to understand this structure without penetrating very deeply into the super-sensible world. Indeed, we need only rise to Imagination, which lies quite near the boundaries of ordinary cognition. The breathing process cannot be understood by means of Imagination; here we must have Inspiration, we must rise higher in the super-sensible world.

To understand the metabolic process we must rise higher still. The metabolic process is really the most mysterious of all processes in the human being. The following lectures will show that we must think of the metabolic process quite differently from the way in which it is thought of in empirical physiology. The changes undergone by the substances as they pass from the tongue to the point where they bring about something in the brain cells, for instance, cannot, unfortunately, be followed by means of purely empirical research, but only by means of Intuition. Intuition leads us beyond the mere perception of the object into the very object itself. In the brain, the Spirit and soul create for themselves an actual mirror-image, but they remain, in essence, outside this image. As Spirit and soul they influence and pass into the breath-rhythm but constantly withdraw. In the metabolism, however, the Spirit and soul submerge themselves completely; as Spirit and soul they disappear in the actual process. They are not to be found—neither are they to be found by empirical research.

And now think of Theodor Ziehen's subtle descriptions of the structure of the human brain. It is, indeed, also possible to make symbolic pictures of the memory in such a way that the existence in the brain of physiological-anatomical mirror-images of the faculty of memory can be proved. But when Ziehen comes to the sentient processes, there is already a hitch, and that is why he does not speak of feelings as independent entities, but only of mental conceptions coloured with feeling. And of the will, modern physiologists have ceased to speak I Why? Very naturally they say nothing. Now when I want to raise my arm—that is to say, to accomplish an act of will—I have, first of all, the idea. Something then descends into the region that, according to current opinion, is wholly ‘unconscious.’ Everything that cannot be actually observed in the life of soul, but is none the less believed to be there, is thrown into the reservoir of the ‘unconscious.’ And then I observe how I move my hand. Between the intention and the accomplished fact lies the will, which plays right down into the material nature of the physical organism.

This process can be followed in detail by Intuitive Knowledge; the will passes down into the innermost being of the organism. The act of will enters right into the metabolism. There is no act of will performed by physical man which cannot be traced by Intuitive Knowledge to a corresponding metabolic process. Nor is there any process of will which does not find its expression in demolition, dissolution—call it what you will—within the metabolic processes. The will first demolishes what exists somewhere or other in the organism, in order that it may act. It is just as if I had to burn up something in my arm before being able to use this limb for the expression of my will. Something must first be done away with, as we shall see in the following lectures.

I know that this would be considered a fearful heresy in science to-day, but nevertheless it will reveal itself to us as a truth. Something that is of the nature of substance must be destroyed before the will can come into play. Spirit and soul must establish themselves where substance existed. Understanding of this belongs to the very essence of Intuitive Knowledge, and we shall never be able to explain the metabolic processes in the human being unless we investigate them by its means.

These three processes—the nerve-sensory process, the rhythmic processes (breathing and blood circulation) and the metabolic processes—include, fundamentally speaking, every function in the human organism. Man is really objective knowledge, knowledge made actual—no matter whether we merely observe him from outside or dissect him. Take the human head. We understand what is going on in the head when we realise that there is such a thing as Imaginative Knowledge; the processes in the rhythmic system become clear when we know of the existence of Knowledge by Inspiration; we understand the metabolic processes when we know of the existence of Intuition. Thus do the principles of reality interpenetrate in the being of man. Take, for example, the specific organs of the will—they can be understood only by an act of Intuitive Knowledge.

As long as we apply a rigidly objective mode of cognition to the being of man, we shall not realise that he is, in fact, not at all as he is usually supposed to be. Modern physiology knows, of course, that to a great extent the human being is a column of fluid. But now ask yourselves quite honestly whether physiology does in fact reckon with man as a column of fluid, or whether it does not proceed merely as if he were a being consisting of solid forms. You will probably have to admit that little account is taken of the fact that he is essentially a fluidic being and that the solids have merely been inserted into this fluid. But, as a matter of fact, man is also an airy, gaseous being, and a being of warmth as well. The solid part of man can well be understood by means of ordinary objective cognition. Just as in the laboratory I can become familiar with the nature of sulphide of mercury, so by chemical and physical investigation of the human organism I can acquaint myself with all that is solid. It is different with the fluids in the being of man. The fluids live in a state of perpetual integration and disintegration and cannot be observed in the same way as the stomach or heart are observed and then drawn. If I make drawings of these organs as if they were solid objects, a great deal can be said about them. But it is not the same if we take this watery being of man as something real. In the fluids something is always coming into being and disappearing again. It is as if we were to conceive of the heart as continually coming into being and disappearing—although the process there is not a very rapid one. The watery being of man must be approached with Imaginative Knowledge.

The importance of the organic functions in the human organism, and their connection with the circulation, are of course well known, but how these functions play into one another—that follows precisely the pattern of Inspiration. Only through Inspiration can the airy part of man be understood.

And now let us pass to the warmth in the human being. Try to realise that man is something very special by virtue of the fact that he is a being of warmth; that in the most various parts of his structure warmth and cold are found present in the most manifold ways. Before we can realise how the Ego lives in the warmth in man, we must ourselves live in the process. There must be an act of Intuitive Knowledge.

Before man can be known in his whole being—not as if he were simply a mass of solid organs with sharp contours—we must penetrate into the organism from many different angles. Just as we feel the need to exercise Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition as we pass from the brain to the other organic phenomena, so it is when we study the aggregate states of matter within him. The solid part of man, his solid bodily nature, hardly differs at all from the state in which substances exist outside the human organism. There is an essential difference in the case of the fluids and gases, and above all in the case of the warmth. This will have to be considered in the next lecture. But it is, indeed, a fact that only when our observation of man widens out in this way do we realise the full significance of the organs and systems of organs.

Empirical physiology hardly enables us to follow up the functions of the human organism further than the point where the chyle passes from the intestines into the lymphatic vessels. What follows is merely a matter of conjecture. All ideas about the subsequent processes in the substances we take in from the outside world, for instance the processes in the blood stream, are really nothing but fantasy on the part of modern physiology. The part played by the kidneys in the organism can be understood only if we observe the katabolic processes side by side with the anabolic processes, which today are almost invariably regarded as the only processes of significance. A long time ago I once said to a friend: ‘It is just as important to study those organs which are grouped around the germ of the human embryo, and which are later discarded, as to study the development of the germ itself from conception to birth.’ The picture is complete only when we observe the division of the cells and the structure arising from this, and also trace the katabolic processes which take their course side by side with the anabolic processes. For we not only have this katabolic process around us in the embryonic period; we bear it within us continually in later life. And we must know in the case of each single organ, to what extent it contains anabolic and to what extent katabolic processes. The latter are, as a general rule, bound up with an increase of consciousness. Clear consciousness is dependent on katabolic processes, on the demolition of matter.

The same must be said of the excretory processes. The kidneys are organs of excretion. But now the question arises: Although from the point of view of material empiricism the kidneys are primarily excretory organs, have they no other purpose in the constitution of man beyond this? Do they not, perhaps, play a more important part in building up the human being virtue of something other than their excretory functions? If we then follow the functions still further, passing from the kidneys to the liver, for example, we find this interesting phenomenon:—The kidneys secrete in the last resort, outwards; the liver, inwards. And the question arises: How is the relation of the kidney process to the liver process affected by the fact that the kidneys send their excretory products outwards and the liver inwards? Is the human being at one time communing, as it were, with the outer world and at another with himself?

Thus we are led gradually to penetrate the mysteries of the human organism, but we must bring to our aid matters that are approached in the ways of which I have to-day given only preliminary hints. I will proceed from this point in the following lectures, showing how these things lead to a true understanding of pathology and therapy, and how far they may become guiding principles in orthodox empirical research. No attack on this kind of research is implied. The only object is to show that guiding principles are necessary.

I am not out to attack scientific research or scientific medicine in any sense. My aim is to show that in this scientific medicine there is a mine of opportunity for a much wider knowledge than can be attained by modern methods, and above all by the current outlook on the world.~ We have no wish to scoff at the scientific mode of observation but on the contrary to give it a true foundation. When it is founded upon the Spirit, then, and only then, does it assume its full significance.

To-morrow I will speak further on this subject.