The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Spiritual science that wants to live into the modern cultural current does not want to be something new and precisely in this way differs from the many world views and other schools of thought that come forward and believe that they can prove their right to exist by claiming to bring something new to this or that question of spiritual life. In contrast to this, the subject that is called spiritual science should emphasize that the sources of its knowledge and its life have been present in the same way at all times when people have thought and striven for the highest questions and riddles of existence. I have often been able to emphasize this, also in this city, when I had the honor of speaking in previous lectures.

It must now be particularly appealing to consider not only the various religious beliefs and world views that have emerged in the development of humanity from this point of view, but also to look at personalities who are close to us from this perspective. For if something is to be true in spiritual science, then at least a kernel of this truth must be found in all those who have honestly and energetically striven for knowledge and for a dignified human existence.

Now when spiritual science is discussed today, the most diverse judgments are asserted from one side or the other, and those who have not penetrated deeper into the corresponding field, who have gained a superficial knowledge from these or those lectures or pamphlets, will, depending on his point of view, regard this spiritual science as the fantasy or reverie of a few unworldly people who have strange ideas about life and its foundations. It must be fully admitted that, if one does not look more closely, such a judgment may seem understandable, because although today we are not talking about a specific topic, it should be pointed out that some of the main insights of this spiritual science are based on a special theme. And as soon as these are mentioned and characterized, our contemporaries may well feel, in all honesty, “What curious stuff is this?”

On the whole, spiritual science, if taken seriously, is based on the premise that what surrounds us in the sensual world, what we can perceive with our senses, what we can grasp with the mind that is bound to our senses, is not the whole world, but that behind everything that is sensual lies a spiritual world. And this spiritual world is not in an indefinite hereafter, but is always around us, just as the phenomena of color and light are also around the blind. But in order for us to know about something that is around us, we need to have an organ to perceive it. And just as the blind man cannot see color and light, so too, as a rule, people in our age with normal abilities cannot perceive the spiritual facts and beings that are around us. But when we have the good fortune to operate on a blind person, then there comes for him the moment of the awakening of the eye, and what was not there for him, light and colors, now floods into his inner being. From the moment of his operation, this is a perceptible world for him. In the spiritual realm, there is a higher awakening, the awakening through which a person becomes initiated into the spiritual world. To speak with Goethe, there are spiritual eyes and ears, but as a rule, human souls are not ready to use them. But when we apply the means and methods by which these powers come into existence, then something happens in us on a higher plane, as when a blind person is operated on and is then flooded with the world of colors and light. When a person's eyes and ears are opened, he becomes awakened. A new world is around him, a world that was always there, but which he can only perceive from the moment of awakening. But then, when a person is ready, he learns to make various insights his own, insights that brighten life, insights that can give us strength and security for our work, that enable us to see into the essence of human destiny and the secrets of fate.

And only one of these insights will be discussed here, one of those insights that, if not crazy, must often seem strange and dreamy to today's people. It is an insight that is nothing more than the revival of an ancient process of knowledge, its continuation in a higher realm, a truth that was only recently attained for a lower realm. In general, humanity has a short memory for great events in the spiritual world, and that is why so few people today remember that in the 17th century not only laymen but even scholars believed that lower animals, even worms and fish, would develop from river mud. It was the great naturalist Francesco Redi who first pointed out that no earthworm or fish grows out of dead river mud unless an earthworm or fish germ is present in it beforehand. He stated that life can only come from life, and from this it can be seen that it is only an inaccurate way of looking at things to believe that a fish or worm can grow out of lifeless river mud. A closer examination shows that we have to go back to the living germ, and that this living germ can only draw from its environment the forces that are there to bring to the greatest development what is alive in the germ.

What Redi said, that living things develop only from living things, is taken for granted by science today. When Redi uttered these words, he only just escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. Such is the way of the development of humanity. First, a truth must be so hard won that those who first express it are branded as heretics. Then it becomes a matter of course, the common property of humanity. What Redi did for natural science should be done for the spirit through spiritual science today, by transferring the sentence that Redi pronounced for natural science from the knowledge of the awakened spiritual eye and spiritual ear to the soul realm. And there this sentence means: The spiritual and soul can only arise from the spiritual and soul. This means that it is an inaccurate way of looking at it when we see a human being come into existence, to believe that everything that comes into life comes only from the father and mother and the ancestors. Just as we have to go back from the developing earthworm to the living earthworm germ, so we have to go back from the human being, who develops from the germ into a specific being, to an earlier spiritual existence, and we have to realize that this being, which comes into existence through birth, draws from its bodily ancestors only the strength for its development, just as the earthworm germ draws strength from its inanimate surroundings. And in a corresponding extension, this sentence: Living things can only come from living things, leads to the other sentence: The present life, which comes into existence through birth, not only leads back to physical ancestors, but through the centuries back to an earlier spiritual-soul. And if you delve deeper into it, you will see that it is scientifically shown that there is not just one, but repeated lives on earth, that what is in us now between birth and death is the repetition of a spiritual soul that was already there in earlier stages of existence, and that our present life is in turn the starting point for subsequent lives. Spiritual-soul-like comes from spiritual-soul-like, goes back to spiritual-soul-like, which was there before birth, which descends from the spiritual world and lives in physical embodiments. We now see something completely different when, for example, we as educators are confronted with a child who gradually develops his powers. At birth we see something indeterminate on his face, how something unfolds from within, ever more distinctly and distinctly, which does not come from heredity but from previous lives. We see how this center of the spiritual soul unfolds more and more from birth through talents.

Today, spiritual science has something to say about repeated lives on earth. Today it may be a mere reverie, as what Francesco Redi said in the 17th century was considered a mere reverie. But what is considered a mere reverie today will become a matter of course in the not too distant future, and the sentence: spiritual-mental comes from spiritual-mental, will become common knowledge for humanity.

Today, heretics are no longer treated as they were in the past. They are no longer burned at the stake, but they are considered fools and dreamers who speak out of random fantasy. They are ridiculed, and those in the know sit in the high chair of science and say that this is not compatible with real science, not knowing that it is true, genuine science that demands this truth. And now we can cite a hundred and a hundred such truths that would show us how spiritual science can illuminate life by showing that there is an immortal essence in man that passes through death into the spiritual world and, when it has fulfilled its destiny there, returns to physical existence to gain new experiences, which it then carries up through death into the spiritual worlds. We would see how the ties that are woven from person to person, from soul to soul in all areas of life, those traits of the heart that go from soul to soul and cannot otherwise be explained, can be explained by the fact that they were formed in previous life circumstances. And just as the spiritual bonds we weave today do not cease when death draws over existence, but just as what passes from soul to soul as bonds of life is immortal like the human soul itself, how it lives on through the spiritual world and will revive again in other, future earthly conditions and new embodiments. And it is only a matter of development that people will also remember their earlier experiences on earth, what they have gone through spiritually and soul-wise in earlier lives and states of existence.

Such truths will become established in human life in the not too distant future as necessary things, and people will gain strength and hope and confidence from such conditions. Today we can only see that a few individuals in the world are drawn by their healthy sense of truth to what spiritual researchers have to proclaim from their experiences in the spiritual world. But spiritual-scientific knowledge will become the common property of mankind and will be assimilated by those who earnestly seek the truth. And those who have trodden the paths of earnest seekers after truth have always, in all that they have offered to mankind, developed the great wisdom and knowledge that spiritual science brings again today.

An example should arise before our soul in a personality that is close to our modern life: the example of Goethe, and with him again that which occupied him as his most comprehensive and greatest work throughout his life: his “Faust”.

If we approach Goethe and try to illuminate his striving with what spiritual science can give, we can actually start quite early on. One can say that from his entire disposition, one recognizes in Goethe how there was soul and spirit in him. Everything that pushes one to seek a spiritual element behind the phenomena of the sensual world was an early predisposition in him. There we see the seven-year-old Goethe, who could have absorbed ordinary ideas from his surroundings, as a boy can absorb them, for his first soul perception. That does not satisfy him; he recounts it himself in 'Poetry and Truth'. There we see how the seven-year-old boy begins something quite remarkable to express his yearning for the divine. He takes a music stand from his father's collection and makes an altar out of it, placing all kinds of minerals and plants and other products of nature on it, from which the spirit of nature speaks. The boy's soul builds an altar, puts a little incense on it, takes a burning glass, waits for the morning sun to rise, collects the first rays of the rising sun with the burning glass, lets them fall on the little incense, so that the smoke rises. And in his later years, Goethe remembers how, as a boy, he wanted to send his pious feelings up to the great god of nature, who speaks through minerals and plants, who sends us his fire in the rays of the sun. This grows with Goethe. We see how, at a more mature stage – but still out of a yearning soul, as it lives in Goethe – after he comes to Weimar and is appointed by the duke as his advisor, how this feeling for the spirit that speaks through all of nature is expressed in the beautiful prose hymn. There he says: “Nature, we are surrounded and embraced by it, unable to step out of it and unable to get deeper into it. Unwarned and uninvited, it takes us into the cycle of its dance and carries on with us until we are tired and fall into its arms. We have not done what we do, she has done everything; she is constantly thinking and pondering, looking at the world with a thousand eyes.” And again later, in the beautiful book about Winckelmann, ‘Antiquities’: ”When man's healthy nature works as a whole, when he feels in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole, when the harmony of pleasure gives him pure, free delight: then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult in reaching its goal and admire the summit of its own becoming and being. Thus Goethe felt, like everything that lives and moves outside in nature, a resurrection celebrating from the human soul, and like a higher nature, a spiritual nature is brought forth from the spirit and soul of man. But it took Goethe a long time to fully grasp the spiritual realization of nature. And there is no clearer or more obvious example of how Goethe was a lifelong seeker who never rested or paused, always striving to reshape his knowledge and reach higher levels, than his life's poem, “Faust.”

From his earliest youth, he had begun to put everything that filled his yearning and intuitive soul into his poem; and as an old man in his later years, shortly before his death, he completed this poem, on which he had worked for over fifty years and into which he had put the best of his life. The second part was sealed at his death, like the great testament he had to give to humanity. It is a momentous document. We can only understand this document if we follow Goethe a little, as he himself sought to struggle towards knowledge.

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For example, there is the student Goethe at the University of Leipzig. He is supposed to become a lawyer, but that is of secondary concern to him. Even then, the young student was possessed by an invincible urge to fathom the secrets of the world, to seek the spiritual. He therefore immerses himself in everything Leipzig has to offer in the way of knowledge about nature. He seeks to eavesdrop on what nature has to say to us in its phenomena, to eavesdrop on the world's riddles of existence. But Goethe needed, in order to rework what natural science could offer him, to re-melt it in his soul to that all-powerful urge of his inner being, which does not seek abstract knowledge but warm hearted a great experience, an experience that really leads the human being to that knowledge which is the gate toward which we intuitively look, the gate that closes for today's normal human being, the invisible, the supersensible: the gate of death. At the end of his student days in Leipzig, he experienced death. A serious illness had prostrated him, brought him close to death. For hours and days he had to face the fact that at any moment he could pass through that mysterious portal. And the mysterious, impetuous urge to understand demanded the utmost seriousness in the pursuit of knowledge. With this newly formed attitude of knowledge, Goethe returned to his native city of Frankfurt. There he found a circle of people, headed by a woman of great and profound talent: Susanne von Klettenberg. Goethe created a wonderful monument to her in his “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul”. He showed how this personality, to whose spiritual world he had such close access at the time, contained something that can only be described as a soul. In Susanne von Klettenberg, there lived a soul that sought to grasp the divine within itself in order to find, through the divine within itself, the spiritual that lives through the world. Goethe was introduced at that time by the circle to which this lady belonged, to studies that, if you, as a truly modern person, let them have an effect on you today, seem crazy. Goethe immersed himself in medieval writings. Those who pick them up today cannot do anything with them. When you see the strange signs in them, you ask yourself: what is the point of this in the face of science's modern quest for truth? — There was a book called “Aurea catena Homeri”, “The Golden Chain of Homer”. When you open it, you find a strange symbolic illustration: a dragon at the top in a semicircle, a dragon full of life, bordering on another dragon, a withering dragon dying within itself. All kinds of signs are linked to it: symbolic keys, two interlocking triangles and the planetary signs. To our contemporaries this is fantasy, to today's science it is fantasy, because one does not know what to do with these signs. Goethe senses in his intuition that they express something, that one can do something with them when one looks at them. They do not immediately express something that can be found here or there in the world. But if you let these signs take effect on you, by memorizing them so that you become deaf and blind to your physical surroundings, only letting these signs take effect on you, then you experience something very peculiar, then you experience that the soul within itself senses something that was dormant before, like a spiritual eye that opens. And if you have enough stamina, you will grasp what you can call meditation, concentration, which will develop your soul to such an extent that you will actually undergo something like an operation of the spiritual eye, through which a new world will open up. At that time, a new world could not yet be opened up for Goethe; he was not yet that far. But what came to life in his soul was the inkling that there are keys to this spiritual world, that one can penetrate into this spiritual world. One must visualize this mood; the vivid sensation, the vivid feeling: something is being stirred in me, something is coming to life; there must be something that leads into the spiritual world. But at the same time he senses: he cannot yet enter it. If Goethe had ever been identical with Faust in his life, we would say: Goethe was in the same situation in which Faust appears at the beginning of the first part, when Faust, after having studied the most diverse fields of human science, opens books in which there are such signs and feels surrounded by a spiritual world, but cannot enter into the spiritual world. Goethe never felt identical with Faust. Faust was a part of him, but he outgrew what was only a part of himself. And so, what went beyond Faust in Goethe grew because he, fearing no discomfort, always strove further and further, saying to himself: “One does not get behind the secrets of existence in a flash , not by incantations and formulas, but by patiently and energetically penetrating, step by step, in a truly spiritual and soulful way, whatever comes our way in the physical world. — It is easy to say: “What is higher knowledge must be absorbed by the soul.” This higher knowledge must penetrate the soul, but it only takes on its true form when we strive with patience and perseverance to get to know the real phenomena of the physical world step by step and then to seek the spiritual behind these phenomena of the physical world. But with what Goethe took with him from his time in Frankfurt, he was able to summarize everything else, he was able to see everything in a different light.

Goethe came from Frankfurt to this city, Strasbourg. We could cite many things that led him higher here. But what is particularly characteristic is how that which has such great significance in this city came before his soul: the cathedral, the minster. At that time, the idea of this wonderful building presented itself before Goethe's soul, and he understood why every single line is as it is. He saw with spiritual vision, with the vision gained through his immersion in Frankfurt, every triangle, every single angle of this significant building as belonging to the whole, and in his soul the great idea of the master builder celebrated a resurrection, and Goethe believed he recognized what had flowed into this building as a thought, as an idea. And so we could cite many instances of what had entered this soul as an inner vision and what it had taken up from external world processes entering into a marriage in Goethe's soul. Therefore it is not surprising that when he later came to Weimar, he took up natural science from a new angle, botany, zoology, bone theory and so on, in order to consider everything like letters that together make up the book of nature, leading into the secrets of existence. This is how his studies of plant development and the animal world came about, which he later continued as a student, only that he sought the spirit behind the sensual phenomena of existence everywhere. Thus we see how, during his Italian journey, he regarded art on the one hand and natural objects on the other, and how he observed the world of plants in order to recognize the spirit that reigns in them. The words he wrote to his friends, while he was engaged in this kind of spiritual natural science, are great and beautiful. He said: Oh, here everything presents itself to me in a new way; I would like to travel to India to look at what has already been discovered in my own way. — That is to say, as his development demanded, according to the indications we were able to give. And so we see how he also looks at the works of art that come to him. He writes in a letter: “This much is certain: the ancient artists had just as great a knowledge of nature and an equally sure concept of what can be imagined and how it must be imagined as Homer. Unfortunately, the number of works of art in the first class is all too small. But if one also sees these, one has nothing to wish for but to recognize them correctly and then to go there in peace. These lofty works of art are at the same time the highest works of nature, produced by man according to true and natural laws. All that is arbitrary and imaginary collapses; there is necessity, there is God.” Just as the great spirit of nature spoke to the seven-year-old boy from the altar he had erected, so the great spirit of the existence of the spiritual world spoke to him from these works of art, which he regarded as a unity. Thus Goethe gradually arrived at the contemplation of the individual in energetic, devoted work. Then he could calmly await the moment when a real insight into the spiritual world leaped out of his observations, a true spiritual science, which then confronts us, artistically transformed and reworked, in his “Faust”.

Thus the first sections of Faust that were written have all the atmosphere of a man who senses the secrets of existence but is unable to penetrate these secrets. We see how Faust allows the signs to take effect that surround him with spiritual reality, but we also see how he is not yet mature enough to really feel this spiritual reality. These are the sentences where Faust, as the Nostradamus aura, allows the signs of the macrocosm and the earth spirit to take effect on him, where the spirit of the earth appears before him. Faust characterizes the earth spirit in wonderfully beautiful words. We see how he senses that what the planet Earth is, is not simply the physical sphere that natural science regards it as, but rather, just as the body contains a soul, so the Earth body contains a spirit.

In the tides of life, in the storm of action,
I surge up and down,
I weave to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So I create at the whirling loom of time
And work the living garment of divinity.

That is what lives in the earth as the spirit of the earth, just as our spirit lives in us. But Goethe characterizes Faust as not yet mature, his spirit as still unfinished. He must turn away from the terrible sign like a timid worm curled up. The earth spirit answers him: “You resemble the spirit you comprehend, not me.” In Goethe's soul there lived the realization, even if at first only a presentiment, that we cannot declare ourselves satisfied at any stage, but must strive from each stage to higher and higher stages, that we cannot say at any stage that we have achieved something, but must always strive higher from each stage. Goethe was led into these secrets by his diligent studies from phenomenon to phenomenon. And now we see him grow.

The same spirit that he first summoned, and of whom he could only say, “Terrible face!” is addressed by Goethe through Faust, after Goethe himself had reached a higher level after his trip to Italy, after his journey, which I have characterized as one in which he wanted to permeate all of nature and art with his vision. Now Faust is attuned to the same spirit that Goethe himself was attuned to. Now Faust stands before the same spirit, which he thus addresses:

Eminent Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
Why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
Turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious Nature's kingdom,
Strength to feel it, to enjoy it. Not
You only allow cold, amazed visitors,
Grant me into their deep chests
To look as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce topples, brushing neighboring branches
And squashing neighboring trunks,
And the hill thunders hollowly hollow;
Then you lead me to the secure cave,
Then you show me myself, and my own breast,
Secret, deep wonders open up.
And when the pure moon rises before my gaze,
Soothingly across: silver figures of primeval times,
and ease the strict desire of contemplation.

There Goethe has arrived, and with him Faust, to the heights, no longer turning away from the spirit that he had wanted to reach by leaping. Now the spirit presents itself as such that he no longer needs to turn away from it. Now he recognizes it in all living things, in all realms of nature: in forest and water, in the silent bush, in the giant spruce, in storm and thunder. And not only there. After it has appeared to him in the great outdoors, he also recognizes it in his own heart: its secret, deep wonders open up.

This is a step forward in Goethe's knowledge of the spirit, and Goethe did not rest on his laurels. We then see how, spurred on by Schiller, he sought to deepen his knowledge, particularly in the 1890s. This knowledge enabled him to go beyond the vague characterization of spiritual consciousness that a spirit lives in everything. He succeeded in grasping this spirit in a concrete way. But Goethe needed much preparation before he was able to depict the life of the human spirit in the sense that spiritual and psychological things can only come from spiritual and psychological things. However, the fact that Goethe never failed to attempt to get deeper is shown by some of the works he created before the second part of Faust was completed. The second part of Faust shows the heights to which he has risen. Some have already turned away from him when they got to know the introspective Goethe in Pandora. Even today we hear people say: the first part of Faust is full of life, it breathes direct naturalness, but the second part is a product of Goethe's old age, full of symbols and contrivances. Such people have no idea what is in it, what infinite wisdom is in this second part of “Faust”, which only the Goethe of his rich life could have produced in his old age, leaving it as a testament. Therefore, we also understand when Goethe writes the lines about some works that already breathe the spirit of “Faust”, and we know that he presents Faust as a struggling soul, a soul that has been overtaken by something new. We recognize it in the anger he poured out on those who called “Faust” an inferior work of old age. He says of them:

They praise Faust,
And what else
In my writings roars
In their favor;

The old Mick and Mack,
That pleases them very much;
They think the riffraff,
It would no longer be!

Goethe once put into words his feelings towards those who believe that only what Goethe achieved in his younger years has validity, who do not want to ascend to what he achieved in his more mature years.

After Goethe has introduced Faust into the life that directly surrounds us, and has allowed him to experience that wonderful tragedy of Gretchen, he leads him out into the world that is outwardly the great world, first of all into the world that is outwardly the great world: the world of the imperial court. There Goethe now wants to show that Faust should now really penetrate spiritually into the secrets of this world. But then Faust should be introduced to the real spiritual world, to the supersensible world.

Right at the beginning of the second part, we see how Goethe has Faust surrounded by all kinds of spiritual beings. This is to express that Faust is not only to be led into an external physical world, but that he is also to experience what can be experienced by someone whose spiritual eye is open, whose spiritual ear is learning to perceive. Therefore, in the second part, Goethe shows us step by step the nature of the human soul, human development. What is Faust to experience? He is to experience the knowledge of the supersensible world. He is to be initiated into the secrets of the supersensible world. Where is this supersensible world?

When we consider the spiritual content of “Faust”, we can only begin to address the question of Mephistopheles, the spirit that surrounds Faust from the very beginning and plays a part in everything Faust undertakes. But it is only in the second part, where Faust is to be led into the spiritual world, that we see what role Mephistopheles plays. After Faust has gone through the events at the “imperial court”, he begins to see what is no longer there in the sensual world: the spirit of Helen, who lived centuries and centuries ago. She is to be found for Faust. She cannot be found in the physical world. Faust must descend into the spiritual world. Mephistopheles has the key to this world, but he cannot enter this spiritual world himself; he can describe it intellectually. He can say: You will descend. One could also say: You will ascend. He then actually describes the spiritual world into which Faust is to descend in order to get to know it supersensibly, to find in it the spirit, the immortal, the eternal that has been left behind from Helena. A word is spoken, a wonderful word: Faust is to descend to the Mothers. What are the “Mothers”? One could talk for hours if one wanted to characterize exactly what the Mothers are. Here we need only say that the Mothers were for spiritual science at all times what man gets to know when his spiritual eye is opened. When he looks into the physical world, he sees all things limited. When he enters the spiritual world, he comes into something from which all physical things come out as ice comes out of a water pond. As one who could not see the water would say: Nothing is there but ice, it piles up out of nothing — so says he who knows not the spirit: Only physical things are there. He sees not the spirit that is between and behind physical things, out of which all physical things are formed as ice is formed out of water. There, where the source of physical things is, which is no longer visible to the physical eye, are the Mothers. Mephistopheles is the being that is to represent that intellect which only knows what is outwardly formed in space, which knows that there is a spiritual world but cannot penetrate into it. Mephistopheles stands there beside Faust, as the materialistic thinker stands today beside the spiritual researcher, and says: “Ah, you spiritual scientist, you theosophist, you want to see into a spiritual world? There is nothing in there, it is all a dream. It is all nothing. To the materialist, who wants to build firmly on what the microscope and the telescope reveal, but who wants to deny everything that lies behind physical phenomena, the spiritual researcher cries out: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.” Thus the materialistic thinker stands opposed to the spiritual man, who hopes to find the spirit precisely where the other sees nothing. These two powers will confront each other forever. And from the very beginning, Mephisto confronts Faust as the spirit that can lead to the door, but cannot cross that threshold. The theosophist or spiritual scientist does not say: material science is nothing, is unnecessary. — He says: we must take this science seriously, study it, but it only has the key, it leads us to where the true spiritual life is to be found.

Faust then descends into the realm of the mothers, into the spiritual world; he succeeds in bringing up the spirit of Helen. But he is not yet mature enough to truly connect this spirit with his own soul. Hence the scene where passion stirs in Faust, where he wants to embrace the image of Helen with sensual passion. That is why he is repulsed. This is the fate of everyone who wants to approach the spiritual world from personal, selfish feelings. He is repulsed, as Faust is repulsed when he has brought up from the realm of the mothers the spirit of Helen. Faust must first mature, learn to recognize how the three members of human nature really come together: the immortal spirit that goes from life to life, from embodiment to embodiment; the body that lives between birth and death; and the soul that stands between the two. Faust is to learn how body, soul and spirit are connected and how they belong together. Faust has already sought the archetype of Helen, the immortal, the eternal that passes from embodiment to embodiment, from life to life, but in an immature state. Now he is to mature in order to become worthy of truly entering the spiritual world. To do this, Faust must learn how this immortality first approaches the human being when he can embody himself again in a new life between birth and death in his physical existence. Therefore, Goethe must show how the soul lives between spirit and body, how it places itself between the immortal spirit and the body that stands between birth and death. This is what Goethe shows us in the second part of “Faust”.

In Goethe, the soul is hidden in that wondrous structure about which Goethe researchers do not know much to say, in which spiritual researchers who are well-versed recognize the archetype of the soul. This is nothing other than the wonderful structure of the homunculus, the little human being. This is an image of the human soul. What does this soul do? It is the mediator between body and spirit; it must draw the elements of the body from all realms of nature in order to connect with them. Only then can it be united with the immortal spirit. Thus we see how Faust is led by this homunculus into the realm of the natural philosophers Anaxagoras and Thales, who have been reflecting on the origin of nature and life.

Therein is shown the true doctrine of evolution, which goes back to the fact that not only an animalistic element underlies human development, but also a soul that gathers the elements from nature to gradually build up the body. Hence the advice given to the homunculus: you must start from the lowest realm in order to ascend to higher and higher ones. The human soul is first referred to the mineral kingdom. Then it is told: “You have to go through the plant kingdom.” There is a wonderful expression here: “It grunts so” to describe the passage through the plant world, the juicy green. There the soul gathers all the elements of the natural kingdoms in order to ascend. It is explicitly said: “And you have time until you reach the human being.” Then we see how the spirit of love, Eros, approaches after the soul has formed the body out of all the realms of nature. There it unites with the spirit. Body, soul and spirit are united. Here that which is the soul of the homunculus, that which it organizes into the body, unites with the spirit of Helen. That is why Helen can appear to us in the third act of the second part in the flesh. We see the doctrine of re-embodiment poetically and artistically enshrined in the second part of Faust. One does not unite with Helena by drawing her to oneself in stormy passion, but by truly living through the secrets of existence, truly living through the re-embodiment.

Goethe was not yet able to express the idea of repeated lives on earth in the way we can today, but he did include it in the second part of his “Faust”. That is why he was able to say to Eckermann: “I have written my ‘Faust’ in such a way that it is suitable for the theater; that the images it presents are outwardly sensually interesting for those who only want to see outwardly sensually. But for those who are initiated, it will be evident that the deepest things have been woven into the second part of “Faust”. - Goethe expressly pointed out that one can find his view of life, his spiritual view, in this poetry. And so we now also understand that Goethe was able to illustrate to us in this reconnection of Faust with Helena what true mysticism is.

Faust unites with the spiritual world. Not an ordinary child is born, but Euphorion, who is as true as he is poetic. He represents for us what comes to life in our soul when it unites with the spiritual world. When the soul penetrates into the secrets of the spiritual world, there comes a moment of development in the soul that is of tremendously deep significance for that soul. Before the soul can go further, it must first, for brief moments, gain connection with the spiritual world, to know for a very short time what the spiritual world is. Then it is as if a spiritual child were born out of spiritual knowledge. But then come the moments of life again, when this spiritual child seems to have disappeared into the spiritual world. One must grasp this with the heart, full of life, then one feels, like Euphorion, the mystic's spiritual child, despite all the poetic truth of life, sinks down into the spiritual world, cannot yet fully enter Faust, but as he passes over, something else does. That is an experience of the spiritual researcher, the spiritual seeker, when our soul has the hour when it truly senses its relationship to the spiritual world, and when knowledge appears as a child of a marriage with the spiritual world. Then it experiences it deeply when it sinks into the everyday, and it is as if it takes with it the best that we have. It is as if our own soul were to escape and go with it into the spiritual world. When one has felt this, one feels the spiritual words of Euphorion, who has sunk down, and who cries out from the dark depths: “Let me not alone in the gloomy realm, mother, let me not alone.” The true mystic knows this voice, the voice that calls from the spiritual child to our soul as its mother.

But this soul must go further. It must break away from that which is only personal passion. We must be able to devote ourselves to the spiritual world impersonally. As long as there is still self-interest, self-will, we cannot grasp the spiritual world. Only then can we grasp this spiritual world when all that is personal has been erased before the higher things of the spiritual world; only then can we truly enter the spiritual world permanently. But there are still many moments when we have already experienced that moment that pushes us back into the physical world, moments that take away all mysticism for a long time. These are the moments when we have to say to ourselves: Yes, even if we have overcome all selfishness and self-will, there still remains this or that, as it is left behind in Faust, even after he has said: “I stand here in the open, I only want to work, to gain everything from nature, to do something only for others.” But he has not yet come that far. As he looks at the hut of Philemon and Baucis, something disturbs his view, he shows: he has not yet overcome the selfishness that wants to be pleased by the sight. He wanted to create a possession, selflessly, but he cannot yet bear what disfigures him: the hut of Philemon and Baucis. Then the spirit of evil approaches him once more. The hut is burnt down. Then that appears to him which appears to everyone who undergoes development: the worry that approaches everyone who still has selfish aspirations within them and which does not allow them to ascend into the spiritual world. Here it is, worry, and we learn to recognize it in its true form; then it is something that can lead us to the last of real spiritual knowledge. It is not intended to show that man should become unworldly, hostile to the world, but how man in the world should get to know that which does not let him go from the world. In wise self-knowledge, we should let worry take a back seat so that we can become free from the selfishness of worry, not from worry itself, which is illustrated by the fact that worry says it creeps in through a keyhole. When we get to know this worry, not just feel it, but learn to bear it, then we attain that degree of human development that opens the spiritual eye to us. This is illustrated by the fact that Faust goes blind in old age, can no longer see with his physical senses, but can look into the spiritual world. “The night seems to penetrate deeper and deeper.” It is dark on the outside, but inner bright light, the light that can illuminate the world, shines, the light in which the soul is between death and birth: the realm of the mothers. Only now can Faust begin his journey into the spiritual world, where his ascension is so beautifully described.

Then Goethe can summarize what has become of Faust, from the intuitive striving of that person who despairs of science and turns away, to what he has become from that stage to the highest spiritual knowledge. He can summarize it in the Chorus mysticus, which, as its name indicates, is intended to signify something deeper. In this Chorus mysticus, it is intended to summarize paradigmatically in a few words what holds the key to all the secrets of the world, how everything that is transitory is only a parable for the immortal. That which the physical eye can see is only a parable for the spiritual, the immortal, of which Goethe showed that he even attained the knowledge of re-embodiment when he entered into this spiritual. It shall finally be shown that when man enters into the spiritual kingdom, then all that is present in the physical world as presentiment, as hope, is there a truth. What is striven for in the physical world becomes a presentiment in the spiritual world.

It may appear pedantic when I state here something that one must know to understand the final words.

Goethe spoke somewhat unclearly in his old age because he was toothless. He dictated the second part of his “Faust” to a scribe. Since he still had some of the Frankfurt dialect, some words and sounds came out a bit unclear. So for some words, the scribe used g's where there should have been ch's. For example, “Erreichnis” was written as “Ereignis”. When dictating the final words of Faust, Goethe spoke “Erreichnis”. The inadequate becomes here something that can be achieved, an “Erreichnis”, that is, with two r's and two ch's. Everywhere, in all editions of Goethe's works, you will find “Ereignis” written. Goethe researchers know so little about penetrating into the sense. That which is inadequate in the physical world becomes “achievement” in the spiritual world. What cannot be described in the physical world is done in the spiritual world. There it becomes a living deed.

And finally, we experience the great thing that Goethe is allowed to express in the closing words of the second part of “Faust”: “The eternal feminine”. Oh, it is a sin against Goethe to say that Goethe means the female sex by this. Goethe means that depth which the human soul represents in relation to the mystery of the world, that which longs as the eternal in man: the eternal feminine, that draws the soul up to the eternal immortal, the eternal wisdom, and that gives itself to the eternal masculine. The eternal feminine draws us up to that which is the eternal masculine. It does not refer to something feminine in the ordinary sense. Therefore, we may well seek this eternal feminine in man and woman: the eternal feminine that strives towards the eternal masculine in the cosmos in order to unite, to become one with the divine-spiritual that permeates and interweaves the world, towards which Faust strives. This secret of men of all times, towards which Faust has been striving from the very beginning, this secret to which spiritual science in a modern sense is to lead us, is expressed by Goethe in a paradigmatic and monumental way in those beautiful words at the end of the second part of Faust, which he presents as a mystical spirit-choir, that all physical things which surround us in the world of sense, Maja, illusion, deception, are a parable of the spiritual. But we see this spiritual when we penetrate to what covers it like a veil. In this spiritual we see what cannot be achieved here on earth. We see that which is indescribable for the mind bound to the senses, transformed into real action when the spirit of man unites with the spiritual world. “The indescribable, here it is done.” And we see that which is significant, where the soul unites, lives together with the eternal masculine of the great world, which lives through and weaves through this world. That is the great secret that Goethe expresses with the words:

All that is transitory
Is but a parable;
The inadequate,
Here it becomes reality;
The indescribable,
Here it is done;
The eternal feminine
draws us on.

Goethe was able to say to himself: Now I have done my life's work. It does not really matter now what I accomplish on earth during the rest of the time I have left to live.

Goethe sealed up the second part of his “Faust”. And this second part was not given to mankind until after his death, and mankind will have to draw on all of its spiritual science to penetrate the secrets of this mighty work.

Today, only sketches could be given. One could spend hours and weeks using all the means of wisdom to illuminate what Goethe gave to mankind as a testament. May humanity open up this testament more and more! Seal after seal will fall, the more people will have the will to penetrate the secrets of the second part. The voices of those who say, “You are seeking to find something in there that Goethe never intended to put in his work,” will fall silent. Those who speak thus do not know the depths of Goethe's soul. Only those who see the highest in this work and in what Goethe condenses into the mystical chorus, which can conclude so many reflections that are intended to lead to the spirit, recognize this.

Once again, let us first of all direct our thoughts to those who are out there at the front, in the arena of present-day events, where they have to stand for what the time demands of them:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who have already gone through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

May the spirit we have been seeking for so many gears in our movement, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, be present above you, may it stream through you and strengthen you for your difficult task.

It seems that not everyone is quite clear about the verse I have just spoken, so I am told. Let me stress that the proper version reads: Spirit of your souls. The verse has been phrased in such a way that it can be used when many people want to speak for one person or one for many or, indeed, many for many—as in the present case. If it refers to just one person, the only change which has to be made is to say ‘Spirit of your soul’ and so forth. It appears that I made a slip of the tongue when I said the verse for the first time here some weeks ago, so that the view has arisen that the words ‘Spirits of your souls’ may not be quite correct. But they are correct as they stand. The first line is addressed to the spirits of the souls requiring protection, as it were and the ‘your’ refers to those to whom our thoughts are directed. In the second line on the other hand, the 'your' relates to the 'guardians'. Let me remark that such verses are always such by nature that there can be problems with the purely grammatical construction. But they are given from the spiritual world for the specific Purpose, and it is true that there are occasional problems with putting the words together for such verses.

Dear friends, it was for good reason and, spiritually, also very much in accord with the work that has to be done in the present time, that two days ago we turned our attention to events in the evolution of man that show how spiritual impulses—and particularly the spiritual Impulses linked with the Mystery of Golgotha, with the Christ impulse—are living impulses within the evolution of man. We have seen how they were active in the evolution of man even though men were unable to grasp the nature of the Christ impulse with their reason, with their intellect.

It was with this intention that reference was made among other historical events to Joan of Arc through whom this Christ impulse resolved a major issue in the 15th century through its servant, the Michaelic spirit, and for the good and advancement of mankind. The reason why it was particularly important to refer to this event was that in our day, too, it does hold true that everything destined to regulate events on the historical scale is ordered and regulated from the spiritual worlds. We need to be aware that the forces, the impulses, for what is to happen come to us from the spiritual worlds. In this respect the same holds true today as in the days of Joan of Arc. But the times are different. What would happen in a particular way in the days of Joan or Arc has to happen in a different way in our time and in times to come; it has to take a different course. For our time is one that is entirely different. Since the 15th and 16th century—and the Joan of Arc event did, of course, come in that period—mankind had been guided in quite a different way. It is this difference, and consequently the basic nature of our time, that we shall consider to some extent today.

Between going to sleep and waking up we are in a soul state where that which we really are is outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live in our astral body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this. That which we really are is then outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live in our astral body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this. That which we really are is then outside the body. We are, of course, bound to our body to an extraordinary degree between birth and death so that in terms of space we are not far away from our body when asleep. Our soul element is spread out in our surroundings, as it were; that is in everything that specifically makes up our environment.
Let us get a clear picture of how the environment has changed specifically over the last centuries—since the 15th and 16 centuries—at least for the great majority of the people whom we have to consider in relation to what fate has decreed for the present age. Just consider whether any of the machinery or the mechanical contrivances we use today also existed at the time when Joan of Arc did her work. We can certainly say that the world has changed completely since that time as far as mechanical things are concerned. Everything we experience in relation to machines has only come since then. There may be some observant people among you who have taken a ‘sleeper’ (train) to travel overnight. They may have had the strange experience of waking up—and this is the kind of occasion when one may wake up quite frequently—and finding that something was still rumbling on that was inherent in the machinery of the train all about them. Something can be perceived, as it were, when one is waking up but still in a dream state, of the croaking and squealing of the train or boat one happens to be on. This happens because the soul is not really in the body but in the area around the body and is placed among those mechanical contrivances.

Yet it is not only on such less usual occasions that we live among the hustle and bustle of the present age, and we can certainly say that the mechanized life has also spread to the countryside today. Fundamentally speaking, we are always within the mechanized life of the present age. When asleep, the soul merges into everything that is mechanism. Those are mechanisms, however, which we have constructed ourselves. A mechanism we have built is something quite different from nature outside us, for this has been constructed by the elemental spirits. When we are out in the woods, for instance, where everything has been built up by the spirits of nature, we are in an environment that is totally different from the environment of mechanical contrivances created by ourselves. What are we doing when we take things from nature and put them together to make the machines and appliances we use in our lives? We are in that case not merely putting together physical components, for in putting together physical components we always provide opportunity for a demonic Ahrimanic servant to unite with the machine. We do this with every machine, every mechanism, in everything of this kind that is part of modern civilization, providing a point of attachment for demonic elemental spirits of Ahrimanic nature. And living surrounded by machines we live together with these demonic Ahrimanic elementals. We allow them to enter into us; we allow not only the squealing and groaning of machines to enter into us but also an element that is eminently destructive for our spirit and our soul.

Please note—and I have often made a similar comment on similar occasions—what I am saying is not intended to be a criticism of our Ahrimanic age. It has to be like this, that we allow demons to stream into everything and allow ourselves to the surrounded by them. It is part of the evolution of mankind. We have to acknowledge the simple necessity for this and understand the real impulse of spiritual science. And so we shall not sing the praises of people who say it is necessary, as far as possible, to protect oneself from the demons and to shun civilization and that we should set up a colony as far away as possible in the wilderness to save us from having anything to do with these demonic Ahrimanic elementals. That has never been the tenor of my words. I have always said that we must entirely accept what comes to us out of the necessity of evolution, that we must not let ourselves be induced to flee from the world. We need to take heed, however, we need to understand, that conditions are such in our age that we are filling our environment more and more with beings of a demonic nature, that we are more and more involved with the principle that is mechanizing our civilization. An age such as this cans for something quite different than the age out of which Joan of Arc was called to do her work. In the time of Joan of Arc it was necessary for the impulse out of which she was to act to be born out of the gentlest, the most subtle powers of the human soul. Just consider: she was a shepherd girl living a very simple, natural life, with nature at her most idyllic. She was very young when her visions came to her, and through the Imaginations given to her she had a direct link with the spiritual world. Out of her inner being she was to bring forth everything that was to be the foundation from which she acted, she was to let it grow forth from her inner being. And not only this, but it was necessary for very special circumstances to be brought about so that through the most subtle powers inherent in the human soul her mission could be imprinted in her soul, in her very heart of hearts.

We know that everything in the world goes in cycles, that things happen in such a way that important events come up in definite cycles. If we take the year of Joan's birth, 1412, we can ask a specific question relating to this. We are able to say that the year this Maid of Orleans was born the sun would of course have been in a particular position, astronomical position, coinciding with one of the constellations in the zodiac. The progress of the sun from one sign of the zodiac to the next marks a major time interval. Passing right through the zodiac the sun will go through all twelve constellations; the time interval needed for the sun to progress from one constellation in the zodiac to the next is approximately 2,160 years, and this is important. Going back approximately 2,160 years from the birth of Joan of Arc we come to the founding of Rome.

In the days when Rome was founded anyone needing information on major issues concerning the city which was then coming into being would go to see the nymph Egeria. There it was possible to get information, from a seeress. But, as I said, that was one solar cycle earlier. And so the times are renewed and everything goes in cycles. Let us visualize it like this: at the time when Rome was founded the sun was at a certain point in the constellation of the Ram, Aries. It then progressed to the Fishes, Pisces, so that it had moved through one-twelfth of the zodiac. And thus the cycle which inevitably has to be there In the evolution of mankind takes us from the nymph Egeria to the inspired deed of Joan of Arc. In ancient Rome, however, it was a matter of pagan Inspiration, of pagan deeds. If we try to think of the same visionary element that operated at the time when Rome was founded also having to operate in a Christian age, acting from within, through the most tender powers inherent in man, what did have to come about? You can imagine that something had to come about which again, in some way or other, had to do with the subtlest powers of the Christian faith.

Most of you will remember my telling you of the variation we get in the course of the year in the forces that link us with the spiritual world. In summer, at St John's tide when the sun's rays are most Powerful externally, one might perhaps achieve an external ecstasy and, as in the old Celtic mysteries, lift oneself up into the spiritual world in some way, but certainly in ecstasy. Yet when the days are shortest, when the sun's rays are least powerful and the winter night the darkest, around Christmas therefore, the opportunity exists also to win through to the spiritual worlds in our innermost soul life. All who have known of the cycle of the year have always maintained, quite rightly, that those who have the gift for it are able to enter into the most intimate aspect of our connection with the spiritual worlds during the time from the 21st, the 23rd of December to about the 6th of January—during those days and particularly the nights. There are legends—the Legend of Olaf Asteson has been read to you here—which tell of people having their most profound Inspirations during those days.²⁶ This, again, is connected with the celebration of Christmas at that time, of the birth of the spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha and is connected with the innermost powers in human soul development. So, if the Inspiration of pagan Rome of old was to be resurrected one sun cycle later, 2,160 years later, it had to come in through the aspect of man that is most utterly childlike. This means that the soul of Joan of Arc had to be taken hold of at the point where souls are taken hold of most profoundly, where they are weakest in relation to earthly things, and where the Christ impulse is not yet hampered by worldly impressions—the souls not yet having taken up the earthly element, so that the Christ impulse can be the only one to enter into the soul sphere. The most favourable timing for this would have been for the Maid of Orleans to have gone through the time of the Thirteen Nights in her mother's womb immediately before her birth, before she took her first breath. And, indeed, she did—for she was born on the 6th of January.

Here we perceive the more profound forces at work which enter into the physical world from the spiritual worlds. We see how they find the channels they need, deeply mysterious channels. There can be nothing more marvellous for someone with insight into such things, nothing more open to explanation through spiritual science, than this fact that the Maid of Orleans took her first breath on earth in the time around Christmas, on the 6th of January, with the days of Christmas immediately preceding her entry on to the physical plane. We see how the girl who was to go through death at the age of 19 was taken hold of at the point where the most subtle of human powers lie, and we are therefore looking into a time when it was necessary for the divine spiritual powers to find a channel through the inmost inwardness of the human soul. That, however, was the last time when such a thing was to be. It was the time when a particular order was brought into Europe through the Christ impulse, as I indicated to you the last time, and this happened in the wonderful way in which it did happen through Joan of Arc. Since then, however, times have changed. Today is not the time when divine spiritual powers approach the human soul in such intimate fashion.

What was the mission of Joan of Arc, really, if we consider something that was present throughout her whole life? She was taken hold of from within by the forces of the divine spiritual world. In her soul these forces encountered the Luciferic forces. These Luciferic forces were mighty and powerful at that time. Joan of Arc bore something within her that made her vanquish the Luciferic forces. She vanquished the Luciferic forces, that is entirely obvious to anyone who wants to see. We have briefly considered the miracle of her birth and seen that she went through an unconscious initiation, in a way, up to Epiphany, the day known as that of the manifestation of Christ. But we can also point to her death which occurred because all the Luciferic forces of her enemies joined together to bring about her death. Her misadventure in a battle was brought about through the jealousy of the men who were the official leaders, appointed to guide the battle. All the jealousy then came to the fore over the manifestations of spiritual forces and spiritual powers that were made through her. She was put on trial. The records of the trial still exist and anyone studying them can see—unless of course his mind is as closed as that of Anatole France—that this Maid of Orleans, having come into the physical world in a very special way, through the thirteen nights, also left it in such a way. For it says in the records, so that there is historical proof, that she said that she would indeed die but that after her death the English would meet with a much greater reverse than any they had known before, and that this would happen within the next seven years.

If we take this rightly, in its spiritual sense, it means nothing less than that the soul of Joan of Arc on going through the gate of death was prepared to continue contributing to the work of shaping events after her death, to share in the work whatever her form of existence. And she did so. What the spiritual powers have to bring about will be brought about whatever the external conditions may be. Joan's adversaries were able to bring about her death, to mount the strongest possible attack against her, as it were. They were not able to prevent her mission.

However, the forces of Joan of Arc were only able to work in the subtle way they did during her time. In everything she did the Luciferic forces were ranged against her. We are also having to deal with hostile forces in our time, but these are predominantly Ahrimanic forces, the Ahrimanic forces that have come up with the materialistic age. These are in evidence even in the outer form and fashion of the whole of our age if we turn our attention to the mechanisms, the mechanical element of the age; if we are aware that, fundamentally speaking, we are offering an abode to demons when we produce our mechanical contrivances, surrounding ourselves with a whole world of Ahrimanic demons. It is evident also from other things that Ahrimanic powers are at work everywhere in our age. We need only look back a few years and pay a little attention to the occult substrate to our life on earth and we can see Ahrimanic forces influencing all aspects of our physical life on earth. Not only the kind of demons we create in our machines influence our earth life but also other kinds of Ahrimanic forces. The occultist has to put into words something I have often put into words for one group of friends or another: that, fundamentally speaking, the sad and painful events now happening all over Europe and a large part of the globe have long been in preparation. War has been present for a long time, as it were, in the astral world but was held back by something that was also astral: by the fear everybody was feeling. Fear is an astral element; it was able to hold the war back, to prevent it; fear was able to stop war from breaking out for all that time.

For fear was abroad everywhere. Fear is altogether something that is most dreadfully widespread in the depths of our souls in the present age. A time came, however, when there was an external indication in time of something often referred to when the starting points of this war are discussed. This outer aspect is not the one that matters, however, it is merely a symbol. As I said on a previous occasion, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke occurred and there emerged the event, so terrible to the soul, that I have already referred to. I had never before known anything like this, not from personal experience nor through other occultists. We know what the soul goes through when it has undergone death. In the case of the soul that went through death at that time something very specific showed itself. All the elements of fear began to gather around it, as though around a focal point, and something of a cosmic power could now be perceived in it. We know already that anything that has a specific character on the physical plane will have the opposite character in the spiritual world. This also held true in the present case. An element that first had had a dispersive effect where war was concerned was now acting in the opposite way, as a spur, an incitement, to war. So we see that a metamorphosis, as it were, of the elements of fear, of the Ahrimanic elements, became mixed up with all the things that finally led to the sad and painful events of the present time. Ahrimanic elements are indeed at work everywhere in our time. We must not rebel against this, nor should we aim to protect ourselves against it. We have to see it as something that is necessary in our time, something that has to be present in our time. The question is: How do we find the right attitude to this? How do we find the one thing that will show us what should be our attitude now, in the present age, if we want to make it possible for divine spiritual forces and powers to enter into our actions?

Here I must refer to an event in the spiritual world that happened a few decades ago. I have mentioned this on a number of occasions, in all kinds of different contexts. It is an event that occurred behind the scenes of our existence, in the spiritual world, in or about November 1879.²⁷ We know that there is a different regent of earth life for every epoch, as it were; one regent follows another. Until 1879 the spirit acting out of the spiritual world was the one we call the spirit Gabriel, if a name is to be used. From 1879 onwards it was the spirit we call Michael. It is Michael who directs events in our time. Anyone able to see into the spiritual worlds in conscious awareness will feel the spirit Michael to be the spirit who truly is the one to lead and govern in our time. Michael is in a way the most Powerful of the leading spirits of the age that follow one another. In a way, I said, he is the most powerful of these spirits. The others have been predominantly active in the spirit sphere. Michael had the strength to push the spirit right through into the physical world. He was the spirit who descended to earth ahead of the Christ, as it were, before the Mystery of Golgotha approached, and governed world affairs for four or five centuries at that time. Now in our time he is again the leading spirit on earth. We may make a comparison by saying that Michael is among the spirits belonging to the hierarchy of the Archangeloi as gold is among the metals. Whilst all other metals act predominantly on the ether body, gold also acts as a medicine for the physical body. In the same way all the other leading spirits act on the soul whilst it is Michael who at the same time is able to act on the physical intellect, on physical reason. Now that his age has come it is possible to act out of the spirit on the physical intellect, on physical reason. In the 15th century he was not the actual leader and therefore had to find a way in the case of Joan without making use of the human intellect, human understanding, human ability to form ideas; a way that was wholly an inner one, as it were, through the innermost powers of the human soul. The Christ influenced Joan of Arc through his Michaelic spirit, but he achieved what had to be done by any other means rather than the forces of the intellect and of reason.

Luciferic spirits are also present today. and these prefer to attack man from within. They want to generate all kinds of passions, but not the error of the intellect, the error of common reason that we have to struggle with in our present age. We therefore have to say that anything we wish to achieve in the spiritual sphere must be achieved in such a way that it is in accord with the forces that Michael, the leading spirit of the age, commands. We are in close alliance with Michael when we try to grasp what we have been attempting to grasp these last few days, when we try and grasp things as phenomena, to grasp what we call the German folk spirit. Two powers: Michael and the German folk spirit. These two are entirely in harmony, and it is their mission to bring the Christ impulse to expression specifically in our time, in accord with the character of our time. For it would be wrong for the people of our time to think that the same inward way of working that was appropriate to the 15th century could still be appropriate now that we are in the fifth post-Atlantean era. In the present age it is a matter above all of understanding that it is necessary to be chained to Ahriman, to Ahrimanic elements we ourselves create in our machines, and that it is necessary to recognize clearly how these things are connected. Otherwise we live in fear of many of the things that exist in the present age.

The question therefore arises: How do we offer resistance to this Ahrimanic element in our age, the way resistance was offered to the Luciferic element at the time of Joan of Arc? We offer resistance to the Ahrimanic element by taking exactly the path that has been so emphatically pointed out over and over again within our stream of spiritual science—the path towards a spiritualization of human culture, of man's ability to form ideas and concepts. This is why it has been stressed again and again that there is a way in which everything spiritual science can give us, even if to begin with it is largely presented to us from the spiritual world, can truly and wholly and utterly be grasped with the intellect, the reason man has been gifted with from the 16th century to this day. And if we say we do not understand, then that is only because we listen to the prejudices current in the materialism of our age. We must stop listening ever and again to the voice of present-day materialism, a voice that speaks loudly at times and then again in the faintest of whispers. Instead we must try and firmly focus our mind on such powers of understanding as we have. Then the things spiritual science produces for us will one day appear to be perfectly understandable, as something that can be understood just as well as some event or other in the outside world can be understood. We generate the great strength we need to offer resistance to the Ahrimanic forces by approaching the spirit not merely through the inmost powers of revelation and of faith, as in the case of Joan of Arc, but by trying to concentrate our powers of understanding most intensely on what spiritual science has to give. If we do this, the hour, the moment, will come when we have to say to ourselves: What comes to us out of spiritual science is the only thing that is rational and at the same time makes the world around us understandable, filling it with light. And when we are taken hold of in this way we are taken hold of by what the spirit has to give in our time so that we shall indeed be strong enough to face the Ahrimanic forces.

Someone with a disposition like that of Joan of Arc would not be able to achieve anything in our day and age. She would be an interesting personality and would be able to reveal many marvellous things through prophesy and in other ways. Such a person capable of making intimate revelations is capable of effectively countering Luciferic forces. Today, however, man has to resist Ahrimanic forces, has to make himself strong to cope with these forces, developing the strength required in the Michaelic age. Sun-like qualities are called for in the age of Michael, qualities we take into ourselves by spiritualizing the powers we have at our command between waking up and going to sleep: the powers of the intellect, of understanding, of insight. For these powers of understanding we possess will undergo a transformation in the soul if only we have sufficient patience. They are transformed to such effect that out of what emerges for us in spiritual science there arises the certainty that what we are grasping there is the direct expression of the thoughts of the spiritual world. So there can be no question today of withdrawing from the outside world which has Ahrimanic forces in it everywhere. No, it is necessary for us to stand in this world but at the same time also make ourselves strong to meet those Ahrimanic forces.

It is a matter therefore of finding the way towards understanding the spiritual world with the very same powers we also use to understand the outside world. That, of course, is the way—as we have said on these few occasions—that is inwardly bound up with the whole mission of the German people, and specifically with this mission as it has been from the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. This mission was in preparation during the preceding centuries. This is what is so remarkable—what has been going on in the intellectual life of Germany, through its poets, its artists and philosophers, is intimately bound up with the spiritual life. Here it really is a matter of boldly looking the facts in the face, without sympathy or antipathy, and seeing how they were first in preparation and gradually took shape. We have ourselves had the experience of simply having to stress one day that there is this necessity to be active in the life of the intellect and spirit as it continues to progress. Why should that be so?

Let us try and take a look at the theosophical movement we had external links with for a time, the theosophical movement in England. Try and build a bridge for yourselves between the general intellectual life in England, including the field of philosophy, and English theosophy. Externally they stand side by side, are two streams running side by side, and a bridge between the two is something we can only make in a very external way. Try on the other hand and consider the life of the mind and spirit that had its preparatory stages in the German mystics Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, and then evolved further through Jakob Boehme and Angelus Silesius.²⁸ In Lessing²¹ it brought acceptance of the idea of repeated earth lives, and in Goethe's Faust an out-and-out glorification of the ascent to the spiritual worlds.

There you have the straight route from the outer worlds to the spiritual world. If you then also include the stream that led from Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Fair Lily²⁹ to the dramatization of the basic forces of initiation³⁰ and take the two streams together, you will have the inner connection. There is an inner connection between that which finally makes its appearance as spiritual science and that which is striven for quite exoterically in the intellectual life of the physical world. The life of the mind and spirit which unfolds outside of spiritual science is of course striven for with the powers of the intellect, but it is compelled to move in the direction of what is found outside the body. I should like to put it like this: It is the mission of the German people that they cannot do anything else but let the river of all their endeavours finally enter into spiritual life. In spiritual terms that really means that the German people are called to unite inwardly with the element that comes into the world because Michael is the leader. Such a union is not achieved by passively, fatalistically, allowing oneself to be governed by the powers of destiny. It is achieved by recognizing the challenge of the time.

What I am trying to show has been revealed not only inwardly, in the evolution of German mysticism, but also outwardly in the whole way German life has developed within the context of European life. In the first of the last two public lectures I have given, ‘The Germanic Soul and the German Intellect’, I discussed the way the soul quality of the Germanic tribes flowed into the peoples of the West and the South, as it were, through those who became the outposts of those tribes, the Goths, Lombards, Vandals. The Germanic soul element was sacrificed on the altar of mankind. Later this was to repeat itself, though less obviously so. Consider first of all the most eastern part of Austria³¹ and the people known as the Transylvanian Saxons. They had emigrated from the Rhine, from the Siebengebirge (Seven Mountains), and there is external evidence to prove this. As time went on they lost their special characteristics. The soul substance gave itself up, to merge into that of the other nation, and little will be left of them one day except for some elements from their language; it was as folk substance that they flowed into the other nation. Now let us move on south to the Banat.³² Swabian immigrants settled there and the Magyar element overgrew the Swabian element. The same thing has happened in the Carpathian mountains in Hungary. To all appearances these immigrant elements have disappeared today. Yet they are still alive everywhere among the present-day population, sometimes emerging in tiny rivulets, like in the fascinating linguistic enclave of the people of Gottschee in Krain [Carniola]. And elsewhere as well. We see—and it would be possible to purse this a great deal further—how the Germanic soul-element has been sent out into the world, how it has an effect there. This happens out of an inner necessity. It happened like this in earlier ages and particularly also during the age of Gabriel. It happened throughout the age of Gabriel in that the blood—I would say the blood and the mixing of blood—was active, everything which, whilst connected with external circumstances in life, yet cannot be grasped externally, but again takes place at a more inward level.

Now the Michael age has come,the age when we must grasp how, through the whole past development of the life of the mind and intellect, the German spirit is able to take its place within the Sun force of Michael. That we simply have to realize. And it can be realized by giving recognition to spiritual science, by gradually—on the basis of what spiritual science is considering—getting an idea and an awareness of the spiritual powers that are at work, of the reality of spiritual powers. Then we shall gradually come to understand how senseless it is for people to say: ‘There are no spiritual forces, I cannot acknowledge them. And if I have a bar of iron in horseshoe form here, then it is just that, a bar of iron, and I see nothing but iron.’ But there may be magnetic forces within it. And in the same way something else, something quite different from magnetic forces, lies within the whole of the outside world. We come to recognize it if we really consider all that is presented to us as the characteristic form of things. That is the way to achieve the powers of mind needed in the age of Michael to resist the Ahrimanic powers, at a time when it is indeed our duty to withstand the Ahrimanic powers. Fundamentally speaking, everything the study of spiritual science has to offer is merely preparatory. One day an awakening of the soul will spring forth from the study of spiritual science, and the soul will know: Within you lives the spiritual world, from the Christ impulse down through Michael to the folk spirit which puts into effect what has to be put into effect.

I have said that the time of Joan of Arc was one when it was possible to act on the weakest, physically the weakest, powers of man. Our age is one where it is necessary to act on the strongest powers of man, to take hold of the will at a point where it is least inclined truly to unfold its powers. We can see it again and again: the thing people find most difficult to do is to unfold the will at the point where our earthly powers, the powers by which we form concepts, are made inwardly active. To bring ‘will-power’ to bear externally is something people still find relatively easy. But a different kind of ‘will-power’ is needed to guide our thoughts in such a way that they encompass the spiritual world. Spiritual science as such has to appeal to that strong will-power, for this must be there if spiritual science is truly to lead where it ought to lead in our Michaelic age. For we are not called to discuss the mechanical element in our age; we are not called to point out that this mechanical element in our age has laid hold of mankind; we are called to do something else.

Of course, if we squeeze the facts a little it will be possible for us to become a philosopher, to some degree even a great philosopher—this we admit without reserve. It is possible to look at the machines in our age and start to consider this very mechanistic aspect as the most pernicious of all things, ascribing it specifically to our enemies. And one then has the inclination, even if one may be considered a great philosopher, to hurl abuse like a market woman. One can then do the same as the philosopher Bergson³³ who only recently again managed to point out rather one sidedly—and many things tend to be perfectly correct if a one sided view is presented—how the mechanistic effect of the forces relates to the essential nature of the German people. But that is not the only thing we can point to—that German brainpower has achieved things in certain areas by applying mechanical principles—for something else may be pointed out as well. Nor is it necessary to hurl abuse like a market woman when discussing such matters, and instead we may say: Perhaps the very place where the intellect has the greatest powers to give form to the mechanistic and demonic element is also the place where these mechanistic and demonic powers can be overcome on the basis of our particular spiritual mission. Then however, a German may easily get himself misunderstood as he comes to see, in conjunction with the way the intellectual life has developed, that it is not his function to stop at the purely mechanical element that is of such great service to him also in the present day, with the challenges presented by the war. He must not stop at what is merely mechanism, for then he would merely create demons. No, he must develop powerful forces within him that can boldly face these demons. This means that we have to stand in the spiritual world, not blindly but in a way that arises from, and is guided by, conviction. If we set out to acknowledge that we are surrounding ourselves with a world of demons, a veritable hell, as we design and build machine after machine, we can of course understand why people speaking out of the materialistic spirit of the present age are saying over and over again that this scientific and materialistic age has taken us to the greatest height ever achieved by man. Of course we can understand this for it is in line with the materialistic thought of the present time, but we must know that with those machines we are introducing nothing but demons for mankind and we must know how to develop the right powers to resist these demons. We only gain the right attitude to the spiritual world by recognizing these demonic Ahrimanic forces, by knowing full well that they are present. For the harmful powers are harmful only when we remain unconscious of them, when we know nothing about them. Let me illustrate this by means of a comparison.

As you know, we hope after some time to have a building at Dornach near Basle where we can nurture our spiritual stream in suitable surroundings. It is not a question of erecting this building to escape the pressures of our time in some way or other, but rather of building it entirely out of the pressures of our time. It was necessary for instance to design a lighting system out of the most Ahrimanic forces of the present age, electric lighting, electric heating and so on. It is a matter of using the architectural form as such to render such potentially harmful things harmless. It could have been the case that anyone entering the building in the future would have been surrounded with everything the Ahrimanic culture of the present age leads to. The point, however, is not that it is present, but that people do not notice it. We are not suppose to notice it. To achieve this, a number of friends got together and they are erecting a separate building for this, giving it a special form, so that the demonic Ahrimanic forces are banished to this place. Anyone approaching the building, and also anyone entering it, will have it brought to their notice that the Ahrimanic forces are at work there. For as soon as we know this they are no longer harmful. The point is that the powers that have a bad effect on man cease to do so when we take a good look at the places where they are active, when we do not look at a machine thoughtlessly and say ‘a machine is simply a machine’ , but rather acknowledge that a machine is a place where a demonic Ahrimanic entity may be found.

If we take our stand in the world with knowledge in our souls we take the right stand in the Michaelic age. It means that we relate to the spiritual world in such a way that Michael, too, can be active within us; Michael with his present mission, as we have described it. The Point is that in every case we can either enter without thought into what exists in the mechanical contrivances men are producing at an unconscious level or we can see through life. If we see through it, if we become aware of the demonic elemental powers at work in the machines we produce, we shall find the way to the rightful givers of Inspiration who are true to the spirit. They are connected with the spirit who is to the other spirits concerned with guidance of man as gold is to the other metals—with Michael.

My aim today has been to show that the mission of our age is to seek the divine spiritual powers that will work for the good of mankind. It is different from the mission given to the human souls who lived at the time of Joan of Arc. At that time it was much more a question of holding back anything intellectual, holding back the Power of reasoning. Today, however, it is a question of cultivating everything to do with reason and intellect to attain to clairvoyance, for it is possible to cultivate it and attain to clairvoyance. Once there are people who cultivate the human soul in this way, the twilight period we are now living through will evolve into what it destined to evolve. Everything that evolves on the physical plane can only be the outer garment for the spiritual life that is to arise for mankind out of the Present time.

And it is true that those who are now sacrificing their powers in the years of their youth are prepared to send these powers down into our earthly existence. For these powers are never lost, they are indestructible- Now, however, they are destined to continue to act spiritually as they would have continued to act physically if the people concerned had not gone through the gate of death on the field of battle. They will continue to send their powers down to earth and into our time, so that we shall know what to do with these powers. These powers need to stream down into a human race that shall use them in such a way, during the time of peace that will follow the war, that spiritual life spreads more and more on earth. As the light of day always arises from the night, so a future filled with light will have to arise out of our present which so often seems like a dark night to us. This future will have to be filled not only with light but with everything the Michaelic age, which started in 1871, has to bring for mankind. Once there are souls capable of establishing as intimate a bond with the spiritual world as has been indicated today, we shall be able to hope that where the events of the present time are concerned, the thought expressed in the seven lines of the mantram will come to fruition. We may hope that it will all be fulfilled—if the first five lines are really and truly connected with the last two:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 26. See also Rudolf Steiner, ‘Welten-Neujahr—Das Traumlied von Olaf Asteson’, Dornach 31 December 1914, in Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der elementarischen Welt (GA 158). In English as extract ‘World New Year’ in Anthroposophical News Sheet 14: 1, 2.
• 27. See, above all, Rudolf Steiner's lectures on 18 and 20 May 1913 in Vorstufen zum Mysterium von Golgotha (GA 152). In English, Michaelmas—The Festivals and Their Meaning (London) Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1957. Lecture of 18 May also as typescript translation Z 136, ‘The Michael Impulse and the Mystery of Golgotha’ in Rudolf Steiner Library, London.
• 28. Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c.1327).
  Johannes Tauler (c.1300 –c.1361).
  Jakob Boehme (1575 –1624).
  Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler) (1624–1677). Concerning the above mystics, see Rudolf Steiner: Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens und ihr Verhältnis zur modernen Weltanschauung (GA 7). In English as Eleven European Mystics (tr. K. Zimmer) (New York) Rudolf Steiner Publications 1971.
• 21. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlecthtes (1780) paragraph 98:
  
  ‘Why should I not return as often as I am sent to gain new knowledge, new skills? Do I carry off so much at one go that it is not worth the effort to return?’
• 29. Rudolf Steiner: Goethes Geistesart in ihrer Offenbarung durch semen Faust und durch das Marchen von der Schlange und der Lille (GA 22). In English as The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethes World Conception (tr.O.D. Wannamaker) (New York & London) Anthroposophic Press and Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1940.
• 30. Rudolf Steiner, ‘Die Pforte der Einweihung’ in Vier Mysteriendramen (GA 14). In English as ‘The Portal of Initiation’, in the Mystery Plays/Dramas tr. A. Bittleston/R. and H. Pusch.
• 31. Rudolf Steiner was referring to the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Transylvania (Siebenbuergen) is now part of one of the successor states—Rumania (translator).
• 32. The Banat lies just south-west of Transylvania and north of the Danube, in Yugoslavia and Rumania (translator).
• 33. Henri Bergson (1859–1941). See ‘La Signification de la Guerre’ in Pages Actuelles 1914/15 Paris 1915.

[ 1 ] “The bud vanishes in the breaking of the blossom, and one could say that the former is contradicted by the latter. In the same way, the fruit declares the blossom to be a false existence and replaces it as its truth. These forms are not merely different from one another but they crowd each other out as they are incompatible. Their Quid nature makes them at once into moments of the organic whole in which they not only do not contradict each other, but in which the one is as necessary as the other, and it is only this equal necessity that constitutes the life of the whole.”

In these words of Hegel, the most significant traits of his mode of conception are expressed. He believes that the things of reality carry within themselves their own contradiction and that the incentive for their growth, for the living process of their development, is given by the fact that they continually attempt to overcome this contradiction. The blossom would never become fruit if it were without contradiction. It would have no reason to go beyond its unquestioned existence.

An exactly opposite intellectual conviction forms the point of departure of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841). Hegel is a sharp thinker, but at the same time a spirit with a great thirst for reality. He would like to have only things that have absorbed the rich, saturated content of the world into themselves. For this reason, Hegel's thoughts must also be in an eternal flux, in a continuous state of becoming, in a forward motion as full of contradictions as reality itself. Herbart is a completely abstract thinker. He does not attempt to penetrate into things but looks at them from the corner into which he has withdrawn as an isolated thinker. The purely logical thinker is disturbed by a contradiction. He demands clear concepts that can exist side by side. One concept must not interfere with another. The thinker sees himself in a strange situation because he is confronted with reality that is full of contradictions, no matter what he may undertake. The concepts that he can derive from this reality are unsatisfactory to him. They offend his logical sense. This feeling of dissatisfaction becomes the point of departure. Herbart feels that if the reality that is spread out before his senses and before his mind supplies him with contradictory concepts, then it cannot be the true reality for which his thinking is striving. He derives his task from this situation. The contradictory reality is not real being but only appearance. In this view he follows Kant to a certain degree, but while Kant declares true being unattainable to thinking cognition, Herbart believes one penetrates from appearance to being by transforming the contradictory concepts of appearance and changing them into concepts that are free from contradictions. As smoke indicates fire, so appearance points at a form of being as its ground. If, through our logical thinking, we elaborate out of a contradictory world picture given to us by our senses and our mind, one that is not contradictory, then we gain from this uncontradictory world picture what we are looking for. This world picture, to be sure, does not appear in this form that is free from contradictions, but it lies behind the apparent one as true reality. Herbart does not set out to comprehend the directly given reality, but creates another reality through which the former is to become explainable. He arrives in this fashion at an abstract thought system that looks rather meager as compared to the rich, full reality. The true reality cannot be a unity, for a unity would have to contain within itself the infinite variety of the real things and events. It must be a plurality of simple entities, eternally equal to themselves, incapable of change and development. Only a simple entity that unchangeably preserves its qualities is free from contradictions. An entity in development is something different in one moment from what it is in another, that is, its qualities are contradictory at various times. The true world is, therefore, a plurality of simple, never-changing entities, and what we perceive are not these simple entities but their relations to one another. These relations have nothing to do with the real being. If one simple entity enters into a relationship with another, the two entities are not changed thereby, but I do perceive the result of their relationship. The reality we perceive directly is a sum of relations between real entities. When one entity abandons its relation to another and replaces it by a relationship with a third entity, something happens without touching the being of the entities themselves. It is this event that we perceive, namely, our apparent contradictory reality. It is interesting to note how Herbart, on the basis of this conception, forms his thoughts concerning the life of the soul. The soul is, as are all other real entities, simple and unchangeable in itself. This entity is now engaged in relations with other beings. The expression of these relations is life in thought-pictures. Everything that happens within us—imagination, feeling, will—is an interplay between the soul and the rest of the world of real entities. Thus, for Herbart, the soul life becomes the appearance of relations into which the simple soul-entity enters with the world. Herbart has a mathematical mind, and his whole world conception is derived fundamentally from mathematical conceptions. A number does not change when it becomes the link of an arithmetical operation. Three remains three, whether it is added to four or subtracted from seven. As the numbers have their place within the mathematical operations, so do the individual entities within the relationships that develop between them. For this reason, psychology becomes an arithmetical operation for Herbart. He attempts to apply mathematics to psychology. How the thought-images condition each other, how they effect one another, what results they produce through their coexistence are things calculated by Herbart. The “ego” is not the spiritual entity that we lay hold of in our self-consciousness, but it is the result of the cooperation of all thought-pictures and thereby also nothing more than a sum, a last expression of relationships. Of the simple entity, which is the basis of our soul life, we know nothing, but its continual relation to other entities is apparent to us. In this play of relations one entity is entangled. This condition is expressed by the fact that all these relationships are tending toward a center, and this tendency expresses itself in the thought of the ego.

[ 2 ] Herbart is, in another sense than Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel, a representative of the development of modern world conception. Those thinkers attempt a representation of the self-conscious soul in a world picture capable of containing this self-conscious soul as an element. In so doing they become the spokesmen for the spiritual impulse of their age. Herbart is confronted with this impulse and he must admit the feeling that this impulse is there. He attempts to understand it, but in the form of thinking that he imagines to be the correct one, he finds no possibility of penetrating into the life of the self-conscious being of the soul. He remains outside of it. One can see in Herbart's world conception what difficulties man's thinking encounters when it tries to comprehend what it has essentially become in the course of mankind's evolution. Compared to Hegel, Herbart appears like a thinker who strives in vain for an aim at which Hegel believes actually to have arrived. Herbart's thought constructions are an attempt to outline as an external spectator what Hegel means to present through the inner participation of thought. Thinkers like Herbart are also significant for the characterization of the modern form of world conception. They indicate the aim that is to be reached by the very display of their insufficient means for the attainment of this aim. The spiritual aim of the age motivates Herbart's struggle; his intellectual energy is inadequate to understand and to express this struggle sufficiently. The course of the philosophical evolution shows that, besides the thinkers who move on the crest of the time-impulses, there are also always some active ones who form world conceptions through their failure to understand these impulses. Such world conceptions may well be called reactionary.

[ 3 ] Herbart reverts to the view of Leibniz. His simple soul entity is unchangeable; it neither grows nor decays. It existed when this apparent life contained within man's ego began, and will again withdraw from these relations when this life ceases to continue independently. Herbart arrives at his conception of God through his world picture, which contains many simple entities that produce the events through their relations. Within these processes we observe purpose-directed order. But the relations could only be accidental and chaotic if the entities, which, according to their own nature, would have nothing in common, were left entirely to themselves. The fact that they are teleologically ordered, therefore, points toward a wise world ruler who directs their relations. “No one is capable of giving a close definition of deity,” says Herbart. He condemns “the pretensions of the systems that speak of God as of an object to be comprehended in sharply drawn contours by means of which we would rise to a knowledge for which we are simply denied the data.”

[ 4 ] Man's actions and artistic creations are completely without foundation in this world picture. All possibility to fit them into this system is lacking. For what could a relationship of simple entities that are completely indifferent to all processes mean to the actions of man? So Herbart is forced to look for independent tools both for ethics and for esthetics. He believes he finds them in human feeling. When man perceives things or events, he can associate the feeling of pleasure or displeasure with them. We are pleased when we see man's will going in a direction that is in agreement with his convictions. When we make the opposite observation, the feeling of displeasure overcomes us. Because of this feeling we call the agreement of conviction and will good; the discord, we call morally reprehensible. A feeling of this kind can be attached only to a relationship between moral elements. The will as such is morally indifferent, as is also the conviction. Only when the two meet does ethical pleasure or displeasure emerge. Herbart calls a relation of moral elements a practical idea. He enumerates five such practical-ethical ideas: The idea of moral freedom, consisting of the agreement of will and moral conviction; the idea of perfection that has its basis in the fact that the strong pleases rather than the weak; the idea of right, which springs from displeasure with antagonism; the idea of benevolence, which expresses the pleasure that one feels as one furthers the will of another person; the idea of retribution, which demands that all good and evil that has originated in a person is to be compensated again in the same person.

Herbart bases his ethics on a human feeling, on moral sentiment. He separates it from the world conception that has to do with what is, and transforms it into a number of postulates of what should be. He combines it with esthetics and, indeed, makes it a part of them. For the science of esthetics also contains postulates concerning what is to be. It, too, deals with relations that are associated with feelings. The individual color leaves us esthetically indifferent. When one color is joined to another, this combination can be either satisfactory or displeasing to us. What pleases in a combination is beautiful; what displeases, is ugly. Robert Zimmermann (1824 – 1898) has ingeniously constructed a science of art on these principles. Only a part of it, the part that considers those relations of beauty that are concerned with the realm of action, is to be the ethics or the science of the good. The significant writings of Robert Zimmermann in the field of esthetics (science of art) show that even attempts at philosophical formulations that do not reach the summit of cultural impulses of a time can produce important stimulation's for the development of the spirit.

[ 5 ] Because of his mathematically inclined mind, Herbart successfully investigated those processes of human soul life that really do go on with a certain regularity in the same way with all human beings. These processes will, of course, not prove to be the more intimate and individually characteristic ones. What is original and characteristic in each personality will be overlooked by such a mathematical intellect, but a person of such a mentality will obtain a certain insight into the average processes of the mind and, at the same time, through his sure skill in handling the arithmetical calculations, will control the measurement of the mental development. As the laws of mechanics enable us to develop technical skills, so the laws of the psychological processes make it possible for us to devise a technique in education for the development of mental abilities. For this reason, Herbart's work has become fruitful in the field of pedagogy. He has found many followers among pedagogues, but not among them alone. This seems at first sight hard to understand with regard to a world conception offering a picture of meager, colorless generalities, but it can be explained from the fact that it is just the people who feel a certain need for a world conception who are easily attracted by such general concepts that are rigidly linked together like terms of an arithmetical operation. It is something fascinating to experience how one thought is linked to the next as if it were through a self-operative mechanical process, because this process awakens in the observer a feeling of security. The mathematical sciences are so highly appreciated because of this assurance. They unfold their structure, so to speak, through their own force. They only have to be supplied with the thought material and everything else can be left to their logical necessity, which works automatically. In the progress of Hegel's thinking, which is saturated with reality, the thinker continually has to take the initiative. There is more warmth, more direct life in this mode of thinking, but it also requires the constant support of the soul forces. This is because it is reality in this case that the thinker catches in his thoughts, an ever-flowing reality that at every point shows its individual character and fights against every logical rigidity. Hegel also had a great number of pupils and followers, but they were much less faithful than those of Herbart. As long as Hegel's powerful personality enlivened his thoughts, they exerted their charm, and as long as his words were heard under its spell, they carried great conviction. After Hegel's death many of his pupils went their own paths. This is only natural, for whoever is self-dependent will also shape his own attitude toward reality in his own fashion. We observe a different process with Herbart's pupils. They elaborate the master's doctrine, but they continue the fundamental stock of his thoughts without change. A thinker who finds his way into Hegel's mode of thinking penetrates into the course of the world's development that is manifested in innumerable evolutionary phases. The individual thinker, of course, can be stimulated to follow this course of evolution, but he is free to shape the various stages according to his own individual mode of conception. In Herbart's case, however, we deal with a firmly constructed thought system that commands confidence through the solidity of its structure. One may reject it, but if one accepts it, one will have to accept it in its original form. For the individual personal element, which challenges and forces us to face the self of another thinker with our own self, is lacking here.

[ 6 ] “Life is a miserable affair; I have decided to spend mine by thinking about it.” Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1861) spoke these words in a conversation with Wieland at the beginning of his university years, and his world conception sprang from this mood. Schopenhauer had experienced personal hardship and had observed the sad lives of others when he decided upon concentrating on philosophical thought as a new aim of life. The sudden death of his father, caused by a fall from a storehouse, his bad experiences in his career as a merchant, the sight of scenes of human miseries that he witnessed as a' young man while traveling, and many other things of similar kind had produced in him the wish, not so much to know the world, but rather to procure for himself a means to endure it through contemplation. He needed a world conception in order to calm his gloomy disposition. When he began his university studies, the thoughts that Kant, Fichte and Schelling introduced to the German philosophical life were in full swing. Hegel's star was just then rising. In 1806 he had published his first larger work, The Phenomenology of the Spirit. In Goettingen, Schopenhauer heard the teachings of Gottlob Ernst Schulze, the author of the book, Aenesidemus, who was, to be sure, in a certain respect an opponent of Kant, but who nevertheless drew the student's attention to Kant and Plato as the two great spirits toward whom he would have to look. With fiery enthusiasm Schopenhauer plunged into Kant's mode of conception. He called the revolution that his study caused in his head a spiritual rebirth. He found it even more satisfactory because he considered it to be in agreement with the views of Plato, the other philosopher Schulze had pointed out to him.

Plato had said, “As long as we approach the things and events merely through sensual perceptions, we are like men who are chained in a dark cave in such a way that they cannot turn their heads; therefore, they can only see, by means of the light of a fire burning behind them, the shadows upon the opposite wall, the shadows of real things that are carried between the fire and their backs, the shadows of each other and of themselves. These shadows are to the real things what the things of sensual perception are to the ideas, which are the true reality. The things of the sensually perceptible world come into existence and pass again, the ideas are eternal.”

Did not Kant teach this, too? Is not the perceptible world only a world of appearances for him also? To be sure, the sage from Koenigsberg did not attribute this eternal reality to the ideas, but with respect to the perception of the reality spread out in space and time, Schopenhauer thought Plato and Kant to be in complete agreement. Soon he also accepted this view as an irrevocable truth. He argued, “I have a knowledge of the things insofar as I see, hear, feel them, etc., that is to say, insofar as I have them as a thought picture in my mind's eye. An object then can be there for me only by being represented to my mind as a thought image. Heaven, earth, etc., are therefore my mind's imaginations, for the “thing in itself' that corresponds to them has become my mind's object only by taking on the character of a thought representation.”

[ 7 ] Although Schopenhauer found everything that Kant stated concerning the subjective character of the world of perception absolutely correct, he was not at all satisfied with regard to Kant's remarks concerning the thing in itself. Schulze had also been an opponent of Kant's view in this respect. How can we know anything at all of a “thing in itself"? How can we even express a word about it if our knowledge is completely limited to thought pictures of our mind, if the “thing in itself” lies completely outside their realm? Schopenhauer had to search for another path in order to come to the “thing in itself.” In his search he was influenced by the contemporary world conceptions more than he ever admitted. The element that Schopenhauer added to the conviction that he had from Kant and Plato as the “thing in itself,” we find also in Fichte, whose lectures he had heard in 1811 in Berlin. We also find this element in Schelling. Schopenhauer could hear the most mature form of Fichte's views in Berlin. This last form is preserved in Fichte's posthumous works. Fichte declared with great emphasis, while Schopenhauer, according to his own admission, “listened attentively,” that all being has its last roots in a universal will. As soon as man discovers will in himself, he gains the conviction that there is a world independent of himself as an individual. Will is not a knowledge of the individual but a form of real being. Fichte could also have called his world conception, The World as Knowledge and Will. In Schelling's book, Concerning the Nature of Human Freedom and Matters Connected with This Problem, we actually find the sentences, “In the last and deepest analysis there is no other being than will. Will is fundamental being and will alone can claim all its predicates: To be without cause, eternal, independent of time, self-assertive. All philosophy is striving for just this aim, to find this highest expression.”

That will is fundamental being becomes Schopenhauer's view also. When knowledge is extinguished, will remains, for will also precedes knowledge. “Knowledge has its origin in my brain,” says Schopenhauer, “but my brain must have been produced through an active, creative force. Man is aware of such a creative energy in his own will.” Schopenhauer now attempts to prove that what is active in all other things is also will. The will, therefore, is, as the “thing in itself,” at the root of all reality that is merely represented in the thought pictures of our mental life, and we can have a knowledge of this “thing in itself.” It is not, as Kant's “thing in itself,” beyond our perceptive imagination but we experience its actuality within our own organism.

[ 8 ] The development of modern world conception is progressive in Schopenhauer insofar as he is the first thinker to make the attempt to elevate one of the fundamental forces of the self-consciousness to the general principle of the world. The active self-consciousness contains the riddle of the age. Schopenhauer is incapable of finding a world picture that contains the roots of self-consciousness. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel had attempted to do that. Schopenhauer takes one force of the self-consciousness, will, and claims that this element is not merely in the human soul but in the whole world. Thus, for him, man is not rooted with his full self-consciousness in the world's foundation, but at least with a part of it, with his will. Schopenhauer thus shows himself to be one of those representatives of the evolution of modern world conception who can only partially encompass the fundamental riddle of the time within their consciousness.

[ 9 ] Goethe also had a profound influence on Schopenhauer. From the autumn of 1813 until the following spring, the young Schopenhauer enjoyed the company of the poet. Goethe introduced him personally to his doctrine of colors. Goethe's mode of conception agreed completely with the view that Schopenhauer had developed concerning the behavior of our sense organs and our mind in the process of perception of things and events. Goethe had undertaken careful and intensive investigations concerning the perceptions of the eye and phenomena of light and colors, and had elaborated their results in his work, Concerning the Doctrine of Colors. He had arrived at results that differed from those of Newton, the founder of the modern theory of color. The antagonism that exists in this field between Newton and Goethe cannot be judged properly if one does not start by pointing to the difference between the world conceptions of these two personalities. Goethe considered the sense organs of man as the highest physical apparatuses. For the world of colors, he therefore had to estimate the eye as his highest judge for the observation of law-determined connections. Newton and the physicists investigated the phenomena that are pertinent to this question in a fashion that Goethe called “the greatest misfortune of modern physics,” and that consisted in the fact that the experiments have been separated, as it were, from man.

One wants to know nature only according to the indications of artificial instruments and thereby even intends to limit and to prove what nature is capable of.

The eye perceives light and darkness and, within the light-dark field of observation, the colors. Goethe takes his stand within this field and attempts to prove how light, darkness and the colors are connected. Newton and his followers meant to observe the processes of light and colors as they would go on if there were no human eye. But the stipulation of such an external sphere is, according to Goethe's world conception, without justification. We do not obtain an insight into the nature of a thing by disregarding the effects we observe, but this nature is given to us through the mind's exact observation of the regularity of these effects. The effects that the eye perceives, taken in their totality and represented according to the law of their connection are the essence of the phenomena of light and color, not a separated world of external processes that are to be determined by means of artificial instruments.

It is really of no avail that we attempt to express directly the nature of a thing. What we are aware of are effects, and a complete account of these effects might possibly encompass the essence of that thing. Vainly do we endeavor to describe the character of a man; we put his deeds and actions together, however, and a picture of his character arises before our eyes. Colors are the actions of light; they are what light does and suffers. In this sense we can expect information from them concerning the nature of light. Color and light are indeed in close relation but we must think of them both as belonging to nature as a whole; for it is nature as a whole that is ready to manifest itself in special ways to the sense of the eye.

Here we find Goethe's world view applied to a special case. In the human organism, through its senses, through the soul of man, there is revealed what is concealed in the rest of nature. In man, nature reaches its climax. Whoever, therefore, like Newton, looks for the truth of nature outside man, will not find it, according to Goethe's fundamental conviction.

[ 10 ] Schopenhauer sees in the world that the mind perceives in space and time only an idea of this mind. The essence of this world of thought pictures is revealed to us in our will, by which we see our own organism permeated. Schopenhauer, therefore, cannot agree with a physical doctrine that sees the nature of light, not in the mental content of the eye, but in a world that is supposed to exist separated from the eye. Goethe's mode of conception was, for this reason, more agreeable to Schopenhauer because Goethe did not go beyond the world of the perceptual content of the eye. He considered Goethe's view to be a confirmation of his own opinion concerning this world. The antagonism between Goethe and Newton is not merely a question of physics but concerns the world conception as a whole. Whoever is of the opinion that a valid statement about nature can be arrived at through experiments that can be detached from the human being must take his stand with Newton's theory of color and remain on that ground. Modern physics is of this opinion. It can only agree with the judgment concerning Goethe's theory of colors that Helmholtz expressed in his essay, Goethe's Anticipations of Future Ideas in Natural Science:

Wherever it is a question of problems that can be solved through poetic divination producing imaginative pictures, the poet has shown himself capable of the most excellent work; wherever only a consciously applied inductive method could have helped, Goethe has failed.

If one sees in the pictures of human imagination only products that are added to an already complete nature, then it is of course necessary to determine what goes on in nature apart from these pictures. But if one sees in them manifestations of the essence contained in nature as Goethe did, then one will consult them in investigating the truth. Schopenhauer, to be sure, shares neither the first nor the second standpoint. He is not at all ready to recognize sense perceptions as containing the essence of things. He rejects the method of modern physics because physics does not limit itself to the element that alone is directly given, namely, that of perceptions as mental pictures. But Schopenhauer also transformed this question from a problem of physics into one of world conception. As he also begins his world conception with man and not with an external world apart from man, he had to side with Goethe, who had consistently drawn the conclusion for the theory of colors that necessarily follows if one sees in man with his healthy sense organs “the greatest and most exact physical apparatus.” Hegel, who as a philosopher stands completely on this foundation, had for this reason forcefully defended Goethe's theory of colors. He says in his Philosophy of Nature:

For the description of the color phenomenon that is adequate to its concept, we are indebted to Goethe, who was attracted early by the phenomena of color and light and who was drawn to their contemplation especially in painting; his pure and simple sense of nature had to revolt against such barbarism of reflected thought as is found in Newton. Goethe took up everything about light and color that had been stated and experimentally demonstrated since Plato. He conceived the phenomenon as simple, and the truest instinct of reason does consist in the ability of approaching a phenomenon from that side that allows its simplest representation.

[ 11 ] For Schopenhauer, the essential ground for all world processes is the will. It is an eternal dark urge for existence. It contains no reason because reason comes into existence only in the human brain, which in turn is created by the will. Hegel sees the spirit as the root of the world in self-conscious reason, and in human reason, only as individual realization of the general world reason. Schopenhauer, by contrast, recognizes reason only as a product of the brain, as a mere bubble that comes into being at the end of the process in which will, the unreasoning blind urge, has created everything else first. In Hegel, all things and processes are permeated by reason; in Schopenhauer, everything is without reason, for everything is the product of the will without reason. The personality of Schopenhauer exemplifies unequivocally a statement of Fichte, “The kind of world conception a man chooses depends on the kind of man he is.”

Schopenhauer had bad experiences and had become acquainted with the worst side of the world before he decided to spend his life in contemplation of it. It is for this reason that he is satisfied to depict the world as essentially deprived of reason as a result of blind will. Reason, according to his mode of thinking, has no power over unreason, for it is itself the result of unreason; it is illusion and dream, produced out of will. Schopenhauer's world conception is the dark, melancholy mood of his soul translated into thought. His eye was not prepared to follow the manifestations of reason in the world with pleasure. This eye saw only unreason that was manifest in sorrow and pain. Thus, his doctrine of ethics could only be based on the observation of suffering. An action is moral only if it has its foundation in such an observation. Sympathy, pity, must be the source of human actions. What better course could be taken by a man who has gained the insight that all beings suffer than to let his actions be guided by pity. As everything unreasonable and evil has its roots in will, man will stand morally the higher the more he mortifies his unruly will in himself. The manifestation of this will in the individual person is selfishness, egotism. Whoever surrenders to pity and thereby wills not for himself but for others, has become master of the will.

One method of freeing oneself from the will consists in surrendering to artistic creations and to the impressions that are derived from works of art. The artist does not produce to satisfy a desire for something; he does not produce his works because of a will that is selfishly directed toward things and events. His production proceeds out of unegotistic joy. He plunges into the essence of things in pure contemplation. This is also true of the enjoyment of art. As long as we approach a work of art with the desire stirring in us to own it, we are still entangled in the lower appetites of the will. Only when we admire beauty without desiring it have we raised ourselves to the lofty stage where we no longer are dependent on the blind force of will. Then art has become for us a means to free ourselves for the moment from the unreasoning force of the blind will to exist. The deliverance takes place in its purest form in the enjoyment of the musical work of art, for music does not speak to us through the medium of representative imagination as do the other arts. Music copies nothing in nature. As all things and events are only mental pictures, so also the arts that take these things as models can only make impressions on us as manifestations of imaginations. Man produces tone out of himself without a natural model. Because man has will as his own essence within himself, it can only be the will through which the world of music is directly released. It is for this reason that music so deeply moves the human soul. It does this because music is the manifestation of man's inner nature, his true being, his will, and it is a triumph of man that he is in possession of an art in which he enjoys selflessly, freed from the fetters of the will, what is the root of all desire, of all unreason. This view of Schopenhauer concerning music is again the result of his most personal nature. Even before his university years, when he was apprenticed to a merchant in Hamburg, he wrote to his mother:

How did the heavenly seed find a place on the hard ground on which necessity and poverty struggle for every little spot? We have been banished from the primordial spirit and are not to reach up to him. Yet, a pitiful angel has begged the heavenly flower for us and it blossoms in full glory rooted in this soil of misery. The pulsation's of the divine art of music have not ceased to beat through the centuries of barbarism, and a direct resonance of the eternal is preserved in this art for us, understandable to every soul and exalted above even vice and virtue.

[ 12 ] From the attitude that is taken toward art by the two antipodes of world conception, Hegel and Schopenhauer, one can learn how a world conception deeply affects the personal relation of man toward the various realms of life. Hegel, who saw in man's world of conceptions and ideas the climax toward which all external nature strives as its perfection, can recognize as the most perfect art only the one in which the spirit appears in its most perfect form, and in which this spirit at the same time clings to the element that continuously strives toward the spirit. Every formation of external nature tends to be spirit, but it does not reach this aim. When a man now creates such an external spatial form, endowing it as an artist with the spirit for which material itself strives without being capable of reaching it, then he has produced a perfect work of art. This is the case in the art of sculpture. What otherwise appears only in the inward life of the soul as formless spirit, as idea, is shaped by the artist out of matter. The soul, the inner life that we perceive in our consciousness as being without shape, is what speaks out of a statue, out of a formation of space. This marriage of the sensual world with the world of the spirit represents the artistic ideal of a world conception that sees the purpose of nature in the creation of the spirit, and therefore can also recognize the beautiful only in a work that appears as immediate expression of the spirit emerging in the form of nature. Whoever, like Schopenhauer, however, sees in all nature only mental pictures, cannot possibly recognize the ideal of art in a work that imitates nature. He must choose an art as his ideal that is free of all nature, that is to say, music.

[ 13 ] Schopenhauer considered everything that leads toward the extirpation, the mortification of the will quite consistently as desirable, for an extirpation of the will means an extinction of the unreasonable in the world. Man is to give up will. He is to kill all desire within himself. Asceticism is, for this reason, Schopenhauer's moral ideal. The wise man will extinguish within himself all wishes; he will annihilate his will completely. He will reach the point where no motivation forces him to exert his will. All striving consists merely in quietistic yearning for deliverance from all life. In the world-renouncing life-views in Buddhism, Schopenhauer acknowledged a doctrine of profound wisdom. Compared to Hegel's, one can thus call Schopenhauer's world view reactionary. Hegel attempted everywhere to affect a reconciliation of man with life; he always strove to present all action as a cooperation with a reason-directed order of the world. Schopenhauer regarded enmity to life, withdrawal from reality and world flight as the ideal of the wise man.

Hegel's mode of world and life conception contains an element that can produce doubts and questions. Hegel's point of departure is pure thinking, the abstract idea, which he himself once called “an oyster-like, gray or entirely black” being (in a letter to Goethe on February 20, 1821), of which he maintained at the same time should be considered the “representation of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite spirit.” The aim that he reaches is the individual human spirit endowed with a content of its own, through whom first comes to light what led only a shadow-like existence in a gray, oyster-like element. This can easily be understood to mean that a personality as a living self-conscious being does not exist outside the human spirit. Hegel derives the content-saturated element that we experience within ourselves from the ideal element that we obtain through thinking. It is quite comprehensible that a spirit of a certain inner disposition felt repulsed by this view of world and life. Only thinkers of such a selfless devotion as that of Karl Rosenkranz (1805–1879) could so completely find their way into Hegel's movement of thought and, in such perfect agreement with Hegel, create for themselves structures of ideas that appear like a rebirth of Hegel's own thought structure in a less impressive medium. Others could not understand how man is to be enlightened through pure idea with respect to the infinity and variety of the impressions that pour in on him as he directs his observations toward nature, crowded as it is with colors and forms, and how he is to profit if he lifts his soul from experiences in the world of sensation, feeling and perception-guided imagination to the frosty heights of pure thought. To interpret Hegel in this fashion is to misunderstand him, but it is quite comprehensible that he should have been misunderstood in this way.

This mood that was dissatisfied with Hegel's mode of thinking found expression in the current thought that had representatives in Franz Xaver von Baader (1765–1841), Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832), Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1797 – 1879), Christian Hermann Weisse (1801–1866), Anton Guenther (1783–1863), Karl Friedrich Eusebius Thrahndorff (1782–1863) Martin Deutinger (1815– 1864), and Hermann Ulrici (1806–1884). They attempted to replace the gray, oyster-like pure thought of Hegel by a life-filled, personal, primal entity, an individual God. Baader called it an “atheistic conception” to believe that God attained a perfect existence only in man. God must be a personality and the world must not, as Hegel thought, proceed from him like a logical process in which one concept always necessarily produces the next. On the contrary, the world must be God's free creation, the product of his almighty will. These thinkers approach the Christian doctrine of revelation. To justify and fortify this doctrine scientifically becomes the more-or-less conscious purpose of their thinking. Baader plunged into the mysticism of Jakob Boehme (1757–1624), Meister Eckhardt (1250– 1329), Tauler (1290–1361) and Paracelsus (1494–1541), whose language, so rich in pictures, he considered a much more appropriate means to express the most profound truths than the pure thoughts of Hegel's doctrine. That Baader also caused Schelling to enrich his thoughts with a deeper and warmer content through the assimilation's of conceptions from Jakob Boehme has already been mentioned.

In the course of the development of the modern world conception personalities like Krause will always be remarkable. He was a mathematician who allowed himself to be swayed by the proud, logically perfect character of this science, and attempted a solution of the problems of world conception after the model of the method he was used to as a mathematician. Typical of this kind of thinker is the great mathematician, Newton, who treated the phenomena of the visible universe as if it were an arithmetical problem but, at the same time, satisfied his own need concerning the fundamental questions of world conception in a fashion that approached the belief to be found in revealed religion. Krause finds it impossible to accept a conception that seeks the primal being of the world in the things and processes. Whoever, like Hegel, looks for God in the world cannot find him, for the world, to be sure, is in God, but God is not in the world. He is a self-dependent being resting within himself in blissful serenity. Krause's world of ideas rests on “thoughts of an infinite, self-dependent being, outside of which there is nothing; this being comprises everything by itself and in itself as the one ground, and that we have to think of as the ground of reason, nature and humanity.” He does not want to have anything in common with a view “that takes the finite or the world as the sum total of everything finite to be God itself, idolizing and confusing it with God.” No matter how deep one may penetrate into the reality given to the senses and the mind, one will never arrive in this way at the fundamental ground of all being. To obtain a conception of this being is possible only if one accompanies all finite observation with a divinatory vision of an over-worldly reality.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte settled his account with Hegelianism poignantly in his essay, Propositions for the Prolegomena of Theology (1826), and Contributions Toward a Characterization of Modern Philosophy (1829). Then, in numerous works, he tried to prove and elaborate his view that a conscious personal being must be recognized as the basis of all world phenomena. In order to procure an emphatic effect for the opposition to Hegel's conception, which proceeded from pure thought, Immanuel Hermann Fichte joined hands with friends who were of the same opinion. In 1837, together with Weisse, Sengler, K. Ph. Fischer, Chalybäs, Fr. Hoffmann, Ulrici, Wirth and others, he began the publication of the Journal for Philosophy and Speculative Theology. It is Fichte's conviction that we have risen to the highest knowledge only if we have understood that “the highest thought that truly solves the world problem is the idea of a primal subject or absolute personality, which knows and fathoms itself in its ideal as well as real infinity.”

The world creation and preservation that comprises the world reality, consists solely in the uninterrupted consciousness-permeated will-direction of God, such that he is only consciousness and will, but both in a highest union, therefore, only person, or person in the most eminent sense of the word.

Chr. Hermann Weisse believed that it was necessary to proceed from Hegel's world conception to a completely theological mode of conception. In the Christian idea of the three personalities in the one deity, he saw the aim of his thinking. He attempted to represent this idea as the result of a natural and unsophisticated common sense and did so with an uncommon array of ingenuity. In his triune, Weisse believed that in a personal deity possessing a living will he had something infinitely richer than Hegel with his gray idea. This living will is to “give to the inner godly nature with one breath the one definite form and no other that is implied at all places in the Holy Writ of the Old and New Testaments. In it, God is shown prior to the creation of the world as well as during and after that event in the shining element of his glory as surrounded by an interminable heavenly host of serving spirits in a fluid immaterial body, which enables him to fully communicate with the created world.”

[ 14 ] Anton Guenther, the “Viennese Philosopher,” and Martin Deutinger, who was under his influence, move with the thoughts of their world conception completely within the framework of the catholic theological mode of conception. Guenther attempts to free man from the natural world order by dividing him into two parts—a natural being that belongs to the world of necessary law, and a spirit being that constitutes a self-dependent part of a higher spirit world and has an existence comparable to an “entity” as described by Herbart. He believes that he overcomes Hegelianism in this manner and that he supplies the foundation for a Christian world conception. The Church itself was not of this opinion, for in Rome Guenther's writings were included in the Prohibitory Index. Deutinger fought vehemently against Hegel's “pure thinking,” which, in his opinion, ought to be prevented from devouring life-filled reality. He ranks the living will higher than pure thought. It can, as creative will, produce something; thought is powerless and abstract. Thrahndorff also takes living will as his point of departure. The world cannot be explained from the shadowy realm of ideas, but a vigorous will must seize these ideas in order to create real being. The world's deepest content does not unfold itself to man in thoughtful comprehension, but in an emotional reaction, in love through which the individual surrenders to the world, to the will that rules in the universe. It is quite apparent that all these thinkers endeavor to overcome thinking and its object, the pure idea. They are unwilling to acknowledge thinking as the highest manifestation of the spirit of man. In order to comprehend the ultimate substance of the world, Thrahndorff wants to approach it, not with the power of knowledge, but of love. It is to become an object of emotion, not of reason. It is the belief of these philosophers that through clear, pure thinking the ardent, religious devotion to the primordial forces of existence are destroyed.

[ 15 ] This opinion has its root in a misconception of Hegel's thought world. Its misunderstanding becomes especially apparent in the views concerning Hegel's attitude toward religion that spread after his death. The lack of clarity that began to prevail regarding this attitude resulted in a split among Hegel's followers into one party that considered his world conception to be a firm pillar of revealed Christianity, and another that used his doctrine to dissolve the Christian conceptions and to replace them by a radically liberal view.

[ 16 ] Neither party could have based its opinion on Hegel if they had understood him correctly, for Hegel's world conception contains nothing that can be used for support of a religion or for its destruction. He had meant to do this with respect to any religion as little as he had intended to create any natural phenomena through his pure thought. As he had set out to extract the pure thought from the processes of nature in order to comprehend them in that way, so he had also, in the case of religion, merely the intention to bring its thought content to the surface. As he considered everything that is real in the world as reasonable just because it is real, so he held this view also in regard to religion. It must come into existence by soul forces quite beyond those that are at the disposal of the thinker when he approaches them in order to comprehend them.

It was also an error of such thinkers as Fichte, Weisse, Deutinger and others that they fought against Hegel because he had not proceeded from the realm of pure thought to the religious experience of the personal deity. Hegel had never set himself a task of this kind. He considered that to be the task of the religious consciousness. The younger Fichte, Weisse, Krause, Deutinger and the rest wanted to create a new religion through their world conception. Hegel would have considered such a task to be as absurd as the wish to illuminate the world through the idea of light, or to create a magnet out of the thought of magnetism. To be sure, in Hegel's opinion, religion has its root in the idea, just as the whole world of nature and the spirit. For this reason, it is possible that the human spirit can rediscover this idea in religion, but as the magnet was created out of the thought of magnetism before the human mind came into being, and as the latter only afterwards has to comprehend the magnet's creation, so also religion has become what it is before its thought emerged in the human soul as an illuminating part of world conception. If Hegel had lived to experience the religious criticism of his pupils, he would have felt compelled to say, “Take your hands off all foundation of religion, off all creation of religious conceptions, as long as you want to remain thinkers and do not intend to become messiahs.” The world conception of Hegel, if it is correctly understood, cannot have a retroactive effect on the religious consciousness. The philosopher who reflects on the realm of art has the same relation to his object as the thinker who wants to fathom the nature of religion.

[ 17 ] The Halle Yearbooks, published from 1838 to 1843 by Arnold Ruge and Theodor Echtermeyer, served as a forum for the philosophical controversies of the time. Starting with a defense and explanation of Hegel, they soon proceeded to develop his ideas independently, and thus made the transition to the views that are called “radical world conceptions” in the next chapter. After 1841, the editors called their journal, The German Yearbook, and, as one of their aims, they considered “the fight against political illiberality, against theories of feudalism and landed property.” In the historical development of the time they became active as radical politicians, demanding a state in which perfect freedom prevails. Thus, they abandoned the spirit of Hegel, who wanted to understand history, not to make it.

[ 1 ] The concept “tree” is conditioned for our knowledge by the percept “tree.” When faced with a determinate percept I can select only one determinate concept from the general system of concepts. The connection of concept and percept is mediately and objectively determined by thinking in conformity with the percept. The connection between a percept and its concept is recognized after the act of perception, but the relevance of the one to the other is determined by the thing itself.

[ 2 ] The procedure is different when we examine knowledge, or rather the relation of man to the world which arises within knowledge. In the preceding chapters the attempt has been made to show that an unprejudiced observation of this relation is able to throw light on its nature. A correct understanding of this observation leads to the insight that thinking may be intuitively apprehended in its self-contained nature. Those who find it necessary, for the explanation of thinking as such, to invoke something else, e.g., physical brain-processes, or unconscious spiritual-processes lying behind the conscious thinking which they observe, fail to grasp the facts which an unprejudiced observation of thinking yields. When we observe our thinking, we live during the observation immediately within the essence of a spiritual, self-sustaining activity. Indeed we may even affirm that if we want to grasp the essential nature of Spirit in the form in which it immediately presents itself to man, we need but look at our own self-sustaining thinking.

[ 3 ] For the study of thinking two things coincide which elsewhere must always appear apart, viz., concept and percept. If we fail to see this, we shall be unable to regard the concepts which we have elaborated in response to percepts as anything but shadowy copies of these percepts, and we shall take the percepts as presenting to us reality as it really is. We shall, further, build up for ourselves a metaphysical world after the pattern of the perceived world. We shall, each according to his habitual thought-pictures, call this world a world of atoms, or of will, or of unconscious spirit, and so on. And we shall fail to notice that all the time we have been doing nothing but erecting hypothetically a metaphysical world modeled on our perceived world. But if we clearly apprehend what thinking consists in, we shall recognize that percepts present to us only a portion of reality, and that the complementary portion which alone imparts to reality its full character as real, is experienced by us in the permeation of percepts by thinking. We shall regard that which enters into consciousness as thinking, not as a shadowy copy of reality, but as a self-sustaining spiritual essence. We shall be able to say of it, that it is revealed to us in consciousness through intuition. Intuition is the purely spiritual conscious experience of a purely spiritual content. It is only through an intuition that we can grasp the essence of thinking.

[ 4 ] Only if one wins through, by means of unprejudiced observation, to the recognition of this truth of the intuitive essence of thinking will one succeed in clearing the way for a conception of the psycho-physical organization of man. One recognizes that this organization can produce no effect whatever on the essential nature of thinking. At first sight this seems to be contradicted by patent and obvious facts. For ordinary experience, human thinking occurs only in connection with, and by means of, such an organization. This dependence on psycho-physical organization is so prominent that its true bearing can be appreciated by us only if we recognize, that in the essential nature of thinking this organization plays no part whatever. Once we appreciate this, we can no longer fail to notice how peculiar is the relation of human organization to thinking. For this organization contributes nothing to the essential nature of thought, but recedes whenever the activity of thinking appears. It suspends its own activity, it yields ground. And the ground thus set free is occupied by thinking. The essence which is active in thinking has a two-fold function: first it restricts the human organization in its own activity; next, it steps into the place of it. Yes, even the former, the restriction of the physical organization, is an effect of the activity of thinking, and more particularly that part of this activity which prepares the manifestation of thinking. This explains the sense in which thinking has its counterpart in the organization of the body. Once we perceive this, we can no longer misapprehend the significance for thinking of this physical counterpart. When we walk over soft ground our feet leave impressions in the soil. We shall not be tempted to say that the forces of the ground, from below, have formed these footprints. We shall not attribute to these forces any share in the production of the footprints. Just so, if without prejudice we observe the essential nature of thinking, we shall not attribute any share in that nature to the traces in the physical organism which thinking produces in preparing its manifestation through the body.¹

[ 5 ] An important question, however, emerges here. If the human organization has no part in the essential nature of thinking, what is the function of this organization within the whole nature of man? The effects of thinking upon this organization have no bearing upon the essence of thinking, but they have a bearing upon the origin of the I-consciousness, through this thinking. Thinking, in its own character, contains the real “I,” but it does not contain, as such, the I-consciousness. To see this we have but to observe thinking with an open mind. The “I” is to be found in thinking. The “I-consciousness” arises through the traces which, in the sense above explained, the activity of thinking impresses upon our general consciousness. (The I-consciousness thus arises through the bodily organization. This view must not, however, be taken to imply that the I-consciousness, once it has arisen, remains dependent on the bodily organization. Once arisen it is taken up into thinking and shares henceforth the spiritual being of the latter.)

[ 6 ] The “I-consciousness” is built upon the human organization. The latter is the source of the acts of will. Following out the direction of the preceding exposition, we can gain insight into the connection of thinking, conscious I, and act of will, only by studying first how an act of will issues from the human organization.²

[ 7 ] In a particular act of will we must distinguish two factors: the motive and the spring of action. The motive is a factor of the nature of concept or representation; the spring of action is the factor in will which is directly conditioned in the human organization. The conceptual factor, or motive, is the momentary determining cause of an act of will; the spring of action is the permanent determining factor in the individual. The motive of an act of will may be a pure concept, or else a concept with a definite relation to perception, i.e., a representation. General and individual concepts (representations) become motives of will by influencing the human individual and determining him to action in a particular direction. One and the same concept however, or one and the same representation, influence different individuals differently. They impel different men to different actions. An act of will is, therefore, not merely the outcome of the concept or the representation, but also of the individual make-up of human beings. This individual make-up we will call, following Eduard von Hartmann, the “characterological disposition.” The manner in which concept and representation act on the characterological disposition of a man gives to his life a definite moral or ethical stamp.³

[ 8 ] The characterological disposition is formed by the more or less permanent content of the individual's life, that is, of the content of his representations and feelings. Whether a representation which enters my mind at this moment stimulates me to an act of will or not, depends on its relation to the rest of my representations, and also to my peculiar modes of feeling. The content of my representations in turn, is conditioned by the sum total of those concepts which have, in the course of my individual life, come in contact with percepts, that is, have become representations. This sum, again, depends on my greater or lesser capacity for intuition, and on the range of my observations, that is, on the subjective and objective factors of my experiences, on my inner nature (development) and place in life, and on my environment. My life of feeling more especially determines my characterological disposition. Whether I shall make a certain representation or concept the motive for action will depend on whether it gives me pleasure or pain.

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

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

[ 10 ] The springs of action in the moral life can be discovered by finding out the elements of which individual life is composed.

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

[ 12 ] The second level of human life is feeling. Definite feelings accompany the percepts of the external world. These feelings may become springs of action. When I see a hungry man, my pity for him may become the spring of my action. Such feelings, for example, are shame, pride, sense of honour, humility, remorse, pity, revenge, gratitude, piety, loyalty, love, and duty.⁴

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

[ 14 ] The highest level of individual life is that of conceptual thinking without reference to any definite perceptual content. We determine the content of a concept through pure intuition from the ideal sphere. Such a concept contains, at first, no reference to any definite percepts. When an act of will comes about under the influence of a concept which refers to a percept, i.e., under the influence of a representation, then it is this percept which determines our action indirectly by way of the conceptual thinking. But when we act under the influence of intuitions, the spring of our action is pure thinking. As it is the custom in philosophy to call the faculty of pure thinking “reason,” we may perhaps be justified in giving the name of practical reason to the moral spring of action characteristic of this level of life. The clearest account of this spring of action has been given by Kreyenbuehl (Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. xviii, No. 3).⁵ In my opinion his article on this subject is one of the most important contributions to present-day philosophy, more especially to Ethics. Kreyenbuehl calls the spring of action, of which we are treating, the practical a priori, i.e., a spring of action issuing immediately from my intuition.

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

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

[ 17 ] The motives of moral conduct are representations and concepts. There are Moralists who see in feeling also a motive of morality; they assert, e.g., that the aim of moral conduct is to secure the greatest possible quantity of pleasure for the acting individual. Pleasure itself, however, cannot become a motive; only its representation can. The representation of a future feeling, but not the feeling itself, can act on my characterological disposition. For the feeling does not yet exist in the moment of action; it has first to be produced by the action.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ 25 ] For such an action to be possible, we must first be capable of moral intuitions. Whoever lacks the capacity to experience for himself the moral principle that applies in each particular case, will never rise to the level of genuine individual willing.

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

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

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

[ 29 ] The decisive factor of an intuitively determined action in any concrete instance, is the discovery of the corresponding purely individual intuition. At this level of morality, there can be no question of general moral concepts (norms, laws), except in so far as these result from the generalization of the individual impulses. General norms always presuppose concrete facts from which they can be deduced. But facts have first to be created by human action.

[ 30 ] When we investigate the leading principles (the conceptual principles guiding the actions of individuals, peoples, epochs), we obtain a science of Ethics which is, however, not a science of moral norms, but rather a natural science of morality. Only, the laws discovered in this way are related to human action as the laws of nature are related to a particular phenomenon. These laws, however, are very far from being identical with the impulses on which we base our actions. If we want to understand how a man's action arises from his moral will, we must first study the relation of this will to the action. For this purpose we must single out for study those actions in which this relation is the determining factor. When I, or another, subsequently review my action we may discover what moral principles come into play in it. So long as I am acting, I am influenced by the principle of morality in so far as it lives in me intuitively; it is united with my love for the object which I want to realize through my action. I ask of no man and of no moral code, whether I shall perform this action or not. I carry it out as soon as I have formed the Idea of it. This alone makes it my action. If a man acts only because he accepts certain moral norms, his action is the outcome of the principles which compose his moral code. He merely carries out orders. He is a superior kind of automaton. Inject some stimulus to action into his mind, and at once the clockwork of his moral principles will begin to work and run its prescribed course, so as to issue in an action which is Christian, or humane, or seemingly unselfish, or calculated to promote the progress of culture. It is only when I follow solely my love for the object, that it is I, myself, who act. At this level of morality, I acknowledge no lord over me, neither an external authority, nor my so-called inner voice. I acknowledge no external principle of my action, because I have found in myself the ground for my action, viz., my love of the action. I do not examine with my intellect whether my action is good or bad; I perform it, because I am in love with it. My action is “good” when my intuition, immersed in love, inserts itself in the right way into the world-nexus as I experience it intuitively; it is “bad” when this is not the case. Neither do I ask myself how another man would act in my position. I act as I, this unique individuality, feel impelled to act. No general usage, no common custom, no general maxim current among men, no moral norm is my immediate guide, but my love for the action. I feel no compulsion, neither the compulsion of nature which dominates me through my instincts, nor the compulsion of the moral commandments. My will is simply to realize what in me lies.

[ 31 ] Those who defend general moral norms will reply to these arguments that, if everyone strives to live his own life and do what he pleases, there can be no distinction between a good action and a crime; every fraudulent impulse in me has the same right to issue in action as the intention to serve the general good. It is not the mere fact of my having conceived the Idea of an action which ought to determine me as a moral being, but the examination of whether it is a good or an evil action. Only if it is good shall I carry it out.

[ 32 ] This objection is easily intelligible, and yet it had its root in what is but a misapprehension of my meaning. My reply to it is this: If we want to get at the essence of human volition we must distinguish between the path along which volition attains to a certain degree of development, and the unique character which volition assumes as it approaches its goal. It is on the path towards the goal that the norms play a legitimate part. The goal consists of the realization of moral aims which are apprehended by pure intuition. Man attains such aims in proportion as he is able to rise at all to the level at which intuition grasps the Idea-content of the world. In any particular volition, other elements will, as a rule, be mixed up, as springs of action or motives, with such moral aims. But, for all that, intuition may be, wholly or in part, the determining factor in human volition. What one should do, that one does. One supplies the stage upon which, what one should do, becomes action. One's own action is what one lets come forth from oneself. The impulse, here, can only be wholly individual. And, in fact, only an action which issues out of intuition can be individual. To regard evil, the deed of a criminal, as a manifestation of the human individuality in the same sense as the embodiment of pure intuition, is a confusion which only becomes possible when blind instincts are reckoned as part of the human individuality.

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

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

[ 35 ] Man is free in so far as, in every moment of his life, he is able to obey only himself. A moral act is my act only when it can be called free in this sense. So far we are concerned here with the presuppositions under which an act of will is felt to be free; the sequel will show how this purely ethical Idea of freedom becomes realized in the essential nature of man.

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

[ 37 ] But how about the possibility, of social life for men, if each aims only at asserting his own individuality? This question expresses yet another objection on the part of Moralism wrongly understood. The Moralist believes that a social community is possible only if all men are held together by a commonly fixed moral order. This shows that the Moralist does not understand the identity of the world of Ideas. He does not grasp that the world of Ideas which inspires me is no other than that which inspires my fellow-man. This unity is, indeed, but a result of the experience of the world. It cannot be anything else. For if we could recognize it in any other way than by observation, it would follow that not individual experience, but universal norms, were dominant in its sphere. Individuality is possible only if every individual being knows of others only through individual observation. I differ from my neighbour, not at all because we are living in two entirely different spiritual worlds, but because from our common world of Ideas we receive different intuitions. He desires to live out his intuitions, I mine. If we both draw our intuitions really from the world of Ideas, and do not obey mere external impulses (physical or spiritual), then we cannot but meet one another in striving for the same aims, in having the same intentions. A moral misunderstanding, a clash is impossible between men who are morally free. Only the morally unfree who follow their natural instincts or the accepted commands of duty, turn their backs on their neighbours, if these do not obey the same instincts and the same laws as themselves. To live in love of action and to let live in understanding of the other's volition, this is the fundamental maxim of the free man. He knows no other “ought” than that with which his will intuitively puts itself in harmony. How he shall will in any given case, that will be determined for him by his faculty of conceiving Ideas.

[ 38 ] If sociability were not deeply rooted in human nature, no external laws would be able to inoculate us with it. It is only because human beings are one in spirit that they can live out their lives side by side. The free man lives out his life in the full confidence that all other free men belong to one spiritual world with himself, and that their intentions will harmonize with his. The free man does not demand accord from his fellow-man, but he expects it none the less, because it is inherent in human nature. I am not referring here to the necessity for this or that external institution. I refer to the disposition, the attitude of soul, through which a man, aware of himself among his fellow-men for whom he cares, comes nearest to living up to the ideal of human dignity.

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

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

[ 41 ] This is an ideal, many will say. Doubtless; but it is an ideal which is a real element in us working its way to the surface of our nature. It is no ideal born of mere imagination or dream, but one which has life, and which announces itself clearly even in the least perfect form of its existence. If men were nothing but beings of nature, the search for ideals, that is, for Ideas which as yet are not actual but the realization of which we demand, would be an impossibility. In dealing with external objects the Idea is determined by the percept. We have done our share when we have recognized the connection between Idea and percept. But with the human being the case is different. The content of his existence is not determined without him. His true concept as a moral being (free spirit) is not a priori united objectively with the percept-picture “man,” so that knowledge need only register the fact subsequently. Man must by his own act unite his concept with the percept “man.” Concept and percept coincide with one another in this instance only in so far as man himself makes them coincide. This he can do only if he has found the concept of the free spirit, that is, if he has found his own concept. In the objective world, a boundary-line is drawn by our organization between percept and concept. Knowledge breaks down this barrier. In our subjective nature this barrier is no less present. Man overcomes it in the course of his development, by unfolding his concept in his outward existence. Hence man's intellectual as well as his moral life lead alike to his two-fold nature, perception (immediate experience) and thinking. The intellectual life overcomes his two-fold nature by means of knowledge, the moral life succeeds through the actual realization of the free spirit. Every being has its inborn concept (the law of its existence and action), but in external objects this concept is indissolubly bound up with the percept, and separated from it only in our spiritual organization. In man concept and percept are, at first, actually separated, to be just as actually reunited by him.

Someone might object that to our percept of a man there corresponds at every moment of his life a definite concept, just as with every other object. I can form for myself the concept of an average man, and I may also find such a man given to me as percept. Suppose now I add to this the concept of a free spirit, then I have two concepts for the same object.

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

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

[ 44 ] From the standpoint of free morality, then, it is not asserted that the free spirit is the only form in which a man can exist. The freedom of the spirit is looked upon only as the last stage in man's evolution. This is not to deny that conduct according to norms has its legitimate place as a stage in development. The point is that we cannot acknowledge it to be the absolute standpoint in morality. For the free spirit transcends norms, in the sense that he recognizes as motives not commands alone, but he regulates his conduct in accordance with his impulses (intuitions).

[ 45 ] When Kant apostrophizes duty: “Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name, that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission,” thou that “holdest forth a law ... before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly counter-work it,” ⁶ then the free spirit replies: “Freedom! thou kindly and humane name, which dost embrace within thyself all that is morally most beloved, all that my manhood most prizes, and which makest me the servant of nobody, which settest up no mere law, but waitest what my moral love itself will recognize as law, because it feels itself unfree in presence of every law that is forced upon it.”

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

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

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

[ 48 ] We must not coin the formula: Man exists only in order to realize a moral world-order which is independent of him. Anyone who maintains that he does stands, in his science of man, still at that same point at which natural science stood when it believed that a bull has horns in order that it may butt. Scientists, happily, have cast the concept of objective purposes in nature into the limbo of dead theories. For Ethics, it is more difficult to achieve the same emancipation. But just as horns do not exist for the sake of butting, but butting because of horns, so man does not exist for the sake of morality, but morality exists through man. The free man acts morally because he has a moral Idea, he does not act in order that morality may come into being. Human individuals, with the moral Ideas belonging to their nature, are the presupposition of a moral world-order.

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

• 1. The way in which the above view has influenced psychology, physiology, etc., in various directions has been set forth by the author in works published after this book. Here he is concerned only with characterizing the results of an unbiased observation of thinking itself.
• 2. The passage from p. 111 down to this point was added, or rewritten for the Revised Edition (1918).
• 3. Students of modern science may care to turn at once to the Editor's Note on p. 135.
• 4. A complete catalogue of the principles of morality (from the point of view of Metaphysical Realism) may be found in Eduard von Hartmann's Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins.
• 5. Ethical-Spiritual Activity in Kant
• *. Editor's Note: The distinction here drawn by Dr. Steiner between “motive” and “spring of action” is of fundamental importance and is implicit in the common English usage of these terms. But because this distinction has been blurred in recent scientific works the word “motive” has come to have a different technical usage which may confuse some readers of this book.
  An example of the psychological usage is R. Woodworth's definition of “motive” as “a state or set of the individual which disposes him for certain behaviour and for seeking certain goals.” This does not bring out the important difference, to which Steiner draws attention, between having a goal, purpose or task, which a man finds by the characteristically human activity of thinking and adopts as the right thing to do in the particular circumstances, and being stimulated by a percept or feeling to an impulsive or emotional act. Steiner uses the term “motive” only when the act of will comes about under the influence of a concept or representation, and he traces a progressive ascent in this direction to the point where action is determined by the content of pure intuition.
  An instance of contemporary ethical usage is A. C. Ewing's alternative definitions of “motive” as “(i) Desires causing action or (ii) Circumstances relevant to an action to which attention is directed at the time.” Here, also, recognition of the unique character of a motive grasped out of pure intuition is precluded.
  In the first part of this book Dr. Steiner has shown how a concept can be grasped by the Ego from the thought-content of the world in a fully conscious act of intuition. In this chapter and the subsequent discussion of moral imagination he shows how such a freely grasped concept can be imprinted on the world as deed without losing the element of freedom. Thus it is shown how the spirit can work creatively in a human act of free will.
  Upon the recognition of this fact depends a clear understanding of the essential difference between man, who can develop the power to create freely out of the spirit, and the animal.
• 6. Translation by Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 180; Critique of Practical Reason, chap. iii.

[ 1 ] We have presented Nietzsche's opinion about supermen as they stand before us in his last writings; Zarathustra (1883-1884), Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Genealogie der Moral, Genealogy of Morals. (1887), Der Fall Wagner, The Case of Wagner (1888), Götzendämmerung, The Twilight of Idols (1889). In the incomplete work, Der Wille zur Macht, The Will to Power, the first part of which appeared as Antichrist in the eighth volume of the Complete Works, these opinions have been given their most significant philosophical expression. From the text of the appendix to the above-mentioned volume, this becomes quite clear. The work is called 1. The Antichrist, attempt at a criticism of Christendom. 2. The Free Spirit, criticism of philosophy as a nihilistic movement. 3. The Immoralist, criticism of the most ominous type of ignorance: morality.

[ 2 ] At the very beginning of his writing career, Nietzsche did not express his thoughts in their most characteristic form. At first he stood under the influence of German idealism, in the manner in which it was represented by Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner. This expresses itself in his first writings as Schopenhauer and Wagner formulas, but the one who can see through these formulations into the kernel of Nietzsche's thoughts, finds in these writings the same purposes and goals which come to expression in his later works.

[ 3 ] One cannot speak of Nietzsche's development without being reminded of that freest thinker who was brought forth by mankind of the new age, namely, Max Stirner. It is a sad truth that this thinker, who fulfills in the most complete sense what Nietzsche requires of the superman, is known and respected by only a few. Already in the forties of the nineteenth century, he expressed Nietzsche's world conception. Of course he did not do this in such comfortable heart tones as did Nietzsche, but even more in crystal clear thoughts, beside which Nietzsche's aphorisms often appear like mere stammering.

[ 4 ] What path might Nietzsche not have taken if, instead of Schopenhauer, his teacher had been Max Stirner! In Nietzsche's writing no influence of Stirner whatsoever is to be found. By his own effort, Nietzsche had to work his way out of German idealism to a Stirner-like world conceptIon.

[ 5 ] Like Nietzsche, Stirner is of the opinion that the motivating forces of human life can be looked for only in the; single, real personality. He rejects all powers that wish; to form and determine the individual personality from outside. He traces the course of world history and discovers the fundamental error of mankind to be that it does not place before itself the care and culture of the individual personality, but other impersonal goals and purposes instead. He sees the true liberation of mankind in that men refuse to grant to all such goals a higher reality, but merely use these goals as a means of their self-cultivation. The free human being determines his own purposes; he possesses his ideals; he does not allow himself to be possessed by them. The human being who does not rule over his ideals as a free personality, stands under the same influence as the insane person who suffers from fixed ideas. It is all the same for Stirner if a human being imagines himself to be “Emperor of China” or if “a comfortable bourgeois imagines it is his destiny to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous human being, and so on. That is all one and the same ‘fixed idea.’ The one who has never attempted and dared not to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, or a virtuous human being, and so on, is caught and held captive in orthodoxy, virtuousness, etc.”

[ 6 ] One need read only a few sentences from Stirner's book, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, The Individual and his very Own, to see how his conception is related to that of Nietzsche. I shall quote a few passages from this book which are specially indicative of Stirner's way of thinking:

[ 7 ] “Pre-Christian and Christian times follow opposite goals. The former wish to idealize the real, the latter to realize the ideal. The former looks for the ‘Holy Spirit,’ the latter for the ‘transfigured body.’ For this reason, the former comes to insensitivity toward the real, with contempt for the world; the latter ends with the rejection of ideals, with ‘contempt for the spirit.’

[ 8 ] “As the stream of sanctification or purification penetrates through the old world (the washings, etc.), so the actual incorporation penetrates into the Christian; the God throws Himself into this world, becomes flesh and redeems it, that is, He fills it with Himself; but since He is ‘the idea’ or ‘the spirit,’ therefore in the end one (for example, Hegel) carries the idea into everything of this world and proves ‘that the idea, that intellect, is within all things.’ Him whom the heathen Stoics represented as ‘the wise one,’ compares with the ‘human being’ in today's culture, and each of them is a bodiless being. The unreal ‘wise one,’ this bodiless ‘holy one,’ of the stories becomes a real person, an embodied holy one, in the God who has become flesh; the unreal ‘human being,’ the bodiless I, becomes reality in the embodied I, in me.

[ 9 ] “That the individual himself is a world history and possesses in the rest of world history his essential self, transcends the usual Christian thought. To the Christian, world history is made more important because it is the history of Christ or of ‘man;’ for the egotist, only his own history has value because he wishes to develop himself, not the idea of mankind; he does not wish to develop the divine plan, the intentions of divine providence, freedom, and so on. He does not regard himself as an instrument of the idea or as a vessel of God; he acknowledges no profession, does not claim to be here for the further development of mankind, and to add his little mite, but he lives his life in indifference to this, oblivious of how well or how ill mankind itself is faring. If it would not lead to the misunderstanding that a condition of nature was to be praised, one could recall Lenaus' Drei Zigeuner, Three Gypsies:—‘What am I in the world to realize ideas?’—To bring about the realization of the idea, ‘State,’ by doing my bit for citizenship, or by marriage, as husband and father, to bring into existence the idea of family? What matters such a profession to me? I live according to a profession as little as the flower grows and perfumes the air according to a profession.

[ 10 ] “The ideal of ‘the human being’ is realized when the Christian concept is reversed in the sentence: ‘I, this unique one, am the human being.’ The conceptual question, ‘What is man?’ has then transposed itself into the personal one, ‘Who is man?’ By ‘what,’ one seeks for the concept in order to realize it; with ‘who,’ it is no longer a question at all, but the answer is immediately present within the questioner: the question answers itself.

[ 11 ] “About God one says, ‘Names do not name You.’ That also is valid for the ‘me:’ no concept expresses the ‘me;’ nothing one gives as my being exhausts me; they are only names. Likewise, one says about God that He is perfect and has no obligation to strive for perfection. This also is valid for me alone.

[ 12 ] “I am the possessor of my own power, and I am this when I know myself to be the unique one. Within this unique one the possessor of self returns again into his creative nothingness, out of which he was born. Each higher being above me, be it God or be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and only fades before the sun of the consciousness: If I base my affairs upon myself, upon the individual, then they stand upon the temporal, upon the mortal creator who devours himself, and, I may say: [ 13 ] ‘I have based my affairs upon nothing.’”

[ 14 ] This person dependent only upon himself, this possessor of creativity out of himself alone, is Nietzsche's superman.

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[ 5 ] These Stirner thoughts would have been the suitable vessel into which Nietzsche could have poured his rich life of feeling; instead, he looked to Schopenhauer's world of concepts for the ladder upon which he could climb to his own world of thought.

[ 6 ] Our entire world knowledge stems from two roots, according to Schopenhauer's opinion. It comes out of the life of reflection, and out of the awareness of will, namely, that which appears in us as doer. The “thing in itself” lies on the other side of the world of our reflections. For the reflection is only the effect which the “thing in itself” exercises upon my organ of knowledge. I know only the impressions which the things make upon me, not the things themselves. And these impressions only form my reflections. I know no sun and no earth, but only an eye which sees a sun, and a hand which touches the earth. Man knows only that, “The world which surrounds him is only there as reflection, that is, absolutely in relation to something else: the reflected, which is he himself.” (Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, World as Will and Reflection, ¶ 1.) However, the human being does not merely reflect the world, but is also active within it; he becomes conscious of his own will, and he learns that what he feels within himself as will can be perceived from outside as movement of his body; that is, the human being becomes aware of his own acts twice: from within as reflection, and from outside as will. Schopenhauer concludes from this that it is the will itself which appears in the perceived body motion as reflection. And he asserts further that not only is the reflection of one's own body and movements based upon will, but that this is also the case behind all other reflections. The whole world then, in Schopenhauer's opinion, according to its very essence, is will, and appears to our intellect as reflection. This will, Schopenhauer asserts, is uniform in all things. Only our intellect causes us to perceive a multitude of differentiated things.

[ 17 ] According to this point of view, the human being is connected with the uniform world being through this will. Inasmuch as man acts, the uniform, primordial will works within him. Man exists as a unique and special personality only in his own life of reflection; in essence he is identical with the uniform groundwork of the world.

[ 18 ] If we assume that as he came to know Schopenhauer's philosophy, the thought of the superman already existed unconsciously, instinctively in Nietzsche, then this teaching of the will could only affect him sympathetically. In the human will Nietzsche found an element which allowed man to take part directly in the creation of the world-content. As the one who wills, man is not merely a Spectator standing outside the world-content, who makes for himself pictures of reality, but he himself is a creator. Within him reigns that divine power above which there is no other.

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[ 19 ] Out of these viewpoints within Nietzsche the ideas of the Apollonian and of the Dionysian world conceptions form themselves. He turns these two upon the Greek life of an, letting them develop according to two roots, namely, out of an art of representation and out of an art of willing. When the reflecting human being idealizes his world of reflection and embodies his idealized reflections in works of art, then the Apollonian art arises. He lends the shine of the eternal to the individual objects of reflection, through the fact that he imbues them with beauty. But he remains standing within the world of reflection. The Dionysian artist tries not only to express beauty in his works of art, but he even imitates the creative working of the world will. In his own movements he tries to image the world spirit. He makes himself into a visible embodiment of the will. He himself becomes a work of art. “In singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten the art of walking and speaking, and is about to fly, to dance up into the air. Out of his gestures this enchantment speaks.” Geburt der Tragödie, Birth of Tragedy, ¶ 1.) In this condition man forgets himself, he no longer feels himself as an individuum; he lets the universal world will reign within him In this way Nietzsche interprets the festivals which were given by the servants of Dionysus in honor of the latter. In the Dionysian servant Nietzsche sees the archetpictures of the Dionysian artist. Now he imagines that the oldest dramatic art of the Greeks came into existence for the reason that a higher union of the Dionysian with the Apollonian had taken place. In this way he explains the origin of the first Greek tragedy. He assumes that the tragedy arose out of the tragic chorus. The Dionysian human being becomes the spectator, the observer of a picture which represents himself. The chorus is the self-reflection of a Dionysically aroused human being, that is, the Dionysian human being sees his Dionysian stimulation reflected through an Apollonian work of art. The presentation of the Dionysian in the Apollonian picture is the primitive tragedy. The assumption of such a tragedy is that in its creator a living consciousness of the connection of man with the primordial powers of the world is present. Such a consciousness expresses itself in the myths. The mythological must be the object of the oldest tragedies. When, in the development of a people the moment arrives that the destructive intellect extinguishes the living feeling for myths, the death of the tragic is the necessary consequence.

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[ 20 ] In the development of Greek culture, according to Nietzsche, this moment began with Socrates. Socrates was an enemy of all instinctive life which was bound up with powers of nature. He allowed only that to be valid which the intellect could prove in its thinking, that which was teachable. Through this, war was declared upon the myth, and Euripides, described by Nietzsche as the pupil of Socrates, destroyed tragedy because his creating sprang no longer out of the Dionysian instinct, as did that of Aeschylus, but out of a critical intellect. Instead of the imitation of the movements of the world spirit's will, in Euripides is found the intellectual knitting together of individual events within the tragic action.

I do not ask for the historical justification of these ideas of Nietzsche. Because of them he was sharply attacked by a classical philologist. Nietzsche's description of Greek culture can be compared to the picture a man gives of a landscape which he observes from the summit of a mountain; it is a philological presentation of a description which a traveler could give who visits each single little spot. From the top of the mountain many a thing is distorted, according to the laws of optics.

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[ 21 ] What comes into consideration here is the question: What task does Nietzsche place before himself in his Geburt der Tragödie, Birth of Tragedy? Nietzsche is of the, opinion that the older Greeks well knew the sufferings of existence. “There is the old story that for a long time King Midas had chased the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without being able to catch him. When the latter had finally fallen into his hands, the king asked, ‘What is the very best and the most excellent for the human being?’ Then, rigid and immovable, the demon remained, silent, until, forced by the king he finally broke out into shrill laughter with these words: ‘Miserable temporal creature! Child of accident and misery! Why do you force In to tell you what is most profitable for you not to hear? The very best for you is entirely unattainable, namely, not to be born, not to exist, to be nothing. But the second best is for you to die soon.’” (Geburt der Tragödie, Birth of Tragedy, ¶ 3.) In this saying Nietzsche finds a fundamental feeling of the Greeks expressed. He considers it a superficiality when one presents the Greeks as a continually merry, childishly playful people. Out of the tragic feeling of the Greeks had to arise the impulse to create something whereby existence became bearable. They looked for justification of existence, and found this within the world of the Gods and in their art. Only through the counter image of the Olympic Gods and art could raw reality become bearable for the Greeks. The fundamental question in the Geburt der Tragödie, Birth of Tragedy, and for Nietzsche himself is, To what extent does Greek art foster life, and to what extent does it maintain life? Nietzsche's fundamental instinct in regard to art as a life-fostering power, already makes itself known in this first work.

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[ 22 ] Still another fundamental instinct of Nietzsche's is to be observed in this work. It is his aversion toward the merely logical spirit, whose personality stands completely under the domination of his intellect. From this aversion stems Nietzsche's opinion that the Socratic spirit was the destroyer of Greek culture. Logic for Nietzsche is merely a form in which a person expresses himself. If no further modes of expression are added to this form, then the personality appears as a cripple, as an organism in which the necessary organs are atrophied. Because in Kant's writings Nietzsche could discover only the pondering intellect, he called Kant a “mis-grown concept cripple.” Only when logic is the means of expression of deeper fundamental instincts of a personality does Nietzsche grant it validity. Logic must be the outflow for the super-logical in a personality. Nietzsche always rejected the Socratic intellect. We read in the Götzendämmerung, Twilight of Idols, “With Socrates the Greek taste reverses in the direction of dialectic; what is it that really happens? Above all, an aristocratic taste is overthrown; the common people get the upper hand with dialectic. Before Socrates, the dialectic manners were rejected in good society; they were considered bad manners, they merely posed.” (Problem of Socrates, ¶ 5.) If powerful fundamental instincts do not uphold a position, then the intellect which has to ‘prove’ sets in, and tries to support the matter by legal artifices.

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[ 23 ] Nietzsche believed that in Richard Wagner he recognized a restorer of the Dionysian spirit. Out of this belief he wrote the fourth of his Unzeitgemässen Betrachtungen, Untimely Observations, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, 1875. During this time he was still a strong believer in the interpretation of the Dionysian spirit which he had constructed for himself with the aid of Schopenhauer's philosophy. He still believed that reality was solely human reflection, and that beyond the world of reflection was the essence of things in the form of primordial will. And the creative Dionysian spirit had not yet become for him the human being creating out of himself, but was the human being forgetting himself and arising out of primordial willing. For him, Wagner's music-dramas were pictures of the ruling primordial will, created by one of those Dionysian spirits abandoned to this same primordial will.

[ 24 ] And since Schopenhauer saw in music an immediate image of the will, Nietzsche also believed that he should see in music the best means of expression for a Dionysian creative spirit. To Nietzsche, the language of civilized people appears sick. It can no longer be the simple expression of feelings, because words must gradually be used more and more to express the increasing intellectual conditioning of the human being. But, because of this, the meaning of words has become abstract, has become poor. They can no longer express what the Dionysian spirit feels, who creates out of this primordial will. The Dionysian spirit, therefore, is no longer able to express himself in the dramatic element in words. He must call upon other means of expression to help, above all, upon music, but also upon other arts. The Dionysian spirit becomes a dithyrambic dramatist. This concept “is so all encompassing that it includes at the; same time, the dramatist, the poet, the musician” ... “Regardless how one may imagine the development of the archetypal dramatist, in his maturity and completeness he is a figure without any hindrances whatsoever and without any gaps; he is the really free artist, who can do nothing but think in all the arts at the same time, the mediator and conciliator between apparently separate spheres, the reconstructor of a unity and totality of artistic possibilities which cannot be at all conjectured or inferred, but can be shown only through the deed.” (Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, ¶ 7) Nietzsche revered Richard Wagner as a Dionysian spirit, and Richard Wagner can only be described as a Dionysian spirit as Nietzsche represented the latter in the above mentioned work. His instincts are turned toward the beyond; he wants to let the voice of the beyond ring forth in his music. I have already indicated that later Nietzsche found and could recognize those of his instincts which by their own nature were directed toward this world. He had originally misunderstood Wagner's art because he had misunderstood himself, because he had allowed his instincts to be tyrannized by Schopenhauer's philosophy. This subordination of his own instincts to a foreign spirit power appeared to him later like a sickness. He discovered that he had not listened to his instincts, and had allowed himself to be led astray by an opinion which was not in accord with his, that he had allowed an art to work upon these instincts which could only be to their disadvantage, and which finally had to make them ill.

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[ 25 ] Nietzsche himself described the influence which Schopenhauer's philosophy, which was antagonistic to his basic impulses, had made upon him. He described it when he still believed in this philosophy, in his third Unzeitgemässen Betrachtung, Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Untimely Observations, Schopenhauer as Educator (1874) at a time when Nietzsche was looking for a teacher. The right teacher can only be one who works upon the pupil in such a way that the inmost kernel of the pupil's being develops out of the personality. Every human being is influenced by the cultural media of the time in which he lives. He takes into himself what the time has to offer in educational material. But the question is, how can he find himself in the midst of all that is pressing in upon him from outside; how can he spin out of himself what he, and only he, and nobody else can be. “The human being who does not wish to belong to the masses needs only to stop being comfortable with himself; he should follow his voice of conscience which calls to him, Be yourself! That is not innately you, that which you are now doing, now intending, now desiring! Thus speaks the human being to himself, who one day discovers that he has always been satisfied to take educational material into himself from outside.” (opus cit, ¶ 1) Through the study of Schopenhauer's philosophy, Nietzsche found himself nevertheless, even if not yet in his most essential selfhood. Nietzsche strove unconsciously to express himself simply and honestly, according to his own basic impulses. Around him he found only people who expressed themselves in the educational formulas of their time, who hid their essential being behind these formulas. But in Schopenhauer Nietzsche discovered a human being who had the courage to make his personal feelings regarding the world into the content of his philosophy: “the hearty well being of the speaker” surrounded Nietzsche at the first reading of Schopenhauer's sentences. “Here is an harmonious, strengthening air; this is what we feel; here is a certain inimitable unreservedness and naturalness, as in those people who feel at home with themselves, and indeed are masters of a very rich home, in contrast to those writers who admire themselves most when they have been intellectual and whose writing thereby receives something restless and contrary to nature.” “Schopenhauer speaks with himself, or, if one absolutely must imagine a listener, then one should imagine a son whom the father instructs. It is a hearty, rough, good-natured expressing of one's mind to a listener who listens with love.” (Schopenhauer ¶ 2) What attracted Nietzsche to Schopenhauer was that he heard a human being speak who expressed his innermost instincts.

[ 26 ] Nietzsche saw in Schopenhauer a strong personality who was not transformed through philosophy into a mere intellectual, but a personality who made use of logic merely to express the super-logic, the instinctive in himself. “His yearning for a stronger nature, for a healthier and simpler mankind, was a yearning for himself, and as soon as he had conquered his time within himself, then with astonished eyes, he had to see the genius within himself.” (Schopenhauer ¶ 3.) Already in those days the striving after the idea of the superman who searches for himself as the meaning of his own existence was working in Nietzsche's mind, and such a searcher he found in Schopenhauer. In such human beings he saw the purpose, indeed, the only purpose of, world existence; nature appeared to him to have reached a goal when she brought forth such a human being. Here “Nature, who never leaps, has made her only jump, and indeed a jump of joy, for she feels herself for the first time) at the goal, where she comprehends that she must abandon having goals.” (Schopenhauer ¶ 5) In this sentence lies the kernel of the conception of the superman. When he wrote this sentence Nietzsche wanted exactly the same thing that he later wanted from his Zarathustra, but he still lacked the power to express this desire in his own language. Already at the time when he wrote his Schopenhauer book, he saw in his conception of the superman, the fundamental idea of culture.

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[ 27 ] In the development of the personal instincts of the single human being, Nietzsche sees the goal of all human development. What works contrary to this development appears to him as the fundamental sin against mankind. But there is something within the human being which rebels in a quite natural way against his free development. The human being does not allow himself to be led only by his impulses, which are always active within him at every single moment, but also by all that he has collected in his memory. The human being remembers his own experiences. He tries to create for himself a consciousness of the experiences of his nation, his tribe, yes, of all mankind through the course of history. Man is an historical being. The animals live unhistorically: they follow impulses which are active within them at one single moment. Man lets himself be determined through his past. When he wants to undertake something he asks himself, What have I or someone else already experienced with a similar undertaking? Through the recollection of an experience the stimulus for an action can be completely killed. From the observation of this fact, the question arises for Nietzsche: To what extent does the human being's memory capacity benefit his life, and to what extent does it work to his disadvantage? The recollection which tries to encompass things which the human being himself has not experienced, lives within him as an historical sense, as study of the past. Nietzsche asks, To what extent does the historical sense foster life? He tries to give the answer to this question in his second Unzeitgemässen Betrachtung, Von Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, Untimely Observations, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life (1873). The occasion for this writing was Nietzsche's perception that the historical sense among his contemporaries, especially among the scholars, had become an outstanding characteristic. To probe deeply into the past: this type of study Nietzsche found praised everywhere. Only through knowledge of the past was man to gain the capacity to differentiate between what is possible and what is impossible for him; this confession of faith drummed itself into his ears. Only the one who knows how a nation has developed can estimate what is advantageous for its future; this cry Nietzsche heard. Yes, even the philosophers wished to think up nothing new, but would rather study the thoughts of their ancestors. This historical sense worked paralysingly upon the creativity of the present. In the one who, with every impulse that stirs within him, has to determine first to what end a similar impulse has led in the past, the forces are lamed before they have become active. “Imagine the extreme example of a human being who simply does not possess the power to forget, who is condemned to see a coming into being everywhere; such a man no longer would believe in his own being, he would no longer believe in himself; he would see everything diffusing in moving fragments, and would lose himself in this stream of becoming. ... Forgetting is a part of all actions, just as not only light, but also darkness is a part of all organic life. A human being who would wish to feel only historically through and through, would be similar to the human being who is forced to do without sleep, or the animal who is compelled to live only by chewing the cud, over and over again.” (History, ¶ 1) Nietzsche is of the opinion that the human being can stand only as much history as is in accordance with his creative forces. The strong personality carries out his intention in spite of the fact that he remembers the experiences of the past; yes, perhaps just because of the recollection of these experiences, he would experience a strengthening of his forces. But the forces of the weak person are erased by this historical sense. To determine the extent, and through that the boundary “where the past must be forgotten if it is not to become the grave-digger of the present, one would have to know exactly the extent of the plastic forces of a human being, of a nation, of a culture; I mean, that power to grow out of oneself in a unique way, to transform and to incorporate the past and the foreign.” (History ¶ 1.)

[ 28 ] Nietzsche is of the opinion that the historical should be cultivated only to the extent that it is necessary for the health of an individual, of a nation, or of a culture. What is important to him is “to learn more about making history of life.” (History, ¶ 1) He attributes to the human being the right to cultivate history in a way that produces, if possible, a fostering of the impulses of a certain moment, of the present. From this point of view he is an opponent of the other attitude toward history which seeks its salvation only in “historical objectivity,” which wants only to see and relate what happened in the past “factually,” which seeks only for the “pure, inconsequential” knowledge, or more clearly, “the truth from which nothing develops.” (History, ¶ 6) Such an observation can come only from a weak personality, whose feelings do not move with the ebb and flow when it sees the stream of happenings pass by it. Such a personality ”has become a re-echoing passivism, which through its resounding, reacts upon other similar passiva, until finally the entire air of an age is filled with a confused mass of whirring, delicate, related after-tones.” (History, ¶ 6) But that such a weak personality could re-experience the forces which had been active in the human being of the past, Nietzsche does not believe: “Yet it seems to me that in a certain way one hears only the overtones of each original and historical chief tone; the sturdiness and might of the original is no longer distinguishable from the spherically thin and pointed sound of the strings. While the original tone arouses us to deeds, tribulations, terrors, the latter lulls us to sleep and makes us weak enjoyers; it is as if one had arranged an heroic symphony for two flutes, and had intended it for the use of dreaming opium smokers.” (History, ¶ 6) Only he can truly understand the past who is able to live powerfully in the present, who has strong instincts through which he can discern and understand the instincts of the ancestors. He pays less attention to the factual than to what can be deduced from the facts. “It would be to imagine a writing of history which contained not the least drop of ordinary empirical truth, and yet could make the highest demands upon the predicate of objectivity.” (History, ¶ 6) He would be the master of such historical writing who had searched everywhere among the historical personages and events for what lies hidden behind the merely factual. But to accomplish this he must lead a strong individual life, because one can observe instincts and impulses directly only within one's own person. “Only out of the strongest power of the present may you interpret the past; only when you apply the strongest exertion of your most noble traits of character will you divine what is worthy to be known and to be preserved from the past, and what is great. Like through like! Otherwise you draw what is passed down to yourselves.” “The experienced and thoughtful writes all history. The one who has not experienced something greater and higher than others also will not know how to interpret something great and high out of the past.” (History, ¶ 6)

[ 29 ] In regard to the growing importance of the historic sense in the present, Nietzsche judges, “That the human being learn above all to live and to use history only in the service of the life which has been experienced.” (History, ¶ 10) He wants above all things a “teaching of health for life,” and history should be cultivated only to the extent that it fosters such a teaching of health.

[ 30 ] What is life-fostering in such an observation of history? This is the question Nietzsche asks in his History, and with this question he stands already at the place which he described in the above-mentioned sentence from Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, page 9.

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[ 31 ] The soul mood of the bourgeois Philistine works especially strongly against the sound development of the basic personality. A Philistine is the opposite of a human being, who finds his satisfactions in the free expression of his native capacities. The Philistine will grant validity to this expression only to the extent that it adapts to a certain average of human ability. As long as the Philistine remains within his boundaries, no objection is to be made against him. The one who wants to remain an average human being will have to settle this with himself. Among his contemporaries Nietzsche found those who wanted to make their narrow-minded soul mood the normal soul mood of all men; who regarded their narrow-mindedness as the only true humanity. Among these he counted David Friedrich Strauss, the aesthete, Friedrich Theodore Vischer, and others. He thinks Vischer, in a lecture which the latter held in memory of Holderlin, set aside this Philistine faith without conquering it. He sees this in these words: “He, (Holderlin) was one of those unarmed souls, he was the Werther of Greece, hopelessly in love; it was a life full of softness and yearning, but also strength and content was in his willing, and greatness, fullness, and life in his style, which reminds one here and there of Aeschylus. However, his spirit had too little hardness: it lacked humor as a weapon; he could not tolerate it that one was not a barbarian if one was a Philistine.” (David Strauss, ¶ 2) The Philistine will not exactly discount the right to existence of the outstanding human beings, but he means that they will die because of reality, if they do not know how to come to terms with the adaptations which the average human being has made regarding his requirements. These adaptations are once and for all the only thing which is real, which is sensible, and into these the great human being must also fit himself. Out of this narrow-minded mood has David Strauss written his book, Der alte und der neue Glaube, The Old and the New Faith. Against this book, or rather, against the mood which comes to expression in this book, is directed the first of Nietzsche's Unzeitgemässen Betrachtungen, David Strauss, der Bekenner und Schriftsteller, Untimely Observations: David Strauss, the Adherer and Writer (1873). The impression of the newer natural scientific achievements upon the Philistine is of such a nature that he says, “The Christian point of view of an immortal heavenly life, along with all the other comforts of the Christian religion, has collapsed irretrievably.” (David Strauss, ¶ 4) He will arrange his life on earth comfortably, according to the ideas of natural science; that is so comfortably that it answers the purposes of the Philistine. Now the Philistine shows that one can be happy and satisfied despite the fact that one knows that no higher spirit reigns over the stars, but that only the bleak, insensate forces of nature rule over all world events. “During these last years we have taken active part in the great national war and the setting up of the German State, and we find ourselves elated in our inmost being by this unexpected, majestic turn of events concerning our heavily-tried nation. We further the understanding of these matters by historical studies which nowadays, through a series of attractive and popular historical books, is made simple for the layman as well; in addition, we try to broaden our knowledge of natural science, for which also there is no lack of generally understandable material; and finally, we discover in the writings of our great poets, in the performances of the works of our great musicians, a stimulation for spirit and soul, for fantasy and humor, which leaves nothing to be desired. Thus we live, thus we travel, full of joy.” (Strauss, Der alte und neue Glaube, The Old and New Faith, ¶. 88)

[ 32 ] The gospel of the most trivial enjoyment of life speaks, from these words. Everything that goes beyond the trivial, the Philistine calls unsound. About the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, Strauss says that this work is only popular with those for whom “the baroque stands as the talented, the formless as the noble” (Der alte und neue Glaube, The Old and New Faith, ¶ 109); about Schopenhauer, the Messiah of Philistinism knows enough to announce that for such an “unsound and unprofitable” philosophy as Schopenhauer's, one should waste no proofs, but quips and sallies alone are suitable. (David Strauss, ¶ 6) By sound, the Philistine means only what accords with the average education.

[ 33 ] As the moral, archetypal commandment, Strauss presents this sentence: “All moral action is a self-determining of the individual according to the idea of species.” (Der alte und neue Glaube, The Old and New Faith, ¶ 74) Nietzsche replies to this, “Translated into the explicit and comprehensible, it means only: Live as a human being and not as a monkey or a seal. This command, unfortunately, is completely useless and powerless, because in the concept, human being, the most manifold concepts are united beneath the same yoke; for example, the Patagonian and Magister Strauss; and because no one would dare to say with equal right, Live as a Patagonian, and, Live as Magister Strauss!” (David Strauss, ¶ 7)

[ 34 ] It is an ideal, indeed, an ideal of the most lamentable kind, which Strauss wishes to set before men. And Nietzsche protests against it; he protests because in him a lively instinct cries out, Do not live like Magister Strauss, but live as is proper for you.

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[ 35 ] Only in the writing, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Human, All Too-Human, (1878), does Nietzsche appear to be free from the influence of Schopenhauer's way of thinking. He has given up looking for supernatural causes for natural events; he seeks natural proofs for understanding. Now he regards all human life as a kind of natural happening; in the human being he sees the highest product of nature. One lives “finally among human beings, and with one's self as in nature, without praise, without reproach, ambition, enjoying one's self in many things, as in a play, before which until now one had been full of fear. One would be free of the emphasis, and would no longer feel the goading of thoughts that one was not only nature or was more than nature ... rather must a human being, from whom the usual fetters of life have fallen away to such an extent that he continues to live on, only to know ever more how to renounce much, Yes, almost everything upon which other human beings place value, without envy and discontent; for him, that most desirable condition, that free, fearless floating above human beings, customs, laws and the usual evaluation of matter, must suffice.” Menschlices Alizumenschliches, Human, All Too Human, ¶ 34. Nietzsche has already given up all faith in ideals; he sees in human action only consequences of natural causes, and in the recognition of these causes he finds his satisfaction. He discovers that one receives an erroneous idea of things when one sees in them merely what is illuminated by the light of idealistic knowledge. What lies in the shadow of things would escape one, Nietzsche now wants to learn to know not only the bright but also the shadow side of things. Out of this striving comes the work, Der Wanderer und sein Schatten, The Wanderer and his Shadow (1879). In this work he wishes to grasp the manifestations of life from all sides. In the best sense of the word, he has become a “philosopher of reality,”

[ 36 ] In his Morgenröte, Dawn (1881), he describes the moral process in the evolution of mankind as a natural event. Already in this writing he shows that there is no super-earthly moral world order, no eternal law of good and evil, and that all morality has originated from the natural drives and instincts ruling within the human being. No the way is cleared for Nietzsche's original journey. When no superhuman power can lay a binding obligation upon man, he is justified in giving his own creativity free reign. This knowledge is the motif of Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Wisdom (1882). No longer are fetters placed upon Nietzsche's “free” knowledge. He feels destined to create new values, having discovered the origin of the old, and having found that they are but human, not divine values. He now dares to throwaway what goes against his instinct, and to substitute other things which are in accord with his impulses: “We, the new, the nameless, the incomprehensible, we firstlings of a yet untried future, we require for a new purpose a new means, namely a new health, a stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder, more audacious health than any previous states of health. The one whose soul bursts to experience the whole range of hitherto recognized values and wishes, and whose soul thirsts to sail around all shores of this ideal ‘Mediterranean,’ wants to know from his most personal adventures how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of ideals ... he requires one thing above all, health ... And now, after having been long on the way, we Argonauts of the ideal, more courageous perhaps than prudent, it will seem to us as recompense for it all that we have before us a still undiscovered land ... After such outlooks and with such a craving in our conscience and consciousness, how can we allow ourselves to be satisfied with the man of the present day?” (Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Wisdom, ¶ 382)

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[ 37 ] Out of the mood characterized in the sentences cited above, arose Nietzsche's picture of the superman. It is the Counter-picture of the man of the present day; it is, above all, the counter-picture of Christ. In Christianity, the opposition to the cultivation of the strong life has become religion. (Antichrist, ¶ 5) The founder of this religion teaches that before God that is despicable which has value in the eyes of man. In the “Kingdom of God” Christ will find everything fulfilled which on earth appeared to be incomplete. Christianity is the religion which removes all care of earthly life from man; it is the religion of the weak, who would gladly have the commandment set before them, “Struggle not against evil, and suffer all tribulation,” because they are not strong enough to withstand it. Christ has no understanding for the aristocratic personality, which wants to create its own power out of its own reality. He believes that the capacity for seeing the human realm would spoil the power of seeing the Kingdom of God. In addition, the more advanced Christians who no longer believe that they will resurrect at the end of time in their actual physical body in order to be either received into Paradise or thrown into Hell, these Christians dream about “divine providence,” about a “supersensible” order of things. They also believe that man must raise himself above his merely terrestrial goals, and adapt himself to an ideal realm. They think that life has a purely spiritual background, and that it is only because of this that it has value. Christianity will not cultivate the instincts for health, for beauty, for growth, for symmetry, for perseverance, for accumulation of forces, but hatred against the intellect, against pride, courage, aristocracy, against self-confidence, against the freedom of the spirit, against the pleasures of the sense world, against the joys and brightness of reality, in which the human being lives. (Antichrist, ¶ 21) Christianity describes the natural as downright “trash.” In the Christian God, a Being of the other world, that is, a nothingness, is deified; the will to be nothing is declared to be holy. (Antichrist, ¶ 18) For this reason, Nietzsche fights against Christianity in the first book of Unwertung aller Werte, Transvaluation of all Values. And in the second and third books he wanted to attack the philosophy and morality of the weak, who only feel themselves comfortable in the role of dependents. The species of human being whom Nietzsche wishes to see trained because he does not despise this life, but embraces this life with love and elevates it in order to believe that it should be lived only once, is “ardent for eternity,” (Zarathustra, Third Part, The Seven Seals) and would like to have this life lived infinite times. Nietzsche lets his Zarathustra be “the teacher of the eternal return.”

“Behold, we know ... that all things eternally return, and ourselves with them, and that we have already existed times without number, and all things with us.” (Zarathustra, Third Part, The Convalescent)

[ 38 ] At present it seems impossible for me to have a definite opinion about what idea Nietzsche connected with the words “eternal return.” It will be possible to say something more specific only when Nietzsche's notes for the incomplete parts of his Willens zur Macht, Will to Power, have been published in the second part of the complete edition of his works.

Theosophy and Asceticism

Enq. I have heard people say that your rules require all members to be vegetarians, celibates, and rigid ascetics; but you have not told me anything of the sort yet. Can you tell me the truth once for all about this?

Theo. The truth is that our rules require nothing of the kind. The Theosophical Society does not even expect, far less require of any of its members that they should be ascetics in any way, except — if you call that asceticism — that they should try and benefit other people and be unselfish in their own lives.

Enq. But still many of your members are strict vegetarians, and openly avow their intention of remaining unmarried. This, too, is most often the case with those who take a prominent part in connection with the work of your Society.

Theo. That is only natural, because most of our really earnest workers are members of the Inner Section of the Society, which I told you about before.

Enq. Oh! then you do require ascetic practices in that Inner Section?

Theo. No; we do not require or enjoin them even there; but I see that I had better give you an explanation of our views on the subject of asceticism in general, and then you will understand about vegetarianism and so on.

Enq. Please proceed.

Theo. As I have already told you, most people who become really earnest students of Theosophy, and active workers in our Society, wish to do more than study theoretically the truths we teach. They wish to know the truth by their own direct personal experience, and to study Occultism with the object of acquiring the wisdom and power, which they feel that they need in order to help others, effectually and judiciously, instead of blindly and at haphazard. Therefore, sooner or later, they join the Inner Section.

Enq. But you said that "ascetic practices" are not obligatory even in that Inner Section?

Theo. No more they are; but the first thing which the members learn there is a true conception of the relation of the body, or physical sheath, to the inner, the true man. The relation and mutual interaction between these two aspects of human nature are explained and demonstrated to them, so that they soon become imbued with the supreme importance of the inner man over the outer case or body. They are taught that blind unintelligent asceticism is mere folly; that such conduct as that of St. Labro which I spoke of before, or that of the Indian Fakirs and jungle ascetics, who cut, burn and macerate their bodies in the most cruel and horrible manner, is simply self-torture for selfish ends, i.e., to develop will-power, but is perfectly useless for the purpose of assisting true spiritual, or Theosophic, development.

Enq. I see, you regard only moral asceticism as necessary. It is as a means to an end, that end being the perfect equilibrium of the inner nature of man, and the attainment of complete mastery over the body with all its passions and desires?

Theo. Just so. But these means must be used intelligently and wisely, not blindly and foolishly; like an athlete who is training and preparing for a great contest, not like the miser who starves himself into illness that he may gratify his passion for gold.

Enq. I understand now your general idea; but let us see how you apply it in practice. How about vegetarianism, for instance?

Theo. One of the great German scientists has shown that every kind of animal tissue, however you may cook it, still retains certain marked characteristics of the animal which it belonged to, which characteristics can be recognised. And apart from that, every one knows by the taste what meat he is eating. We go a step farther, and prove that when the flesh of animals is assimilated by man as food, it imparts to him, physiologically, some of the characteristics of the animal it came from. Moreover, occult science teaches and proves this to its students by ocular demonstration, showing also that this "coarsening" or "animalizing" effect on man is greatest from the flesh of the larger animals, less for birds, still less for fish and other cold-blooded animals, and least of all when he eats only vegetables.

Enq. Then he had better not eat at all?

Theo. If he could live without eating, of course it would. But as the matter stands, he must eat to live, and so we advise really earnest students to eat such food as will least clog and weight their brains and bodies, and will have the smallest effect in hampering and retarding the development of their intuition, their inner faculties and powers.

Enq. Then you do not adopt all the arguments which vegetarians in general are in the habit of using?

Theo. Certainly not. Some of their arguments are very weak, and often based on assumptions which are quite false. But, on the other hand, many of the things they say are quite true. For instance, we believe that much disease, and especially the great predisposition to disease which is becoming so marked a feature in our time, is very largely due to the eating of meat, and especially of tinned meats. But it would take too long to go thoroughly into this question of vegetarianism on its merits; so please pass on to something else.

Enq. One question more. What are your members of the Inner Section to do with regard to their food when they are ill?

Theo. Follow the best practical advice they can get, of course. Don't you grasp yet that we never impose any hard-and-fast obligations in this respect? Remember once for all that in all such questions we take a rational, and never a fanatical, view of things. If from illness or long habit a man cannot go without meat, why, by all means let him eat it. It is no crime; it will only retard his progress a little; for after all is said and done, the purely bodily actions and functions are of far less importance than what a man thinks and feels, what desires he encourages in his mind, and allows to take root and grow there.

Enq. Then with regard to the use of wine and spirits, I suppose you do not advise people to drink them?

Theo. They are worse for his moral and spiritual growth than meat, for alcohol in all its forms has a direct, marked, and very deleterious influence on man's psychic condition. Wine and spirit drinking is only less destructive to the development of the inner powers, than the habitual use of hashish, opium, and similar drugs.

Theosophy and Marriage

Enq. Now to another question; must a man marry or remain a celibate?

Theo. It depends on the kind of man you mean. If you refer to one who intends to live in the world, one who, even though a good, earnest Theosophist, and an ardent worker for our cause, still has ties and wishes which bind him to the world, who, in short, does not feel that he has done for ever with what men call life, and that he desires one thing and one thing only — to know the truth, and to be able to help others — then for such a one I say there is no reason why he should not marry, if he likes to take the risks of that lottery where there are so many more blanks than prizes. Surely you cannot believe us so absurd and fanatical as to preach against marriage altogether? On the contrary, save in a few exceptional cases of practical Occultism, marriage is the only remedy against immorality.

Enq. But why cannot one acquire this knowledge and power when living a married life?

Theo. My dear sir, I cannot go into physiological questions with you; but I can give you an obvious and, I think, a sufficient answer, which will explain to you the moral reasons we give for it. Can a man serve two masters? No! Then it is equally impossible for him to divide his attention between the pursuit of Occultism and a wife. If he tries to, he will assuredly fail in doing either properly; and, let me remind you, practical Occultism is far too serious and dangerous a study for a man to take up, unless he is in the most deadly earnest, and ready to sacrifice all, himself first of all, to gain his end. But this does not apply to the members of our Inner Section. I am only referring to those who are determined to tread that path of discipleship which leads to the highest goal. Most, if not all of those who join our Inner Section, are only beginners, preparing themselves in this life to enter in reality upon that path in lives to come.

Theosophy and Education

Enq. One of your strongest arguments for the inadequacy of the existing forms of religion in the West, as also to some extent the materialistic philosophy which is now so popular, but which you seem to consider as an abomination of desolation, is the large amount of misery and wretchedness which undeniably exists, especially in our great cities. But surely you must recognise how much has been, and is being done to remedy this state of things by the spread of education and the diffusion of intelligence.

Theo. The future generations will hardly thank you for such a "diffusion of intelligence," nor will your present education do much good to the poor starving masses.

Enq. Ah! but you must give us time. It is only a few years since we began to educate the people.

Theo. And what, pray, has your Christian religion been doing ever since the fifteenth century, once you acknowledge that the education of the masses has not been attempted till now — the very work, if ever there could be one, which a Christian, i. e., a Christ-following church and people, ought to perform?

Enq. Well, you may be right; but now —

Theo. Just let us consider this question of education from a broad standpoint, and I will prove to you that you are doing harm not good, with many of your boasted improvements. The schools for the poorer children, though far less useful than they ought to be, are good in contrast with the vile surroundings to which they are doomed by your modern Society. The infusion of a little practical Theosophy would help a hundred times more in life the poor suffering masses than all this infusion of (useless) intelligence.

Enq. But, really —

Theo. Let me finish, please. You have opened a subject on which we Theosophists feel deeply, and I must have my say. I quite agree that there is a great advantage to a small child bred in the slums, having the gutter for playground, and living amid continued coarseness of gesture and word, in being placed daily in a bright, clean school-room hung with pictures, and often gay with flowers. There it is taught to be clean, gentle, orderly; there it learns to sing and to play; has toys that awaken its intelligence; learns to use its fingers deftly; is spoken to with a smile instead of a frown; is gently rebuked or coaxed instead of cursed. All this humanises the children, arouses their brains, and renders them susceptible to intellectual and moral influences. The schools are not all they might be and ought to be; but, compared with the homes, they are paradises; and they slowly are re-acting on the homes. But while this is true of many of the Board schools, your system deserves the worst one can say of it.

Enq. So be it; go on.

Theo. What is the real object of modern education? Is it to cultivate and develop the mind in the right direction; to teach the disinherited and hapless people to carry with fortitude the burden of life (allotted them by Karma); to strengthen their will; to inculcate in them the love of one's neighbour and the feeling of mutual interdependence and brotherhood; and thus to train and form the character for practical life? Not a bit of it. And yet, these are undeniably the objects of all true education. No one denies it; all your educationalists admit it, and talk very big indeed on the subject. But what is the practical result of their action? Every young man and boy, nay, every one of the younger generation of schoolmasters will answer: "The object of modern education is to pass examinations," a system not to develop right emulation, but to generate and breed jealousy, envy, hatred almost, in young people for one another, and thus train them for a life of ferocious selfishness and struggle for honours and emoluments instead of kindly feeling.

Enq. I must admit you are right there.

Theo. And what are these examinations — the terror of modern boyhood and youth? They are simply a method of classification by which the results of your school teaching are tabulated. In other words, they form the practical application of the modern science method to the genus homo, qua intellection. Now "science" teaches that intellect is a result of the mechanical interaction of the brain-stuff; therefore it is only logical that modern education should be almost entirely mechanical — a sort of automatic machine for the fabrication of intellect by the ton. Very little experience of examinations is enough to show that the education they produce is simply a training of the physical memory, and, sooner or later, all your schools will sink to this level. As to any real, sound cultivation of the thinking and reasoning power, it is simply impossible while everything has to be judged by the results as tested by competitive examinations. Again, school training is of the very greatest importance in forming character, especially in its moral bearing. Now, from first to last, your modern system is based on the so-called scientific revelations: "The struggle for existence" and the "survival of the fittest." All through his early life, every man has these driven into him by practical example and experience, as well as by direct teaching, till it is impossible to eradicate from his mind the idea that "self," the lower, personal, animal self, is the end-all, and be-all, of life. Here you get the great source of all the after-misery, crime, and heartless selfishness, which you admit as much as I do. Selfishness, as said over and over again, is the curse of humanity, and the prolific parent of all the evils and crimes in this life; and it is your schools which are the hot-beds of such selfishness.

Enq. That is all very fine as generalities, but I should like a few facts, and to learn also how this can be remedied.

Theo. Very well, I will try and satisfy you. There are three great divisions of scholastic establishments, board, middle-class and public schools, running up the scale from the most grossly commercial to the idealistic classical, with many permutations and combinations. The practical commercial begets the modern side, and the ancient and orthodox classical reflects its heavy respectability even as far as the School Board pupil teacher's establishments. Here we plainly see the scientific and material commercial supplanting the effete orthodox and classical. Neither is the reason very far to seek. The objects of this branch of education are, then, pounds, shillings, and pence, the summum bonum of the XIXth century. Thus, the energies generated by the brain molecules of its adherents are all concentrated on one point, and are, therefore, to some extent, an organized army of educated and speculative intellects of the minority of men, trained against the hosts of the ignorant, simple-minded masses doomed to be vampirised, lived and sat upon by their intellectually stronger brethren. Such training is not only untheosophical, it is simply UNCHRISTIAN. Result: The direct outcome of this branch of education is an overflooding of the market with money-making machines, with heartless selfish men — animals — who have been most carefully trained to prey on their fellows and take advantage of the ignorance of their weaker brethren!

Enq. Well, but you cannot assert that of our great public schools, at any rate?

Theo. Not exactly, it is true. But though the form is different, the animating spirit is the same: untheosophical and unchristian, whether Eton and Harrow turn out scientists or divines and theologians.

Enq. Surely you don't mean to call Eton and Harrow "commercial"?

Theo. No. Of course the Classical system is above all things respectable, and in the present day is productive of some good. It does still remain the favourite at our great public schools, where not only an intellectual, but also a social education is obtainable. It is, therefore, of prime importance that the dull boys of aristocratic and wealthy parents should go to such schools to meet the rest of the young life of the "blood" and money classes. But unfortunately there is a huge competition even for entrance; for the moneyed classes are increasing, and poor but clever boys seek to enter the public schools by the rich scholarships, both at the schools themselves and from them to the Universities.

Enq. According to this view, the wealthier "dullards" have to work even harder than their poorer fellows?

Theo. It is so. But, strange to say, the faithful of the cult of the "Survival of the fittest" do not practice their creed; for their whole exertion is to make the naturally unfit supplant the fit. Thus, by bribes of large sums of money, they allure the best teachers from their natural pupils to mechanicalise their naturally unfit progeny into professions which they uselessly overcrowd.

Enq. And you attribute all this to what?

Theo. All this is owing to the perniciousness of a system which turns out goods to order, irrespective of the natural proclivities and talents of the youth. The poor little candidate for this progressive paradise of learning, comes almost straight from the nursery to the treadmill of a preparatory school for sons of gentlemen. Here he is immediately seized upon by the workmen of the materio-intellectual factory, and crammed with Latin, French and Greek Accidence, Dates and Tables, so that if he have any natural genius it is rapidly squeezed out of him by the rollers of what Carlyle has so well called "dead vocables."

Enq. But surely he is taught something besides "dead vocables," and much of that which may lead him direct to Theosophy, if not entirely into the Theosophical Society?

Theo. Not much. For of history, he will attain only sufficient knowledge of his own particular nation to fit him with a steel armour of prejudice against all other peoples, and be steeped in the foul cess-pools of chronicled national hate and blood-thirstiness; and surely, you would not call that — Theosophy?

Enq. What are your further objections?

Theo. Added to this is a smattering of selected, so-called, Biblical facts, from the study of which all intellect is eliminated. It is simply a memory lesson, the "Why" of the teacher being a "Why" of circumstances and not of reason.

Enq. Yes; but I have heard you congratulate yourself at the ever-increasing number of the Agnostics and Atheists in our day, so that it appears that even people trained in the system you abuse so heartily do learn to think and reason for themselves.

Theo. Yes; but it is rather owing to a healthy reaction from that system than due to it. We prefer immeasurably more in our Society Agnostics, and even rank Atheists, to bigots of whatever religion. An Agnostic's mind is ever opened to the truth; whereas the latter blinds the bigot like the sun does an owl. The best — i. e., the most truth-loving, philanthropic, and honest — of our Fellows were, and are, Agnostics and Atheists (disbelievers in a personal God). But there are no free-thinking boys and girls, and generally early training will leave its mark behind in the shape of a cramped and distorted mind. A proper and sane system of education should produce the most vigorous and liberal mind, strictly trained in logical and accurate thought, and not in blind faith. How can you ever expect good results, while you pervert the reasoning faculty of your children by bidding them believe in the miracles of the Bible on Sunday, while for the six other days of the week you teach them that such things are scientifically impossible?

Enq. What would you have, then?

Theo. If we had money, we would found schools which would turn out something else than reading and writing candidates for starvation. Children should above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves. We would reduce the purely mechanical work of the memory to an absolute minimum, and devote the time to the development and training of the inner senses, faculties and latent capacities. We would endeavour to deal with each child as a unit, and to educate it so as to produce the most harmonious and equal unfoldment of its powers, in order that its special aptitudes should find their full natural development. We should aim at creating free men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and above all things, unselfish. And we believe that much if not all of this could be obtained by proper and truly theosophical education.

Why, Then, is There So Much Prejudice Against the T. S.?

Enq. If Theosophy is even half of what you say, why should there exist such a terrible ill-feeling against it? This is even more of a problem than anything else.

Theo. It is; but you must bear in mind how many powerful adversaries we have aroused ever since the formation of our Society. As I just said, if the Theosophical movement were one of those numerous modern crazes, as harmless at the end as they are evanescent, it would be simply laughed at — as it is now by those who still do not understand its real purport — and left severely alone. But it is nothing of the kind. Intrinsically, Theosophy is the most serious movement of this age; and one, moreover, which threatens the very life of most of the time-honoured humbugs, prejudices, and social evils of the day — those evils which fatten and make happy the upper ten and their imitators and sycophants, the wealthy dozens of the middle classes, while they positively crush and starve out of existence the millions of the poor. Think of this, and you will easily understand the reason of such a relentless persecution by those others who, more observant and perspicacious, do see the true nature of Theosophy, and therefore dread it.

Enq. Do you mean to tell me that it is because a few have understood what Theosophy leads to, that they try to crush the movement? But if Theosophy leads only to good, surely you cannot be prepared to utter such a terrible accusation of perfidious heartlessness and treachery even against those few?

Theo. I am so prepared, on the contrary. I do not call the enemies we have had to battle with during the first nine or ten years of the Society's existence either powerful or "dangerous"; but only those who have arisen against us in the last three or four years. And these neither speak, write nor preach against Theosophy, but work in silence and behind the backs of the foolish puppets who act as their visible marionnettes. Yet, if invisible to most of the members of our Society, they are well known to the true "Founders" and the protectors of our Society. But they must remain for certain reasons unnamed at present.

Enq. And are they known to many of you, or to yourself alone?

Theo. I never said I knew them. I may or may not know them — but I know of them, and this is sufficient; and I defy them to do their worst. They may achieve great mischief and throw confusion into our ranks, especially among the faint-hearted, and those who can judge only by appearances. They will not crush the Society, do what they may. Apart from these truly dangerous enemies — "dangerous," however, only to those Theosophists who are unworthy of the name, and whose place is rather outside than within the T. S. — the number of our opponents is more than considerable.

Enq. Can you name these, at least, if you will not speak of the others?

Theo. Of course I can. We have to contend against (1) the hatred of the Spiritualists, American, English, and French; (2) the constant opposition of the clergy of all denominations; (3) especially the relentless hatred and persecution of the missionaries in India; (4) this led to the famous and infamous attack on our Theosophical Society by the Society for Psychical Research, an attack which was stirred up by a regular conspiracy organized by the missionaries in India. Lastly, we must count the defection of various prominent (?) members, for reasons I have already explained, all of whom have contributed their utmost to increase the prejudice against us.

Enq. Cannot you give me more details about these, so that I may know what to answer when asked — a brief history of the Society, in short; and why the world believes all this?

Theo. The reason is simple. Most outsiders knew absolutely nothing of the Society itself, its motives, objects or beliefs. From its very beginning the world has seen in Theosophy nothing but certain marvellous phenomena, in which two-thirds of the non-spiritualists do not believe. Very soon the Society came to be regarded as a body pretending to the possession of "miraculous" powers. The world never realised that the Society taught absolute disbelief in miracle or even the possibility of such; that in the Society there were only a few people who possessed such psychic powers and but few who cared for them. Nor did it understand that the phenomena were never produced publicly, but only privately for friends, and merely given as an accessory, to prove by direct demonstration that such things could be produced without dark rooms, spirits, mediums, or any of the usual paraphernalia. Unfortunately, this misconception was greatly strengthened and exaggerated by the first book on the subject which excited much attention in Europe — Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World." If this work did much to bring the Society into prominence, it attracted still more obloquy, derision and misrepresentation upon the hapless heroes and heroine thereof. Of this the author was more than warned in the Occult World, but did not pay attention to the prophecy — for such it was, though half-veiled.

Enq. For what, and since when, do the Spiritualists hate you?

Theo. From the first day of the Society's existence. No sooner the fact became known that, as a body, the T. S. did not believe in communications with the spirits of the dead, but regarded the so-called "spirits" as, for the most part, astral reflections of disembodied personalities, shells, etc., than the Spiritualists conceived a violent hatred to us and especially to the Founders. This hatred found expression in every kind of slander, uncharitable personal remarks, and absurd misrepresentations of the Theosophical teachings in all the American Spiritualistic organs. For years we were persecuted, denounced and abused. This began in 1875 and continues to the present day. In 1879, the headquarters of the T. S. were transferred from New York to Bombay, India, and then permanently to Madras. When the first branch of our Society, the British T. S., was founded in London, the English Spiritualists came out in arms against us, as the Americans had done; and the French Spiritists followed suit.

Enq. But why should the clergy be hostile to you, when, after all, the main tendency of the Theosophical doctrines is opposed to Materialism, the great enemy of all forms of religion in our day?

Theo. The Clergy opposed us on the general principle that "He who is not with me is against me." Since Theosophy does not agree with any one Sect or Creed, it is considered the enemy of all alike, because it teaches that they are all, more or less, mistaken. The missionaries in India hated and tried to crush us because they saw the flower of the educated Indian youth and the Brahmins, who are almost inaccessible to them, joining the Society in large numbers. And yet, apart from this general class hatred, the T. S. counts in its ranks many clergymen, and even one or two bishops.

Enq. And what led the S. P. R. to take the field against you? You were both pursuing the same line of study, in some respects, and several of the Psychic Researchers belonged to your society.

Theo. First of all we were very good friends with the leaders of the S. P. R.; but when the attack on the phenomena appeared in the Christian College Magazine, supported by the pretended revelations of a menial, the S. P. R. found that they had compromised themselves by publishing in their "Proceedings" too many of the phenomena which had occurred in connection with the T. S. Their ambition is to pose as an authoritative and strictly scientific body; so that they had to choose between retaining that position by throwing overboard the T. S. and even trying to destroy it, and seeing themselves merged, in the opinion of the Sadducees of the grand monde, with the "credulous" Theosophists and Spiritualists. There was no way for them out of it, no two choices, and they chose to throw us overboard. It was a matter of dire necessity for them. But so hard pressed were they to find any apparently reasonable motive for the life of devotion and ceaseless labour led by the two Founders, and for the complete absence of any pecuniary profit or other advantage to them, that our enemies were obliged to resort to the thrice-absurd, eminently ridiculous, and now famous "Russian spy theory," to explain this devotion. But the old saying, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," proved once more correct. After the first shock of this attack, the T. S. doubled and tripled its numbers, but the bad impression produced still remains. A French author was right in saying, "Calomniez, calomniez toujours et encore, il en restera toujours quelque chose." Therefore it is, that unjust prejudices are current, and that everything connected with the T. S., and especially with its Founders, is so falsely distorted, because based on malicious hearsay alone.

Enq. Yet in the 14 years during which the Society has existed, you must have had ample time and opportunity to show yourselves and your work in their true light?

Theo. How, or when, have we been given such an opportunity? Our most prominent members had an aversion to anything that looked like publicly justifying themselves. Their policy has ever been: "We must live it down;" and "What does it matter what the newspapers say, or people think?" The Society was too poor to send out public lecturers, and therefore the expositions of our views and doctrines were confined to a few Theosophical works that met with success, but which people often misunderstood, or only knew of through hearsay. Our journals were, and still are, boycotted; our literary works ignored; and to this day no one seems even to feel quite certain whether the Theosophists are a kind of Serpent-and-Devil worshippers, or simply "Esoteric Buddhists" — whatever that may mean. It was useless for us to go on denying, day after day and year after year, every kind of inconceivable cock-and-bull stories about us; for, no sooner was one disposed of, than another, a still more absurd and malicious one, was born out of the ashes of the first. Unfortunately, human nature is so constituted that any good said of a person is immediately forgotten and never repeated. But one has only to utter a calumny, or to start a story — no matter how absurd, false or incredible it may be, if only it is connected with some unpopular character — for it to be successful and forthwith accepted as a historical fact. Like Don Basilio's "CALUMNIA," the rumour springs up, at first, as a soft gentle breeze hardly stirring the grass under your feet, and arising no one knows whence; then, in the shortest space of time, it is transformed into a strong wind, begins to blow a gale, and forthwith becomes a roaring storm! A calumny among news, is what an octopus is among fishes; it sucks into one's mind, fastens upon our memory, which feeds upon it, leaving indelible marks even after the calumny has been bodily destroyed. A calumnious lie is the only masterkey that will open any and every brain. It is sure to receive welcome and hospitality in every human mind, the highest as the lowest, if only a little prejudiced, and no matter from however base a quarter and motive it has started.

Enq. Don't you think your assertion altogether too sweeping? The Englishman has never been over-ready to believe in anything said, and our nation is proverbially known for its love of fair play. A lie has no legs to stand upon for long, and —

Theo. The Englishman is as ready to believe evil as a man of any other nation; for it is human nature, and not a national feature. As to lies, if they have no legs to stand upon, according to the proverb, they have exceedingly rapid wings; and they can and do fly farther and wider than any other kind of news, in England as elsewhere. Remember lies and calumny are the only kind of literature we can always get gratis, and without paying any subscription. We can make the experiment if you like. Will you, who are so interested in Theosophical matters, and have heard so much about us, will you put me questions on as many of these rumours and "hearsays" as you can think of? I will answer you the truth, and nothing but the truth, subject to the strictest verification.

Enq. Before we change the subject, let us have the whole truth on this one. Now, some writers have called your teachings "immoral and pernicious"; others, on the ground that many so-called "authorities" and Orientalists find in the Indian religions nothing but sex-worship in its many forms, accuse you of teaching nothing better than Phallic worship. They say that since modern Theosophy is so closely allied with Eastern, and particularly Indian, thought, it cannot be free from this taint. Occasionally, even, they go so far as to accuse European Theosophists of reviving the practices connected with this cult. How about this?

Theo. I have heard and read about this before; and I answer that no more utterly baseless and lying calumny has ever been invented and circulated. "Silly people can see but silly dreams," says a Russian proverb. It makes one's blood boil to hear such vile accusations made without the slightest foundation, and on the strength of mere inferences. Ask the hundreds of honourable English men and women who have been members of the Theosophical Society for years whether an immoral precept or a pernicious doctrine was ever taught to them. Open the Secret Doctrine, and you will find page after page denouncing the Jews and other nations precisely on account of this devotion to Phallic rites, due to the dead letter interpretation of nature symbolism, and the grossly materialistic conceptions of her dualism in all the exoteric creeds. Such ceaseless and malicious misrepresentation of our teachings and beliefs is really disgraceful.

Enq. But you cannot deny that the Phallic element does exist in the religions of the East?

Theo. Nor do I deny it; only I maintain that this proves no more than does its presence in Christianity, the religion of the West. Read Hargrave Jenning's Rosicrucians, if you would assure yourself of it. In the East, the Phallic symbolism is, perhaps, more crude, because more true to nature, or, I would rather say, more naive and sincere than in the West. But it is not more licentious, nor does it suggest to the Oriental mind the same gross and coarse ideas as to the Western, with, perhaps, one or two exceptions, such as the shameful sect known as the "Maharajah," or Vallabhacharya sect.

Enq. A writer in the Agnostic journal — one of your accusers — has just hinted that the followers of this disgraceful sect are Theosophists, and "claim true Theosophic insight."

Theo. He wrote a falsehood, and that's all. There never was, nor is there at present, one single Vallabhacharya in our Society. As to their having, or claiming Theosophic insight, that is another fib, based on crass ignorance about the Indian Sects. Their "Maharajah" only claims a right to the money, wives and daughters of his foolish followers and no more. This sect is despised by all the other Hindus.

But you will find the whole subject dealt with at length in the Secret Doctrine, to which I must again refer you for detailed explanations. To conclude, the very soul of Theosophy is dead against Phallic worship; and its occult or esoteric section more so even than the exoteric teachings. There never was a more lying statement made than the above. And now ask me some other questions.

Is the Theosophical Society a Money-Making Concern?

Enq. Agreed. Well, have either of the Founders, Colonel H. S. Olcott or H. P. Blavatsky, ever made any money, profit, or derived any worldly benefit from the T. S., as some papers say?

Theo. Not one penny. The papers lie. On the contrary, they have both given all they had, and literally beggared themselves. As for "worldly benefits," think of the calumnies and vilification they have been subjected to, and then ask the question!

Enq. Yet I have read in a good many missionary organs that the entrance fees and subscriptions much more than covered all expenses; and one said that the Founders were making twenty thousand pounds a year!

Theo. This is a fib, like many others. In the published accounts of January, 1889, you will find an exact statement of all the money ever received from any source since 1879. The total received from all sources (entrance fees, donations, etc., etc.) during these ten years is under six thousand pounds, and of this a large part was contributed by the Founders themselves from the proceeds of their private resources and their literary work. All this has been openly and officially admitted, even by our enemies, the Psychic Research Society. And now both the Founders are penniless: one, too old and ill to work as she did before, unable to spare time for outside literary work to help the Society in money, can only write for the Theosophical cause; the other keeps labouring for it as before, and receives as little thanks for it.

Enq. But surely they need money to live?

Theo. Not at all. So long as they have food and lodging, even though they owe it to the devotion of a few friends, they need little more.

Enq. But could not Madame Blavatsky, especially, make more than enough to live upon by her writings?

Theo. When in India she received on the average some thousand rupees a year for articles contributed to Russian and other papers, but gave it all away to the Society.

Enq. Political articles?

Theo. Never. Everything she has written throughout the seven years of her stay in India is all there in print. It deals only with the religions, ethnology, and customs of India, and with Theosophy — never with politics, of which she knows nothing and cares less. Again, two years ago she refused several contracts amounting together to about 1,200 roubles in gold per month; for she could not accept them without abandoning her work for the Society, which needed all her time and strength. She has documents to prove it.

Enq. But why could not both she and Colonel Olcott do as others — notably many Theosophists — do: follow out their respective professions and devote the surplus of their time to the work of the Society?

Theo. Because by serving two masters, either the professional or the philanthropic work would have had to suffer. Every true Theosophist is morally bound to sacrifice the personal to the impersonal, his own present good to the future benefit of other people. If the Founders do not set the example, who will?

Enq. And are there many who follow it?

Theo. I am bound to answer you the truth. In Europe about half-a-dozen in all, out of more than that number of Branches.

Enq. Then it is not true that the Theosophical Society has a large capital or endowment of its own?

Theo. It is false, for it has none at all. Now that the entrance fee of £l and the small annual due have been abolished, it is even a doubtful question whether the staff at the head-quarters in India will not soon be starved to death.

Enq. Then why not raise subscriptions?

Theo. We are not the Salvation Army; we cannot and have never begged; nor have we ever followed the example of the Churches and sects and "taken up collections." That which is occasionally sent for the support of the Society, the small sums contributed by some devoted Fellows, are all voluntary donations.

Enq. But I have heard of large sums of money given to Mdme. Blavatsky. It was said four years ago that she got £5,000 from one rich, young "Fellow," who went out to join them in India, and £10,000 from another wealthy and well-known American gentleman, one of your members who died in Europe four years ago.

Theo. Say to those who told you this, that they either themselves utter, or repeat, a gross falsehood. Never has "Madame Blavatsky" asked or received ONE PENNY from the two above-named gentlemen, nor anything like that from anyone else, since the Theosophical Society was founded. Let any man living try to substantiate this calumny, and it will be easier for him to prove that the Bank of England is a bankrupt than that the said "Founder" has ever made any money out of Theosophy. These two calumnies have been started by two high-born ladies, belonging to the London aristocracy, and have been immediately traced and disproved. They are the dead bodies, the carcases of two inventions, which, after having been buried in the sea of oblivion, are once more raised on the surface of the stagnant waters of slander.

Enq. Then I have been told of several large legacies left to the T. S. One — some £8,000 — was left to it by some eccentric Englishman, who did not even belong to the Society. The other — £3,000 or £4,000 — were testated by an Australian F. T. S. Is this true?

Theo. I heard of the first; and I also know that, whether legally left or not, the T. S. has never profited by it, nor have the Founders ever been officially notified of it. For, as our Society was not then a chartered body, and thus had no legal existence, the Judge at the Court of Probate, as we were told, paid no attention to such legacy and turned over the sum to the heirs. So much for the first. As for the second, it is quite true. The testator was one of our devoted Fellows, and willed all he had to the T. S. But when the President, Colonel Olcott, came to look into the matter, he found that the testator had children whom he had disinherited for some family reasons. Therefore, he called a council, and it was decided that the legacy should be refused, and the moneys passed to the legal heirs. The Theosophical Society would be untrue to its name were it to profit by money to which others are entitled virtually, at any rate on Theosophical principles, if not legally.

Enq. Again, and I say this on the authority of your own journal, the Theosophist, there's a Rajah of India who donated to the Society 25,000 rupees. Have you not thanked him for his great bounty in the January Theosophist for 1888?

Theo. We have, in these words, "That the thanks of the Convention be conveyed to H. H. the Maharajah . . . for his promised munificent gift of Rupees 25,000 to the Society's Fund." The thanks were duly conveyed, but the money is still a "promise," and has never reached the Headquarters.

Enq. But surely, if the Maharajah promised and received thanks for his gift publicly and in print, he will be as good as his promise?

Theo. He may, though the promise is 18 months old. I speak of the present and not of the future.

Enq. Then how do you propose to go on?

Theo. So long as the T. S. has a few devoted members willing to work for it without reward and thanks, so long as a few good Theosophists support it with occasional donations, so long will it exist, and nothing can crush it.

Enq. I have heard many Theosophists speak of a "power behind the Society" and of certain "Mahatmas," mentioned also in Mr. Sinnett's works, that are said to have founded the Society, to watch over and protect it.

Theo. You may laugh, but it is so.

The Working Staff of The T. S

Enq. These men, I have heard, are great Adepts, Alchemists, and what not. If, then, they can change lead into gold and make as much money as they like, besides doing all kinds of miracles at will, as related in Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World," why do not they find you money, and support the Founders and the Society in comfort?

Theo. Because they did not found a "miracle club." Because the Society is intended to help men to develop the powers latent in them through their own exertions and merit. Because whatever they may or may not produce in the way of phenomena, they are not false coiners; nor would they throw an additional and very strong temptation on the path of members and candidates: Theosophy is not to be bought. Hitherto, for the past 14 years, not a single working member has ever received pay or salary from either the Masters or the Society.

Enq. Then are none of your workers paid at all?

Theo. Till now, not one. But as every one has to eat, drink, and clothe himself, all those who are without any means of their own, and devote their whole time to the work of the society, are provided with the necessaries of life at the Head-quarters at Madras, India, though these "necessaries" are humble enough, in truth! (See Rules at the end.) But now that the Society's work has increased so greatly and still goes on increasing (N. B., owing to slanders) in Europe, we need more working hands. We hope to have a few members who will henceforth be remunerated — if the word can be used in the cases in question. For every one of these Fellows, who are preparing to give all their time to the Society, are quitting good official situations with excellent prospects, to work for us at less than half their former salary.

Enq. And who will provide the funds for this?

Theo. Some of our Fellows who are just a little richer than the rest. The man who would speculate or make money on Theosophy would be unworthy to remain in our ranks.

Enq. But you must surely make money by your books, magazines, and other publications?

Theo. The Theosophist of Madras, alone among the magazines, pays a profit, and this has regularly been turned over to the Society, year by year, as the published accounts show. Lucifer is slowly but steadily ingulfing money, never yet having paid its expenses — thanks to its being boycotted by the pious booksellers and railway stalls. The Lotus, in France — started on the private and not very large means of a Theosophist, who has devoted to it his whole time and labour — has ceased to exist, owing to the same causes, alas! Nor does the New York Path pay its way, while the Revue Theosophique of Paris has only just been started, also from the private means of a lady-member. Moreover, whenever any of the works issued by the Theosophical Publishing Company in London do pay, the proceeds will be devoted to the service of the Society.

Enq. And now please tell me all you can about the Mahatmas. So many absurd and contradictory things are said about them, that one does not know what to believe, and all sorts of ridiculous stories become current.

Theo. Well may you call them "ridiculous!"

Translator Unknown, revised

We will think first of those who are standing on the arena of present-day events (World War I)

Spirits ever watchful, Guardians of your souls,
May your wings bring
To the men of Earth committed to your charge
Our souls' beseeching love,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may stream with helpfulness
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who as a consequence of these events have already passed through the Gate of Death:

Spirits ever watchful, Guardians of your souls,
May your wings bring
To the men of heavenly spheres committed to your charge
Our souls' beseeching love,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may stream with helpfulness
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And may the Spirit for whom we seek through spiritual knowledge, the Spirit who for the salvation of the earth and for the freedom and progress of humanity passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, may He be with you and your hard tasks.

A week ago we considered souls nearly related to us who, if they are to be located now, must be sought in spiritual worlds. Certain things were said about these souls which can throw light upon the whereabouts of beings in the spiritual world. Today I propose to direct our study more to that path to the spiritual world which the human soul can take while it is still in the body, in order to find those spiritual realms referred to last time as the dwelling place of the souls of the so-called dead. It must be emphasized over and over that the way into the spiritual worlds that is suitable for souls of the present day requires manifold preparation. Some of this preparation is difficult, but it is necessary. Today I wish to point to certain matters connected with the path of knowledge from the point of view of what may be called “Imaginative Cognition.”

It is very familiar to you, my dear friends, that the human soul can have experiences in the spiritual world only when it is not using the instrument of the body. Everything we can gain through the instrument of the body can yield only experiences of what is present in the physical world. If we wish to have experience of the spiritual worlds, we must find the possibility of working with the soul outside the physical body. Now although it is difficult, it is possible for the human being today to experience the spiritual world while outside the body. Moreover it is always possible, once observations of the spiritual world have been made, for another who is not himself capable of this to judge them with really sound human reason—not with the kind of reason that is called sound, but with reason that is genuinely sound. But today we are going to speak of the actual way in which the human soul on the one hand emerges from the physical body, and on the other hand how it enters the spiritual world. A week ago we spoke of this from another point of view and as today I want to consider it from the standpoint of Imaginative Cognition, many pictures will be discussed that will remain to be pursued in your meditations. If you do this, you will see that this path of knowledge is of great significance.

The spiritual world can be entered, as it were, through three portals. The first may be called the Portal of Death, the second the Portal of the Elements, and the third the Portal of the Sun. Those who wish to tread the entire path of knowledge must pass through all three portals.

The Portal of Death has from time immemorial been described by all mystery teachings. This Portal of Death can only be attained if we strive to reach it through what has long been known to us as meditation, that is to say, complete surrender and devotion to certain thoughts or perceptions which are suited to our individuality and which we place so entirely in the center of our consciousness that we identify ourselves wholly with them. Human effort, of course, weakens very easily along this particular path, because there truly are and must be inner hindrances and obstacles to be overcome. It is a matter of repeating, again and again, the silent inner efforts to devote oneself so completely to the given thoughts and perceptions that one forgets the whole world and lives wholly in these thoughts and perceptions. After constant repetition, however, one gradually begins to perceive that the thoughts that have been made the center of the consciousness are taking on a kind of independent life. One receives the feeling that, “Hitherto I have only ‘thought' this thought; I have placed it at the center of my consciousness; but now it is beginning to unfold a particular life and inner agility of its own.” It is as if one were in the position of being able to produce a real being within oneself. The thought begins to become an inner structure. It is an important moment when one notices that this thought or perception has a life of its own, so that one feels oneself to be the sheath of this thought, of this perception. One can then say to oneself: “My efforts have enabled me to provide a stage on which something is developing which now, through me, is coming to a particular life of its own.”

This awakening, this enlivening of the thought, is a moment of great significance in the life of the meditator. He is then deeply stirred by the objective reality of the spiritual world; he realizes that the spiritual world, so to speak, is concerning itself with him, that it has approached him. Naturally, it is not a simple matter to reach this experience, for before doing so, one must go through various sensations that one would not, from one's own inclination, gladly go through. There is a certain feeling of isolation, for example, a feeling of loneliness to be undergone—a feeling of being forsaken. One cannot grasp the spiritual world without previously feeling forsaken by the physical world, without feeling that this physical world does many things which crush one, which wear one down. But we must come through this feeling of isolation to be able to bear the inner animation to which the thought awakens, to which it is born. Much resistance now confronts the human being; from within himself there is much resistance to what leads to true perception of this inner awakening of the thought to life.

One feeling in particular comes—an inner feeling that we simply do not wish to have. We do not admit this, however, but say instead: “Oh, I can never attain that; it sends me to sleep; my thinking and inner elasticity forsake me, they will not continue.” In short, one chooses involuntarily all sorts of evasions of what one must experience: that the thought which thus becomes enlivened becomes substantial. It becomes substantial and forms itself into a kind of being. And then one has not merely the feeling but the vision that the thought is, at first, like a little rounded seed which germinates into a being with definite form, which from outside our head continues inside so that the thought seems to tell us: “You have identified yourself with it, you are within the thought, and now, you extend with the thought into your own head; but you are essentially still outside.” The thought takes on the form of a winged human head, flowing out into infinity and then extending into one's own body through the head. The thought, therefore, grows into a winged angel's head. One must actually achieve this. It is difficult to have this experience and we therefore like to believe that in this moment when the thought grows in this way, we lose all possibility of thinking. We believe we shall be taken at this moment. The body we have known hitherto and into which the thought extends is felt to be like an abandoned automaton. Besides, there are present in the spiritual world all kinds of hindrances which prevent this from becoming visible to us. This winged angel's head really becomes inwardly visible, but there are all conceivable hindrances preventing its becoming visible. The point thus reached is the real threshold of the spiritual world. When one reaches the point I have just described, one is actually on the threshold of the spiritual world. But there, at first quite invisible to one, stands the power whom we have always called Ahriman. One does not see him. And it is Ahriman who hinders us from seeing that which I have described as the germinating thought-being. Ahriman does not wish one to see it. He wants to hinder this. And because it is primarily on the path of meditation that one reaches this point, it always becomes easy for Ahriman to erase what one must come to, if one clings to the prejudices of the physical world. And truly, one must say: The human being does not believe how very much he clings to the prejudices of the physical world; neither can he imagine that there is another world whose laws are different from those of the physical world. I cannot mention today all the prejudices which people bring with them to the threshold of the spiritual world, but I will allude to one of the principal and more intimate prejudices.

You see, people speak of the physical world from a monistic world view, from unity; they repeatedly say that they can only grasp the world by contemplating the whole world as a unity. We have sometimes had to go through curious experiences in this respect. When the spiritual scientific movement began in Berlin a good many years ago, with only a few members, there were several who felt they were not wholly in sympathy with it. One lady, for instance, came to us after a few months and said that spiritual science was not for her because it required too much thinking, and she found that thinking wiped out everything precious for her, making her fall into a kind of sleep; besides which, she said, there is only one thing of real value, and that is unity! The unity of the world which the monist seeks in so many areas—and not the materialistic monist alone—had become a fixed idea with her. Unity, unity, and again unity! That was her quest.

In German culture we have the philosopher Leibnitz, an emphatically monadological thinker who did not seek for unity but for the many “Monads” who to him were essences of soul. It was clear to him that in the spiritual world there can be no question of unity but only of multiplicity. There are monists and pluralists. The monists speak only of unity and oppose the pluralists who speak of multiplicity. You see, however, the fact is that both unity and multiplicity are concepts which are of value only in the physical world, so people believe that they must be of value in the spiritual world as well. But that is not so. People must realize that although unity can be glimpsed, it must immediately be superseded for it reveals itself as multiplicity. It is unity and multiplicity at the same time. Nor can ordinary calculation, physical mathematics, be carried into the spiritual world. One of the very strongest and at the same time most subtle of Ahrimanic temptations is the desire to carry into the spiritual world, just as they are, concepts acquired in the physical world. We must approach the threshold without “bag or baggage,” without being weighed down with what we have learned in the physical world; we must be ready to leave all this at the threshold. All concepts—precisely those we have taken the most trouble to acquire—must be left behind and we must be prepared for the fact that in the spiritual world new concepts will be given; we will become aware of something entirely new. This clinging to what the physical world gives is extremely strong in the human being. He would like to take with him into the spiritual world what he has conquered in the physical. He must have the possibility, however, of standing before a completely clean slate, of standing before complete emptiness and of allowing himself to be guided only by the thoughts which then begin to come to life. This entrance into the spiritual world has been called fundamentally the Gate of Death, because it really is a greater death than even physical death. In physical death we are persuaded to lay aside the physical body; but on entering the spiritual world we must resolve to lay aside our concepts, our notions, and our ideas and allow our being to be built up anew.

Now we confront the winged thought-being of which I have spoken. We already confront it if we really give all our effort to living in a thought. All we need to know then is that when the moment comes which makes claims upon us that are different from those we have imagined, we must really stand firm, we must not, as it were, retreat. This retreat is in most cases unconscious. We weaken, but the weakening is only the sign that we do not wish to lay bag and baggage aside. The whole soul, with everything it has acquired on the physical plane, must perish if it is to enter the spiritual world. That is why it is quite correct to call this portal the Portal of Death. And then we look through this winged thought-being as through a new spiritual eye that one acquires, or through a spiritual ear—for we also hear, we also feel—and by these means we become aware of what is present in the spiritual world.

It is even possible, my dear friends, to speak of particular experiences which one can have upon entering the spiritual world. For one to be able to have these experiences, nothing else is necessary than perseverance in the meditation I have previously described. It is particularly important to be very clear that certain experiences that one brings to the threshold of the spiritual world must be laid aside before entering. Experiences have hence really shown that the spiritual world that confronts one is usually different from that which one would like to have. This then is the first portal: the Portal of Death.

The second portal now is the Portal of the Elements. This Portal of the Elements will be the second one to be passed through by those who give themselves up to zealous meditation. But it is also possible for a man to encourage his own organization in such a way that he can actually reach the second portal without having passed through the first. This is not good for a real knowledge, but it may happen that one reaches this point without first going through the first portal. A real appropriate knowledge will only yield itself if one has passed through the first portal and then approached the second portal consciously. This second portal shows itself in the following way: You see, if a man has passed through the Portal of Death he feels himself at first to be in certain conditions which in their outward impression upon him resemble sleep, although inwardly they are quite different. Outwardly man is as though asleep while these conditions last. As soon as the thought begins to live, when it begins to stir and grow, the outer man is really as though he were asleep. He need not be lying down, he may be sitting, but he is as though asleep. Outwardly it is impossible to distinguish this state from sleep, but inwardly it is absolutely different. Not until one passes back into the normal condition of life does one realize: “I have not been asleep but I have been within the life of thought in just the same way as I am now awake in the physical world and looking with my eyes at what is around me.” But one also knows: “Now that I am awake, I think, I form thoughts, I connect them; but shortly before, when I was in that other state, the thoughts formed themselves. The one approached the other, explained the other, separated from the other; and what one usually does oneself in thinking was there done by itself.” But one knows: whereas in physical life one is an Ego, adding one thought to another, in that other state one swims, as it were, in one thought and then over to another; one is united with the thoughts; then one is within a third and then swims away from it. One has the feeling that space simply no longer exists.

No longer is it the way it is in physical space, where if one had gone to a certain point and looked back and then went on further, and if one wished to return to the first point, then one would have to travel along the road again; one would have to make the journey both ways. That is not the case in that other state. Space is different there; one springs through space, so to speak. At one moment we are in one place, the next we are far away. We do not pass through space. The laws of space have ceased. We now actually live and weave within the thoughts themselves. We know that the Ego is not dead, it is weaving in the web of thoughts, but although we are living within the thoughts, we cannot immediately be their master; the thoughts form themselves and we are drawn along with them. We do not ourselves swim in the stream of thoughts but the thoughts take us on their shoulders, as it were, and carry us along. This state must also cease. And it ceases when we pass through the Portal of the Elements. Then the whole process becomes subject to our will, then we can follow a definite line of thought with intention. We then live in the whole life of thought with our will. This is again a moment of tremendous significance. For this reason I have even referred to it exoterically in public lectures by saying that the second stage is reached by identifying ourselves with our destiny. Thereby we acquire the power to be within the weaving thoughts with our own will.

At first, when one has passed through the Portal of Death, one is in the spiritual world which does as it likes with one. One learns to act for oneself in the spiritual world by identifying oneself with one's destiny. This can only be achieved by degrees. Thoughts then acquire being which is identical with our own. The deeds of our being enter the spiritual world. But in order to achieve this in the right way one must pass through the second portal. When, with the power acquired from identifying oneself with destiny, one begins to weave in the thoughts in such a way that they do not carry one along as in a dream-picture but one is able to eliminate a thought and call up another—to manipulate them at will—when this begins one experiences what may be called the “passing through the portal.” And then the power of will we are now using shows itself as a simply fearful monster. This has been known for thousands of years in mysticism as the encounter with the “lion.” One must go through this encounter with the lion. In the life of feelings this gives rise to a dreadful fear, a fear of what is taking place in the world of thought, of this living union with it, and this fear must be overcome, just as the loneliness of the Portal of Death must be overcome. This fear can in the most manifold ways simulate other feelings that are not fear; but it is, in reality, fear of what one approaches. And what now occurs is that one finds the possibility of mastering this wild beast, this “lion” who meets us. In Imagination it actually appears as if it were opening wide its enormous jaws, wishing to devour us. The power of will which we want to use in the spiritual world threatens to devour us. One is incessantly overcome by the feeling; “You are obliged to will, but you must do something, you must seize something.” Yet concerning all these elements of will which one contains, one has the feeling: “If you seize it, it devours you, eradicates you from the world.” This is the experience of being devoured by the lion. So—and one can speak of this in pictures—rather than surrendering to the fear that the elements of will in the spiritual world will seize, devour, and strangle us, one must swing oneself to the back of the lion, grasp these elements of will, and make use of them for action. That is what must be done when this happens.

You can now understand the essentials. If one has first passed through the Gates of Death, one is outside the body, and can only use the forces of will outside. One must insert oneself into the cosmic harmony. The forces that must be used outside the body are also within us, only they rule unconsciously. The forces that circulate our blood and make our hearts beat come from the spirituality into which we plunge when we immerse ourselves in the element of will. We have these forces within us. If, therefore, a man is taken possession of by the element of will without having gone through the prescribed esoteric path, without having passed through the Gate of Death, those forces seize him which otherwise circulate in his blood and beat in his heart; and then he does not use the forces that are outside his body but those that are within him. This would be “grey magic.” It would cause a man to seize the spiritual world with the forces with which one is not permitted to seize the spiritual world. What matters is that one sees the lion, that this monster is actually before one, and that one knows: This is what it looks like, this is how the forces of will desire to lay hold of one; they must be mastered from outside the body. If one does not approach the second portal or actually behold the lion, one remains always in danger of wanting to rule the world out of human egotism. That is why the true path of knowledge leads us first of all from within the physical body and physical existence and only then to approach the conditions that are to be arrived at with the essences which are outside.

Opposing this there is the inclination of most people to enter the spiritual world by a more comfortable way than through true meditation. Thus it is possible, for example, to avoid the Gate of Death, and, if the inner predisposition is favorable, to approach the second portal. One can reach this through giving oneself up to a particular image, an especially fervent image which speaks about dissolving oneself in the Universal All and the like, recommended in good faith by certain pseudo-mystics. By this means the exertions of thinking are stupefied and the emotions are stimulated. The emotions are whipped into fiery enthusiasm. By this means one can, to begin with, certainly be admitted to the second portal and be given over to the forces of will, but one does not master the lion; one is devoured by the lion and the lion does with one what it likes. This means that fundamentally occult things are taking place, but in essence, they are egoistic. That is why it is constantly necessary—although one might say there is also a risk of this from the point of view of true esotericism today—not to censure that which one might say is only a mystical feeling and experience that is lashed into a fury. This appeal to what stimulates a man inwardly, whipping him out of his physical body but leaving him still connected with the forces of the blood and the heart, the physical forces of the blood and the heart, does undoubtedly bring about a kind of perception of the spiritual world which may also have much good in it; but it causes him to grope about insecurely in the spiritual world, and renders him incapable of distinguishing between egotism and altruism. This brings one directly, if one must stress this, to a difficult point, for with respect to real meditation and everything related to it, modern minds have for the most part fallen asleep. They do not like to exert their thinking as strongly as is necessary, if they are to identify themselves with the thinking. They far prefer to be told to give themselves in loving surrender to the Cosmic Spirit, or the like, where the emotions are whipped up and thinking is evaded. People are led in this way to spiritual perceptions, but without full consciousness of them, and then they are not able to distinguish whether the things they experience spring from egotism or not. Certainly enthusiasm in feeling and perception must run parallel to selfless meditation, but thought must also run parallel to it. Thinking must not be eliminated. Certain mystics, however, try to suppress thought altogether, and to surrender themselves wholly to the glow of frenzied emotion.

Here too there is a difficult point, for this method is useful; those who stimulate their emotions go forward much more quickly. They enter the spiritual world and have all kinds of experiences—and that is what most people desire. The question with most people is not whether they are entering the spiritual world in the right way but only whether they are entering it at all. The uncertainty that arises here is that if we have not first passed through the Gate of Death but go directly to the Gate of the Elements, we are there prevented by Lucifer from really perceiving the lion, so that before we become aware of it, it devours us. The difficulty is that we are no longer able to distinguish between what is related to us and what is outside in the world. We learn to know spiritual beings, elemental spirits. One can learn to recognize a rich and extensive spiritual world, without having passed through the Gate of Death, but these are spiritual beings who for the most part have the task of maintaining the human blood circulation and the work of the human heart. Such beings are always around us in the spiritual, in the elemental world. They are spirits whose life-element is in the air, in the encircling warmth and also in the light; they also have their life-element in the music of the spheres, which is no longer physically perceptible; these spiritual beings weave and lace through everything that is living. Of course, then, we enter this world. And the thing becomes alluring because the most wonderful spiritual discoveries can be made in this world. If a man—who has not passed through the Gate of Death but has gone directly to the Portal of the Lion without seeing the lion—perceives an elementary spirit whose task is to maintain the activity of the heart, this elementary spirit, who also maintains the heart-activity of other people, may under certain circumstances bring information about other human beings, even about people of the past, or indeed prophetic tidings of the future. The experience may be accompanied with great success, yet it is not the right path because it does not make us free in our mobility in the spiritual world.

The third portal that one must pass through is the Portal of the Sun. And there we must, when we reach this portal, undergo yet another experience. While we are at the Portal of Death, we perceive a winged angel's head; while we are at the Portal of the Elements, we perceive a lion; at the Portal of the Sun, we must perceive a dragon, a fierce dragon. And this fierce dragon we must truly perceive. But now Lucifer and Ahriman together try to make it imperceptible to our spiritual vision. If we do perceive it, however, we realize that in reality this fierce dragon has most fundamentally to do with ourselves, for he is woven out of those instincts and sensations which are related to what in ordinary life we call our “lowest nature.” This dragon comprises all the forces, for instance, that we use—if you will forgive the prosaic expression—for digestion and many other things. What provides us with the forces of digestion, and many other functions bound up with the lowest part of our nature, appears to us in the form of a dragon. We must contemplate him when he coils out of us. He is far from beautiful and it is therefore easy for Lucifer and Ahriman so to influence our subconscious life of soul that unconsciously we do not want to see this dragon. Into the dragon are also woven all our absurdities, all our vanities, our pride and self-seeking, as well as our basest instincts.

If we do not contemplate the dragon at the Portal of the Sun—and it is called the Portal of the Sun because in the sun-forces live those forces from which the dragon is woven, and it is the sun-forces that enable us to digest and to carry out other organic processes (this occurs really through living together with the sun)—if we do not contemplate the dragon at the Portal of the Sun, he devours us and we become one with him in the spiritual world. We are then no longer distinct from the dragon, we actually are the dragon, who experiences in the spiritual world. This dragon may have very significant and, in a sense, grand experiences, experiences more fascinating than those which come at the Portal of Death or beyond it. The experiences one has at the Portal of Death are, to begin with, colorless, shadowlike, and intimate—so light and intimate that they may easily escape us, and we are not in the least inclined to be attentive enough to hold them fast. We must always exert ourselves to allow what easily comes to life in the thoughts to expand. It expands ultimately into a world, but long and energetic striving and work is necessary before this world appears as reality, permeated with color, sound, and life. For we must let these colorless and soundless forms take on life from infinity. If one discovers, for example, the simplest air or water spirit through what we may now call “head clairvoyance” (by which is meant the clairvoyance that arises from animation of thinking), this air or water spirit is at first something that flits away so lightly and fleetingly over the horizon of the spiritual world that it does not interest us at all. And if it is to have color or sound this must draw near it from the whole sphere of the cosmos. This happens, however, only after long inner effort. This occurs only through waiting until one is blessed. For just suppose—speaking pictorially—that you have one of these air spirits: if it is to approach in color, the color must stream into it from a mighty part of the cosmos. One must have the power to make the colors shine in. This power, however, can only be acquired, can only be won, by devotion. The radiating forces must pour in from without through devotion. But if we are one with the dragon we shall be inclined, when we see an air or water spirit, to ray out the forces which are within us, and precisely those which are in the organs usually called the “lower” organs. This is much easier. The head is in itself a perfect organ but in the astral body and etheric body of the head there is not much color because the colors are expended in forming, for example, the brain and especially the skull. When we approach the threshold of the spiritual world and in “head clairvoyance” draw the astral and etheric bodies out of the physical body, there is not much color in them. The colors have been expended to shape the perfected organ, the brain. When, however, in “belly clairvoyance” [“Bauchellsehen”] we draw the astral body and etheric body out of the organs of stomach, liver, gall-bladder, and so forth, the colors have not yet been as expended in building up perfected organs. These organs are only on the way to perfection. What comes from the astral body and etheric body of the stomach is beautifully colored; it gleams and glitters in all possible radiant colors; and if the etheric and astral bodies are drawn out of these organs, the forms seen are imbued with the most wonderful colors and sounds. So it could happen that someone may see wonderful things and sketch a picture with gorgeous coloring. This is certainly interesting, as it is also interesting for the anatomist to examine the spleen, liver, or intestines, and from the standpoint of science this is also indispensable. But when it is examined by someone very experienced, what appears in these beautifully colored pictures is that which underlies the process of digestion two hours after eating.

There is certainly no objection to investigating these things. The anatomist must necessarily do so and the time will come when science will gain a great deal by knowing what the etheric body does when the stomach digests food. But we must be totally clear about this: if we do not connect this with our dragon, if we do not consciously approach the Portal of the Sun, if we are not aware that we summon into the dragon what is contained in the etheric and astral body of the belly, we then radiate it forth into picture-clairvoyance, and then we receive a truly wonderful world. The most beautiful and easiest of attainments does not at first come from the higher forces, from “head clairvoyance,” but from “belly clairvoyance.” It is most important to know this. From the point of view of the cosmos there is nothing vulgar in an absolute sense, but only in a relative sense. In order to produce what is necessary for the process of digestion in man the cosmos has to work with forces of colossal significance. What matters is that we not succumb to errors or illusions but know what the things are. When we know that something which looks very wonderful is nothing other than the process of digestion, this is extremely important. But if we believe that some celestial world is being revealed by such a picture, then we are falling into error. An intelligent person will have no objection to the cultivation of science based on such knowledge, but only to things being put in a false light. This is what we are concerned with. Thus it can happen, for instance, that someone will always at a certain moment draw out the etheric and astral bodies directly through an occurrence within the digestive processes, at a certain stage of digestion. Such a man may be a natural clairvoyant. One must only know what we are concerned with.

Through “head clairvoyance,” where all the colors of the etheric and astral bodies are used for the production of the wonderful structure of the brain, it will be difficult for a man to fill what is colorless and soundless with colors and sounds. But with “belly clairvoyance” it will be comparatively easy to see the most wonderful things in the world. In this kind of clairvoyance, of course, also lie forces which a man must learn to use. The forces used in digestion are involved in a process of transformation and we experience them in the right way when we learn more and more to cultivate the identification with destiny. And this is also the ground from which we learn: that which at first appeared as a flying angel's head we must trace again to the other element that we have dealt with, so that we do not trace only the forces which serve digestion, but also those of a higher kind, those which lie within the sphere of our karma, our destiny. If we identify ourselves with it, we succeed in bearing forth the spiritual entities we see around us, which now have the inclination towards colors and sounds flowing in from cosmic space. The spiritual world then naturally becomes concrete and full of stability, truly so concrete that we fare there as well as we fare in the physical world.

One great difficulty at the Portal of Death is that we really have the feeling—and we must overcome it—I am essentially losing myself. But if one has stretched oneself and has identified oneself with the life of thought, one may at the same time have the consciousness, “I lose myself but I find myself again.” That is an experience that one has. One loses oneself on entering the spiritual world, but one knows that one will find oneself again. One must make the transition: to reach the abyss, to lose oneself in it, but with trust that one shall find oneself again there. This is an experience that one must go through; all that I have described are inner experiences that one must go through. And one must come to know that what takes place in the soul is important. It is just as if we were obliged to see something; if one is shown the way by a friend, it is easier than if one thinks it out for oneself. But one can attain all that has been described if one submits oneself to constant inner work and inner self-control through meditation, as you will find described in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment and in the second part of Occult Science, an Outline.

It is of very great importance that we should learn to pass through these alien experiences beyond the threshold of the spiritual world. If, as is natural to the human being in his naked need, one is prone to imagine the spiritual world merely as a continuation, a duplication of the physical world, if one expects everything in the spiritual world to look just the same as in the physical world, then one cannot enter. One must really go through what one experiences as a reversal of everything experienced in the physical world. Here in the physical world one is accustomed, for example, to open one's eyes and see light, to receive impressions through the light. If one were to expect, in the spiritual world, that one could open a spiritual eye to receive impressions through the light, then one could not enter, for one's expectations would be false. Something like a fog would be woven around the spiritual senses, concealing the spiritual world as a mass of fog conceals a mountain. In the spiritual world, for instance, one cannot see objects illuminated by light; on the contrary, one must be very clear that one streams with the light oneself into the spiritual world. In the physical world, if a ray of light falls upon an object, one sees it; but in the spiritual world one is oneself within the ray of light and it is in this way that one touches the object. One knows oneself to be shimmering with the ray of light, in the spiritual world; one knows oneself to be within the streaming light. This knowledge can give an indication towards acquiring concepts capable of helping us onward in the spiritual world. It is, for instance, extremely useful to picture to ourselves: How would it be, if we were now within the sun? Because we are not within the sun we see objects illuminated by the sun's rays, by the refracted rays of the sun. But one must imagine oneself to be within the sun's rays and thus touching the objects. This “touching” is an experience in‘ the spiritual world; indeed, experience there consists in knowing that one is alive within that world. One knows that one is alive in the weaving of thoughts. As soon as this condition begins, that one knows one is conscious in the weaving of thoughts, then comes an immediate awareness of self-knowledge in the luminous streaming light. For thought is of the light. Thought weaves in the light. But one can experience this only when one is really immersed in the light, if one is within this weaving of thoughts.

The human being has now reached a stage where he must acquire such concepts as these, so that he may not pass through the Gate of Death into the spiritual world and find himself in completely strange worlds. The “capital” given to man by the Gods at the primal beginning of the Earth has gradually been consumed. Human beings no longer bear with them through the Gate of Death the remains of an ancient heritage. They must now gradually acquire concepts in the physical world which, when they proceed through the Gate of Death, will serve after crossing to make visible to them the tempting, seductive, dangerous beings confronting one there. The fact that spiritual science must be communicated to humanity, must take shelter in humanity at the present time, is connected with these great cosmic relations. And one can observe already in our time, in our destiny-laden time, that crossings are really being created. Human beings are now passing through the Gate of Death in the prime of youth; in obedience to the great demands of destiny, they have, in a sense, consciously allowed death to approach them in the days of their youth. I do not mean now so much the moment before death on the battlefield, for instance. In those cases there may be a great deal of enthusiasm and so forth, so that the experience of death is not so saturated with as clear an attention as one would like to believe. But when the death has actually occurred, it leaves behind a still unspent etheric body, in our time it leaves behind a still unspent etheric body upon which the dead one can look, so that he now beholds this phenomenon, this fact of death, with much greater clarity than would be possible for him if it occurred as the result of illness or old age.

Death on the battlefield is more intense, an event which works more powerfully in our time than a death occurring in other ways. It therefore works upon the soul which has passed through the Gate of Death as an enlightenment. Death is terrible, or at least may be terrible for the human being so long as he remains in the body. But when he has passed through the Gate of Death and looks back at death, death is then the most beautiful of all experiences possible in the human cosmos. For between death and a new birth this looking back to the entrance to the spiritual world through death is the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most glorious event possible. While directly from our birth so little before our physical experience ever really remains—no man remembers his physical birth with the ordinary, undeveloped faculties—nevertheless the phenomenon of death is ever-present to the soul which has passed through the Gate of Death, from the moment of the sudden emergence of consciousness onwards. It is always present, yet it stands there as the most beautiful presence, as the “awakener.” Within the spiritual world, death is the most wonderful instructor, an instructor who can prove to the receptive soul that there is a spiritual world, because through its very being it destroys the physical, and from this destruction allows the spiritual to emerge. This resurrection of the spiritual, with the complete stripping off of the physical, is an event ever-present between death and a new birth. It is a sustaining, wonderful event, and the soul gradually grows in his understanding of it, grows in a totally unique way if it is to a certain extent “self-selected”—not, of course, in the sense of a man seeking his own death but by having voluntarily considered it. If he has of his own free will allowed death to come to him, this moment gains immensely in lucidity. And a man who has not hitherto thought much about death or has concerned himself little with the spiritual world, may in our time receive in his death a wonderful instructor. This is a fact of great significance, precisely in this war, regarding the connection of the physical with the spiritual world. I have already stressed this in many lectures about this difficult time; but what can be done through mere teaching, through words, does not suffice. Yet great enlightenment is in store for mankind of the future because there have been so many deaths. They work upon the dead, and the dead, in their turn, set to work on the future development of culture in humanity.

I am able to communicate to you directly certain words which came from one who in our day passed through the Gate of Death in his early years, who has, I would like to say, come through. These words are, precisely for that reason, rather startling, because they testify to the fact that the dead one—who experienced death with the particular clarity one feels on the battlefield—is finding now in these alien experiences after death how he works himself away from earthly conceptions into spiritual conceptions. I will communicate these words here. They are, if I may so characterize them, intercepted by someone who wanted to bring that which the dying soldier would if he were allowed to return.

Within the streaming
Light I feel
The life force.

Death has waked
Me from sleep,
From spirit sleep.

I shall live on
And do, out of myself,
What the power of light
Radiates into me.²

This was to a certain extent what the suffering soul had learned from looking back to his death, the learning he had experienced. It was as though his being were filled with what must be learned from the sight of death, and he wished to give this information, to reveal it.

Within the streaming
Light I feel
The life force.

Therefore he feels that he is more alive to grasping the spiritual world than he was before death. He feels death as an awakener, an instructor:

Death has waked
Me from sleep,
From spirit sleep.

And now he feels that he will be a doer in the spiritual world:

I shall live on
And do, out of myself ...

but he feels that this action is that of the forces of light within him, and he feels the light working within him:

I shall live on
And do, out of myself,
What the power of light
Radiates into me.

One can see everywhere, can rightly see, that what one can come to perceive in the spiritual world can again and again deliver the most pure confirmation of what can become universally familiar through the form of knowledge called Imagination. This is what we should so like to see resuscitated, rightly resuscitated, through our spiritual scientific movement; that we have not to do with just a naked knowledge of the spiritual world, but that this knowledge becomes so alive in us that we adopt another way of feeling with the world, of experiencing with the world, so that the idea of spiritual science begins to live in us. It is this inward enlivening of the thoughts of spiritual science which, as I have repeatedly said, will be fundamentally demanded of us, so that it can be our contribution to the evolution of the world. This must be done in order that the thoughts born of spiritual science, which soar into the spiritual world as light forces, may unite with the radiant cosmos, in order that the cosmos may unite with that which those who have passed through the Gate of Death in our fateful times wish to incorporate into the spiritual movement of culture. Then will begin what is implied in these words with which we will again today conclude our lecture:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood on fields of strife,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the people's sacrifice
There shall blossom fruit of spirit—
If souls, conscious of the spirit,
Turn their sense to the spirit realm.

---

• 2. Im leuchtenden, / Da fühle ich / Die Lebenskraft. / Der Tod hat mich / Vom Schlaf erweckt, / Vom geistesschlaf. / Ich werde sein / Und aus mir tun, / Was Leuchtekraft /In mir erstrahlt.

The explanations which I took the liberty to give you, will have shown you that the acquisition of real super-sensible knowledge entails above all, with the aid of the exercises already characterized, that the two sides of human nature which are usually incorrectly designated as man's inner and outer being should be distinctly separated. Perhaps I may point out that in ordinary consciousness one does not carefully distinguish man's inner and outer being, when speaking of these. The way in which I characterized the exit of man's sentient and volitional being during sleep and the acquisition of conscious super-sensible knowledge outside the physical body, shows us that just this super-sensible knowledge enables us to separate distinctly those parts which are usually designated vaguely in ordinary consciousness as man's outer and inner being.

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

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

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

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

In the same measure in which it is moulded plastically and acquires (if I may use this paradoxical expression) soul-spiritual sense organs, the soul-spiritual world rises up around our inner being. That part of our being which ordinarily lives in a dull twilight existence and which can only perceive an environing world; namely, the physical world (when it uses the physical and etheric organs of perception), thus acquires plastic form and enters in connection with a world which always surrounds us, also in our ordinary life, even though we are not aware of it, a world in which we lived before descending into our physical being through birth or conception, as described the day before yesterday, a world in which we shall live again when we pass through the portal of death, for then we shall recognize it as a world which belongs to us and which is not limited by birth and death.

But there is one thing which rises up before us when we enter the soul-spiritual world. We cannot enter the soul-spiritual world in the same abstract, theoretical manner with which we can live in the physical world and in the world of thoughts or of the intellect. In the physical world and in the world of thoughts we use ideas and thoughts, which as such, leave us cold. With a little self-observation anyone can discover that when he ascends to the sphere of pure thinking, when he surrenders to the external sensory world without any special interest or a close connection with it, the external physical world, as well as the world of ideas, really leaves him cold. We must learn to know this in detail from single examples in life. We should note, for instance, how different are the inner feelings with which we consider our home, from these with which we look upon any other strange country which is indifferent to us. This will show us that in order to have a living interest for the environing world, our feeling and our will must be drawn in through special circumstances; we must include the feeling and the will which ordinarily dive down into the physical world only when we awake, obtaining from this physical world a connection with the senses and the understanding. The fact that love or perhaps hate are kindled in us when we encounter certain people in the physical world, the fact that we feel induced to do certain things for them out of compassion, all this demands the inclusion of our feelings and of everything which constitutes our inner being, when we come across such things in the external physical world. How conscious we are of the fact that our inner life grows cold, when we rise up to spheres which are generally called the spheres of pale, dry thought and of theoretic study!

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

We thus recognize that in life itself feeling and will must first be drawn into the sensory world and into the world of thoughts. But we perceive this in the fullest meaning of the word only when super-sensible knowledge, which has become emancipated from the physical and etheric bodies, enables us to have experiences outside these bodies within our sentient-volitional being.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I might say: Even as in the physical world we face a mirror and in this mirror the environing world appears simultaneously with our own self, so in super-sensible knowledge the spiritual world appears through this mirror. And in the same way in which we can touch the material mirror with its foil and investigate its composition, so we can also investigate this super-sensible mirror; namely, our physical body and our etheric body, when our real soul-spiritual being is outside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We recognize that from birth onwards, we constantly pass through a partial process of death, and real death sets in when the whole body does that which we ordinarily do through the nervous system, within a small part of the body.

We therefore learn to look upon the moment of death by gaining insight on a small scale into its being through the activity of thinking in the human organism. Throughout the whole time after death, we can only look back upon our physical body because the following fact exists: Whenever a thought lights up within you during your ordinary life, this is always accompanied by the fact that physical matter is eliminated in the physical body, in the same way in which, for instance, physical substance separates from a precipitated salt solution. This lighting up of thought you owe to this obscuring, to this casting-off of physical mineral substance. When you abandon the physical body, you sum up in a comparatively brief space of time what lives in the continual stream of your thoughts. You confront the fact that in death there flares up all at once that which slowly glimmered and shone throughout your earthly life, from birth to death.

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

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

This is how the evolution of humanity forms part of the evolution of the world. If we study the development of the world, for instance the mineral life on earth, we understand why there should be mineral, earthly laws. They exist so that they might also exist within us, and thinking is therefore bound up with the earth. But in perceiving how the beings whose thinking is connected with the earth emerge from that which produces their thought, we also learn to recognize how man's true being rises above that which pertains only to the earth. This is what connects the development of the world with the development of humanity and unites them.

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

When we thus learn to know man's inner being, the development of the world appears in the same way in which the ordinary earthly experiences appear before us, the experiences through which we passed since our birth.

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

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

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

Within the development of the world we can see something which is again of immense importance to those who are interested in modern civilization, just as interesting as the facts which I explained in connection with a knowledge of the human being, of the eternal inner kernel of man.

Modern civilization shows us that up to a certain point it is possible to consider man's relationship to the development of the world by linking up the human being with the evolution of the animals—even though the corresponding theories, or the hypotheses, as some people say, still contain many unclear facts, requiring completion and modification. We follow the development of the simplest organic beings up to the highest animals, and if we continue this line of observation we come to the point of placing man at the summit of animal development. One person does it in this way, and the other in that way; one more idealistically, and the other more materialistically in accordance with Darwin's theory of evolutionary descent, but methodically it can hardly be denied that if we wish to study man's physical nature according to natural-scientific methods, we must link him up with the animal line of descent (this has been done for some time).

We investigate how his head changed in comparison with the heads of the different animal species; we investigate his limbs, etc., and we thus obtain what is known as comparative anatomy, comparative morphology, comparative physiology, and also ideas on the way in which man's physical form gradually developed out of lower beings in the course of the world's evolution. But we always remain in the physical sphere. On the one hand people take it amiss today if the anthroposophical spiritual investigator speaks of the spiritual world as I take the liberty to do in this lecture; from many sides this is viewed as a pure fantasy, and although many people believe that it is well meant … they nevertheless look upon it as something fantastic.

Those who become acquainted to some extent with the things described by me, those who at least try to understand them, will see that the preparations and preliminary conditions for them are just as serious as, for instance, the preparations for the study of mathematics, so that it is out of the question to speak of sailing into a fantastic region. But just as on the one hand people take it amiss if a person describes the spiritual world as a real, objective world, so they take it amiss on the other hand if in regard to man's physical development one fully accepts those who follow man's development darwinistically, with a natural-scientific discipline, along the animal line of descent, as far as man. No speculations should enter the observations made in the physical sphere, as is, for instance, the case today in Neovitalism. This is full of speculations; the old vitalism was also full of speculative elements. But whenever we consider the physical world, we must remain by physical facts.

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

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

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

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

If we conscientiously trace the evolutionary development through animal descent up to man, as Darwin or other Darwinians or Haeckel did, and if we penetrate into the justifiable scientific aspects of the world development of man, we can continue this in a spiritual-scientific direction, after having reached the boundary to which we are led by natural science.

We now discover that a CONTEMPLATION OF THE FORM into which we penetrate through super-sensible knowledge, shows us all the SIGNIFICANCE OF FORMS, as they appear in the kingdom of man on the one hand, and in the animal kingdom on the other; we discover the whole significance of these forms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Through an artistic deepened contemplation of the forms in the world's development the conscientiously accepted Darwinistic theory changes, insofar as it is scientifically justified today. We thus recognize that in the development of the world the human being has behind him a LONGER TIME OF DEVELOPMENT than the animals—that the animals develop as their chief form that part which man adds to his head. In this way man reaches the point of lifting one part of his being out of the force of gravity, whereas the animals are entirely subjected to the force of gravity. Everything which constituted our head with its sense organs is raised above the force of gravity, so that it does not turn towards ponderable matter but towards the ether, which fills the sensory world. This is the case above all with the senses; we would see this, could we study them more closely. In this way, for instance, the human organ of hearing depends upon an etheric structure, not only upon an air structure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By surveying the development of the earth in this way, we perceive IN THE MIDDLE OF ITS DEVELOPMENT THE EVENT OF GOLGOTHA. We see how this event of Golgotha is placed in the middle of the earth's development; before this event, there only existed forces which would have led man to a kind of paralyzation of his forces. We really learn to recognize (I can only allude to this at the end of my lecture) that in the same way in which through the vegetable and animal fertilization a special element enters the fertilized organism, so the Mystery of Golgotha brought something into the evolution of the world from regions outside the earth, and this continues to live; it accompanies the souls until at the end of the earth they pass on to new metamorphoses of earthly life. I would have to describe whole volumes were I to show the path leading in a strictly conscientious scientific way from what I have described to you today in connection with the evolution of humanity and of the universe, to the Mystery of Golgotha, to the appearance of the Christ-Being in relationship with the earth.

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

Now Christ's words in the Gospels resound to us in a new and wonderful way; “HEAVEN AND EARTH SHALL PASS AWAY, BUT MY WORDS SHALL NOT PASS AWAY,” and connected with these words are those of St. Paul: “NOT I, BUT CHRIST IN ME.” If a Christian really grasps these words, if a person who really understands Christianity inwardly and who says, “Not I, but Christ in me,” understands Christ's words, “Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away”—that is, “what lives within my everlasting Being shall not pass away”—these words will shine forth from the Gospel in a peculiar manner, with a magic producing reverence, but if one is really honest they cannot be understood without further ado.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The words of the ancient Greeks, addressed to man, sound like a deep spiritual admonition: “Know thyself!” These words can be applied to general knowledge of human nature, not so much to personal knowledge. In this way, knowledge of human nature is, as it were, designated as the summit of all human knowledge and striving. And we can also feel from the way this word sounds to us that it is not meant merely in a scientific-theoretical sense, but that it is meant as a spiritual admonition in a moral-religious sense. And one would like to say: After the expiration of a many-sided, self-contained spiritual development epoch of humanity, today a kind of counter-word stands before our soul. This counter-word was pronounced almost fifty years ago and has today, in a certain way, even been forgotten, disappeared from the consciousness of mankind. Nevertheless, the whole modern state of mind, what one carries within oneself today as the great soul conflicts, lives under the influence of this newer word. It is the word that Du Bois-Reymond pronounced, the word: “We cannot recognize,” the word: “Ignoramus, ignorabimus.” Even if many today believe themselves to be beyond the confession of this word, in the way we relate to the world as humans, this word is still deeply involved. It is, so to speak, the confession, expressed or unexpressed, of the results of scientific research in their significance for a general knowledge of the world and view of life.

But anyone who has been involved in intellectual life for decades and has observed how this intellectual life has developed over the last three to four centuries can do no other than justify, as it were, what is regarded as knowledge today in relation to science. Natural science has indeed achieved so much in terms of exploring the external world of the senses; it has achieved so much in terms of applying instruments and experimental methods to research into this external world and its great laws, and it has confirmed and corroborated what it has discovered through the manifold empirical, technical and practical applications, without which we could no longer imagine our modern life. This natural science assumes that it can gain knowledge of the world that is as independent as possible of what man, out of his desires and his prejudices and preconceptions, can bring to the knowledge of the nature of things and world processes. And it is precisely by excluding all personal factors that science has achieved all its successes. But now, precisely the person who stands quite honestly on the ground of natural science, who sees through how beneficially this natural science has worked precisely for the knowledge of external nature, must say more and more to himself, out of the handling of the applied methods: to those regions in which the human soul-spiritual reigns, precisely natural science, as it has developed today, cannot penetrate. One might say, not because of its shortcomings, but precisely because of its merits.

If we survey what has been achieved in the various fields of natural science, we will see that this science naturally also strives to return to the human being. It strives to apply its methods to the nature of the human being. But it can only research the external, bodily, physical nature of the human being. We see this most clearly when the scientific method is applied to the human being, when experimental psychology is used, and when truly magnificent scientific research methods are employed. We see how the expressions of the soul in the human constitution are examined. But we become aware that through all these investigations we cannot get at what can be called the eternal in human nature, what must be called that in human nature, in the face of which man carries the deep longing to recognize it in its true essence, and from which he at least initially has hope that it will arise for him as something beyond the limits of earthly life, as something beyond birth and death and having an effect beyond it. Nothing should be said here against such experimental methods as those of experimental psychology. The very field of research from which I take the liberty of speaking to you this evening recognizes the full validity of these methods. But precisely because they can be seen through from this point of view, even within their limitations, it must be said that these methods cannot approach the actual essence of the soul and spirit. And this was what compelled a few insightful researchers to admit that natural science cannot reach what, on the one hand, is the nature of matter itself and, on the other, the nature of human consciousness. But if man cannot explore how his consciousness, that is, the soul-life at work within him, takes hold of matter, then he must bid farewell to that great challenge: “Know thyself!” Then we would have concluded that period of human spiritual development since ancient Greece with the admonition “Know thyself!” as a beautiful, powerful — but nevertheless only one illusion of humanity. Then we must confess: this demand cannot be fulfilled. The deeper one penetrates into the spirit of nature research, the more one must admit from the point of view of anthroposophy that those who speak of the “ignorabimus” of natural science are right, who speak of the fact that there are limits to natural science that it cannot exceed. But the question arises as to whether the human mind can be easily consoled by the mere recognition of such limitations, and whether it does not seek from the outset to disregard what the human heart desires in this respect, as something particularly prejudicial.

The aim of what I would like to characterize to you this evening as anthroposophical research is to provide an answer to this. It seeks to recognize the extent to which this demand of the soul is somehow justified. Many people today see what science has achieved on the one hand, and on the other hand they feel that science cannot get to the actual soul-spiritual. And so many of those who do not want to stop at the confession of the limits of human knowledge turn to one or other kind of mysticism, that mystical way of looking at things that attempts to reach that which relates to the eternal in the human being by immersing oneself in one's own inner self. And through such mystical contemplation many beautiful things have been brought up from the depths of the human soul, from the depths of life that otherwise remain in the subconscious or unconscious. Through such mystical contemplation many people have come to believe that what is brought up from the depths of the soul, what is present in man, is directly rooted in the divine-spiritual existence, so that by brings the divine-spiritual to revelation in the recognition of the human being himself, and thereby advances to the exploration of the eternal character of man and to the connection of man with the divine.

Thus anyone who raises the big questions of human existence today finds themselves, I would say, between two cliffs that seem to set insurmountable limits to knowledge: on the one hand, natural science, and on the other, mysticism. However much mysticism promises, however beautiful and magnificent it draws from the human soul, most mystical attempts cannot stand up to truly scientific and disciplined knowledge. For anyone who has been accustomed to judging all things, including those within himself, by the conscientious methods of natural science, will soon find that what the mystic often brings up from the depths of his soul is nevertheless nothing other than what he may have received or acquired in the outer world in the form of ideas or feelings from some distant period in the past feelings, which then, perhaps through a beautifully working imagination, have grown into powerful images, but which ideas and feelings, by descending into the depths of the human being, have been changed by the human organism, which for external knowledge has such a secret and meaningful connection with the soul. And it is precisely to the deep soul-searcher that it reveals itself, how that which one, in a mystical way, has gained, one holds for eternal, is nothing more than a modified, even modified by the human organism itself, result of memory.

And so, in the end, if one wants to approach deeper experiences, the great questions of human existence, one must admit: natural science offers no possibility of penetrating into these questions. It closes its insights in one area, so that with its insights one can only recognize the external aspects of the human being, and one cannot get close to the human being with them. This is the necessary conclusion that one must come to. Especially serious and honestly meant natural science does not come close to the human being. And mysticism, as it usually appears at first, does not come from within the human being. By penetrating into the world, natural science does not come from the world to the human being; by penetrating into the human being, mysticism does not come out into the world from the human being. If we allow ourselves to be deeply affected by what the soul receives from these two perspectives, we cannot but ask ourselves once more: Is it not perhaps possible to go even further than what mysticism gives on the one hand and what knowledge of nature gives on the other?

Now, in the lecture I was privileged to give at the Urania a few days ago, I took the liberty of pointing out how anthroposophy, as spiritual research, strives to take a close look at what a person acquires in memory. And so, in the end, memory turns out to be what can be deepened. Today, as a few days ago, I do not wish to delve into deep philosophical or epistemological discussions, but to remain with popular consciousness. Such discussions could be made, but what is meant from the point of view under discussion here will be best understood if I stick to the popular.

What lives in our memory, what makes our personality complete, so that we are able at any moment to conjure up before our eyes what we have been through, is indeed brought into the human soul through impressions from the outside world. They are sensory impressions that we absorb and process with our ideas, and which change in the human being in an unknown way and then come up again; they come up of their own accord or with effort, when the person needs them, and are brought up by the person from the soul. And if we want to visualize what actually lives in the memory for the human soul, we can come to no other conclusion than to say to ourselves: It is like something that is reflected from the mirror of the soul, which lies deep and forever in our human being, even if it is after a long time. The external world is reflected in our soul because we have memory, because we have the ability to remember. And as I said, even if I am not immediately able to explain the nature of this mirror of the soul due to the limited time and circumstances, the image will suffice for our understanding. We do not get to the bottom of the essence of our soul with our memory. Just as when we have a mirror before us, we see what is in front of the mirror, so memory, in the mystically evoked images, offers us nothing other than the reflection of the outer world. If one wants to see what is behind the mirror, then the mirror must either be removed or the mirror must be smashed. In a sense, we have to break through this inner mirror, this power of memory within us, in order to look deeper into our being. And we break through this soul mirror, that is, we go even deeper into the human being through that which this mirror allows us to see as mysticism, when we inwardly bring our thinking, which we otherwise allow to be stimulated by experiments, into activity, when we meditate and concentrate on a particular thought content, repeatedly strengthening the soul forces.

I described it in detail in my Urania lecture and discussed it in my books: how, through a special activity of thinking, we can go below the memory level and look more deeply into our being. One might assume that we would then see what our physical organization is. For there is no doubt that, for ordinary consciousness, we only penetrate to the memory mirror in our soul, and in doing so, the processes of the physical organization change the image from the outside, which we see in the soul mirror, into a distorted image. But if we create an ever more activated thinking, with which we live inwardly as with our blood and our breath, so that our whole being participates in this inwardly living thinking, we penetrate deeper into our human nature, then not a physical human being is revealed to us, but a spiritual-soul being, which can only be revealed to us through this strengthened thinking. Then that in man reveals itself to us which is entirely of a spiritual-soul nature, which remains unconscious to consciousness, but which, by its own nature, shows that it was present before man, through birth, even through conception, entered upon his earthly existence.

That this can be the case can be understood when we consider how memory, through its own content, indicates to us that we are not dealing with the presentation of a present event, but with a past one. We have the same certainty about the character of our experience when we approach the event that characterizes us, which leads us deeper than mystical contemplation. Then we gain a mental picture of all that is actually creative in that first epoch of man's life, in which such a wonderful plastic activity is carried out on the sensory nervous system, on the brain and on the rest of the human organization. But through such contemplation we follow the human soul-spiritual being beyond birth and death; we look into a spiritual world in which we were as spiritual-soul human beings with our core being before we descended into this earthly world and clothed ourselves with what our ancestors gave us, with a physical human body.

It is certainly the case that one comes to this view not only through that nebulous gift of man that is today called “clairvoyance”. Even if one uses the word “clairvoyance” for what I have just spoken of, one must address this as exact clairvoyance. For the one who sets out on the path of spiritual research like an exact scientist activates thinking in such a way that this thinking brings forth from the human being not only the memory images, but also things that lie below the ability to remember, that were creatively in the human being before the ability to remember had developed, before the human being began his earthly existence.

This is one side of the coin that anthroposophical research turns to when faced with the two principles characterized. It seeks to deepen the spiritual through exact thought processing and, on one side, goes beyond birth to the realization of the eternal essence of the human being. But just as one must recognize how the mystic develops what he so beautifully calls his contemplation, which leads him to illusions, how one must recognize this if one wants to arrive at a scientific knowledge and not stop at the points where the mystic , how one must strive for knowledge of the prenatal human being in the continuation of the mystical, and on the other hand, one must try to take a further step in spiritual knowledge by deepening scientific research. And that arises in the following way.

Yes, we come up against limits, especially when we honestly apply scientific methods to the world; we come up against limits when we apply them to natural processes in a real way. We come up against limits that we formulate in the concept of “material consciousness” and so on. But it is one thing to recognize these limitations and to say, “The human being cannot go beyond these limits”, and to have to reassure oneself, or to begin to struggle with all of one's humanity precisely at these limits, saying, “Perhaps these limits arise from the fact that one limiting the abilities one has within oneself here in order to perfect natural science – but then, if one continues to struggle, using one's full human abilities to struggle with these ideas, which will then gain boundaries; perhaps then one will go beyond these boundaries. I know that an objection can easily be raised; people will say: Yes, it is so good, so beneficial that science has understood how to exclude the human element from scientific methods, to stick to measuring, counting, the results of the scales, and so on, in other words, to separate what is known as research methods, what is recognized, from the human being. It is dangerous to mix people back in.

If you do this in the way that anthroposophical research wants, namely that you first stand on the point of view of science, that you have fully mastered the objective detachment of research methods from the human being and have introduced personal struggle into the detached, then something else comes out. Then you respect the demands of natural science and at the same time you introduce the human element into the objectivity of natural science. And here one must say: if you have absorbed yourself in the knowledge of the natural sciences of the last few centuries, especially the nineteenth century, so that you have, so to speak, completely imbued yourself with the spirit of the natural sciences, and can one still give oneself with one's whole personality, precisely to the things that science describes, then a gift of human nature, which is otherwise not at all regarded as a power of knowledge, becomes a power of knowledge. This devotion to something that is attained as something objective ultimately also becomes an objective expression of human love. When one can express this way of thinking with full respect for the scientific way of thinking, after having surveyed the phenomena of the world from a scientific point of view as far as possible, when one musters enough heroism in research to immerse oneself in what is scientifically given with such devotion, as one otherwise only immerses oneself when one develops love in the world, especially human love, then love itself becomes knowledge, and then, with the love that has undergone the metamorphosis to become the power of knowledge, one penetrates behind what science is able to give.

This is the work not of a day, but of long epochs of human life, to penetrate to those entities that lie beyond the boundaries of science. But what then emerges is the following: At the moment when one breaks through those boundaries, as it were, and looks behind the scenes that are erected by scientific knowledge, something about the human being himself becomes strangely transparent, which previously always remained opaque: we wake up in the morning, spend our day with a waking consciousness out of the forces of our earthly feelings and our soul, we fall asleep in the evening. What happens to the soul and spirit in the physical and bodily is beyond human consciousness. What plays into human life are confused dreams without cognitive value. So that we can say: the entire development of human life consists of what we live through while awake and what we spend while sleeping. And we do not pay attention to the fact that when we look back, we always piece together the morning and the evening, and let that fall out of consciousness that we cannot reach with it, that withdraws from consciousness, that we switch off the stretches that we have slept through. Now the question arises as to whether what sleep gives us spiritually and mentally is not just as important as what being awake gives us.

Of course, only being awake can be considered for our outer life, and the more civilization has turned to mere observation of the outer life, the more it relies on observing the waking state. But for the life of the human being itself – something that even level-headed philosophers have already conceded – what happens in the abundant third of life on earth that we sleep through is no less essential than what we experience while awake. But it only becomes vividly apparent when we have broken through the boundaries defining things through the struggle with nature through ultimate perceptions. Then it happens that the empty space of experience, which we otherwise sleep through, which otherwise contains nothing for us except dreaming, that this empty space of knowledge is filled with content, that we learn to look at that which otherwise shrouds itself in the darkness of sleep. Just as we can look back on what presents itself in waking life as the knowledge that we, as physical-sensory human beings, have experienced with the earth and its phenomena, so now knowledge of a spiritual-soul nature arises from the state in which the human being finds himself from falling asleep to waking up. The darkness between falling asleep and waking up is illuminated, this third of our life becomes transparent to us, and what we see is then our true self, the form of thinking, feeling and willing. We see that which, without our consciousness knowing it, is constantly at work within us, shaping our spiritual and psychological being. We see through to the content as that which is separated from us by the gate of death when we lay down the physical body. As sleep becomes transparent to us, we learn to recognize the true nature of human immortality. When we look beyond the mystical, when we go further than ordinary mysticism, we get to know the prenatal nature of the human being when we take natural science seriously, but when we begin to struggle at the boundary, we get to know what immortal existence the human being carries within. And so, for us, the human being comes together in its development, in that we see, so to speak, how a prenatal human being enters into the physical human organization, I would even say becomes more and more absorbed in this physical human organization, how the physical human organization becomes more and more becomes mightier and mightier, how that which has entered into the human being through birth, in the physical human existence, fades more and more in the further development of the human being, how, so to speak, the human being from this side becomes more and more a physical-bodily being. But in the same measure as this development proceeds, in the same measure as the spirit and soul that are innate in us submerge in the physical body, so that which appears to us, when we observe sleep, as the future being of the human being emerges.

As we look more and more towards the end of the normal human life, we see how, on the other hand, the spiritual-soul being of the spiritual post-mortal human existence emerges in contrast to the dying spiritual human life of prenatal existence. In every moment of earthly life we see a measure of what the human being has brought with them from the eternal worlds into earthly existence, what they are forging in order to carry it through the gateway of death into a spiritual world; cognitively we advance to immortality. The path I am describing to you, in order to arrive at an understanding of the human being by going beyond mysticism and natural science, is not one that can be dismissed by casually labeling it “clairvoyant.” This is a path in which one knows how each step follows the previous one, just as the mathematician knows how one mathematical derivation follows another. The path that I have been able to sketch for you – with reference to the books mentioned – is the path of anthroposophy, the path that leads to the unborn and immortal nature of the human soul in a way that could be explained to a strict mathematician, and which shows how one does not have to stop at the world in order to penetrate into the human being, as one does not have to stop at the human being in mysticism in order to penetrate into the world, but how one can connect the knowledge of the world with the knowledge of the human being. If enough natural science and enough mysticism is pursued in this way, then the possibility will arise for the future spiritual civilization of humanity to fulfill the word that approaches man so powerfully admonishing, the word “know thyself!”

Such knowledge as I have just described, however, differs from the knowledge that is bound to the nervous system, which is essentially knowledge of the head. And allow me to make a personal remark, which is, however, completely factual. As a spiritual researcher trying to penetrate this realm, which I call the realms that one has to pass through before birth and after death, one is aware that you cannot get by with the thinking that otherwise serves you in life. You have to develop a strengthened thinking that engages the whole person. One does not become a medium through this, but the whole human being must be taken up by such thinking. Such thinking penetrates into feeling, into emotion, and even demands that the human being surrender himself to it with the whole content of his will. At the same time, thinking about spiritual content is such that it cannot be incorporated into the memory in the usual way, like any other. Here too I would like to make a personal comment: You see, when a spiritual researcher gives a lecture like the one I am giving here, he cannot prepare it in the same way as other scientific lectures. In that case he would only appeal to memory. But what has come about through such a deepening cannot be assimilated by memory, it must be experienced again and again in every moment. It can be brought down into those regions where we put our knowledge into words, but one must endeavor to do so with one's whole being. And that is why I have a profound experience of only being able to incorporate into human language that which I succeed in researching in the spiritual world. And by incorporating it into human language, it also becomes incorporated into memory; I only succeed when I draw or write down a few lines, so that not only the head but also all the other organ systems are involved. You have to feel the need to take one or the other to help you, because you can't manage it, it fluctuates when you want to grasp it with your head. The important thing is that I express the thought with lines and thus fix it. So you can find whole truckloads of old notebooks of mine that I never look at again. They are not there for that either, but so that what I have laboriously extracted from my mind can be developed to the point where it can be clothed in words and thus brought to the memory. Once it has been written, one has participated in the spiritual production with something else in one's organism than merely with the head, with thoughts, then one is able to hold on to that which wants to escape. The rest of the human organization is initially uninvolved, unconsciously more dormant than the mental processes, and when we incorporate something into our will, we make use of those organs that are in a state that we describe as dormant when we are awake. We are actually only awake in our thoughts and imagination, for the way in which our mental images penetrate into our organism as a volitional decision, to become a movement of the hand or fingers, remains completely shrouded in darkness in ordinary consciousness. Only the spiritual researcher will recognize what happens between the process in the brain and the movement. And so spiritual knowledge, which is not ordinary head knowledge, is entrusted to the whole human organization. By acquiring knowledge of the human being from within the whole human being, one is able to apply this knowledge of the human being, which can take the prenatal and the after-death as a tangible reality, to practical life in a completely different way than one would be able to without this true knowledge of the human being.

Now those who are grounded in anthroposophical research dare, I would say, through a twist of fate that also extends to the other areas of human education, pedagogy and didactics, to introduce human education into practical life. Those who imbibe the knowledge of the human being that has been brought forth from such research as I have mentioned acquire a more refined instinct, a spiritualized instinct, for everything that develops in the human being through the different ages from birth to death. We must then only have the courage to look at human development, the knowledge of which we need, at a higher level, in the same way as we otherwise look at anything with strict scientific methods that lies within the scientific world.

For example, the following arises: We are always thinking about what the effect of the soul and spirit on the physical body of the human being might actually be. But we do not consider that we should not apply the methods of speculation to such questions, but should also apply the methods of observation to such questions. When real observation of human beings is developed humanely, then we see – I am speaking from a popular point of view – how in the first age of the child, from birth to the change of teeth, in a wonderful way the most significant abilities of the human being emerge from the indeterminate depths of his being. We see how the dynamic develops through which the human being, as an upright creature, places himself in the world in his balance, how speech and thought emerge from the depths of the soul and are physically realized. But what we see culminates organically in the change of teeth. This has the peculiarity of being a unique event in human life. What happens during the change of teeth does not repeat itself. In a sense, a conclusion is made with a sum of forces in the human organization. Only someone who does not know this human organization can believe that the change of teeth stands alone. No, it does not stand alone, it stands as the outwardly perceptible expression of what is going on in the whole human organism. The human being is going through something that he will no longer go through in later life, otherwise he would always change his teeth in a periodic sequence. But those who observe the human being are aware of this significant transformation of the spiritual and psychological nature of the human being But this change, which takes place during this epoch of the human being's life, is not observed. If I were to present what educators and didacticians should know, what underlies the human knowledge I want to talk about here, it would go far beyond the scope of a lecture, and so I will just sketch it out.

Take memory, for example. On superficial examination, we say that memory behaves in a certain way up to the change of teeth, then it changes somewhat. But it is something different, the memory before the change of teeth and the memory after the change of teeth. Today, due to our scientific attitude, we do not have the right talent for observation for such intimate expressions of human nature. For a correct observation, it can be seen that the wonderful memory before the change of teeth is nothing more than the completion of habits expressed from within. From the forces of habit, memory is built up until the teeth change. If it is a memory that can be compared to a habitual movement, then one can say that for memory one image follows another.

In short, what we call memory undergoes a metamorphosis when children change teeth around the age of seven. It undergoes a metamorphosis from more physical-bodily experience to spiritual-soul experience. Once one begins with such an observation, further ones arise that are tremendously characteristic of the further development of the human being. For example, when one has acquired the instinct of observation, when one has assimilated the knowledge of spiritual research, one sees that the child, up to the change of teeth, is an imitative being. Of course, one must not take such things crudely, but the child in the first period of life is, so to speak, one single large sense organ. We can compare the whole life of the child in the first period with a single sense organ, we can compare it with the internal organization of the eye. Just as the eye takes in the external world and, through the application of willpower, builds up the image of what is impressed upon the eye organ through the agency of the organic within, so the child is constantly striving to reproduce what is present in its environment through imitation, which emerges from the inner being. The child is entirely sensory organ, entirely active sensory organ. Because the whole being of the child functions as a sense organ, the child not only imitates and inwardly experiences, in a dreamy state, quite unconsciously, what is external movement, gesture, what is speech sound, what is thought in speech sound, but it always arises - and this is the peculiar thing - from this starting point: the imitative child observes the moral significance of the gestures of father and mother. The moral significance of facial expression, for example, finds its counterpart in the child's sense of it; it becomes ingrained in the child, in its physical organization. The child organizes itself right down to the cellular level by empathizing with what is happening in its environment. Only when we consider the implications of this will we be able to distinguish between what is inherited and what is acquired in this way during the first childhood epoch through imitation from the environment. Then we will see the wonderful interaction between the environment and the child, and the real, for the sober-minded observer mystical, concept of the science of heredity will be able to be placed on a completely different footing. But it also shows the special nature that the human being brings with them, in that they enter earthly existence as spiritual-soul beings with an etheric body, which is something that is unfamiliar to today's way of thinking. What characterizes the child is a bodily-religious being. It is actually the case that the child is given over with its body to the physical outer world and its moral content, just as we can be given over in a religious mood to something that reveals itself to us as divine. It is in a bodily-religious mood; because this mood is purely bodily-religious, it does not, of course, have the mood of piety and similar states that later become mental religiosity. But if we follow the development of the human being, we see how what remains in the body until the teeth change then appears differently, how what is completely contained in the bodily-physical in the first epoch moves into impulses of feeling and will. And when we send our children to primary school, we must realize that the inner life of the child undergoes a metamorphosis. After the final point mentioned, which is the change of teeth, what was physical experience is partially left behind in the physical development and appears in a different form as soul and feeling. That which was first in the growth forces, in the plastic formative forces, that which has worked in the body as spiritual-soul during the change of teeth, part of this detaches itself and transforms into the free soul-spiritual after the change of teeth. And what we call growth, what has been working in the body, gradually transforms into the spiritual-soul. If we pay attention to this and are equipped with this knowledge, then we as teachers and educators face the child to be educated with our whole attitude and all our knowledge in the right way. Then we know that in this physical, bodily, sensual being, which is in a religious mood of devotion to its environment, as it grows into a bodily-religious being, the spiritual-soul being that was there in the pre-earthly existence. Let us put ourselves in the shoes of an educator who is confronted with the child in this way. He will be aware of his responsibility, he knows that the spiritual worlds have sent him to guide a being that he has to guess at and unravel through its physical expressions. He will stand before the being in such a way that he devotes himself to helping everything that the child has brought with it from the spiritual and soul worlds to truly come to manifestation. And with reverence for his calling, the educator will stand before the child, seeing with each month, with each year, that all that it has brought with it from the spiritual and soul world is transformed into the physical and bodily. And he will observe the way in which he can influence the child, and he will be able to perceive what was bodily-physical before the transformation, in the first epoch until the change of teeth; in the second epoch, from the change of teeth until sexual maturity, it transforms itself as a transition into the soul, and only with sexual maturity does it transform itself into the spiritual. The human being then presents himself to us in such a way that what has been experienced in his organization in the first years of childhood now comes to expression in his spiritual grasp of the world: the bodily-religious becomes spiritual-religious. Now we can see the connection between what is physical and what becomes soul and spirit. Now we no longer speculate about the physical and bodily, about spirit and soul; now we see how, in the different ages of life in human development, the spiritual and soul-like is directly revealed. Now we gain an understanding of the human being based on the interaction between body and soul, on the basis of observing human beings, which becomes the basis for proper human education.

By the will of fate, the opportunity arose to apply what results from such observation in a practical, didactic and pedagogical way in the years when one is able to guide the destiny of the child. In Stuttgart, Mr. Emil Molt founded the Waldorf School as a free elementary school, to which the lower classes of the middle school were later added. The leadership was given to me. I was now able to apply the methods that result from the human knowledge described above. The aim is to initially leave aside what is otherwise called the “teaching goal”, and to read this from the human development itself.

What I have described is only a rough sketch, but it can be observed from day to day in a new form in the child through the pedagogical instinct that arises from working with the child. Through this, one can see how the child's life unfolds; one can see what dictates what you, as an educator, should bring to the child each week, each month, and that you let the human being's inner being dictate what you, as an educator, should bring to the child. For example, when you first send your child to primary school, it is only natural that he or she should have an aversion to learning to read and write. And that is understandable. Consider that these strange signs, which we call letters and by which we read and write, which are something completely foreign to the human being, have emerged from the original characters in a long cultural development. The original writing emerged from the images and signs of what it represented; it was even closer in expression to what it meant; it was still similar to what one perceived directly. The child who comes to school and is supposed to learn the derived characters feels no affinity with the characters that are foreign to his or her perception. This understanding only awakens with sexual maturity and is quite different from that between the sixth and eighth years and between the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth years of life. The child, because it is only there emotionally, relies on the pictorial, which presents itself to it in the same way as sensory perception and sensory vision. If we recognize this, then we will introduce the right educational impulses for this age; but then we must move on to those things that we have introduced in our school in Stuttgart. The aim is to bring the child to a stage where they can draw by painting and paint by drawing. They should not be engaged only with their heads and eyes, but with their whole being. It is amazing what emerges in terms of pictorial quality when children draw and paint. If this is properly directed, it is possible to develop the letters, writing and reading from what is close to the children. We learn to read after learning to write because reading only involves the head, whereas writing involves the whole person.

This is an example of how we try to achieve, through practical pedagogy and didactics, what human education should achieve, based on knowledge of the human being. The person who looks at how the human being is predisposed in terms of their religious life will also find the opportunity to bring in the moral-religious impulses. In this way, the following is revealed: It is remarkable how children between the ages of nine and ten, in the first third of the second stage of life, go through something like this in this stage of life. All this takes place unconsciously. We see how the child, having changed teeth, makes the transition from being an imitative being to one who, in response to the authority of the educator and teacher, acquires everything. You will believe the person who wrote the “Philosophy of Freedom” thirty years ago when he says that he does not approach you as an advocate for authority, but precisely when you have recognized from that “Philosophy of Freedom” what freedom means , then one can also appreciate that it is out of the lawfulness of the human being that the child, from the change of teeth to the time of sexual maturity, is a being that completely imitates what it sees in its teacher or educator. We see that the child not only wants to model itself on the teacher or educator through language, in accordance with its own inner laws, but that it wants to model itself on the whole of human life. When the child has become immersed in this necessary, self-evident sense of authority, we see how it undergoes a kind of crisis between the ages of nine and ten. Everything happens emotionally and intuitively, the child does not give it any thought, but it approaches the teacher and wants something special. And if we want to put it into words, the child thinks: Until now, the beautiful was beautiful because the teacher and educator thought it was beautiful, until now the true was true because the teacher and educator thought it was true. But from this point on, the child feels: Who justifies this authority before the whole world, where did it get the true and the beautiful as true and beautiful? The child is going through a crisis, it knows nothing of what I have formulated here, it only senses something. And we, as teachers and educators, must observe this moment so that the right word can be spoken from the educator to the child, over and over again, if necessary. For it is a matter of the fact that our actions in this moment of crisis determine the whole of later life, whether it is full of joie de vivre and security or is alienated and inwardly paralyzed.

An educational method of this kind shows us that we, as educators, must do what is beneficial for life as a whole. If we enter into such a study of life, we will see how something that is properly introduced into a child at an early age only comes to fruition in later life. I will give you an example here. We know people who, when they get older, perhaps when they are very old and enter into some society, they do not need to say much, they are something that brings calm, peace, something that blesses into society. These are people who, often only through the nuance of their words, through the way they speak, can have a magnificent effect on their fellow world, with moral impulses, dispensing grace. If we are not satisfied with observing life in shorter periods, and if we make the effort and are able to observe the whole of human life, then we know that such people, who bring such blessings, had the good fortune as children to look up in adoration to other people or to something that was shown to them. From this veneration between the ages of ten and fourteen develops that which makes us benefactors in later life, which, figuratively speaking, I want to say: No hand can rise in blessing in later life that has not learned to fold in prayer in childhood. This is just a pictorial way of indicating how a true knowledge of the human being brings such things to the child that the feeling for moral good and the antipathy for evil grow and live, that they grow as the human body itself grows. One has the feeling that if one brings sharp contours into definitions to the child, it would be as if one were to shackle the child's organism. We must give the child concepts and impulses that can grow like the organism, that can grow spiritually and soulfully, that spiritually carry within them the inner possibility of becoming ever richer and richer, so that later one can look back with joy in one's memory that the child's life has sprouted in the aged human body. I would like to show you with a few pictures how a real knowledge of the human being, gained in the way I described at the beginning of my lecture, can be applied to the education and development of the child. You will see in the Stuttgart School how it will have to prove to you what I have described to you here, how it provides, so to speak, the practical proof of life that exists to a certain degree, even if we want to be modest about the results.

It could now be objected that only those who have undergone what qualifies them to look into the spiritual world can have an interest in such knowledge of man. But it is not so. Although anyone who has gone through the path of knowledge, as described for example in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” can verify for themselves what spiritual research says, this is not even necessary for judgment, just as anyone who is not a painter themselves can judge the beauty of a picture. Although only the researcher can describe the spiritual world, those who have retained a healthy sense of judgment can certainly see through the truth or untruth of what is being researched from the spiritual world. Therefore, those who profess this spiritual research should not be portrayed as a sect or as blind.

Anthroposophy does not want to be a sect; it wants to be a continuation of scientific research, which has developed over centuries to its culmination in the nineteenth century, and we are still in the process of developing it today. Only by following these guidelines can it become a true knowledge of the human being and thus the basis for an education that is appropriate for humanity and in keeping with human dignity. For it is not only through knowledge of the world that we can cope in life, since neither science nor mysticism can lead the human being to a full knowledge of his or her own humanity. For it is like breathing: there must be an interaction, a kind of inhalation and exhalation, between knowledge of the world and knowledge of the human being. But such knowledge alone can only be the basis for an education that pursues the spiritual and soul aspects of the human being until they are transformed into the physical and bodily aspects. It is the basis for that aspect of the state of human culture that needs to be transformed. For anyone who looks at today's life will be able to say to himself: This state cannot be transformed by external transformation, it cannot be brought about by it alone, what we desire for the continuation of our civilization, which is threatened, but only by that which comes from the spirit, and only those human deeds and actions that are borne by the spirit will fit in with social progress.

Let me summarize briefly: spiritual knowledge gives man, immersed in spirit, the ideas that can fill his whole being, that can lead to spirit-filled deeds, to spirit-filled actions and to a spirit-filled social, to a spiritual human coexistence steeped in love. And that is what we will most urgently need in the near future.

I would well understand if anybody considered the whole idea of this talk as an aberration. I would also understand if anybody said how one can abuse Goethe's name while making a relationship to spiritual science, because it is sufficiently known that Goethe's view is typical just because it is directed to the outer nature, and it regarded it as rather dubious to raise the lawfulness of the world to ideal heights, as Schiller did it. Then one can say how Goethe would have behaved negatively if one had related his mental pictures to that which accepts a concrete real spirit from particular inner experiences that places itself beside the natural world. I know very well that to the production of such relation such a rich spirit can be abused like Goethe. Since if one still brings in so many remarks of Goethe to confirm this or that own view, it is always possible of course to bring in other remarks of Goethe to confirm the opposite opinion. However, compared with all that I am allowed to mention from the start that I never wanted in case of my really long-standing occupation with Goethe and the Goethean worldview to state these or those contents of a Goethean sentence to confirm the worldview meant here. I always wanted to characterise the whole way, the inner structure of Goethe's soul life in its relation to the natural phenomena. Since it seems to me if one goes into the inner structure of Goethe's nature that one will also gain an understanding of the fact that such a spirit like Goethe expressed apparently opposite views about the same. One can always easily argue something can from the most different sides against the intention to connect Goethe with the investigation of spiritual life.

At first the philosophers feel called because of their ability of thinking if it concerns the investigation of the supersensible compared with the sensory. One has always reminded that Goethe characterised the whole way of his position to the world repeatedly while he said, he owes everything that he got as knowledge about the world to the fact that he never thought about thinking. With it, the whole philosophical attitude of Goethe seems to be condemned to many philosophically thinking people.

It seems necessary to reject Goethe's nature for the investigation of the world as far as one has to exceed with such an investigation what it presents immediately to the senses. On the other side, religious people who want to direct the soul to a world that is beyond the sensory, of course, are irked by such a concise sentence as he did. He always felt it unpleasant to the highest degree to speak of things of another world. He expresses himself even once about the fact in such a way that he says, as a spot is in the eye, which sees, actually, nothing, a cavity is in the human brain. If this hollow place, which actually sees nothing, dreams all kinds of stuff in the world, so one speaks of such nullities like of the things of another world. When Goethe said this, he also pointed to the fact, that such a person inclined to the spiritual like Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) was worried if one spoke only of the things of another world. Goethe agrees with Hamann in this respect completely. In the most vigorous way, Goethe refused to speak of the things of another world. Yes, the naturalists themselves, although on them the influence of Goethe has worked strongly, can refer if they stand quite sincerely on the ground of modern natural sciences to the fact that Goethe showed, for example, in his theory of colours that he never could penetrate into the strictly scientific way of research that this never was adequate to him, and that he came just thereby to a view deviating from the ruling theory of colours.

Now here it cannot be my task to justify the Goethean natural sciences. I have done this in a number of writings. Today it should be only my task to attach some connections from spiritual science to the Goethean natural sciences. Above all, I would like to go back to something that is exceptionally typical with this spirit for someone who approaches Goethe: the refusal of thinking about thinking. One has the sensation with the Goethean worldview where one only wants to recognise it, that Goethe himself was afraid instinctively of submitting the thinking itself to a consideration. He shrank from it as from something that constitutes, otherwise, the strength of his worldview. At such a place where Goethe characterises himself, you have to stop, because you can rather deeply look from here into the structure of the Goethean mind. If one considers just philosophically disposed people who have struggled with that which the thinking means for the human soul, you can realise if you make the thinking an object of observation like other objects of our world experience that you always evoke something in the soul that appears like an insurmountable obstacle. While you direct the thinking to the thinking itself, you cause a sum of uncertainties in the human being. Although you have always to ask yourself if you want to investigate the supersensible seriously: is this human thinking able to penetrate into the spiritual world?—You still face doubt, indecision.

As a single factual proof of it which could be increased a hundred times I would like to quote the sentence of a thinker who is less famous, indeed, who, however, is counted by those who know him among the deepest ones, among the most impressive thinkers of our time, Professor Gideon Spicker (1840-1912), the philosopher with the strange destiny who has worked his way out of a confessional ecclesiastical worldview to a free philosophical viewpoint. You can pursue how there once a thinking really soared by own power from a traditional viewpoint to a free one if you read his book At the Turning Point of the Christian World Period. The Philosophical Confession of a Former Capuchin that appeared in 1910 as a kind of philosophical autobiography. You find the following sentence there that describes a self-experience with the thinking:

“To whichever philosophy you confess—whether to a dogmatic or skeptical one, to an empiric or transcendental one, to a critical or eclectic one—any without exception takes an unproven and unprovable sentence as starting point, namely the necessity of the thinking. No investigation figures this necessity out one day, as deeply as it may prospect. One must accept it and one can reason it with nothing; every attempt to prove its correctness already requires it. Beneath it a bottomless abyss yawns, a spooky darkness illuminated by no beam of light. We do not know where from it comes nor where to it leads. It is uncertain whether a merciful god or a bad demon put it in the reason.”

This is a self-experience of a thinking which tried to bring to mind what is, actually, a thinking which has struggled to grasp the human being in the point where it thinks to find that in this point where the temporal, the transient of the human being is connected with the everlasting. To this point everybody must come who wants to approach the everlasting nature of the human being. However, what does Gideon Spicker find? He finds if one has arrived at the place where one can consider the thinking, indeed, the necessity of the thinking appears, but there also a bottomless abyss appears. Since beyond this thinking—what is there? Is it a merciful god or a bad demon who put the thinking in the reason? An abyss, a desolate darkness is that what Gideon Spicker sees. One can find out immediately that those who cannot get further with the pursuit of thinking than up to the thinking cannot still satisfy themselves within this thinking.

All that is like a spiritually instinctive experience in Goethe's healthy worldview. One cannot say that he was prepared in his inside one day to bring the bottomless abyss home to himself of which Gideon Spicker speaks. However, Goethe felt that such a thing could happen if one wants to solve the world riddles only with the mere thinking. Hence, he did not approach at all this point. We will see immediately which deeper impulses formed the basis of this Goethean instinct. For the time being I only wanted to point out that Goethe was very well at that point where the philosophers are if they want to investigate the everlasting in the human being and in the world that he avoided, however, this point, did not approach it.

You can understand Goethe's character immediately if he does not defer to things of another world. There just the oppose impulse appears with him who argued from immediate spiritual instinctiveness that one does not need to go out of the world which presents itself immediately to the senses to find the spirit. Goethe was clear in his mind that someone who is able to find the spirit does not need to search it in another world, and vice versa, that someone who feels nature as little filled with spirit so that he needs to reflect on another world can only find fantastic, dreamy things in another world but never really the spirit. Goethe searched the spirit so much within the things of this world that he had to refuse to search it in any other world. He already regarded the feeling that one must leave this world to get to the spirit as something brainless.

In particular, you get an impression of the kind of the Goethean world observation if you look at how Goethe behaved to the phenomena of nature how he searched the spirit and the spiritual life really in nature. You know that Goethe did not study the various fields of natural sciences during his school years but approached them only later in his life and that he had to manage the phenomena of nature with mental pictures that he had compiled in his life. Herman Grimm emphasised rightly as a significant characteristic feature in the life of Goethe that, while others are introduced by teachers gradually methodically in this or that scientific approach, Goethe approached scientific attempts as a ripe man by life praxis, so that he had to form own mental pictures of these or those natural phenomena with a certain maturity.

As a rule, he got to mental pictures, which deviated significantly from that what about the same things just the authoritative scientists of his time meant. One can say that the Goethean viewpoint is diametrically opposed not only to the natural sciences of his time but also to the natural sciences of the present in a certain respect.

It is inadmissible if from some side single remarks of Goethe are picked out repeatedly to prove the views of Haeckel or also of his opponents one-sidedly. One can prove and confirm everything with Goethe if one wants it. Goethe got to botany because he wanted to care about the agriculture in the Grand Duchy of Weimar, so out of life praxis. He got to geology by the Ilmenau (little town in Thuringia) mining, to physics because the scientific collections of the University of Jena had been assigned to him. Therefore, from necessity of life he tried to get mental pictures by which he could penetrate into the secrets of nature. You know that he formed views this way that found their confirmation partly in the course of the nineteenth century, as far as they point to outer scientific facts. However, Goethe did not get these views like other naturalists, but rather he was urged by his enclosing way of thinking to think in a way about certain natural processes and essentialities. You can say that immediately with his first, epoch-making discovery this is the case.

When Goethe became acquainted with zoology and human biology by observing the anatomical and physiological collections in Jena, he also familiarised himself with all kinds of teachings which were usual in natural sciences at that time about the human being as sensory being. One looked in those days still for outer differences of the human being and the animals. One looked in a way that the modern natural sciences do no longer understand.

One linked, for example, the difference to a detail, while one stated that in the upper jaw of the human being no intermaxillary existed, while all higher animals would have this bone. Goethe disliked this, simply because he could not imagine at first that the remaining skeleton of the human being would differ in such an unimportant detail. Now Goethe looked, while he himself became an anatomical researcher, while he investigated skeleton after skeleton and compared the human construction to the animals in relation to the upper jaw whether that had an inner significance what the anatomists said. Then Goethe could show really that there is no difference between the human and the animal skeletons in this respect. He already consulted the embryological research that became especially important later and showed that with the human being relatively early during the embryonic development the other parts of the upper jaw grow together with the intermaxillary so that it does not seem to exist with the human being. Goethe had become clear in his mind that it was right what he had felt first that the human being is different from the animals not by such an anatomical detail, but only by his whole posture. Of course, Goethe thereby did not become a materialistic thinker. However, he could get closer to the ideas that immediately suggested themselves to him, above all, by his acquaintance with Herder (Johann Gottfried H., 1744-1803) who wanted to extend an enclosing way of thinking to all world phenomena, so that the evolution of the world shows an inner necessity that finally generates the human being at its summit.

How can one imagine, Goethe thought in harmony with Herder, that in the evolution a big harmony, an inner lawful necessity prevails, and that then suddenly somewhere a line is drawn so that on this side of the line the complete animal development is and beyond this line the human development which should be different by such an unimportant detail? One can realise from how Goethe speaks, what was near and dear to him, actually. Not to make a single scientific discovery, but to behold a harmonious order in the whole enclosing nature, so that the details put themselves everywhere in a whole so that jumps are nowhere to be found in the evolution of the world. You can notice in a letter to Herder in which he informed his discovery joyfully with the words: “It is there too, the small bone!” that Goethe found something like a confirmation of his worldview in this single fact.

He continued this view just in relation on the animal forms. There he got also to single facts that were important, however, for him not as those, but confirmed his worldview only. He himself tells that he found an animal skull at his stay in Venice on a cemetery that showed him clearly that the cranial bones are nothing but transformed vertebrae. He thought that the ring-shaped vertebrae contain concealed possibilities of growth, can be transformed into the cranial bones that surround the brain. Goethe thereby got to the idea that the human being and the animal, the different beings of organic life generally, are built from relatively simple entities that develop in living metamorphosis into each other or diverge.

One can immediately receive the sensation with the research intentions of Goethe that he wanted to apply this idea of metamorphosis not only to the skeleton, but also to all other parts of the human being. He could carry out his research only on a special field because one human being cannot do everything, and because he worked with limited research means. Someone who knows Goethe's scientific writings knows that Goethe carefully indicated the cranial bones as transformed dorsal vertebrae. However, one can just have the feeling that Goethe's ideas advanced farther in this field. He would generally have had to carry the view in his mind that the complete human brain is only a transformed part of the spinal cord as a physical-sensory organ that the human formative forces are able to transform what is only a part of the spinal cord on a low level into the complex human brain.

I had this feeling when I received the task in the end of 1889 to incorporate the handwritten notes in the Weimar Goethe and Schiller Archive into Goethe's scientific writings published until then. It was especially interesting to me to pursue whether such ideas have really lived in Goethe from which one could have the feeling that they must have been there, actually, with him. In particular, it interested me whether Goethe really had the idea to regard the brain as a transformed part of the spinal cord. Lo and behold, with the examination of the manuscripts it really resulted that Goethe had written the following sentence in a notebook with pencil like an intuition: “The brain is only a transformed cerebral ganglion.” Then the anatomist Bardeleben (Karl von B., 1849-1919) revised this part of Goethe's scientific writings.

Then Goethe applied the same way of thinking to the plant realm. There his views concerning the outer facts have found just as little contradiction as in anatomy. Goethe interprets, actually, the whole plant as composed of a single organ. This organ is the leaf. Backward and forward, the plant is always leaf. The coloured petal is the transformed green leaf, also the stamens and the pistil are to him only transformed leaves, and everything of the plant is leaf. That what lives in the plant leaf as formative force can accept all possible outer forms. Goethe explained this so nicely in his writing Metamorphosis of Plants (1790).

Howsoever one may behave now to the details with Goethe, the way is important how he generally did research. This was and is to many people something strange. Goethe himself was clear about that. Imagine how the human soul that looks at the organic world in Goethe's sense sees such an organ like the plant leaf changing into the petal, then into the filamentous stamen, even into the root. Imagine a simple ring-shaped dorsal vertebra fluffed and flattened by laws of growth, so that it is qualified for enclosing not only the spinal cord, but also the brain which itself is transformed from a part of the spinal cord, and that the inner mobility of his thinking is necessary. He probably felt what prevents us from looking at the world phenomena this way. Someone who has a rigid thinking who wants to develop sharply outlined concepts only forms the firm concept of the green leaf, of the petal and so on; however, he cannot go over from one concept to the other. In doing so, nature breaks into nothing but details. He does not have the possibility because his concepts have no inner mobility to penetrate into the inner mobility of nature.

However, thereby you become able to settle down in Goethe's soul and to convince yourself of the fact that with him cognition is generally something else than with many other people. While with many other people, cognition is joining of concepts which they form apart, cognition is with Goethe immersing in the world of the beings, pursuing that what grows and becomes and transforms perpetually, so that his thinking changes perpetually. Briefly, Goethe sets that in inner motion, which is mere thinking, otherwise. Then it is no longer a mere thinking. About that, I will speak in detail in the next talks. It matters that the human being arouses the only inferring thinking to the inner living thinking. Then thinking is a life in thoughts. Then one can also no longer think about the thinking, but then it generally changes into something else.

Then the thinking about the thinking changes into a spiritual view of thinking, then one faces the thinking as usual outer sensory objects, save that one perceives these with eyes and ears, while one faces the thinking mentally. Goethe wanted to go over everywhere from the mere thinking to the inner spiritual views, to the beholding consciousness as I have called it in my book The Riddle of Man. Hence, Goethe is dissatisfied because Kant said that the human being cannot approach the so-called “things in themselves” or generally the secret of existence, and that Kant called it an “adventure of reason” if the human being wants to ascend from the usual faculty of judgement up to the “beholding faculty of judgement.”

Goethe said, if one accepts that the human being can ascend by virtue and immortality—the so-called postulates of practical reason with Kant—to a higher region, why one should not stand the “adventure of reason” courageously while beholding nature? Goethe demands from the human being this beholding faculty of judgement. From this point, one can understand why Goethe avoided the thinking about the thinking. Goethe knew that if one wants to think about the thinking one is, actually, in the same position, as if one wanted to paint the painting. One could imagine that anybody wants to paint the painting even that he does it. However, then he exceeds the real painting.

In the same way, you have to exceed the thinking if it should become concrete. Goethe knew from a spiritual instinct that the human being can wake concealed forces and abilities in himself and get to the beholding consciousness, so that the spiritual world is around him, just as, otherwise, the sensory world is around his senses. Then you leave as it were not only your usual sensory life but also your usual thinking. Then you look at the thinking as a reality. You cannot think the thinking; you can behold it. Hence, Goethe always understood if philosophers approached him who believed to have the ability to look at the thinking spiritually. He could never understood if people stated, they could think about the thinking. Only a higher ability lets the thinking appear before the human being. Goethe had this ability. This simply shows the kind of his view of nature. Since the ability to put the thinking in living motion to pursue the metamorphosis of the things is on a lower level the same as the beholding consciousness on a higher level. Goethe felt thinking while looking. However, Goethe had a special peculiarity.

There are certain persons who have a kind of naive clairvoyance, a kind of naive beholding consciousness. Now it is far from my mind to state that Goethe had a kind of naive beholding consciousness only, but Goethe had a special disposition by which he differs from someone who only is able to get to the beholding consciousness by the conscious development of the deeper abilities of his soul. Goethe had this beholding consciousness not from the start as the naive clairvoyants have it, but he could put his thinking, the whole structure of his soul in such a motion that he could do research really not only externally and got thereby to physical laws grasped in thoughts, but he could pursue the inner life of the natural phenomena in their metamorphoses.

It is peculiar that this predisposition, if one wants to develop the ability of the spiritual beholding consciously, is impaired at first, it is even extinguished. Goethe had this natural predisposition in himself to develop a certain beholding consciousness gradually in himself with natural phenomena. He did not want such rules, as I have described them in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?. Goethe did not have the beholding consciousness from the start, but in the course of his development it was to him a self-evident fact to develop certain abilities unlike other people do. This naive talent would have been extinguished at first. If the talent does not exist, one does not want to extinguish it, and then one can quietly develop these abilities consciously. Because it existed with Goethe as an inner spiritual desire, he did not want to disturb it; he wanted that it was left to itself. Hence, his shyness to look at the thinking, which he only wanted to behold, with the thinking. Otherwise, one has to try to go to the point of thinking to grasp the thoughts themselves and to transform them gradually into forces of beholding.

This is a special peculiarity of Goethe that he felt those forces growing up which can be also developed artificially. He did not want to destroy this naive while he spread, I would like to say, too much consciousness about it. However, this shows that it is not unjustified to observe not only how his soul forces work internally, but also how his soul forces immerse in nature. Then without fail Goethe is a model of the development of the beholding consciousness, of those spiritual forces, which really lead into the spiritual world, into the everlasting.

If you settle in Goethe's natural sciences in such a way that you observe them not only externally, but that you try to observe how you yourself become, actually, if you activate such forces in yourself, you can also transfer that what Goethe pursued with his view of nature to the human soul itself. Then comes to light what Goethe omitted because his senses were directed outward at first, to nature which he considered spiritually in her spirituality, namely that one has to look at the human soul life also under the viewpoint of metamorphosis. Goethe became aware of nature due to his special predisposition, and because this predisposition was especially strong, he looked less after the soul life.

However, you can apply his way of looking at the world to the soul life. Then you are led beyond the mere thinking. Most people who deal with these things simply do not believe this. They believe that one can think about the soul exactly the same way as one can think about something else. However, one can direct thoughts only to that what can be perceived outwardly. If you want to look back at the soul itself, on that what activates the human thinking, then you cannot do it with the thoughts. You need the beholding consciousness that exceeds the mere thinking; you get to the Imaginative knowledge, as I called it in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? and in other books. One cannot apply the same abstract, pale thoughts with which one grasps nature to the human soul life. One simply does not grasp it with them. Such thoughts are like a sieve, through which you pass the human soul life.

This occurred once in a great historical moment when Goethe and Schiller (1759-1805, German poet) met. Just in this point, you can realise what happens if you want to enter from Goethe's view of nature into a soul view. Schiller had written an important treatise, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (1794). I want to indicate only briefly, which soul riddle Schiller had in mind. Schiller wanted to solve the problem of the artistic. He wanted to answer the question to himself: what happens, actually, in the human soul if the human being creates or feels artistically if he puts himself in the world of beauty? Schiller found, if the human being is only given away to his sensory drives, he is subject to the physical necessity.

As far as the human being is subject to the physical necessity, he cannot approach beauty and art. Also, not if he dedicates himself only to the thinking if he follows the logical necessity only. However, there is a middle state, Schiller thinks. If the human being impregnates everything that the sensory gives him with his being so that it becomes like the pure spirituality, if he raises the sensory to spirituality and presses the spirituality down into the sensory, so that the sensory becomes spiritual and the spiritual becomes sensory, then he is in beauty, then he is in the artistic. The necessity seems to be reduced by the desire, and the desire seems to be improved by the spirit. Schiller spoke a lot about his intention to Goethe to invigorate the human soul forces so that in the harmony of the single soul forces this middle state appears which enables the human being to create or feel the artistic. In the nineties, from the deeper acquaintance of Goethe and Schiller on, this important life riddle played a big role in the correspondence and in the conversations of Schiller and Goethe. In the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man Schiller tried to solve this problem philosophically. Goethe also dealt with this problem because this problem occupied Schiller so much. But Goethe had the beholding consciousness which Schiller did not have; this enabled him to submerge with his thoughts in the world of the things themselves, but also to grasp the soul life more intimately.

He could realise that the human soul life is much more extensive, is much more immense than that what one can grasp with abstract thoughts, as Schiller did in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.

Goethe did not want simply to put such dashes, such contours of thoughts to characterise this richly structured human soul life. Thus, a little work of quite different nature originated about the same problem.

It is very interesting to consider more closely this point of the acquaintance of Goethe and Schiller. What did Schiller want, actually? Schiller wanted to show that in every human being a higher human being lives, as compared with what the usual consciousness encloses is a lower one. Schiller wanted to announce this higher human being who carries his desires up to the spirit and brings the spirit down to the desires, so that the human being, while he connects the spiritual and sensory necessities, grasps himself in a new way and appears as a higher human being in the human being. Goethe did not want to be so abstract. However, Goethe also wanted to strive for what lives as a higher human being within the human being. This higher being in the human being appeared to him so rich in its single member that he could not grasp it with mere thinking, so he put it in mighty, important pictures. Thus, The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (1795) originated from forms at the end of Conversations of German Emigrants.

Someone who symbolises a lot in this fairy tale does not come close to its deeper sense. The different figures of this fairy tale, they are about twenty, are the soul forces, personified in their living cooperation which lift the human being beyond themselves and to the higher human being. This lives in the composition of The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. Only in pictures, Goethe could grasp the problem that Schiller grasped in thoughts philosophically; but in pictures which are an entire world.

You do not need to grasp the soul life pedantically only in Goethean way, so, actually, only in poetic pictures, but one realises—just if one goes into the inner structure of the Goethean worldview if one applies this to the soul life in same way, as Goethe applied his ramble spirituality in the metamorphosis—that the metamorphosis of the soul forces grasps the human being vividly and leads him from the transient that he experiences in the body to the imperishable that he experiences as that which is in his inside and goes through births and deaths. The usual psychology deals a lot with the question: should one take the one or the other soul force as starting point? Is the will original, is the imagination, or is the thinking original? How should one imagine the mutual relation of imagination, thinking, feeling, and percipience? One applied a lot of astuteness to grasp the cooperation of the different soul forces in such a way as the outer natural sciences grasp the interaction of green leaf and petal or the interaction of cranial bones and cerebral ones without considering the inner transformation.

Somebody who can turn his view from the outside inwards with Goethean sense can behold the soul life; however, he has to do it even more vividly than to the outer life of nature because one can rest in the outer life as it were with the spiritual view. The outer life gives you the material; you can go from creation to creation. The inner life seems to disappear perpetually if you want to look at it. However, if you turn the ramble thinking inwards, which just becomes a beholding one, then that becomes what appears as thinking, feeling, willing, and as perceiving, nothing but something intrinsic that changes into each other. The will becomes a metamorphosis of the feeling, the feeling a metamorphosis of imagining, the imagining a metamorphosis of the perceiving and vice versa.

The development of the forces and abilities slumbering in the human being, of the meditative thinking, which leads into the spiritual world, is based on nothing but on the living pursuit of the inner metamorphoses of the soul forces. On one side that tries who wants to become a spiritual researcher to develop his imagination, his percipience in such a way that he leads the will which only slumbers, otherwise, in percipience and imagination, into this percipience and imagination repeatedly in such a way that he brings that consciously to mind what, otherwise, appears as an involuntary mental picture. Thereby the usually pale thinking or forced percipience changes into the pictorial beholding. Since one can behold the spiritual only in pictures. The will and the feeling that one can imagine only, otherwise, but not in their real nature are recognised, are transformed by the meditative life, so that they become an imagining life, a perceiving life.

Leading the imagination into the will, leading the will into the imagining, changing the will into imagination and vice versa, the transformation of the imagining into the will in inner liveliness, the transformation of the single soul forces into each other, this is meditative life. If this is pursued, that announces itself for the inner observation what cannot announce itself if one looks only at thinking, at feeling and willing side by side. If one looks at them side by side, only the temporal of the human being appears. If one learns to recognise how imagining changes into feeling and the will changes into imagining and perceiving, one gets to know the metamorphosis of the inner soul life, as vividly as Goethe pursued the metamorphoses in the outer nature. Then the everlasting of the human soul announces itself that goes through births and deaths. The human being thereby enters the everlasting.

What did Goethe want while he removed such a prejudice that the human being differs by a detail like the intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw from the animal? He did not want that the human being faces as an isolated being the remaining world, he wanted, completely in harmony with Herder, to survey nature as a big whole and to look at the human being arising from the whole nature. When Schiller had got rid of some prejudices towards Goethe and had reached a pure free recognition of his greatness, he wrote to Goethe, how he had to think about Goethe's way of looking at nature. Among the rest, he wrote the nice words: “You take together the whole nature to get light for the single; in the entirety of her phenomena you look for the explanation of the individual ... A great and really heroic idea which shows only too well, how much your mind holds together the rich whole of its mental pictures in a nice unity.”

It attracts Schiller's attention that Goethe wanted to understand the human being while he assembled him from that which is separated, otherwise, in the different beings of nature but which can change by inner formative forces so that the human being appears like a summary of the outer natural phenomena in his outer figure, the crown of the outer nature.

One has to form a correct mental picture of that which there Goethe wanted, actually, if one envisages the other side now that arises for the soul life. If one envisages the metamorphosis of the inner soul forces as Goethe envisaged the metamorphosis of the outer forms of the human being, that arises what appears in the human being as a summary of the metamorphosing soul forces from the underlying world of spiritual beings and spiritual processes, as on the other side if one looks at the human being as a physical being in the Goethean way, this human physical being arises as a summary of the physical world. As Goethe's natural sciences connect the outer human figure to the whole remaining physical world, a Goethean psychology connects the human soul to the everlasting, concrete, enclosing spiritual world and allows it to concentrate in the human being. Not while you take this or that sentence of Goethe to confirm your own view you can build a bridge between spiritual science and the Goethean world consideration, but while you try to solve the problem internally—vividly, not in the abstract—logically how does one come close to such a kind to delve into nature?

Goethe himself possessed this ability to delve into nature naively. If you search it by deepening in his way to look at the world, to bring it back to life in yourself, then you get to the necessity to extend that which Goethe had as disposition for the view of nature also to the world of the mental. Then you get by the human soul life to the everlasting spiritual world as Goethe got by the human natural life to his consideration of the outer physical world. You have to approach Goethe internally; you have to try to want that in love what he wanted concerning nature. Then you get around to wanting the same concerning the spiritual world whose image is the human soul world. You get around to looking from the human soul into the spirit as Goethe looked from the human nature into the remaining nature. In this sense, one can already say that one understands Goethe little if one takes him only in such a way as he behaved at first. Goethe himself did not want to be taken in such a way. Since Goethe was very close to the whole way that must appear again with spiritual research, he was close to it also in the non-scientific areas, in the area of art.

If you yourself try to settle in the beholding consciousness, you realise that it is necessary above all that this settling does not perpetually disturb itself by all kinds of prejudices which are transferred from the sensory world or from the abstract, only logical thinking to the spiritual world. An important viewpoint of the investigation of the spiritual world is that you are able to wait. The soul can exert itself ever so much to investigate something in the spiritual world, it wants to investigate it absolutely, but it will fail, it will fool itself. It can exert itself ever so much unless in it those abilities have still matured which are necessary to the view of certain beings or certain facts, it will not yet be able to recognise them. Maturing, waiting is necessary until in the soul that has grown up which faces you in a certain area of the spiritual world. This is something that is necessary in a particular way for penetrating into the spiritual world. The spiritual researcher must have patience and energy to a high degree. I characterise other rules in later talks. Goethe was minded by his whole nature to be also as an artist in such a way that he waited everywhere.

Nothing is more interesting than to pursue those poetries of Goethe that he could not finish if one pursues how he got stuck with the Pandora, how he got stuck with the Natural Daughter which should have become a trilogy and became only one part. If you compare it to that which he finished brilliantly, like the second part of Faust or the Elective Affinities, one recognises his innermost nature. Goethe could not “do” anything, he had always to form that only to which he had advanced by the maturity of his being, and if he did not attain this maturity, he left it, and then he was not able to work on. Someone who creates artistically only combining can work on. Someone who lets the spirit create in himself like Goethe cannot advance sometimes just if he is great as Goethe was. Where Goethe had to stop, he was of particular interest for that who wants to penetrate into his inner being. If one pursues something like the Elective Affinities, one realises that that which lives in it existed already in relatively early time, but not the possibility to develop figures really that could embody this riddle of nature and human being. Goethe left them, and thus he handed over the Elective Affinities to a time when the persons did no longer live who could still have understood it because they had experienced the first youth impulses together with him.

Thus, Goethe was close to spiritual science by this real experience of the mental as it were, he was close to it by the desire not to stop at the abstract thinking but to advance from the thinking to reality, indeed, as a naturalist, but as a naturalist who searched the spirit. Therefore, he was so glad when during the twenties the psychologist Heinroth (Johann Christian H., 1773-1843, German anthropologist) said that Goethe had a concrete thinking. Goethe understood this straight away that he did not have a thinking that keeps on spinning a thread but that submerges in the things.

However, the thinking submerges in the things, it does not find abstract material atoms in them, but the spirit, as well as by the beholding consideration of the soul life the everlasting spirit of the human being is recognised. Therefore, Goethe's view envisaged what reveals itself within the world of the sensory as something spiritual. You can understand from those indications that Goethe did not want to think about the thinking because he only knew too well that one could only look at the thinking. One can also understand well that Goethe did not at all mean anything irreligious when he said that it is antipathetic to him to speak of the things of another world. Since he knew that these things of another world are in this world, penetrate it perpetually, and that someone who does not search these spiritual things and beings in nature who denies them in nature does not want to recognise the spirit in the phenomena of nature. Hence, Goethe did not want to look behind the natural phenomena, but he wanted to search everywhere in the natural phenomena. Hence, it was unpleasant to him to speak of an “inside of nature.”

So about many philosophical minded people look for the “thing in itself.” They face the world of the outer sensory perceptions; they recognise that they are only sensory perceptions, reflections of reality. There they look for the “things in themselves,” but not, while they withdraw from the mirror and search in that which the spirit can grasp as spirit, but while they smash the mirror to reach for the world of the dead atoms from which one can never grasp anything living.

This inside of nature was for Goethe completely beyond his imagination. Hence, with his review on all efforts which he had to do to penetrate into the spirituality of the natural phenomena, that severe quotation which he did about the great naturalist Haller who had become unpleasant to him because he had said once: “No created mind penetrates into the being of nature. Blissful is that to whom she shows her appearance only!” Goethe did not at all want to speak about nature this way. He answered to it:

“No created mind penetrates
Into the being of nature.”
O you Philistine!
Do not remind me
And my brothers and sisters
Of such a word.
We think: everywhere we are inside.
“Blissful is that to whom she shows
Her appearance only!”
I hear that repeatedly for sixty years,
I grumble about it, but covertly,
I say to myself thousand and thousand times:
She gives everything plenty and with pleasure;
Nature has neither kernel nor shell,
She is everything at the same time.
Examine yourself above all,
Whether you are kernel or shell.

Goethe believes that someone who looks at nature as something that is an outside of the spirit cannot penetrate into the spirit of nature. While she shows her shell in her different metamorphoses to the human being, it reveals the spirit to him at the same time with her kernel. Spiritual science wants nothing to be in this respect but a child of Goethe, I would like to say. It wants to extend that which Goethe applied in such fertile way to the world of the outer natural phenomena also to the soul phenomena by which they immediately receive active life and reveal the internal spiritual, that spiritual which lives in the human being as his everlasting immortal essence. We look closer at this in the following talks.

I wanted to show this today. Not because one grasps Goethe in his single statements, one can call him a father of spiritual science—since in this way one could make him the father of all possible worldviews—, but while one tries to settle affectionately in that what appeared to him so fertile. Then one does not repeat what he already said, but then spiritual science appears rightly as a continuation of the Goethean worldview. It seems to me that it is in its sense if one ascends from the physical life to the spiritual life.

Goethe himself showed when he wanted to summarise his worldview in his essay about Winckelmann (Johann Joachim W., 1717-1768, German art historian and archaeologist) the living together of the human being with the whole universe as an interaction of spirits, while he said: “If the healthy nature of the human being works as a whole if he feels in the world as in a big nice and worthy whole if the harmonious ease grants a pure, free delight to him, then the universe would shout out and admire the summit of its own being and becoming if it could feel itself because it has attained its goal.” Thus, Goethe lively imagined the essence of the human being together with the essence of nature in interaction: nature, the world perceiving itself in the human being, the human being recognising himself as everlasting, but expressing his eternity in the temporality of the outer world. Between world and human being, the world spirit lives, grasping itself, knowing itself, even confirming itself in the sense of Goethe.

Hence, those who have thought in the sense of Goethe were never tempted to deny the spirit and to apply the Goethean worldview to confirm a more or less materialistic worldview. No, those who have understood Goethe have always thought that the human being, while he faces the things of nature and lives among them, lives at the same time in the spirituality into which he enters if he dies. These human beings have thought in such a way as for example Novalis (1772-1801) did.

Novalis, the miraculous genius, who wanted to submerge in nature in certain phases of his life in quite Goethean way, knew himself immersed in the spiritual world. His many remarks about the immediate present of the spirit in the sensory world go back to the Goethean worldview. Hence, I am allowed, while Goethe is put as it were as a father of a spiritual worldview, to close with a remark, which Novalis did completely in the Goethean sense that summarises that which I briefly outlined today as Goethean worldview in a way:

“The spiritual world is also not closed to us here. It is always manifest to us. If we can make our souls as elastic as it is necessary, we are like spirits among spirits!”