The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A lecture such as was given the day before yesterday could easily give the impression that a people's soul should only be spoken for out of mere sympathy. If the spiritual researcher were to speak about these matters today purely out of sympathy, out of mere passion, then one could be certain that what he has to say has no particular value in terms of spiritual research, or that what he has to say, because it is imbued with passion, must be fundamentally untrue. Now, to what extent what was said the day before yesterday may, despite all this, be spoken as coherent with the deepest insights of spiritual science of the present day, that should emerge for you from the way in which the spiritual researcher must relate to one or the other folk soul.

We already know from the very elementary presentation in anthroposophy that when we speak of folk souls, we do not mean what the outer, exoteric world understands by an abstract term. We may say that quite definite entities, with archangelic rank — one has only to read about it in the lecture cycle on 'The Mission of Individual National Souls' — entities with a consciousness that is higher than human consciousness, guide the affairs of nations. And we look up to these folk souls, so we speak of them as real, actual entities, indeed more real entities than we human beings ourselves are. How does the human being enter into a relationship with these folk souls in relation to his spiritual soul? We will first raise this question.

We know that man alternates between waking and sleeping in relation to his consciousness; we know that man has to be awake within his physical and etheric bodies and that he then, between falling asleep and waking up, dwells in his astral body and in his I. If a person is outside of their physical body with their astral body and I between falling asleep and waking up, then they are in a region that is completely different in relation to the folk soul, to which they primarily belong in a particular incarnation, than the region in which the person is in relation to the folk soul when they are in their physical body. Through his language and many other things, man is born into the realm of his folk soul. How does this folk soul affect the human soul, that which is taken out of the physical and etheric bodies during sleep, but which is present in the body during waking? How does the folk soul of the people to which a person belongs affect the individual soul of the person?

It actually only has an effect during the time in which the human being is immersed in the physical body, from the moment of waking until the moment of falling asleep. The human being is immersed in the forces of the physical and etheric bodies, and what I would like to call the tentacles of the folk soul, the soul of the people to which the human being belongs in a particular incarnation, is also immersed in these forces. And we not only submerge in our physical body, we also submerge in a certain part of our folk soul, we live from waking up to falling asleep while we are in our physical body, with what is going on in the physical body, within the folk soul. We experience what we experience in communion with the folk soul during our waking hours, only that the folk soul does not speak directly into what is fully conscious in the I, that it speaks more into the subconscious of the astral body from the etheric body, that it tinges, nuances, gives our feeling and temperament a certain direction. This is the essential way in which we relate to it. The one who, through his corresponding initiation, is able to observe all that is involved when a person submerges into the physical body, he sees, looks at the encounter with the folk soul when submerging into the physical body. But he also sees something else. And when I speak of this, you will soon recognize that objectivity must prevail within what the spiritual researcher has to say about one or other folk soul.

The spiritual researcher lives in those moments when he is strengthened and illuminated in the right way by the spiritual and soul life and enables it to live consciously and independently of the body. He lives in such a way that he can observe where the human being is, even when he is outside of his physical body with his soul and spirit, with his astral body and I. The spiritual researcher observes how every human soul, unconsciously, between falling asleep and waking up, immerses itself in the entire environment of the folk souls that are relevant for a particular time. While the human being is immersed in the physical body, he is with the national soul of his nation. In the state of sleep, he is with all the other national souls of the time in question, with the exception of the one with which he is in the physical body during the waking state.

The spiritual researcher has ample opportunity to become acquainted with the characteristics of the other national souls, because as soon as he becomes aware of himself in his disembodied state, he lives spiritually and soulfully with the other national souls in the same way that he lives with his own national soul in the physical body. In this state it would be quite impossible to allow one's ordinary passions to lead one to speak in a one-sided way about the one folk soul. But when the spiritual researcher consciously lives with these other folk souls, this consciousness also shows him that every person unconsciously connects with the other folk souls between falling asleep and waking up, but somewhat differently than with his own folk soul. When you enter your physical body, you get to know the individual folk soul with its essential characteristics, essentially its activity in its effect on you, albeit in the subconscious. During sleep or in the state of initiation, one gets to know the other folk-souls, not as individuals, but in their interaction; only one's own folk-soul is not present. The others interact as in a round dance, and in that which their round dance activity is, one lives in it, as one lives with one's own folk-soul in the physical body during the day. Thus one lives

5 not with the peculiarity of the one national soul, but with the interaction. There is only one thing by which one can be condemned, quite certainly condemned, to be torn out of the normal togetherness with the dance of the national souls and to be together with only one foreign national soul in the body-free state, that is, in sleep. Do understand me: it is not normal to be with a foreign folk soul; but you can achieve it if you passionately hate this other folk soul. In this way you condemn yourself to be torn out of the dance of the other folk souls and to be together with this one folk soul in a sleeping state, as you are with your own folk soul during the waking state.

Yes, these are objective truths that spiritual research reveals. It shows you that it is bitterly serious about the sentence that is often spoken by spiritual science: that what confronts us in external reality, maya, is great deception, and that behind this aja, behind this veil, there are truths which he who is content with the veil of Maja cannot comprehend with his intellect and does not want to comprehend with his will. There are still many people in our time who cannot yet see what lies behind the veil of Maya, and therefore cannot understand that there is such a supersensible, invisible world and that in it the relationship of the human soul to the other folk-souls is quite different from anything one could dream of. If one takes spiritual science seriously precisely where it points to the spheres that are connected with our life, then one must bear that spiritual science points to conditions in the spiritual world that are so uncomfortable to immerse oneself in, even just with one's consciousness, that one resists it with one's will. One does not want to submerge, one would like the truth to be different with regard to very many things. That not only the intellect but also the will resists what spiritual science often has to say as something bitterly serious, that is something we may also bring before our soul one day. And from feelings that can be stimulated by such a discussion as the one just expressed, we feel that the principle we have within our spiritual movement, of a certain work, without distinction of race, color, nationality and so on, is so closely connected with the deeper essence of our spiritual-scientific movement that it is actually nonsense for anyone who truly understands the profound seriousness of spiritual-scientific truths not to support this first principle. It is indeed nonsense, for to hate the nature of some folk soul in the deepest human being means to condemn oneself to be in the subconscious with this folk soul during sleep in exactly the same way as one is in one's subconscious during waking with the folk soul that is one's own. For the normal interaction with national souls during sleep is this: to be together with the whole range of others for an age. That man must not become one-sided, the wise arrangement of the world takes care of that.

We have often emphasized that what a person has to go through in the next few years, the time between death and a new birth, depends to a certain extent on the after-effects of the life in the body between birth and death. Now, as we can see from what has just been discussed, being with the soul of a nation is part of this life in the body. This coexistence with the folk soul, I said, tinges us, nuances us; we take what the folk soul arouses as an impulse in our soul and spiritual being with us into the spiritual world when we pass through the gate of death, and we have to gradually shed it as such. If we bear this in mind, it will be readily understandable to us that it depends on the way in which the human being lives with his national soul, how he still stands in the aftermath of this national soul immediately after death.

Let us consider two European nations in terms of what has just been suggested: the Russian and the French people. The life of the folk soul is such that the folk soul must be active in a different way with its consciousness than a human being is with his consciousness. How is a human being active with his consciousness? He directs his gaze outwards to the horizon of external facts and can also turn his gaze back to his own soul. We know that human beings differ from one another in certain respects. Goethe, for example, belongs to the one group, with his objective view of things; Schiller, on the other hand, belongs to the other group, and is more concerned with his own inner life, and accomplishes what he has to create more from there. The souls of nations are also like this, but only approximately, because their consciousness is of a completely different nature than human consciousness. The national souls stand in a different relation to the individual members of the nation. When they direct their gaze outwards, it is more a glance of the will, sending impulses into the individual members of the nation. In this way they work objectively outwards, directing themselves towards the individual members of the nation. Or they can live more within themselves. The French national soul, in particular, belongs to the national souls that live more inwardly, one might say, and do not worship a national soul realism that spreads over the individuals, but a national soul idealism that lives more within itself. This French national soul, as it permeates the French people today, has a certain stability of consciousness in that it looks back to an earlier time.

I have often pointed out that we have our ordinary physical waking consciousness by immersing ourselves in our spatial body. After death, we have our consciousness by looking back in time at our earlier life. There we can already sense the characteristic of a higher consciousness, which unfolds not in space but in time. It kindles its self by looking back to ancient Greece, for it is essentially a kind of repetition, a reawakening of ancient Greekness. This ancient Greek element lives again in the French national soul, just as the Egyptian-Chaldean element of the third post-Atlantic cultural period lives again in the Italian national soul. Therefore, the Italian national soul has more opportunity to stimulate the sentient soul in the individual human beings who belong to the nation. The actual nature of the French national soul stimulates the intellectual or the emotional soul of the individual. This can be demonstrated quite clearly in detail. Indeed, even the individual historical facts can be explained in a wonderful way if one consults these general results of spiritual research.

Let us just point out a few things in this direction. Consider: what was the peculiarity of the Egyptian folk soul? At that time, there was still astrology that had a direct effect on the soul. The folk soul looked out at the movements of the heavenly bodies, did not see, as today's people do, only material processes in what happened in the cosmos, but really perceived the active spiritual beings behind what was going on outside. Their relationship to the whole cosmos was the same as that of a person to another person, in that they know that a soul looks at them through the whole physiognomy. Thus, everything was a physiognomy to the ancient Egyptians, and they perceived the soul in nature. The meaning of the further development in the new time lies in the fact that what used to be, as it were, an elementary ability, was directly ignited in the physical body of the human being, that it became his inwardness in the newer time, in our fifth post-Atlantic age. And just as what the Egyptian went through was more elemental, so the Italian, in what he repeats, in what he goes through in his sentient soul, goes through it more inwardly, in that he experiences in the sentient soul that which is spiritual and cosmic, but now more interiorized. What could be more internalized than the Egyptian astrology in Dante's Divine Comedy? The true resurrection of ancient Egyptian astrology, but internalized!

And in the same way we could prove that ancient Greek life is to be found, not in the consciousness of the individual Frenchman, but in the working of the impulses of the folk soul. This can be traced right down to the latest invention and into the details; it is just that such research is not taken seriously enough. Greece and, as the other peoples called it, “the barbarians,” even that is reviving. Thus one could prove that in all French literature and art — I do not mean consciously, but in the deeper impulses — ancient Greek life is revived in the way it must be revived in our time. We are therefore dealing with a national soul that has absorbed everything that was in Greek culture, a national soul that therefore has an extraordinarily strong effect on individual human beings, permeating and taking hold of them. The consequence of this is that when the individual French soul enters the physical and etheric body, it enters into the weaving and essence of the sharply defined activity of the national soul. He finds the impulses of this national soul sharply defined. That is why the Frenchman, by absorbing in his physical body this sharp, concise life and weaving of the national soul, lives more in it than in his elementary sense of self, that he lives more in the image, in the idea he forms of the Frenchman, which surges up from the national soul. He lives from the image of the Frenchman. And everything that is of great importance to him is connected with this image: 'Gloire' and so on. The Frenchman lives in his own image, which comes up from the etheric body. This fantasy image is strongly influenced and interwoven with the spiritual and soul nature of the individual, and the person takes it with them as an image that is strongly moved in the etheric body when they enter the spiritual world after death. It is very difficult for them to get rid of. It is very difficult for them to get rid of their ether image. The image he has formed of himself clings to him, is firmly connected to him.

The attitude of the Russian national soul towards the individual is quite different. This Russian national soul does not have to repeat any of the post-Atlantic cultures in the same way as the French nation; it is a youthful national soul that leaves few imprints on the etheric body. Therefore, when the individual belonging to this Russian national soul immerses himself in his physical body, little of significance happens to him. Consequently, when he enters the spiritual world, he takes little of significance with him, few ethereally woven images of the imagination.

Thus, the souls differ in relation to their national souls after death. On the one hand, we have the host of those individual souls who have passed through death, who carry into the spiritual world sharply woven images of their own being, and on the other hand, in the east, we see young souls ascending, belonging to a young national soul, bringing little in the way of sharply woven human images flooding in the etheric body.

Now, as I have often discussed, we are on the threshold of the great event of the coming time: the appearance of the Christ in a very special way. I do not need to discuss this today. But since the last third of the nineteenth century, He has been preceded by the spirit whom we call the spirit of Michael, the champion of the spirit of the sun, in his struggle to prepare humanity for the Christ event. Now everything depends on the spiritual world preparing for this event, which is to befall humanity spiritually, in an appropriate way. But this can only happen if work is done in the spiritual world, as it were, on the pure development of the Christ, who will appear in the etheric in the future, since he is to appear to man as an etheric form. But for this it is necessary that he who marches before the spirit of the sun, that Michael, fights a battle in the spiritual world. For this battle he needs the help of the souls who, through their bodies, have just been drawn up into the spiritual world, of those souls who bring little of sharply defined imaginative images with them into the spiritual world. And so we see the spirit Michael and in his wake a number of Russian souls fighting for the purity of the spiritual horizon and in a hard struggle with the souls that have come from the West, which bring sharply defined images of fantasy. These must be dispersed and dissolved. We have been seeing this battle between East and West in the making since the last third of the nineteenth century. It is a fierce battle that is to serve the progress of humanity and which consists in the spiritual struggle of European East against European West, in spiritual Russia waging a fierce spiritual battle against spiritual France. This, my dear friends, is one of the most harrowing events of the present time: to see how, to the same extent that the physical alliance between West and East is being carried out down here in the field of great deception, the sharp struggle of the European East, Russia, against the European West, France, is taking place up there in the spiritual world. We have here one of those cases that have such a shattering effect on the spiritual researcher, where one can see how what is behind the veil of the outer sense world is often the opposite of what happens down here in the realm of deception. But I would always and always admonish not to believe that one can determine such things through speculation. Anyone who, from what I have said in individual cases – that the spiritual presents itself as the opposite of what occurs in the realm of the great Maja – might conclude that it must always go to the opposite when it comes from the physical to the spiritual, would be very much mistaken. For there are cases in the spiritual world in which things take place exactly as they do in the physical. Between this case and the other, where they take place in such stark contrast as in relation to the alliance between France and Russia in the physical and spiritual, there are all possible gradations.

Today, we still have little sense of the impulses through which real spiritual science must communicate. I would say that our time has become, in a sense, careless, especially with regard to what appears to be worth communicating to the individual person; for very little is asked about the responsibility that lies behind what is to be communicated for the one who has to consider the connection between the spiritual and physical worlds. Perhaps I may say something to you, not for personal reasons, but only to illustrate, in connection with my lecture the day before yesterday. You see, in this public lecture, where of course I can only speak externally, exoterically, I do not speak as exoterically as one might think, and I would be glad if, especially in such lectures, one would take into consideration the cultural task that spiritual science has. In particular, the fact that spiritual science is behind it is expressed in the way in which what needs to be said is emphasized and said. It is not a matter of arbitrary ideas or something that has been cobbled together. Take this one example: I said that if one wants to assess the circumstances of the individual European nations in this war, one should proceed historically, that one should consider, for example, that Austria received that mission in the Balkans at the request of British politicians, and that basically everything that has happened to Austria is a consequence of what was imposed on it at the behest of Britain. And I said that this must be taken into account, that it must be taken into account that as a result Austria, and with it Germany, came into particular antagonism with Russia, and that England has abandoned its own work and is now fighting against Germany, while the Central Powers and Russia have come into antagonism because Austria, at England's behest, was entrusted with the Balkan mission and also, by coming to the aid of the Turks, was supposed to hold back the influence of the Russian East. Of course, in an exoteric lecture intended for a general audience, one can only hint at what might affect the perceptions that should be stimulated today. But what is behind this event? Outwardly, exoterically, we see English politics on the side of Russian politics, which has come to its consequences precisely through an act of England. We see that outwardly. The spiritual researcher who looks at things in the spiritual world can make a very peculiar discovery today, a most remarkable discovery. Let us assume that the spiritual researcher would look from bottom to top by taking a certain perspective point. He would take the perspective point below the physical plane and look up to the astral plane. He could also take it above the astral plane. Then he would see what is happening on the physical plane and, as it were, also what is happening on the astral plane. It would merge. It is not true that if one looks up from below or down from above through the astral plane, one sees through the astral to the physical and vice versa. If one now looks at the physical plane, it is true that England is fighting against Turkey since Turkey declared war on Russia. But that is mere Maya, for in reality the astral being of England is fighting with Turkey against Russia. So that one has the spectacle of England fighting for Russia in the northwest and for Turkey in the southeast, thus against Russia. Only one thing is decisive for the physical plane and the other for the astral plane.

When one is confronted with such knowledge of the world, one feels that one cannot, of course, communicate this knowledge to the public, but it does urge one to emphasize this one point about England's inconsistency in the East. The fact that this one point is emphasized arises from the recognition of the spiritual connections. This is how I would like to point out the responsibility that one simply has when compiling the individual truths and the way in which one presents them.

If one feels one's occult responsibility, then one does not pick and choose at random, as today's book-makers or journalists do, but one must extract what is to be said from the essence of the current situation. It is not to say something personal, but to draw your attention to the fact that spiritual science, when it steps forward before the world with full responsibility, should really be taken very seriously and should not be confused with all that is spreading today as journalism and book-making and which, in the way it is combined, is very far removed from such a sense of responsibility towards the spiritual powers of the time. I would like to draw your attention, my dear friends, to the seriousness of spiritual science, especially in our time. For our time shows us a serious face in many respects, a very serious face, and only those who understand the seriousness of this face will be able to cope with this time.

To substantiate this, I would also like to bring before you a context that is of interest to the student of spiritual science. It has been said many times that spiritual science truly does not enter the present because it arises from the arbitrariness of one person or another, or because one person or another has made it his ideal out of his own inclination and would like to bring it to other people, but because now is the epoch when the spiritual beings, which otherwise kept the gate of this truth to be revealed to mankind closed, have opened it so that this wisdom flows down into the human soul. And we are approaching a time when people will have to absorb more and more wisdom, which is appropriated by the soul not only in abstract concepts, not only in gray ideas of the mind. We are living towards times when what we call imagination wants to enter into human souls, into human minds. One would like to say, when one sees through the matter: There they hang, like dense clouds hanging over the landscape before a storm, there they hang in the spiritual world and want to enter human minds, and wait until these human minds are ripe. Yes, that is the time; that is how it is.

Now there is a peculiar law: that which is imaginative, which wants to enter into human minds and cannot yet be received as imagination in any age, casts something like a mirage-like image just as far down below the physical plane as it itself is above the physical plane. The imaginations evoke passions in human beings, feelings, urges, instincts, which express themselves in antagonism. And if we take today the instincts, the outbursts of passion with which the nations insult each other, they are nothing other than the result of imaginations that should be taken up by the European nations but cannot be taken down, for they are reflected in the subconscious of human beings in such instincts and passions that contradict the truth. Basically, we can say that all the discharge of instincts and passions that we are experiencing in the present is an expression of the fact that renewed imaginations want to break into the world of human cultural development. All the often so sad phenomena that the war brings to the surface are the transformed imaginations that humanity cannot grasp.

Again, and this never seems unimportant to me, I would like to point out that one should not say: So every war is transformed imagination. Wars can also be something completely different. Today's war is what I have said. Generalization, which is important for understanding the physical plane, is not important for the spiritual world. Here, things must be investigated individually.

Today we see – and I would now like to present an appearance from a certain perspective for you to consider and also explain – today we see how members of different nations persecute each other in hatred and how they insult each other. Where does this come from? Now, since we have already taken on board in all seriousness the essence of repeated earthly lives, it does not seem particularly incomprehensible to us that the soul passes through different nationalities in its repeated lives. Someone who is incarnated today in a German body may already be preparing in his innermost being to undergo the next incarnation in an English body; someone who is incarnated today in an English body may already be preparing to undergo the next incarnation in a German body. Man is already this dual being, this duality. Outwardly, we stand before the world – not only in relation to the external physical-sensual view, but in relation to many other things – quite legitimately linked to the nature and weaving of the national soul through our physical body; but within, something is already asserting itself that will be quite different for the next incarnation. Now, of all the many things man is hostile towards, he is often most hostile towards his own innermost being. He fights against that the most. He does not know that it is his innermost being. Take an Englishman, who is predestined by the innermost part of his soul to be a German in his next incarnation. There we see him today, fighting against his own inner being. He fights against the next German incarnation. This comes to expression today in the fact that he rails shamefully against everything German. Because he sees the goal in the German body, he rages against what, in the spiritual world, is his innermost being. It is basically a conflict of the soul with itself, and only externally, in the Maja, is it the case that over there, beyond the Channel, people here in Central Europe are being ranted against. Basically, what is being ranted about refers to one's own soul. This shows the deep tragedy that must overcome people in their whole being and in their innermost impulses when, where the matter becomes bitterly serious, they compare the outer Maja with what is within.

And so we can see the souls of nations as real living entities that permeate and pervade the individual closed individuals. And what the individual experiences, he experiences in connection with his national soul. On the physical plane, in the outer life, people face each other today. One nation blames the other for the war and believes it is saying something special. But what about this blaming of guilt? The karma of each nation and the karma of the nation in question are, of course, connected with what the soul of the nation is experiencing in the people and directing into the individual etheric bodies and thus also into the astral bodies. Thus the individual nations live side by side and with one another in relationships that are an expression of the relationship between their national soul and the karma of the national soul. And when one nation experiences this or that through another, when this or that happens to one nation through another, it does not happen without it being connected with the innermost karma. Insofar as the national soul is a closed entity, there is also a national karma. And while in the outer exoteric one believes that one nation does this or that to another, it is the case that each nation experiences its own individual national karma in what it experiences. When one of them inflicts a defeat on the other, something takes place in the defeated nation that it has inflicted on itself through its own karma. And when one speaks in the very rough manner, as is outwardly justified, of the right of one and the other, it is really no different than when an old man sees a small child beside him, fresh and growing into youthful vigor, and he says, “Why am I getting older, why does decay show itself more and more to me? I see: the child takes away my strength; as it grows older, the child takes away my strength. While he is losing his strength in a perfectly natural way, he can succumb to the delusion – he will not do it, but I have heard of such things – that the child is taking his strength from him. You can see right away that this is nonsense, because the causal connection lies in every single being. But it is the same with the karma of nations. Nations live side by side, and when one conquers the other, the victory is due to its karma; even if with the same victory the other nation must succumb, the defeat is caused by the karma of the other nation. Thus spiritual science really does bring peace to the soul, even if on the other hand it also realizes that the forces acting against each other must indeed act against each other.

It is precisely through such things that one would like to point out today that spiritual science does not want to be just a game with sensational concepts, but that spiritual science, when viewed in its bitter seriousness, really shakes and shakes our soul and makes a different being out of man when he takes it seriously. We must only take a good look at this, really take a good look at how superficially it is sometimes taken as a mere intellectual game, and how it should actually be taken as something that can truly make a completely different being out of a person. And much will come of engaging in such things, much of understanding the connections will come about.

When two people have different views about something that is happening in front of them, one of them will usually be wrong. It will be easy to prove that one of them is wrong. But the individual life of a human being is different from the life of nations. We must not identify the life of nations with that of individual human beings, nor must we believe that the deeds of nations can be subject to the same impulses of judgment as the lives of individual human beings. Otherwise, one judges in a way that one would never judge if one had a blue horizon about the relations between nations, as is the case, for example, when one says that one must declare war on Germany because it has violated Belgium's neutrality – as has been said – one must declare war on moral grounds. In politics, it is simply nonsensical to apply the same categories that are rightly applied in judging individuals. Because it is quite natural that Germany's interest requires it to advance on Belgium, and England's interest requires it to prevent that. At the moment you sincerely admit that the interest is there and there, you have something that indicates that there are contrasting interests. When two people claim something contrary, it will be necessary to prove that one of them is wrong. When two nations have to do something contrary, then they must do it. And to believe that the judgment of one side can sweep away that of the other is just as foolish as if someone were to say: You drew me a tree that has a branch here, one there, one there; that is quite wrong, the tree looks like that. And now he draws it so that the branch is here and the other one is there and so on. One person has drawn it from one side and the other from the other. Of course, you can put that together. But what is happening in world history cannot be balanced out by mere observation. When the souls of nations, with their different mindsets, have to do things through their people, it is impossible to somehow decide by judgments like: one is right and the other is wrong. There are contrasting interests that must necessarily be discharged in phenomena such as today's. You cannot refute what is said on one side or the other. Just as one must not believe that the karma of one does not stand independently beside that of the other, so one must not believe that one can refute the judgment of the other with the judgment of the one. For the one nation may have interests which it would be a breach of duty for the statesman of the other nation to oppose, while it is the duty of the statesman of the first nation to stand up for these interests.

Judgments of people, judgments in the consciousness that we have on the physical plane within our physical bodies, only come into consideration in the field of the mind and balance each other dialectically, with one knocking the other out of the field. The consciousnesses of the folk-souls judge differently. They also have judgments that differ from each other, but these judgments are not merely judgments of the mind, they are facts. When one judgment defeats the other in the human sphere, then it does not hurt, then one kills, but one does not see it as a death. But it is different when what prevails in the consciousness of the souls of nations, and what is not just an abstract judgment, but what works as facts, when that collides. Then one must recognize the necessity, the iron necessity, that it has come to this. And then one must have the possibility of adopting, so to speak, a form of judgment in one's mind, a form of spirit that does not agree with the form of spirit that one encounters in everyday life.

One must think, as it were, with the folk souls, not with the individual human souls. If one thinks with the individual human souls, then it is quite natural that one tries not to make a judgment that contradicts that of the other, because then one would not be able to live socially in the human world. If you have to think and feel with the soul of the people, then there will come times when it is impossible to relate to it in any other way than by identifying with it and considering its content to be justified, without stepping out of this people's soul, without comparing what it has to do with what the others have to do. Because that is the business of the others, it cannot be brought together in a common consciousness, it goes from consciousness to consciousness. From this point of view, you will understand that one can ask: What does the German people have to say about its mission, considering that it considers itself to be the descendant of Fichte, Schiller and the other greats? It has to say that what it is undertaking today is the outward expression of its spiritual mission and that it cannot fail to fulfill it. Those who are part of the people must feel with all their being that it must happen. And there is no possibility that anyone, when one sharply defines what must happen for the German people, could call this an attack. The attack, the assault on the other people only begins when one starts to curse about the other people. These are things that must be understood very deeply today: to stand up positively for the essence of a people basically means no more than what can be compared to the fact that one can only take care of one's own body, that it is in order, and not in the same way for another body.

Please note that this is a decisive factor for the judgment that we can gain from the sources of spiritual research.

And when we look into the weaving and nature of the folk souls and what is behind them, behind what is happening on the outside, I would like to say that for the spiritual researcher, especially today, the matter is becoming very, very serious, extraordinarily serious. But this seriousness is also fitting for our time, and it is as if the fact that we have seen the greatest military conflicts were connected with the great demand of the time to found a culture that takes into account what lies behind the veil of sense perception. And those who have the right sense will judge precisely what is taking place in the outer world today, who see in the outer events something like signs, like mighty world symbols for the dawning of something completely new in the evolution of mankind.

I said: Not only does the intellect and its prejudices rebel in man against what spiritual science has to say about the supersensible entity behind the external things, but the mind, the impulses of the will, rebel. They do not want it because the soul must change its way of thinking and feel and perceive differently about many things. — That I said. Yes, that is also a truth. You see, we not only sleep at night, we also sleep during the day, only that at night our attraction to the physical body is so strong that it permeates our astral body and our ego like a fog and dulls our consciousness. When we now descend with the same astral body and the same ego into our physical body to satisfy our desires, then what we develop as consciousness is permeated by the influences of the national soul and there again consciousness is interspersed, so that down there, despite our belief that we are quite awake, there is always something asleep in us. Basically, something is always asleep in us, and that in itself is a sleep within us, just as the folk soul works within us, because it does not happen with the same consciousness with which we make our day-waking judgments. And to this, to the sleep of the day, which is only covered by ordinary consciousness, to this also belongs the working over of the folk souls of the other nations. They also have an effect in a certain way on the sleeping human mind and produce different phenomena than during sleep, but they do produce phenomena on the physical plane.

For example, while the German people had an evolutionary theory through Goethe that came from the very depths of the German being itself, they left it unnoticed and accepted Darwinism. Just as the Italian people have to develop the sentient soul, the French the intellectual soul, and the English the consciousness soul, so the German has to develop the I, and much about the nature of the German people becomes understandable when one feels and realizes how everything that is German culture wells up from the I. This connection between the ego and the most sacred spiritual goods is a characteristic of the Central European people.

It is particularly evident in one phenomenon. If we take the occult truths themselves and look towards the West: external culture has little connection with what appears as mysticism, as occultism. There are actually always two parallel currents. It is not easy to find anything in an ordinary bookshop in Paris that is connected with occultism; you have to go to other places that present it. Now we see how it is in the German to bring everything out of the ego, how the German has Jakob Böhme, how German cultural development is unthinkable without this occult influence. Think of Goethe and Lessing. There are not two currents flowing side by side, but there is one stream, there is real life interwoven and permeated with the spiritual, and one cannot approach this with a materialistic view, as is propagated by the “Star of the East”, that Christ is still incarnating in a physical human being. Hence the necessity arose, as did the antagonism between Germany and England, which could not be allowed to wait until war brought it about: to clearly separate what German occultism is from what English occultism is. And perhaps one or other of them will now reflect on why this split has become necessary. But I only wanted to give a hint. Because some people may see a kind of archetype in the compilation of facts, the justification of facts, when they look at the letters from Grey and Annie Besant today: the way of proving, of putting things together, is very similar in both. But I only wanted to point out how what emerges from the German people is connected to the innermost soul. When the German is awake, he adheres, for example, to the profound theory of development of Goethe, who presented the sequence of organisms but took the impulse for the arrangement from the deepest interior of the I. I say this as a fact, without sympathy or antipathy. Half a century later, Darwin reproduced it from the consciousness soul, but with a materialistic slant. The world understood it more easily, and the German world also preferred to accept the theory of evolution in a Darwinian rather than a Goethean form. Goethe even founded a color theory out of the depths of the German being; the physicists still regard it as nonsense today, because the outer world has adopted Newton's color theory. When will the Darwinian and Newtonian theory be taken instead of Goethe's theory of development and color? Then, when within the German people, people are asleep and the other soul of the people can have an effect. There we have this sleeping in the midst of waking. And when the people are shaken up, they still fail to recognize the matter, then they realize: something is not right —, then they go and take their box in which they have the medals received from England. They send them back and just forget to send back the English coloring of the theory of evolution or the Newtonian coloring of the theory of colors. In particular, one could prescribe the example of a certain coloration of Haeckelianism as a good recipe. One experiences many things there. For example, one could still experience it in these days; one could hear that in a special scientific society in German cities a lecture was given about what has been disturbed in the international nature of the peoples by this war, and how attention was drawn to something that is true if you apply larger scales, but not if you apply those that this gentleman with his ordinary professorial mind applies. If you start from these standards, it sounds very strange when this gentleman says: Internationalism must reappear as soon as the war is over, because otherwise the German would lose a lot, and it would in turn, a special metaphysics would awaken that the German had previously unfolded, while he is glad that this German spirit, with its inclination towards the supernatural, has been flooded by the nations, who have little inclination towards the supernatural. — One could experience this in these days in a special economic lecture: the fear of the awakening of the German essence.

Much could be said, but I wanted to express just a few thoughts about what can be gained by taking seriously, bitterly but blissfully, an external view of life, which flows like a magic breath through us when we take spiritual science in its full depth. To consider, feel and sense this is our task in our time, and with such feelings we may survey this time and feel united with those who are standing outside and who have to stand up for what karma demands with their blood and their souls.

Thus we summarize what our knowledge and our task should be and what should inspire confidence in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
The fruit of the spirit comes to life —
Guiding souls, conscious of the spirit
Into the realm of the spirit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ 11 ] Many people at that time felt an urge to return to the age of innocence—history is far from accurate on this question—to forgo their errant ways, to start life afresh as it had been before the Fall; to refuse participation in the changes and developments of the social order and national life which had taken place since the Fall up to the time of the Roman Empire or the time of Herod the Tetrarch when John the Baptist preached in the wilderness. Those who felt that they must break with the past withdrew from the world and became anchorites. John the Baptist is a case in point. We are told that his meat was locusts ² and wild honey and his raiment was of camel hair (Matt. III, 4). He is depicted as the typical desert father, the typical anchorite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ 19 ] Jesus then explained the deep inner meaning of these words, contrasting their spirit with the spirit which He found in the world around Him. He wished to contrast the Kingdom of Heaven with the kingdom of the world and characterized this difference in these words when He addressed the assembled Jews in the synagogue: [ 20 ] “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of these was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.” (Luke IV, 23-27.)

[ 21 ] None of the Jews was healed by Elias or Eliseus, but only the Gentiles. This was the interpretation Jesus gave to His words in order to distinguish between the Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdom of the world. What was the result?— [ 22 ] “And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way.” (Luke IV, 28-30.)

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

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

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

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

[ 27 ] There is a very fine passage in the writings of the Church Father Tertullian ^t1 at the turn of the second century, that touches upon this problem. He writes that he himself had seen the pulpits of the Apostles from which their successors had read aloud the epistles that were still in the Apostles’ handwriting. Whilst these epistles were being read, Tertullian tells us, the assembly of the faithful seemed to hear once again the living voices of the Apostles and when they examined the epistles, the features of the Apostles seemed to rise up before them. For those who investigate these matters clairvoyantly, these are not empty words. As they sat before the pulpit the faithful felt that they detected in the timbre of the voices of the Apostles’ successors the voices of the Apostles themselves and that from the handwriting of the Apostles they were able to picture the actual features of the Apostles. Thus, at the beginning of the third century, people were still able to evoke a living image of the Apostles and, metaphorically speaking, to hear their voices. And Clement I who occupied the Papal See from A.D. 92 to 101 also knew personally those pupils of the Apostles who had seen Christ Jesus. At this time, therefore, a continuous tradition was already in existence. And in this passage from Tertullian we catch an echo of something that can be investigated clairvoyantly. Those pupils of the Apostles who listened to the Apostles could detect from the tone and modulation of their voice the manner in which Christ Jesus spoke. This is something of great importance. We must bear in mind this tone of voice, this peculiar timbre characteristic of Christ's speech if we are to understand why those who heard Him spoke of the magic power that lay in His words. When He spoke, something akin to an elemental force gripped His listeners. His words possessed an elemental power that had never been known before. How is one to account for this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 1. St. Anselm's remark is interesting in this context: “Credo ut intelligam” (I believe in order that I may understand).
• 2. Compare with Deeper Secrets of Human History in which Steiner explains this bible verse as a mischaracterization of locust as referring to the insect rather than the locust (carob) bean. —RS Archive
• t1. Tertullian (A.D. 150–c. 220). Son of a Roman centurion, he was a convert to the African Church. His writings are doctrinal, apologetic and practical. In A.D. 202 he joined the Montanist sect which practised prophesying, a form of extempore preaching which was connected with ecstasy and trance. Tertullian wrote six books on ecstasy which are lost. His “Rule of Faith” was substantially the Apostles’ Creed. He believed that the Twelve Apostles had founded Apostolic Churches. All teaching which agrees with these Churches must be accepted as the truth since it is received from Christ. He believed that the soul derives from God, is immortal, corporeal, is endowed with free will, thinks and wills. The body is its necessary counterpart and swill rise again, but does not return to Earth. Though we are all infected with original sin, there is no total corruption. Tertullian was a voluminous writer, a bitter polemicist and inclined to fanaticism. To him we owe the famous sayings: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”, “Christ is truth, not custom”, “Credo quia absurdum, certum est quia impossible”. He was the first of the three great Church Fathers of the African Church; the others were Cyprian and Augustine.

And now we must go on to say something about the cases you have with you at Lauenstein.¹

I would like to speak first of that eldest boy of yours, who is sixteen years old, and in whom we can clearly recognise an inferiority occasioned by the failure of the I and astral body to penetrate the physical organisation. He was given into your care comparatively late; you did not, I think, have him with you until he was in his sixteenth year? So you have here a case with antecedents that have already undergone marked development. If the boy could have been taken in hand earlier on and given the advantage of Waldorf School education, then, in the time between the change of teeth and puberty, he would have experienced the principle of authority in the right way. Care would also have been taken, first of all, to watch all the time and see what things really interested him, and then, starting from these, to extend his field of interest. Had this been possible, and if in addition the boy could at the same time have been given lead in gently administered doses, then notwithstanding his inherent difficulties the boy's soul would be today on quite a different level. For it is plain, the boy has interests. He has moreover definite ability. You will however have seen from the quite simple test that we put to him, where the lad's trouble lies.

You will remember, I set him a comparatively simple sum in arithmetic—a problem in subtraction, put in the form that accords with the methods of Waldorf School education. For we always ask, you know: What have I to take from a given number in order to leave another given number as remainder: Thus, we do not, as is usually done in teaching arithmetic, give the minuend and subtrahend, but instead the minuend and the remainder, leaving the subtrahend to be found. This way of stating the problem puts the condition of mind and soul to severer test; on the other hand, the child is helped far more in his development when he has to tackle the problem in this form, than when it is put to him the other way round. As you saw, the boy was able to do the sum, but not able to do it at once. As soon as he had solved the problem, he came up to me with great delight; but it must have been an hour and a half later. He took thus an hour and a half to do the sum, and was happy and delighted when he had found the answer. There was therefore no doubt about it, the boy had the necessary ability, he was able to do the sum. All the members of his organism were in readiness to be directed to the task; there was, so to speak, no “fault in the contact”. The trouble with him is only that he needs longer time. And the reason for this is, that from the very outset his ether body and his physical body offer resistance; they fail to unfold the activity that is proper to them, in spite of the fact that the possibilities for the activity are there all the time.

Follow carefully how the boy's interests work. You will find they remain in the head organisation; they cannot make their way down into the rest of the body. This fact was clearly demonstrated in a little incident that took place during my visit. You saw how the boy came up to us with his little Kodak and wanted to take our photograph. He managed it quite well, carrying the whole thing through with intense interest. Afterwards I tried to suggest to him that he should make another exposure. This would have necessitated his going to fetch a new film; his interest would have had to reach beyond what lay immediately to hand. He resisted the idea, and nothing would persuade him to listen to it. When an interest seizes hold of him in the very movement, here and now—he is ready for it—he is “all there”: but if the situation requires that he should bring the interest down into his metabolism-and-limbs system, then at once his ether and physical bodies set up a powerful resistance. What should one do in such a case?

With a boy already in his teens, it is of course much more difficult than it would have been earlier; we should however set ourselves even now to intervene with our pedagogical therapy. Taking as our starting point things that the boy follows with a certain interest, we should go on from these, widening the circle of his interest in all directions. A great deal can be achieved by recognising and appealing to an entirely healthy instinct that the boy undoubtedly possesses—despite his difficulties. For you must realise that even in persons who are abnormal, healthy instincts are yet always present. And with this boy, you will find that as soon as you draw his attention to objects and processes that call for skilful handling, he will at once begin to experience a widening of his circle of interests.

The boy has, you see, difficulty in following the road that leads from the head organisation to the metabolism-and limbs organisation, and thence, as I have explained to you, out again beyond. This latter part of the journey he accomplishes only with great difficulty, since there is in him no capacity to perceive what is going on there. Even the slight measure of perception that is present in a normal human being is in his case lacking. Once, however, he can be brought to see, he has an object plainly before him, the skilfulness of his own limbs, the sight will fill him with joy. You must get him to do things which will bring this about. An excellent plan will be to give him Curative Eurythmy exercises, to be done with legs and hands, but especially taking care to see that the toes and fingers move with great energy. Then draw the boy's attention to these movements that are going on in his limbs, let him watch himself making the movements.

If it should happen that you have to do with younger children who already show signs of this kind of difficulty, where what has been decided upon by the head does not easily find its way down into the rest of the organism, try getting them to touch their feet with their head. In the case of the boy we are considering, it is too late for this, but you may any day receive into your Home quite little children with the same disability. Try it yourselves; you will find it is no easy matter! But for small children it is a very good exercise; they can be brought even to kiss their own toes. Another thing that never fails to help in such cases—and it could prove a real blessing even to your boy—is to get the child to hold a pencil between his great toe and the next, and with the pencil contrive to trace out some letters of the alphabet, and so have the enjoyment of discovering that he can write with his feet. It is quite possible that even at his age this boy of yours could receive very great benefit from such an experiment. For in cases such as his, Curative Eurythmy—and writing with the toes is a kind of Curative Eurythmy!—can be of the very greatest help. Whether also a course of treatment with lead will at his age afford him the help he stands in need of, we shall discover when we begin to make trial with it and note its effects.

All that I have been saying will have demonstrated to you the imperative need for a delicate and fine power of observation. The simple calculation that took the boy an hour and a half to make, the reluctance to go back into the house to fetch a new film—facts like these may seem trifling and insignificant, and yet it is just this kind of thing that we must learn to make the object of careful observation. As we come to do so, we shall realise what an invaluable aid it can be to the educator of backward children if he is sensitive to every little thing that happens with the child he wants to help.

And now you will be wanting to say to me: It looks as though the education of backward children is going to take up all one's time; one will have to be perpetually giving one's whole attention to the children, and will have no time left to meditate, no time in fact to do anything else whatever! That is not the case; and the esoteric nature of a life-work such as you are undertaking should not allow you ever to admit for a moment this point of view. What is wanted is not that you should all day long be constantly on the watch—not that at all, but rather that you should acquire a quick sense for characteristic happenings. If one has already learned how to watch quite a number of children and knows how to make the right use at every turn of one's powers of perception, it is, under certain circumstances, quite possible to carry out a thorough investigation of a single child in five or ten minutes. It does not depend at all on the length of time one devotes to the matter, but wholly on the degree to which one is able to unite oneself inwardly with the act of perception. If people would only realise that one has to really connect oneself inwardly with the phenomena in question then a great deal of time would be saved, especially for those who work in the professions.^E1

Now, there was at Lauenstein another boy, a typical case, a fifteen-year-old epileptic. You could see the same type in the boy we had here before us the other day; only, your boy at Lauenstein is several years older. The first thing that claims our attention in his case is the difficult situation created by the fact that he is at the age of transition to puberty. He has been castrated, has he not? Now what we are concerned with is the process of attaining puberty as it has to go forward in the whole organism. The fact that the boy has been castrated, means that in his case we have to reckon with a phenomenon that manifests in him with extraordinary vehemence—namely, the reaction that is induced as a result of this unnatural influence that has been brought to bear on the evolution of sex. The boy gives indeed every appearance of one in whom the transition to puberty is going to prove difficult. The gradual attainment of puberty is, as we have said, a process that belongs to the whole organism; and the sole significance that castration possesses for the boy at the present time consists in the reactionary influence it has in him upon the attainment of puberty.

The first thing to do therefore is to see that the boy is placed where he will be sure of being treated in the way that is right and necessary for boys who are attaining puberty—that is to say, where care is taken to provide conditions under which such boys have their interest aroused in all the processes that go on in the world in which they find themselves. Boys who are at the age of puberty urgently need Waldorf School education. This boy must not be left to the mercy of his own impulses and emotions; we must try to bring it about that he is continually occupied with something outside himself, and takes a keen interest in the objects and processes that he finds around him. Tell me, how is he getting on at school? Perhaps you can tell me this?

(S. “He can neither read nor write. During the past year we have not even made a beginning with school for him. Frau F. did once begin to teach him reading and writing; it was on the Montessori method, and he did not get on at all, he seemed unable to make any progress. His school attainments have really to be counted as nil.”)

He shows, you see, a certain obtuseness to external impressions. We shall here be under the necessity of applying Waldorf School education in the way we are accustomed to do with quite little children—taking our start, that is, from painting, and so providing the opportunity for the boy to put out into colour whatever is tormenting him inwardly. Get him to paint, and you will see what can be got rid of this way. And then you can go farther with him in whatever direction his own inclinations and abilities indicate.

There can moreover be no question but that we must intervene here also with our therapy. We have not, I think, up to now, prescribed any medicaments? The boy should have algae and belladonna. Therapeutical treatment will consist then of these two remedies. You probably understand in a general way the nature of algae injections, but you will do well to enter a little more deeply into the significance of them; for you should, you know, be ready to make use of them on your own responsibility, in individual cases. Why do we propose for this boy algae injections?

In the algae we have plants that have neither strongly developed root formation nor strongly developed flower formation. It is indeed almost as though flower and root had been telescoped. The leaf organisation is the main thing; everything else is produced from it. In algae therefore, since foliage preponderates, we find no very near relationship to the earth. Nor, on the other hand, is there any very near relationship to the outer cosmos. There is however a relationship to the watery and airy elements that are active immediately over the surface of the earth. Algae—and the same applies also to mushrooms—are plants that are, as it were, completely steeped in the interplay of air and water. And these two kinds of plants have in addition this characteristic in common, that they are strongly attracted to the minute quantity of sulphur which is to be found everywhere today in water as well as in air. Consequently, when these plants are introduced into the rhythmic organism of man, they are peculiarly adapted to restore harmony between astral body and ether body. And harmony between astral body and ether body is precisely what is lacking in a boy of this type.

In cases where we perceive a disturbance due to the ego organisation making too great demand upon the astral body and not allowing it to enter into the etheric body, we must have recourse rather to the mushroom type of plant. The algae, which come nearer to the ordinary plant, are to be used when the physical body and etheric body refuse to allow the astral body to enter—that is to say, when the disharmony is due not to an excessive attraction exerted by the ego organisation, but to a special resistance put up by the ether body.^E2

Then there was a girl you had at Lauenstein. Perhaps you would kindly describe her for us, in accordance with the indications I gave at the time?

(S.: “I too have seen this girl only on that one occasion—a girl with protruding lips. You pointed out that something very serious must have happened to her astral body between the ages of 3 and 4; the child must, you said, have had at that time a violent attack of itching and scratching. The mother confirmed afterwards that high temperatures had occurred at that age, accompanied by irritation and itching. For treatment, nicotiana enema was prescribed; and if that did not help, nicotiana injections were to be given. The girl is fifteen years old.”)

So we have here a girl who has attained the age of fifteen, and in whom we can see quite clearly that the astral organisation has made very weak connection with the organism as a whole. The girl is obviously of that type.^E3 One notices at once that the astral organisation is far too weak to restrain the ego in face of the temptation that always assails man when he eats—the temptation to enjoy the eating too much, to revel in the sweet and pleasant taste of the food. When the astral body is not sufficiently active in the lower region of the face, then the lips will be found to protrude noticeably—a symptom that is due to the excessive pleasure experienced in tasting food and also in the initial process of digestion, that takes place in the mouth. Phenomena such as these have far-back antecedents; obviously they cannot be making their appearance for the first time at this somewhat late stage of childhood. As has been said, I stated at the time that an irregularity must have occurred in the child's development about the 3rd or 4th year.

How can you learn to perceive such facts for yourselves? You can find your way to such perceptions if you set out to do so with the love that I have described to you and upon which you will remember I laid such stress. You must never say: In order to perceive such things, I should have to be clairvoyant. To say that betokens an inner laziness—a quality that must on no account ever be found in one who undertakes the task of education. Long before you attain to the clairvoyance that is required for spiritual research in general, you can beget in yourself the faculty simply to perceive what is really the matter. The power to do this can be born in you, if you approach with loving devotion all that shows itself in the child, and especially just those developments that come with abnormal conditions. What you say to yourself at that moment will be true. There is of course need here for esoteric courage. This esoteric courage can and does develop in man—provided only that one thing does not stand in the way.

It is strange, and at the same time significant, that these inner intuitions are so little noticed by the very people who are, comparatively speaking, well able to have them. Anthroposophists have many an opportunity to pay heed to such inner intuitions! For they have these intuitions, far more than is supposed, but they fail to attend to them—the reason being that in the moment when they should do so, they find themselves assailed by a vanity that is hard to overcome. With the discovery of faculties not known before, all manner of impulses that spring from vanity begin to crop up in the soul. Along with the other characteristics of our age that I described for you in my lecture yesterday, as well as on several other occasions, we have to reckon also a tendency to grow vain and conceited, for it is a tendency that is terribly prevalent in present-day mankind.

This is a matter that should receive serious consideration from those of the present-day Youth—and you yourselves are of course among the number—who are devoting their lives to some great and noble calling. There is in our time great need that young men and women should rise up among us and exercise a regenerating influence upon mankind; and what I am now going to say is not said out of misunderstanding of the Youth Movement of our day, nor from lack of understanding, but out of a true understanding of it. It is a necessity, this Youth Movement, it is something of quite extraordinary significance; for those older people who can understand it, the modern Youth Movement is interesting in the highest degree. Not a word shall be uttered here against it. Nor shall we attempt to deny that there is only too often a deplorable lack of readiness on the part of the older generation to understand this Youth Movement, and that a great many plans have suffered shipwreck just because the Movement has not been taken seriously enough, just because people have not troubled themselves to look into it sufficiently. But the Youth Movement does need to beware of one thing when it sets out to undertake specific practical tasks; and it is incumbent on those of us who have had experience in the matter to call attention to it, for it makes one seriously apprehensive for the whole future of the Movement. I mean a certain vanity that shows itself there on every hand.

This vanity is not so much due to a lack of education and culture, but is rather the consequence of an inevitable situation. For the will to action necessitates of course a strong development of inner capabilities, and then it follows all too easily that under the influence of Ahriman vanity begins to spring up in the soul. I have had opportunity in my life to make careful and intimate observation of persons who were full of promise—persons too of the most various ages of life—in whom one could see again and again how with the dawn of the Age that has followed Kali Yuga, vanity began to grow and thrive in their souls. It is not, therefore, only among the Youth that the vanity shows itself. What concerns us at the moment however is the special form of it that manifests in the Youth and that has in point of fact hindered them from developing the right and essential character that lies inherent in present-day Youth, waiting to be developed. Hence the phenomenon with which we are so familiar, this endless talk of “missions”, of great tasks, with all too little inclination to set to work upon the details, to take pains about the small things that require to be done in carrying out these tasks.

These will emphatically be need in the future for what has been described in simple words as devotion to detail.

Devotion to detail and to little things is something which the Youth of our time need to develop. They are far too apt to revel in abstractions; and this revelling in abstractions is the very thing that can then lure them with irresistible force into the snare of vanity. I do beg you to bethink yourselves of the difficulties that beset your path on this account. Make it a matter of esoteric striving to master this tendency to vanity; for it does indeed constitute a real hindrance to any work you undertake.

Suppose you want to be able to speak to some fellow human being from out of an intuitive power of vision. The things you need to behold in him are by no means written plain for all to see; and you may take it that statements made about backward children from the ordinary lay point of view are generally false. What you have to do is to see through what lies on the surface, see right through it to the real state of affairs. If therefore you want to come to the point of being able to say something to him out of intuitive vision, what do you need for that? You need to tell yourself with courage and with energy—not just saying it at some particular moment, but carrying it continually in your consciousness, so that it determines the very quality and content of your consciousness:—“ I can do it.” If, without vanity, in a spirit of self-sacrifice, and in earnest endeavour to overcome all the things that hinder, you repeat these words, not only feeling them, but saying them to yourself over and over again, then you will begin to discover how far you are able to go in this direction. Do not expect to find the development of the faculty you seek, by spinning out all manner of theories and thoughts. No, what you need to do is to maintain all the time this courageous consciousness, which develops quite simply of itself when once you have begun to fetch up from the depths of your soul what lies hidden there, buried (metaphorically speaking) beneath an accumulation of dust and rubbish.

Generally speaking, people are not able to achieve anything of this kind in the realm of pedagogy. They could do so if only they would set themselves seriously to bring to life within them a certain truth. Let me explain to you how this can be done.

Try to accustom yourselves to live your way every evening into the consciousness: In me is God. In me is God—or the Spirit of God, or what other expression you prefer to use. (But please do not think I mean just persuading yourself of this truth theoretically—which is what the meditations of the majority of people amount to!) Then, in the morning let the knowledge: I am in God shine out over the whole day. And now consider! When you bring to life within you these two ideas, which are then no longer mere thoughts, but have become something felt and perceived inwardly, yes, have even become impulses of will within you, what is it you are doing?

First, you have this picture before you: In me is God;

and on the following morning, you have this picture before you: I am in God (see Figure 3, right). They are one and the same, the upper and the lower figure. And now you must understand: Here you have a circle (yellow); here you have a point (blue). It doesn't look like that in the evening, but in the morning the truth of it comes to light. And in the morning you have to think: Here is a circle (blue); here is a point (yellow). Yes, you have to understand that a circle is a point, and a point a circle. You have to acquire a deep, inner understanding of this fact.

But now, this is really the only way to come to a true understanding of the human being! You remember the drawing I made for you, of the metabolism-and-limbs man and the head man (see Figure 1.). That drawing was nothing else than a realistic impression or record of what you have before you now in this simple figure for meditation. In the human being it becomes actual reality; the I-point of the head becomes in the limb man the circle—naturally, with modifications. Adopting this line of approach, trying, that is, to understand man inwardly, you will learn to understand the whole of man. You must, first of all, be quite clear in your mind that these two figures, these two conceptions, are one and the same, are not at all different from one another. They only look different from outside. There is a yellow circle; here it is too! There is a blue point; here it is too! Why do they look different? Because that drawing is a diagram of the head, and this a diagram of the body. When the point claims a place for itself in the body, it becomes the spinal cord. It makes its way in here

and then the part it plays in the head organisation is continued in the spinal cord. There you have the inner dynamic of the morphology of man. Taking it as your starting point, you will be able, by meditation, to build up a true anatomy, a true physiology. And then you will acquire the inner intuition that can perceive in how far the upper and lower jaws are limbs; for you will begin to see in the head a complete organism in itself, sitting up there on the top of the human being, an organism whose limbs are dwarfed and have—in process of deformation—turned into jaws. And you will come to a clear perception of how teeth and toes are in polarity to one another. For you have only to look at the attachments of the jawbones, and you can see it all there before you—the stunted toes, the stunted hands and feet.

But, my dear friends, meditation that employs such pictures as I have been giving can never take its course in the kind of mood that would allow us to feel: Now I am going to settle down to a blissful time of meditation; it will be like sinking into a snug, warm nest! No, the feeling must be continually present in us that we are taking the plunge into reality—that we are grasping hold of reality.

Devotion to little things—yes, to the very smallest of all! We must not omit to cultivate this interest in very little things. The tip of the ear, the paring of a finger-nail, a single human hair—should be every bit as interesting to us as Saturn, Sun and Moon. For really and truly in one human hair everything else is comprised; a person who becomes bald loses a whole cosmos! What we see externally—we can verily create it inwardly, if only we achieve that overcoming which is essential to a life of meditation. But we shall never achieve it so long as any vestige of vanity is allowed to remain—and vestiges of vanity lurk in every corner and crevice of the soul. Therefore is it so urgent, if you want to become real educators, and especially educators of backward children, that you should cultivate, with the utmost humility, this devotion in the matter of little things. And when you have made a beginning in this way in your own sphere, you can afterwards go on to awaken in other circles of the Youth Movement this same devotion to little things.

And then it will indeed become possible for you to receive, for example, indications that are afterwards verified from external evidence—as happened, you remember, in the case we are considering. And here I must say in connection with this very case, I have occasion to find grave fault. The same kind of thing happens only too often in connection with the various undertakings that have been begun within our anthroposophical movement. The situation was as follows. Here was a girl concerning whom I told you that a kind of abnormality must have occurred in her development between the third and fourth year. You question the mother, and the mother confirms that it was so. What did you do then? Please tell me, honestly and sincerely: What did you do, when the mother confirmed the fact? (Silence.) Please be esoterically honest and tell me the truth, you three: what did you do? (Silence.) If you had done the right thing, you would now be telling me: “We danced and jumped until we made a hole in the ceiling!” And the after-effect of this jumping for joy would be still expressing itself today—and not merely in words, it would be shining out from you like a light.

That is what you need—enthusiasm in the experience of truth. This enthusiasm is an absolute sine qua non: you cannot get on without it. For years it has been so terribly painful to me, the way the members of the anthroposophical movement stand there as if they were rooted to the spot—and the young too, almost as much as the old. But now consider what it means, That they can stand there so impassively. Look at Nietzsche! What a different sort of fellow he was—even if he did get ill from it! He made his Zarathustra become a dancer. Can't you become dancers—in the sense Nietzsche meant it? Why, you should be leading lives of joy—deep inner joy in the truth! There is nothing in the world more delightful, nothing more fascinating, than the experience of truth. There you have an esotericism that is far more genuine, far more significant than the esotericism that goes about with a long face. Before everything else—and long before you begin to talk about having a “mission”—there must be this living inner experience of truth.

The girl had, when three or four years old, an occult fever. It is even called that in the medical world—one of those instances where medicine has retained an earlier form of speech. When a doctor does not know what is the cause of a fever, he calls it an “occult” fever. This occult fever, then, made its appearance. During the period round about the third and fourth years, the astral body was particularly weak. The physical body and the ether body reacted to this and developed too strongly; and then the astral body was unable to keep up with them. It is exceedingly important that we take cognisance first of all of this fact: at the age of three the growth of the astral body suffered a significant check, the child's astral body became stunted and cramped within itself. I must come to its aid. It must receive help to make up for what has been lost; and this help can be given through education, by awakening the child's interest in many directions. Tell me now, how has it been with this girl at school?

(S.: “We are not having the girl with us in the Home, she will come only for treatment. She was in a school for giving special help to backward children up to the beginning of her sixteenth year, and can read and write, and work with numbers up to about a thousand. In all other respects we have really no knowledge of the girl, we had her there only in order for you to see her. Enema containing nicotiana was prescribed.”)

It will be important to treat this girl with Curative Eurythmy.^E4

As a result of the stunting of the astral body, a strong tendency to deformation has, you see, made its appearance in the upper organism. The child has about her an extraordinarily animal look, the reason being that all that part which belongs to the organs of mastication is deformed. We have already been making very careful tests here in the Clinic of the influence of nicotiana juice in counteracting deformation; and this girl is just a case in point, where it will be able to do its good work. So you see it will be possible right away to begin—slowly—to make some progress. The nicotiana juice is given by the mouth, to start with; and then one has to watch carefully—one must acquire an eye for such things—to see whether the organs of mastication are beginning to come more under the control of the organism. For, as it is, the organs of mastication lie almost entirely outside the realm of the child's control. They just hang there—limp. The child can thus be treated with nicotiana juice given by the mouth in suitable decimal of dilution, beginning with the sixth and going up to the fifteenth. If it should turn out that this does not work strongly enough, we shall have to resort to injection of nicotiana juice in a high potency into the circulation, so that it may make direct contact there with the astral body and enable us to achieve in this way what we failed to achieve when we administered nicotiana juice by ingestion.

I have also a further suggestion to make. The nicotiana juice is intended to work within the astral body and remain there, and it will perhaps be good if we try to prevent its influence from entering too powerfully into the ego organisation—if we try, that is, to arrest it before it reaches the ego organisation. This result can be induced by giving—not often, perhaps only once a week—a weak sulphur bath.

Tomorrow we will speak about the other cases that you have at Lauenstein, and I shall be particularly glad to be able to consider with you the interesting phenomenon of albinism, which we have opportunity to study in two of your children. One of them is fifteen years old and the other a much younger sister of hers. (Dr. Steiner asked Dr. Vreede [the original leader of the Mathematical-Astronomical Section at the Goetheanum] if she had drawn their horoscopes, and she handed them to him. The dates were 6th December, 1909, approximately 4 a.m., and 18th May, 1921, approximately 3 a.m., both at Jena.) How does Uranus stand? Did you not find any special constellations? (Dr. Vreede replied that she had—namely with Uranus and Neptune. In the case of the elder girl, Neptune was in opposition to Uranus.)

Such children always show two main characteristic peculiarities: fair hair; and poor sight, with the variation in the eyes. These are the essential phenomena of albinism. No more than a superficial study is required to discover that in albinos we have to do with an organisation that is very feeble at assimilating iron, but on the other hand assimilates sulphur with the greatest ease. The organisation resists iron; it resists dealing with it, and this applies especially to the periphery of the body; assimilation of iron stops short of the periphery. Sulphur, on the other hand, is driven to the periphery; and not only so, but driven even out beyond it. That is how it comes about that in the region of the hair, you see, all around, a sulphur-aura, which pales and bleaches the hair and takes the strength out of it. And in the eyes (which are formed comparatively independently, being built into the organism from without, in the embryo time)—in the eyes you have a still more striking manifestation of a sulphur-aura. Here it has the effect of fairly forcing the eyes to betake themselves out of the etheric into the astral. In such children we see the eye plucked right out of its “grotto”, the etheric body of the eye left disregarded and its astral body very much to the fore and fully engaged.

Very important questions arise at this point. If we consider the “forming” of man, we find that he stands in connection on the one hand with the telluric forces that divulge themselves to us in the substances of the earth, and on the other hand, with the whole cosmos. He is dependent on both. Both sets of forces are present in the individual process of evolution, as well as also in the stream of inheritance. Let us take first, in considering these two children, the stream of inheritance. Neither in the case of the father nor of the mother is there any indication of albinism. They are both perfectly normal human beings. There was however somewhere in the antecedents—was it a grandmother, of whom it is reported that she had signs of albinism? (Frl. Dr. K.: “It was a sister of the mother.”) An aunt, then. Albinism has been known in the family; that is all that need concern us at the moment. A tendency to albinism is present in the antecedents. And did you not tell me that there had been other cases in the Saal region, also at Jena? (Frl. Dr. K.: “Yes, two children; and one adult, aged thirty-two, who is already married. Of these three, in only one case had there been albinism before in the family history.”) It would seem, therefore, that albinism is in some way endemic to a certain part of the country, but meets also with many counter-influences. And so in fact it makes its appearance quite sporadically! Only under certain circumstances will an albino be born there. The equation will immediately suggest itself: How does it come about that an albino is born in a particular territory?

In the case of an albino we have, as we have seen, a sulphurisation process working outwards, so that little sulphur islets occur in the aura, in the periphery. And now we look round in the native environment of the children to see where we can find sulphur. The whole valley of the Saal abounds in iron sulphide. Iron and sulphur are thus present in combination. You can study first the presence of iron in the neighbourhood, and then again the presence of sulphur; and you can take special note of the whereabouts of the beautiful pyrites (iron sulphide). These delicate and lovely cubes of pyrites with their beautiful golden gleam are a characteristic product of the valley of the Saale. Other regions nearby yield gypsum. Gypsum is, as you know, calcium sulphate with 20 per cent water. So that here again we have an opportunity to study sulphur—this time in combination with calcium. This kind of study of the soil will throw light for us on all that lives in the atmosphere etc.; and so we shall have first of all to give ourselves to the study of that which comes out of the ground and is connected with the absorption of sulphur and iron. For we have here a territory that is also very rich in iron, and the question arises: How does this opposite relationship come about in this territory in regard to earth and man, in the earth has a great power of attraction for iron, while the human being cannot attract iron at all, or only with difficulty? What constellations must be present to cause the human being to be particularly disposed to reject the iron and accept the sulphur?

Here we come into the realm of the cosmic; we have to set about investigating the constellations that were present at birth (we cannot of course do it for conception). And this will lead us to ask whether there were not in the case of these children who are albinos, quite special constellations, constellations moreover that can only seldom occur. We shall have to find what we can learn, not from the planets that move more quickly, but from the constellations of the planets that take a long time to revolve, such as Saturn and Uranus. You see, therefore, to what kind of questions such cases will lead us. We must first find the right questions to ask; when once we have the questions, then we are ready to begin our study.^E5

Now, for these children also, I would like to prescribe a little course of treatment, basing it on the indications I have given today. We will talk of that tomorrow.

I gather from a remark that was made to me this morning, that you are wanting something more than is contained in the lectures. These (you feel) go too much in the direction of “devotion to detail”—too much, that is, in the direction that you need! But I am really entirely ready to meet you in this matter, and propose to use here the new method I have been using with the workmen at the Goetheanum. For there I have allowed it gradually to come to this—that I ask them on what I am to speak; so that, ever since a certain date, the workmen themselves have been specifying the themes they want dealt with in the lectures. And now they can never complain that they do not get lectures on subjects they want to hear about.

• 1. Curative home in Jena-Lichtenhain, founded by Franz Löffler, Siegfried Pickert, and Albrecht Strohschein.
• E1. Rudolf Steiner visited Lauenstein on 18th June, 1924, almost immediately after the Home was opened. The children were brought to him; and having first had a good look at each in turn, talking with the child and enquiring into the history of the case, he explained to us how this or that condition had come about, and gave indications for therapeutical treatment and education.
  
  The explanations and advice given by Rudolf Steiner on the occasion of this visit were noted down, and provide in each case a most valuable addition to the words spoken by him in this course. Wonderful, above all, was the example Rudolf Steiner set us in the whole way in which he met the children, entering with loving and devout interest into every single detail of their condition. For the little group of us who were taking part together in these first beginnings of the work of Curative Education, the whole visit was a deep experience, and the memory of it continues to be cherished in the “Institutions for the Education and Healing of Children in Need of Special Care”. Some of the indications and instructions given by Rudolf Steiner will be added here as Notes to the Course.
  
  As regards this boy, Rudolf Steiner told us that he is lacking in brain sand (the calcareous concretions of the pineal body). The convulsions and the whole general condition must go back to some fright to which the mother had been subjected during pregnancy. (Enquiry afterwards confirmed this.) He added that one must, in such cases, always ask how things were with the mother during pregnancy. The convulsions, he said, were a secondary effect.
  
  For therapy, Rudolf Steiner prescribed injections of thyroid gland secretion. The medicament must enter the body in a centripetal direction, in order to evoke a reaction that works centrifugally. The preparation should still contain epithelial cells. On the day following the injection, the fever curve, also the pulse and the breathing, should be measured, quantitatively and qualitatively.
  
  In addition, the boy should drink a full glass of Levico water in the course of each day, diluted in the proportion 1:8.
  
  Curative Eurythmy: O, I (ee), L.
• E2. When this poor feeble-minded boy, who was as a rule excessively restless, was brought to Rudolf Steiner, he became for the moment quite peaceful and at rest, and the finer side of his nature, which was generally overlaid and hidden, suddenly revealed itself in a truly beautiful manner. Rudolf Steiner took particular interest in the boy's sense-perceptions, and proved to us that he cannot see far into the distance. When his bad teeth were alluded to, Rudolf Steiner pointed out that his finger nails also were soft and weak. The following notes of the conversation were made at the time: “Did you not notice anything particular about the mother? This is a case where we can see evidence of a remarkable karma. The astral body is over-ripe. Something is working in from the preceding incarnation. The time between death and new birth has been quite short, with the result that the soul has brought into this incarnation something of the astral body of the former incarnation. The boy still has even now strange dreams at night. This fact will reveal itself to you in strange and disconnected remarks that he makes after waking up. Supposing he has at some time or other seen snakes, then it may be that now he will see them coiling and uncoiling themselves. It is a case of a poor astral body, that has its seat mainly in the back of the head.” (Here Dr. Steiner laid his hand, with a gesture of the most intense interest, on the back of the boy's head, which was thickly covered with stubborn black hair. “This condition has to be met by introducing a counter-astrality; and that we can do by the use of algae. For algae draw in the astral forces of the surrounding air. Mushrooms do this still more; but we had better not begin with the strongest influences. All parasitic plants draw in astrality. By means of algae injections, healthy astrality will be attracted—astrality, that is, which is opposite in quality to the astrality already in the body; for there the astrality is bad.
  
  The therapy will therefore be: Algae inoculations D 5; Belladonna D 4, D 10, D 15, D 20, D 30.”
  
  Dr. Steiner was shown the record of the fits. The suggestion having been raised that their occurrence might be running parallel with the rhythms of the Moon, Dr. Steiner said that the influence of the Moon could not in this case be the direct cause of the fits; at the most, it could affect only the consciousness.
  
  Eurythmy should be done, especially with the legs.
• E3. Dr. Steiner said at Lauenstein: “She has a kink in her astral body; its form has no unity or coherence; above, it is weak, whilst below, it is stronger.”
• E4. At Lauenstein the following prescription was given: Nicotiana enema, a five per cent decoction, twice a week. If this does not help, then Nicotiana injections D 6. Curative Eurythmy: F, M, UT (oot), TU (too).
• E5When the children were brought to Rudolf Steiner at Lauenstein, he particularly enquired whether there had not been some weakness or debility in the mother. The mother declared that she had never been seriously ill, but admitted that she had suffered from chlorosis as a girl and had in general been very anaemic. Rudolf Steiner: “So the mother, you see, was evidently, earlier on, in a delicate state of health.” The father too had in his youth been weak and ailing. Their first child, at whose birth the mother was twenty years old and the father twenty-two, died young of pneumonia. The second was the elder of the girls we are considering. The third, a boy, is entirely normal. Then came, as fourth, the younger of our two albinos.
  
  Rudolf Steiner also made enquiries about the geological conditions of the district in which the children had been born. Information was given of the presence of pyrites and gypsum, to which allusion is made in the lecture. He then asked whether the people of the district were strikingly blond. This was denied; on the contrary, they are inclined to be dark. Lastly, he enquired whether the parents were relatives of one another; the answer was in the negative.
  
  Rudolf Steiner then explained to us the connection of the albinism with the sulphur. “These children”, he said, “are completely sulphurous. In them, sulphur processes are permeating the entire body.” The children are “all eye”; processes which ought to be going on in the eye alone are here taking place throughout the body. The quivering in the eyes and the furtive glancing hither and thither are due to oscillation between ether body and astral body.

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Whatever may arise in course of time from anthroposophy, in regard to the sphere of medical knowledge, it will not be found to be in any disagreement whatsoever with that which is understood to-day as the orthodox scientific study of medicine. It is easy, in looking at the question from the scientific standpoint, to be deceived about this, because from the outset it is supposed that any study which is not founded upon so-called exact proof, must be of the nature of sectarianism, and cannot therefore be taken seriously by the scientific observer.

For this reason it is necessary to remark that it is just that point of view which seeks to support medicine upon an anthroposophical basis, which is the most appreciative of, and the most sympathetic towards all that is best and greatest in modern medical achievements.

There cannot therefore be any question that the following statements are merely the polemics of dilettantism, or unprofessionalism, leveled against recognised methods of healing. The whole question turns solely upon the fact that during the last few centuries our entire world-conception has assumed a form which is limited by investigation only into those things which can be confirmed by the senses—either by means of experiment, or by direct observation—and which are then brought into relation with one another through those powers of human reasoning which rely upon the testimony of the senses alone.

This method of research was nevertheless entirely justifiable during several hundred years, because if it had been otherwise, mankind would have become immersed in a world of dreams and fantasies, would have been forced to a capricious acceptance of things, and to a barren weaving of hypotheses.

That is connected with the fact that man, as he lives in the world between birth and death, is a being who cannot truly know himself by means of his physical senses and his reason alone—because he is just as much a spiritual as a physical being.

So that when we come to speak of man in health and in disease we can do no less than ask ourselves: Is it possible to gain a knowledge of health and disease only by those methods of research which concern the physical body; purely with the assistance of the senses and the reason, or by the use of instruments which extend the faculties of the senses and enable us to carry out experiments?

We shall find that a real, unprejudiced, historical retrospect shows us that the knowledge which mankind has gained originated from something totally different from these mere sense-observations. There lies behind us an immense development of our spiritual life, no less than of our physical.

Some three thousand years ago, during the flowering of the most ancient Greek culture, there existed schools that were very different from those of to-day. The basis of these ancient schools consisted in the belief that man had first of all to develop new faculties in his soul before he could become capable of attaining to true knowledge concerning mankind.

Now it was just because, in these ancient times, the more primitive soul-faculties did not incline towards the fantastic, that it was possible to experience, in the so-called mysteries, the spiritual foundations from which all forms of learning arose.

This state of things came to an end more or less contemporaneously with the founding of our Universities—during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Since that time we learn only in a rationalistic way. Rationalism leads on the one hand to keen logic, and on the other hand to pure materialism.

During the course of centuries a vast store of external knowledge has been accumulated in the domain of biology, physiology, and other branches of research which are introductory to the study of medicine; indeed an amazing mass of observations, out of which an almost immeasurable amount may yet be obtained!

But during these centuries all knowledge connected with man which could not be gained without spiritual vision, sank completely out of sight.

It has therefore become actually impossible to investigate the true nature of health and disease.

In order to emphasise this remark, I may mention that even at the present time, according to the descriptions given in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and An Outline Of Occult Science, it is possible so to raise the faculties of the soul that the spiritual nature of man may be clearly distinguished from the physical, This spiritual part of man is, for the spiritual observer, just as visible as the physical part is for the man who observes with his outer senses; with this difference, however, that our ordinary senses have been and are incorporated into our bodily organism without our co-operation, whereas we must ourselves develop the organs of spiritual sight.

This can be brought about if one unfolds within oneself an earnest life of thought. Such a state of living, of resting in quietude—in thought—must, however, be carried out so as to bring about a methodical education and transformation of the soul. If one can, so to say, experiment for a time with one's own soul, allowing it to rest within an easily grasped thought, at the same time permitting neither any traces of auto-suggestion nor any diminution of consciousness to arise, and if one in this way exercises the soul as one would exercise a muscle, then the soul grows strong. Methodically, one pursues the exercises further and further; the soul grows stronger, grows powerful, and becomes capable of sight.

The first thing that it sees is that the human being actually does not consist merely of physical body, which can be investigated either with the naked eye or with a microscope, and so forth, but that he also bears an etheric body. This is not to be confused with that which, in earlier scientific times, was somewhat amateurishly described as “vital forces.” It is something that can really be perceived and observed; and if I were to distinguish qualitatively between the physical body and the etheric body, I should choose, out of all the innumerable qualitative distinctions that exist, the following:—The physical body of man is subject to the laws of gravity; it tends to be drawn earthward. The etheric body tends to be drawn towards the periphery of the universe; that is to say, outwards, in all directions. As a rule, our investigations are concerned with the relative weight of things, but that part of the human organism which possesses weight is the direct opposite of that which not only has no weight but which strives to escape from the laws of gravitation. We have in us these two opposing forces.

This is the first of our super-physical bodies. We may say, then, that we have within us first of all the physical man, whose orientation is centripetal and tends earthwards, and another man, whose orientation is centrifugal and tends to leave the earth. It will be seen that a balance must be maintained between these two configurations of the human being—between the heavy physical body, which is subject to the laws of gravity, and the other, the etheric body, which strives outwards towards the farthest limits of the universe.

The etheric body seeks, as it were, to imitate, to be an image of the whole Cosmos; but the physical body rounds it off, and keeps it within its own limits.

Therefore, by contemplating the state of balance between the physical body and the etheric body, our perception of the nature of the human being becomes real and penetrating. Once we have succeeded in recognising these outward-streaming centrifugal forces in man, we shall be able to perceive them also in the vegetable kingdom. The mineral kingdom alone appears purely physical to us. In it we can trace no centrifugal forces. Minerals are subject to the laws of gravity. But in the case of plants we recognise their outer form as being the result of the two forces. At the same time it becomes apparent to us that we cannot remain at this point in our investigations if we wish to observe anything that is higher in the scale of organic life than the plants. The plant has its etheric body; the animal, when we observe it, possesses life, and also sensation. It creates, inwardly, a world; this fact arrests our attention, and we see that we must make yet deeper researches. Hence we realise that we must develop our ordinary state of consciousness still further.

Already, as I have shown, a certain stage will have been reached when we are able to see not merely the physical body of man, but the physical body embedded within the etheric body, as though in a kind of cloud. But that is not all; the more we strengthen our souls, the more we find greater and greater reality in our thoughts, and it then becomes possible to arrive at a further stage, which consists in suppressing these strong thoughts which have been made so powerful by our own efforts.

In ordinary life if we blot out by degrees our faculties of sight, of hearing, of sensation, and of thinking—we fall asleep. That is an experiment which may easily be carried out. But if one has strengthened the soul in the manner described by the training of thought, of the whole of one's life of concept and feeling, then one can actually learn to suppress the life of the senses. One then arrives at a condition where, above all things, one is not asleep but is very much awake. Indeed, it may even be that one has to guard against losing the power to sleep, while one is striving to reach this condition. If, however, one sets to work in the way I have indicated in my books, every precaution is taken to prevent any disturbances in the ordinary life.

One succeeds then in being completely awake, though one cannot hear as one hears with the ears. The ordinary memory, too, and ordinary thinking cease. One confronts the world with a perfectly empty but perfectly waking consciousness. And then one sees the third human organism—the astral.

Animals also possess this astral organism. In man it bestows the possibility of unfolding a real inner life of experience. Now this is something which is connected neither with the innermost depths of the earth nor with the wide expanse of the universe, but rather it is connected with a state of being inwardly penetrated by forces which are “seen” as the astral body. So now we have the third member of the human organisation.

If one learns to perceive this third member in the manner indicated above, one finds that from the scientific point of view it is indescribably illuminating. One says to oneself—the child grows up and becomes the man; his vital forces are active. But he is not only growing physically, his consciousness is developing at the same time; he is unfolding within himself an image of the outer world.

Can this be the result of physical growth? Can this be accomplished by the same forces that underlie nutrition and growth?

When the organic forces that underlie the latter gain the upper hand, the consciousness becomes dimmed. We need, therefore, something which is connected with these forces, and which is actually opposed to them. The human being is always growing and always being nourished. But he has within his astral body, as I have described it, something which is perpetually suppressing, inhibiting the forces of growth and nutrition.

So we have in man a process of construction through the physical body in conjunction with the earth; another process of construction through the etheric body in conjunction with the Cosmos, and through the astral body a continuous destruction of the organic processes in the cell-life and the glandular life.

That is the secret of the human organism.

Now we understand why it is that man possesses a soul. If he were to grow continuously like the plant, he could not have a soul. The process of growing must first be destroyed, for it expels the soul. If we had nothing in our brain but the process of building up, and no processes of breaking down and destruction, we could not contain the soul.

Evolution does not proceed in a straight line. It must retreat in one direction; it must give way. Herein lies the secret of humanity—of the ensouled being.

If we go no further than the consideration of the organisation of the animal, we find ourselves concerned only with its three principles—the physical, etheric, and astral. But if we proceed to the observation of man, we find, when we have progressed yet further with the training of our souls, that we spiritually perceive yet another principle.

Our spiritual perception of the animal discloses that its thinking, feeling, and willing are, in a certain sense, neutral in regard to one another; they are not clearly distinct. One cannot speak of a separate thinking, a separate feeling, and a separate willing, but only of a neutral blending of these three elements. But in the case of man, his inner life depends just upon the fact that he lays hold of his intentions by quiet thought, and that he can remain with his intentions; he can either carry them out in deeds, or not carry them out. The animal obeys its impulses. Man separates thinking, feeling, and willing from one another.

How this is so, can only be understood when one has carried one's power of spiritual perception far enough to observe the fourth principle of man's organisation—the “I am I”—or the Ego.

As we have just seen, the astral body breaks down the processes of growth and nutrition; in a sense, it introduces a gradual dying into the whole organism. The Ego redeems, out of this destructive process, certain elements which are continually falling away from the combination of the physical and etheric bodies, and rebuilds them.

That is actually the secret of human nature.

If one looks at the human brain, one sees—in those lighter parts which lie more below the superficial structures, and which proceed as nerve fibres to the sense organs—a most complicated organisation which, for those who can perceive it in its reality, is in a continual state of deterioration, although so slowly does this take place that it cannot be observed by ordinary physiological means. But, out of all this destruction, that which differentiates man from the animals, namely, the peripheral brain, is built up. This is the foundation of the human organisation. With regard to man, naturally, the central brain (the continuation of the sensory nerves and their connections) is more perfect than the peripheral brain, which is, as a matter of fact, more akin to the metabolic processes than the deeper portions of the brain are.

This peripheral brain, which is peculiarly characteristic of man, is organised for these metabolic functions by the Ego-organisation—organised out of what otherwise is in a state of deterioration.¹ And so the activity of the Ego permeates the entire organism.

The Ego redeems certain elements out of the ruin worked by the astral body, and builds out of them that which underlies an harmonious co-ordination of thinking, feeling, and willing.

I can of course only mention these things, but I wish to point out that one can proceed with the same exactitude when making observations spiritually as one can in any branch of external experimental science and with a full sense of responsibility; so that in every case one seeks for the agreement between what is spiritually observed and what is discovered by empirical physical methods of research. It is exactly the formation of the physical brain which leads one on to apprehend the super-physical, and to attain knowledge by spiritual investigation.

Thus we have these four members of the human organisation. These, in order to maintain health, must be in quite special relation to one another.

We only get water when we mix hydrogen and oxygen in accordance with their specific gravity. In the same way there is a determinative which brings about a normal relationship—if I may say so—between the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the Ego.

We not only have four, but 4x4 relative states. All these can be disturbed. An abnormal relation may arise between the etheric and the physical bodies, or between the astral and etheric, or between the Ego and one or another of these. All are deeply connected with one another and are in a special relation to one another. The moment this is disturbed, illness arises.

But this relationship is not uniform throughout the human being; it differs in the different individual organs. If we observe, for instance, a human lung, the physical, etheric, astral, and Ego constituents of this lung are not the same as those of the brain or of the liver. Thus, the entire human organisation is so complicated that the spiritual and the material are differently related in every organ. Therefore, it will be understood that, just as one studies physical anatomy and physical physiology in accordance with external symptoms, so—when one admits the existence of this spiritual investigation, and practises it—one must study with the greatest exactitude the health and disease of every separate organ. In this way one always arrives at a complete and comprehensive knowledge of the human organism. It cannot be so understood if it is observed solely from the physical standpoint. It can only be known through a knowledge of its four principles. One is only clear about any illness when one is able to say which of these four principles either predominates too strongly or is too much suppressed. It is because one is able to observe these things in a spiritual manner that one actually places a spiritual diagnosis alongside the material diagnosis. Therefore what is gained by anthroposophical methods in seeing through the fourfold constitution of man, is gained in addition to all that it is possible to observe of health and disease by ordinary methods.

And further, it is not only possible to behold man spiritually but also the whole of Nature. One is now, for the first time, in a position to find man's relation to the various kingdoms of Nature, and, in medicine, his relation to the healing properties which these kingdoms contain.

Let us take an example. There is a substance which is most widely distributed over the whole earth, and not only over the whole earth, but also, in its finest form, throughout the air. This is silicic acid. It is an enormously important constituent part of the earth. But for those who are able to see these things with higher faculties, all this silicious substance is revealed as the external manifestation of something spiritual; and an immense and almost overpowering difference is seen to exist between that which ordinary physical methods of observation disclose with regard to silicic acid, or, for example, carbonic acid gas, and that which spiritual investigation discloses.

By the latter method we see that quartz, or rock-crystal, such as we find in the mountains—in fact, all forms of silicious substance—provides a free path for something spiritual. Just as any transparent substance allows light to stream through it, so all silicious substance allows what is spiritually active in the entire world to stream through it.

But we find quite a different relationship towards the spiritual when we come to carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has this peculiarity (for there is something spiritual in every physical substance), that the spiritual that is in contact with carbonic acid becomes individualised. Carbonic acid retains the spiritual in itself with all its force. The spiritual “selects” carbonic acid as a dwelling-place. In silica it has a transcending tendency—a consuming tendency—but it inheres in carbonic acid as though it felt itself “at home” there.

Carbonic acid processes are present in the breathing and circulation of animals. The former are especially connected with the astral body. The carbonic acid processes are related to the external physical of the animal, while the astral body is that which is inwardly spiritually active. The astral is therefore the spiritual element, and the carbonic acid process is its physical counterpart and underlies the animal's expirations.

The Ego-organisation is the spiritual inner element in man of that which takes place in man as silicic acid processes. We have silicic acid in our hair, our bones, our organs of sense, in all the extremities and periphery of our bodies—in fact, everywhere where we come into contact with the outer world—and all these silicic acid processes are the external counterpart, the expression from within outwards, of the Ego-organisation.

Now it must be borne in mind that the Ego must, in a certain sense, be strong enough to manipulate, to control, the whole of this silicic acid activity. If the Ego is too weak, the silicic acid is separated out—that is a pathological condition. On the other hand, the astral body must be strong enough to control the carbonic acid process; if it cannot, carbonic acid or its waste products are separated out, and illness results.

It is possible, therefore, in observing the strength or weakness of the astral body to find the cause of an illness rooted in the spiritual. And in observing the Ego-organisation one discovers the cause of those disturbances which either bring about a morbid decomposition of the silicic acid processes in. the body, or which one must deal with therapeutically by the administration of silicic acid. What happens then is that the spiritual, which is never retained in the material substance itself, passes through it and affects the silicic acid deposited in the body. It takes the place of the Ego itself. In the administration of carbonic acid as a healing agent, it must be so prepared that the spiritual is present in it in the right manner; in using it as a remedy one must be aware that the astral body works in it.

Therefore: One can conceive of a form of therapy which does not only make use of chemical agents, but which is quite consciously administering a cure, in the knowledge that, if a certain quantity of physical substance is given, or a particular solution is prepared as a bath, or if an injection is given, at the same time something of a spiritual nature is quite definitely introduced into the human organism.

So it is perfectly possible to make a bridge from a knowledge of purely physical means of healing to a knowledge which works with spiritual means.

That was the characteristic of the medicine of ancient times; some tradition of it still lingers; it lingers even in some of the recognised cures to-day. And we have to get back to this. We can do so if, without in any way neglecting physical medicine, we add to it what we can gain in spiritual knowledge, not only of man, but of Nature also. Everything can be carried out with the same exactitude as is the case with regard to physical natural science.

Anthroposophy does not seek to correct modern medicine, but to add its own knowledge to it, because ordinary medicine makes demands upon itself only.

What I have just briefly indicated is merely the commencement of an exceedingly wide spiritual knowledge, in which, at present, people have very little faith. One can quite well understand that. But some results have already been attained in the sphere of medicine, and these can be studied in practice at Dr. Ita Wegman's Clinical Institute in Arlesheim, Switzerland. And I am convinced that if any person would investigate this advancement and enlargement of the medical field with the same goodwill with which, as a rule, they investigate physical medicine, they would find it not at all difficult to accept the idea of the spiritual in man, and the spiritual in methods of healing him.

Quite briefly, I will give two examples that illustrate what I have said. Let us suppose that by means of this kind of spiritual diagnosis (if I may use such an expression) it is seen that in a patient the etheric body is working too strongly in some particular organ. The astral body and the Ego-organisation are not in a position to control this super-activity of the etheric body, so that we are faced with an astral body that has become too weak, and possibly also with an Ego which is too weak, and the etheric body therefore predominates. The latter thereby brings about in some particular organ such a condition of the growing and nourishing processes that the whole organism cannot be properly held together, owing to the lack of control by the other two principles.

At this point, then, where the etheric body predominates, the human organism appears as though too much exposed to the centrifugal forces of the Cosmos. They are not in equipoise with the centripetal forces of the physical body. The astral body cannot control them. In such a case we are confronted on the one hand by a preponderance of the silicic acid processes, and on the other by an impotence of the Ego to control them.

This fact underlies the formation of tumours, and it is here that the way is indicated for the true understanding of the nature of carcinomatous processes (cancer). Researches into this matter have had very good results and have been carried out in practice. But one cannot understand carcinoma unless one realises that it is due to the predominance of the etheric body, which is not suppressed by a corresponding activity of the astral and the Ego,

The question then arises, what is to be done in order to strengthen the elements of the astral body and the Ego which correspond to the diseased organ, so that the superabundant energy of the etheric organisation can be reduced? This brings us to the question of the therapy of carcinoma, which shall be dealt with in due course.

Thus, through an understanding of the etheric body we are enabled gradually to become acquainted with the nature of that most terrible of all human diseases, and at the same time, by investigating the spiritual nature of the action of the remedies, we shall discover the means to combat it. This is just one example of how illnesses can be understood through the etheric body.

But supposing that it is the astral body whose forces predominate—supposing that they are so strong that they predominate practically throughout the entire organism, so that there arises a kind of universal stiffening of the whole astral body due to its excessive inner forces; what does such a state of things bring about? When the astral body is not under the control of the Ego—which is to say, when its disintegrating forces are not cancelled by the integrating forces of the Ego—then symptoms appear which are connected with a weakened Ego-organisation.

This results, primarily, in an abnormal activity of the heart. Further, another occurrence due to a weakened Ego-activity, as described above, is that the glandular functions are disturbed. Since the organisation of the Ego is not sufficiently prominent and cannot exercise enough control, in greater or less degree the peripheral glandular organs begin to secrete too actively. Swollen glands appear—goitre appears.

And we see further how, through this stiffening of the astral body, the silicic acid processes, which should have a reaction inwards, are being pressed outwards, because the Ego is not able work strongly enough in the sense-organs, where it ought to work strongly. So, for instance, the eyes become prominent; the astral body drives them outwards.

It is the task of the Ego to overcome this tendency. Our eyes are actually retained in their right place in our organism by the equipoise that should exist between the astral body and the Ego. So they become prominent because the Ego element in them is too weak to maintain the balance properly. Also, one observes in such cases a general condition of restlessness. One sees, in a word, because the Ego cannot drive back those organic processes which are worked upon by the astral body, that the activity of the whole astral body predominates. In short, the symptoms are those of exophthalmic goitre.

Knowing, therefore, that a disturbance of the balance between astral body and Ego-organisation produces exophthalmic goitre, one can apply the same principles in effecting a cure.

Hence it can be seen with what exactness one can pursue these methods as regards both pathological conditions and therapeutical agencies, when one investigates the human being in a spiritual way.

Before we pass on from the pathological to the therapeutical—and particularly in connection with the two examples mentioned—it would be well to touch upon some of the principles underlying the assimilation of various substances by the human organism.

One only recognises the entire connection that exists between so-called “Nature” and the human being when one perceives not only that the latter is a physico-psychic-spiritual being consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego, but also when one further perceives that the basis of all natural substances and processes is a concrete and comprehensible spiritual one. But one must first be able to penetrate into this concrete spiritual existence.

Just as, in the natural world, one must distinguish between minerals and plants, so one must distinguish quite definitely between the spiritual elements and beings that express themselves through them.

Suppose we take first the mineral kingdom.

A considerable part of our healing agents are taken from this kingdom, and therefore what can be made use of in medicine out of spiritual bases emanates from minerals to a very large extent. We find that the spiritual element is connected in such a way with minerals that it establishes a particular relation between them and the Ego-organisation. It is credible that if a mineral substance is administered, either by mouth or by injection, it works principally upon the human organism itself, and makes for either health or ill-health. But what really takes place is that the physical mineral, as such, as it is regarded and handled by the chemist or the physicist, actually does not work upon the organism, but remains as it is. The physical substance itself, when seen by spiritual observation, shows scarcely any metamorphosis when it is absorbed. On the contrary, what is spiritual in the substance works with extraordinary strength upon the Ego.

So one can say that the spirit, for instance of a rock crystal, affects the Ego. The Ego controls the human being when it contains something silicious—that is, the spiritual element of silicic acid. That is what is so remarkable.

Again, if we take the vegetable kingdom, plants do not only possess a physical form, they possess also what I have characterised as an etheric body. Suppose we administer some plant substance, either by mouth or by injection, what is in the plant works as a rule solely upon the astral body. (These things are described in a general sense; there are always exceptions, which may also be studied.)

Everything derived from the animal kingdom, in whatever way it may be manufactured—out of fluids or solids—when it is administered, works upon the etheric body. This is most particularly interesting, because in this spiritual-medical work results have been attained by using for instance, in certain cases, animal products derived from the secretions of the hypophysis cerebri. These have been used successfully on rickety children or in cases of child-deformity, and so on.

There are also other animal products that work upon the human etheric body, either strengthening it or weakening it. In short, this is their principal function.

Anything injected out of one human being into another affects only the physical body; here there is solely a working of the physical upon the physical. For example, if human blood is transfused, nothing comes into consideration save what can take place as a purely physical phenomenon by means of the blood. A remarkable example of this could be observed when, in vaccinations against smallpox, a change was made from using human lymph to using calf-lymph. It was possible to observe then how the human lymph worked only upon the physical body, and how the effect went, so to speak, a stage higher when calf-lymph was introduced, by its becoming transferred to the etheric body.

Thus it becomes possible to see, by developing spiritual powers of observation, how Nature works, as it were, in degrees, or steps, upon human beings—the mineral being made use of in a certain sense by the Ego, the plant by the astral body, the animal by the etheric body, and the human physical body by the human physical body. In the latter case there is no longer anything spiritual to be described. Indeed, even as regards the animal kingdom, we can no longer speak of the “spiritual” in the animal product, but only of the “etheric.”

It is only through all these various connections that one can gain a true conception of how man—in both health and disease—is really immersed in the whole natural order. But one attains also to an inner perception of a still further continuation of the workings of nature in the human organism.

One may now ask, what is to be one's attitude towards cancer! We have seen how the etheric body is able to develop over-strong forces from itself in some particular organ. The centrifugal forces—that is, the forces that tend outwards into the Cosmos—become too powerful; the astral body and the Ego are too weak to counteract them. Spiritual knowledge now comes to one's aid. One can now try either to make the astral body stronger, in which case one administers something from the plant kingdom, or one must restrain the etheric body, and in that case one makes use of the animal kingdom.

Spiritual investigation has led to the adoption of the former course—that which relates to the astral body. In order to cure cancer, the forces of the astral body must be made stronger. And it may now be admitted that the remedy has really been discovered in the plant kingdom.

We have been accused of dilettantism and so forth, because we make use of a parasitic plant—the mistletoe (which has been used in medicine mainly for epilepsy and similar conditions)—and because we prepare it in a very special manner, in order to discover the way which will lead to the healing of cancer.

If you have observed trees which bear a remarkable outgrowth upon the trunk, resembling swellings, especially if you have seen them in section, you will notice that the whole tendency of growth, which usually has a vertical direction, has at these places a deflection at right angles, becoming therefore horizontal. It presses outwards as though another trunk were beginning to grow; and you find something that is as though drawn out of the tree itself—something parasitic. More closely studied, one discovers that any tree which has such an outgrowth is somewhere or other suppressed, restrained, in its physical development. Sufficient physical material has not been available everywhere, in order to keep pace with the growth forces of the etheric body. The physical body remains behind. The etheric body, which otherwise strives centrifugally to project the physical substance out into the Cosmos, is, as it were, left alone in this portion of the tree. Too little physical substance passes through it, or, rather, matter that has too little physical force. The result is, that the etheric body takes a downward direction to the lower part of the tree, which is connected with stronger physical forces.

Now let us imagine that this does not happen, but, instead, the mistletoe appears; and now there occurs through this plant, which has also its own etheric body, what otherwise takes place through the etheric body of the tree.

From this there results a very special relationship between the mistletoe and the tree. The tree, which is rooted directly in the earth, makes use of the forces which it absorbs from the earth. The mistletoe, growing on the tree, uses what the tree gives it; the tree is, in a sense, the earth for the mistletoe. The mistletoe, therefore, brings about artificially that which, when it is not present, results in the “swellings” which are due to a hypertrophy of the tree's etheric organisation. The mistletoe takes away what the tree only gives up when it has too little physical substance, so that its etheric element is excessive. The excess of the etheric passes out of the tree into the mistletoe.

When the mistletoe is prepared in such a way that this superabundant etheric quality which it has taken from the tree is administered to a person under certain conditions, by injection (and, since we are observing all these facts in a spiritual manner), we gain the following information: that the mistletoe, as an external substance, absorbs what is manifest in the human body as the rampant etheric forces in cancer. [i.e. it becomes a vehicle for the excessive etheric forces.—TRANS.] Through the fact that it represses the physical substance, it strengthens the working of the astral body, which causes the tumour, or cancer, to disintegrate and break up. [The astral body being the destructive principle.—TRANS.]

Therefore we actually introduce the etheric substance of the tree into the human being by means of the mistletoe, and the etheric substance of the tree, carried over by means of the mistletoe, works as a fortifier of the human astral body.

That is one method which can only be known to us when we gain an insight into the way in which the etheric body of the plant acts upon the astral body of the human being—an insight into the fact that the spiritual element in the plant, which in this case is drawn out of it by the parasitic growth, works upon the human astral body.

Thus it can be seen how concretely what I have said may be verified—namely, that it is a question of not merely administering remedies in the manner of the chemist—in the sense in which the chemist speaks and thinks of remedies—but it is a question of administering the spiritual, the super-physical, which the various substances contain.

I have also referred above to the fact that in exophthalmic goitre (Graves' disease) the astral body becomes stiffer, and that the Ego-organisation is unable to deal with this condition. The symptoms are as I have described. This is a case in which it is necessary to strengthen the forces of the Ego. We must consider for a moment something which plays quite an unimportant part in our ordinary associations with the external world; but it is just such apparently unimportant substances which, as regards their spiritual element, have the greatest effect upon the spiritual in the human being. For example, one finds

that oxide of copper has the greatest imaginable effect upon the Ego-organisation of man; it really strengthens it. So, if one gives oxide of copper to a person suffering from Graves' disease, the effect is that one creates a strong Ego-organisation that dominates the stiffened astral body; the oxide of copper comes, as it were, to the rescue of the Ego, and the correct balance is thus restored.

I have quoted these two examples especially in order to show how every product in all the expanse of Nature may be studied, and the question asked: “How does this or that product work upon the physical body of man? how does it work upon the etheric body? and how upon the astral body and the Ego-organisation?”

It all rests, therefore, upon our penetration into the profound secrets of Nature. This search into Nature's secrets—into the mysteries of Nature—is the only possible way to combine the observation of human disease with the observation of the healing agencies. If I know how, let us say, a magnet will affect iron filings, then I know what is taking place. Similarly, if I know in what respect oxide of copper is “spiritual,” and on the other hand what is lacking in the human being when he has the symptoms of exophthalmic goitre, that is to permeate what is called medicine with spiritual knowledge.

One can look back upon the evolution of humanity, that is to say upon the evolution of the spirit of humanity which has given birth to the various civilisations, and which brought forth knowledge also and science; and if, in such a retrospect, one looks into a past so remote that it is only possible to reach it by means of the spiritual vision which I have described, one comes upon centres of knowledge quite unlike our present-day schools, wherein men were led to penetrate into a knowledge of Nature and of humanity, after their souls were first prepared in such a way that they could perceive the spiritual in all the external world.

These centres of knowledge, which we have become accustomed to speak of as the “mysteries,” were not just merely “schools,” but fundamentally they were representative of certain things which are regarded quite separately from one another in the life of to-day. They were centres of religion and of art, as well as of knowledge concerning all the various departments of human culture.

They were so organised that those who were set apart as teachers did not instruct their pupils by means of mere abstract concepts, but by means of pictures—of imagery. These pictures, by reason of their inner characteristics, represented the living relationships and connections between all things in the world. Therefore this imagery was able to produce its effects through ceremonial, as we should call it to-day. In its further development this imagery became permeated with beauty. Religious ceremony became artistic. And later, when what had been gained—not from arbitrary fantasies, but from out of these images or pictures, which had been extracted from out of the world-secrets themselves—was expressed in ideas, it became, at that time, science. The same pictures when presented in such a way that they called forth an essential quality of the human will that could be expressed as goodness—that was religion. And again, presented so that they ravished and exalted the senses, touched the emotions, and lifted the soul to the contemplation of beauty—that was art.

The centres of art were indissolubly linked with the centres of religion and of science. There was no one-sided appreciation of anything through the human reason alone, or through sense-perception alone, or through external physical experiment alone, but the whole human being was involved—body, soul, and spirit.

There was penetration into the profoundest nature of all things—to those depths where reality revealed itself; on the one hand stimulating to goodness, on the other hand to the true expression of ideas. To follow this path, which leads to truth, to beauty, and to goodness, was spoken of, and is still spoken of, as the way of initiation—to the knowledge of the “beginnings” of things. For men were aware that they indeed lived in these beginnings when they conjured them forth in religious ceremonial, in the revelations of beauty, and in the rightly created world of ideas; and so called this attitude which they bore towards the things of the world, “initiation-knowledge”—the knowledge of the beginnings from out of which alone man is able to grasp the true nature of things, and so use them according to his will.

So men sought for an initiation-science which could penetrate into the mysteries of the world—to the “beginnings.”

A time had to. come in the course of human development when this initiation-science withdrew; for it became necessary for men to direct their spiritual energies inwards in order to attain to greater self-consciousness. Initiation-science became as though dreamlike—instinctive. It was not at that time a matter of developing human freedom, for such a development towards freedom has only come about because mankind has been for a time driven away from the beginnings; he has lost the initiation-vision, and turning away from the beginnings, contemplates what is related more to the endings of things—to the external revelations of the senses, and to all that, through the senses, may be discovered by experiment concerning the ultimate, concerning the endings.

The time has now come when, having achieved an immeasurably extensive science of the superficial—if I may call it so—which can have only quite an external connection with art or religion, we must once again seek an initiation-science; but we must seek it with the consciousness which we have evolved in ourselves by means of exact science; a consciousness which, in respect of the new form of initiation-knowledge, will function no less perfectly than it does in connection with the exact sciences.

A bridge will then be built between that world-conception which links the human soul with its origins by means of inwardly conceived ideas, and the practical manipulation of the realities contained in those ideas.

In the ancient mysteries, initiation-knowledge was especially bound up with all that was connected with the healing of humanity. There was a real art of healing. For indeed, the mystery-healing was an art, in that it aroused in man the perception that the process of healing was at the same time a sacrificial process.

In order to satisfy the inner needs of the human soul, there must once again be a closer bond between healing and our philosophical conception of the world. And it is this which a knowledge of the needs of the age seeks to find in the Anthroposophical Movement.

The Anthroposophical Movement, whose headquarters are in Dornach, Switzerland, does not interpose anything arbitrary into life; neither does it stand for any sort of abstract mysticism. It desires rather to enter in a wholly practical way into every sphere of human activity. It seeks to attain with complete self-consciousness what was striven for in ancient times instinctively.

Even though we are only making a beginning, at any rate we are creating the possibility of a return to what, in the ancient mysteries, was a natural, a self-evident thing—medicine existing in closest communion with spiritual vision.

• 1. The “Ego-organisation” denotes the whole of those attributes of the human being by means of which he attains his “sense of I am”. As hearing, sight, taste, etc. each have their “organs” of expression, so also has the Ego. In this case the “organ” is the entire physical body in its self-conscious contact with the outer world.

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Whatever may arise in course of time from anthroposophy, in regard to the sphere of medical knowledge, it will not be found to be in any disagreement whatsoever with that which is understood to-day as the orthodox scientific study of medicine. It is easy, in looking at the question from the scientific standpoint, to be deceived about this, because from the outset it is supposed that any study which is not founded upon so-called exact proof, must be of the nature of sectarianism, and cannot therefore be taken seriously by the scientific observer.

For this reason it is necessary to remark that it is just that point of view which seeks to support medicine upon an anthroposophical basis, which is the most appreciative of, and the most sympathetic towards all that is best and greatest in modern medical achievements.

There cannot therefore be any question that the following statements are merely the polemics of dilettantism, or unprofessionalism, leveled against recognised methods of healing. The whole question turns solely upon the fact that during the last few centuries our entire world-conception has assumed a form which is limited by investigation only into those things which can be confirmed by the senses—either by means of experiment, or by direct observation—and which are then brought into relation with one another through those powers of human reasoning which rely upon the testimony of the senses alone.

This method of research was nevertheless entirely justifiable during several hundred years, because if it had been otherwise, mankind would have become immersed in a world of dreams and fantasies, would have been forced to a capricious acceptance of things, and to a barren weaving of hypotheses.

That is connected with the fact that man, as he lives in the world between birth and death, is a being who cannot truly know himself by means of his physical senses and his reason alone—because he is just as much a spiritual as a physical being.

So that when we come to speak of man in health and in disease we can do no less than ask ourselves: Is it possible to gain a knowledge of health and disease only by those methods of research which concern the physical body; purely with the assistance of the senses and the reason, or by the use of instruments which extend the faculties of the senses and enable us to carry out experiments?

We shall find that a real, unprejudiced, historical retrospect shows us that the knowledge which mankind has gained originated from something totally different from these mere sense-observations. There lies behind us an immense development of our spiritual life, no less than of our physical.

Some three thousand years ago, during the flowering of the most ancient Greek culture, there existed schools that were very different from those of to-day. The basis of these ancient schools consisted in the belief that man had first of all to develop new faculties in his soul before he could become capable of attaining to true knowledge concerning mankind.

Now it was just because, in these ancient times, the more primitive soul-faculties did not incline towards the fantastic, that it was possible to experience, in the so-called mysteries, the spiritual foundations from which all forms of learning arose.

This state of things came to an end more or less contemporaneously with the founding of our Universities—during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Since that time we learn only in a rationalistic way. Rationalism leads on the one hand to keen logic, and on the other hand to pure materialism.

During the course of centuries a vast store of external knowledge has been accumulated in the domain of biology, physiology, and other branches of research which are introductory to the study of medicine; indeed an amazing mass of observations, out of which an almost immeasurable amount may yet be obtained!

But during these centuries all knowledge connected with man which could not be gained without spiritual vision, sank completely out of sight.

It has therefore become actually impossible to investigate the true nature of health and disease.

In order to emphasise this remark, I may mention that even at the present time, according to the descriptions given in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and An Outline Of Occult Science, it is possible so to raise the faculties of the soul that the spiritual nature of man may be clearly distinguished from the physical, This spiritual part of man is, for the spiritual observer, just as visible as the physical part is for the man who observes with his outer senses; with this difference, however, that our ordinary senses have been and are incorporated into our bodily organism without our co-operation, whereas we must ourselves develop the organs of spiritual sight.

This can be brought about if one unfolds within oneself an earnest life of thought. Such a state of living, of resting in quietude—in thought—must, however, be carried out so as to bring about a methodical education and transformation of the soul. If one can, so to say, experiment for a time with one's own soul, allowing it to rest within an easily grasped thought, at the same time permitting neither any traces of auto-suggestion nor any diminution of consciousness to arise, and if one in this way exercises the soul as one would exercise a muscle, then the soul grows strong. Methodically, one pursues the exercises further and further; the soul grows stronger, grows powerful, and becomes capable of sight.

The first thing that it sees is that the human being actually does not consist merely of physical body, which can be investigated either with the naked eye or with a microscope, and so forth, but that he also bears an etheric body. This is not to be confused with that which, in earlier scientific times, was somewhat amateurishly described as “vital forces.” It is something that can really be perceived and observed; and if I were to distinguish qualitatively between the physical body and the etheric body, I should choose, out of all the innumerable qualitative distinctions that exist, the following:—The physical body of man is subject to the laws of gravity; it tends to be drawn earthward. The etheric body tends to be drawn towards the periphery of the universe; that is to say, outwards, in all directions. As a rule, our investigations are concerned with the relative weight of things, but that part of the human organism which possesses weight is the direct opposite of that which not only has no weight but which strives to escape from the laws of gravitation. We have in us these two opposing forces.

This is the first of our super-physical bodies. We may say, then, that we have within us first of all the physical man, whose orientation is centripetal and tends earthwards, and another man, whose orientation is centrifugal and tends to leave the earth. It will be seen that a balance must be maintained between these two configurations of the human being—between the heavy physical body, which is subject to the laws of gravity, and the other, the etheric body, which strives outwards towards the farthest limits of the universe.

The etheric body seeks, as it were, to imitate, to be an image of the whole Cosmos; but the physical body rounds it off, and keeps it within its own limits.

Therefore, by contemplating the state of balance between the physical body and the etheric body, our perception of the nature of the human being becomes real and penetrating. Once we have succeeded in recognising these outward-streaming centrifugal forces in man, we shall be able to perceive them also in the vegetable kingdom. The mineral kingdom alone appears purely physical to us. In it we can trace no centrifugal forces. Minerals are subject to the laws of gravity. But in the case of plants we recognise their outer form as being the result of the two forces. At the same time it becomes apparent to us that we cannot remain at this point in our investigations if we wish to observe anything that is higher in the scale of organic life than the plants. The plant has its etheric body; the animal, when we observe it, possesses life, and also sensation. It creates, inwardly, a world; this fact arrests our attention, and we see that we must make yet deeper researches. Hence we realise that we must develop our ordinary state of consciousness still further.

Already, as I have shown, a certain stage will have been reached when we are able to see not merely the physical body of man, but the physical body embedded within the etheric body, as though in a kind of cloud. But that is not all; the more we strengthen our souls, the more we find greater and greater reality in our thoughts, and it then becomes possible to arrive at a further stage, which consists in suppressing these strong thoughts which have been made so powerful by our own efforts.

In ordinary life if we blot out by degrees our faculties of sight, of hearing, of sensation, and of thinking—we fall asleep. That is an experiment which may easily be carried out. But if one has strengthened the soul in the manner described by the training of thought, of the whole of one's life of concept and feeling, then one can actually learn to suppress the life of the senses. One then arrives at a condition where, above all things, one is not asleep but is very much awake. Indeed, it may even be that one has to guard against losing the power to sleep, while one is striving to reach this condition. If, however, one sets to work in the way I have indicated in my books, every precaution is taken to prevent any disturbances in the ordinary life.

One succeeds then in being completely awake, though one cannot hear as one hears with the ears. The ordinary memory, too, and ordinary thinking cease. One confronts the world with a perfectly empty but perfectly waking consciousness. And then one sees the third human organism—the astral.

Animals also possess this astral organism. In man it bestows the possibility of unfolding a real inner life of experience. Now this is something which is connected neither with the innermost depths of the earth nor with the wide expanse of the universe, but rather it is connected with a state of being inwardly penetrated by forces which are “seen” as the astral body. So now we have the third member of the human organisation.

If one learns to perceive this third member in the manner indicated above, one finds that from the scientific point of view it is indescribably illuminating. One says to oneself—the child grows up and becomes the man; his vital forces are active. But he is not only growing physically, his consciousness is developing at the same time; he is unfolding within himself an image of the outer world.

Can this be the result of physical growth? Can this be accomplished by the same forces that underlie nutrition and growth?

When the organic forces that underlie the latter gain the upper hand, the consciousness becomes dimmed. We need, therefore, something which is connected with these forces, and which is actually opposed to them. The human being is always growing and always being nourished. But he has within his astral body, as I have described it, something which is perpetually suppressing, inhibiting the forces of growth and nutrition.

So we have in man a process of construction through the physical body in conjunction with the earth; another process of construction through the etheric body in conjunction with the Cosmos, and through the astral body a continuous destruction of the organic processes in the cell-life and the glandular life.

That is the secret of the human organism.

Now we understand why it is that man possesses a soul. If he were to grow continuously like the plant, he could not have a soul. The process of growing must first be destroyed, for it expels the soul. If we had nothing in our brain but the process of building up, and no processes of breaking down and destruction, we could not contain the soul.

Evolution does not proceed in a straight line. It must retreat in one direction; it must give way. Herein lies the secret of humanity—of the ensouled being.

If we go no further than the consideration of the organisation of the animal, we find ourselves concerned only with its three principles—the physical, etheric, and astral. But if we proceed to the observation of man, we find, when we have progressed yet further with the training of our souls, that we spiritually perceive yet another principle.

Our spiritual perception of the animal discloses that its thinking, feeling, and willing are, in a certain sense, neutral in regard to one another; they are not clearly distinct. One cannot speak of a separate thinking, a separate feeling, and a separate willing, but only of a neutral blending of these three elements. But in the case of man, his inner life depends just upon the fact that he lays hold of his intentions by quiet thought, and that he can remain with his intentions; he can either carry them out in deeds, or not carry them out. The animal obeys its impulses. Man separates thinking, feeling, and willing from one another.

How this is so, can only be understood when one has carried one's power of spiritual perception far enough to observe the fourth principle of man's organisation—the “I am I”—or the Ego.

As we have just seen, the astral body breaks down the processes of growth and nutrition; in a sense, it introduces a gradual dying into the whole organism. The Ego redeems, out of this destructive process, certain elements which are continually falling away from the combination of the physical and etheric bodies, and rebuilds them.

That is actually the secret of human nature.

If one looks at the human brain, one sees—in those lighter parts which lie more below the superficial structures, and which proceed as nerve fibres to the sense organs—a most complicated organisation which, for those who can perceive it in its reality, is in a continual state of deterioration, although so slowly does this take place that it cannot be observed by ordinary physiological means. But, out of all this destruction, that which differentiates man from the animals, namely, the peripheral brain, is built up. This is the foundation of the human organisation. With regard to man, naturally, the central brain (the continuation of the sensory nerves and their connections) is more perfect than the peripheral brain, which is, as a matter of fact, more akin to the metabolic processes than the deeper portions of the brain are.

This peripheral brain, which is peculiarly characteristic of man, is organised for these metabolic functions by the Ego-organisation—organised out of what otherwise is in a state of deterioration.¹ And so the activity of the Ego permeates the entire organism.

The Ego redeems certain elements out of the ruin worked by the astral body, and builds out of them that which underlies an harmonious co-ordination of thinking, feeling, and willing.

I can of course only mention these things, but I wish to point out that one can proceed with the same exactitude when making observations spiritually as one can in any branch of external experimental science and with a full sense of responsibility; so that in every case one seeks for the agreement between what is spiritually observed and what is discovered by empirical physical methods of research. It is exactly the formation of the physical brain which leads one on to apprehend the super-physical, and to attain knowledge by spiritual investigation.

Thus we have these four members of the human organisation. These, in order to maintain health, must be in quite special relation to one another.

We only get water when we mix hydrogen and oxygen in accordance with their specific gravity. In the same way there is a determinative which brings about a normal relationship—if I may say so—between the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the Ego.

We not only have four, but 4x4 relative states. All these can be disturbed. An abnormal relation may arise between the etheric and the physical bodies, or between the astral and etheric, or between the Ego and one or another of these. All are deeply connected with one another and are in a special relation to one another. The moment this is disturbed, illness arises.

But this relationship is not uniform throughout the human being; it differs in the different individual organs. If we observe, for instance, a human lung, the physical, etheric, astral, and Ego constituents of this lung are not the same as those of the brain or of the liver. Thus, the entire human organisation is so complicated that the spiritual and the material are differently related in every organ. Therefore, it will be understood that, just as one studies physical anatomy and physical physiology in accordance with external symptoms, so—when one admits the existence of this spiritual investigation, and practises it—one must study with the greatest exactitude the health and disease of every separate organ. In this way one always arrives at a complete and comprehensive knowledge of the human organism. It cannot be so understood if it is observed solely from the physical standpoint. It can only be known through a knowledge of its four principles. One is only clear about any illness when one is able to say which of these four principles either predominates too strongly or is too much suppressed. It is because one is able to observe these things in a spiritual manner that one actually places a spiritual diagnosis alongside the material diagnosis. Therefore what is gained by anthroposophical methods in seeing through the fourfold constitution of man, is gained in addition to all that it is possible to observe of health and disease by ordinary methods.

And further, it is not only possible to behold man spiritually but also the whole of Nature. One is now, for the first time, in a position to find man's relation to the various kingdoms of Nature, and, in medicine, his relation to the healing properties which these kingdoms contain.

Let us take an example. There is a substance which is most widely distributed over the whole earth, and not only over the whole earth, but also, in its finest form, throughout the air. This is silicic acid. It is an enormously important constituent part of the earth. But for those who are able to see these things with higher faculties, all this silicious substance is revealed as the external manifestation of something spiritual; and an immense and almost overpowering difference is seen to exist between that which ordinary physical methods of observation disclose with regard to silicic acid, or, for example, carbonic acid gas, and that which spiritual investigation discloses.

By the latter method we see that quartz, or rock-crystal, such as we find in the mountains—in fact, all forms of silicious substance—provides a free path for something spiritual. Just as any transparent substance allows light to stream through it, so all silicious substance allows what is spiritually active in the entire world to stream through it.

But we find quite a different relationship towards the spiritual when we come to carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has this peculiarity (for there is something spiritual in every physical substance), that the spiritual that is in contact with carbonic acid becomes individualised. Carbonic acid retains the spiritual in itself with all its force. The spiritual “selects” carbonic acid as a dwelling-place. In silica it has a transcending tendency—a consuming tendency—but it inheres in carbonic acid as though it felt itself “at home” there.

Carbonic acid processes are present in the breathing and circulation of animals. The former are especially connected with the astral body. The carbonic acid processes are related to the external physical of the animal, while the astral body is that which is inwardly spiritually active. The astral is therefore the spiritual element, and the carbonic acid process is its physical counterpart and underlies the animal's expirations.

The Ego-organisation is the spiritual inner element in man of that which takes place in man as silicic acid processes. We have silicic acid in our hair, our bones, our organs of sense, in all the extremities and periphery of our bodies—in fact, everywhere where we come into contact with the outer world—and all these silicic acid processes are the external counterpart, the expression from within outwards, of the Ego-organisation.

Now it must be borne in mind that the Ego must, in a certain sense, be strong enough to manipulate, to control, the whole of this silicic acid activity. If the Ego is too weak, the silicic acid is separated out—that is a pathological condition. On the other hand, the astral body must be strong enough to control the carbonic acid process; if it cannot, carbonic acid or its waste products are separated out, and illness results.

It is possible, therefore, in observing the strength or weakness of the astral body to find the cause of an illness rooted in the spiritual. And in observing the Ego-organisation one discovers the cause of those disturbances which either bring about a morbid decomposition of the silicic acid processes in. the body, or which one must deal with therapeutically by the administration of silicic acid. What happens then is that the spiritual, which is never retained in the material substance itself, passes through it and affects the silicic acid deposited in the body. It takes the place of the Ego itself. In the administration of carbonic acid as a healing agent, it must be so prepared that the spiritual is present in it in the right manner; in using it as a remedy one must be aware that the astral body works in it.

Therefore: One can conceive of a form of therapy which does not only make use of chemical agents, but which is quite consciously administering a cure, in the knowledge that, if a certain quantity of physical substance is given, or a particular solution is prepared as a bath, or if an injection is given, at the same time something of a spiritual nature is quite definitely introduced into the human organism.

So it is perfectly possible to make a bridge from a knowledge of purely physical means of healing to a knowledge which works with spiritual means.

That was the characteristic of the medicine of ancient times; some tradition of it still lingers; it lingers even in some of the recognised cures to-day. And we have to get back to this. We can do so if, without in any way neglecting physical medicine, we add to it what we can gain in spiritual knowledge, not only of man, but of Nature also. Everything can be carried out with the same exactitude as is the case with regard to physical natural science.

Anthroposophy does not seek to correct modern medicine, but to add its own knowledge to it, because ordinary medicine makes demands upon itself only.

What I have just briefly indicated is merely the commencement of an exceedingly wide spiritual knowledge, in which, at present, people have very little faith. One can quite well understand that. But some results have already been attained in the sphere of medicine, and these can be studied in practice at Dr. Ita Wegman's Clinical Institute in Arlesheim, Switzerland. And I am convinced that if any person would investigate this advancement and enlargement of the medical field with the same goodwill with which, as a rule, they investigate physical medicine, they would find it not at all difficult to accept the idea of the spiritual in man, and the spiritual in methods of healing him.

Quite briefly, I will give two examples that illustrate what I have said. Let us suppose that by means of this kind of spiritual diagnosis (if I may use such an expression) it is seen that in a patient the etheric body is working too strongly in some particular organ. The astral body and the Ego-organisation are not in a position to control this super-activity of the etheric body, so that we are faced with an astral body that has become too weak, and possibly also with an Ego which is too weak, and the etheric body therefore predominates. The latter thereby brings about in some particular organ such a condition of the growing and nourishing processes that the whole organism cannot be properly held together, owing to the lack of control by the other two principles.

At this point, then, where the etheric body predominates, the human organism appears as though too much exposed to the centrifugal forces of the Cosmos. They are not in equipoise with the centripetal forces of the physical body. The astral body cannot control them. In such a case we are confronted on the one hand by a preponderance of the silicic acid processes, and on the other by an impotence of the Ego to control them.

This fact underlies the formation of tumours, and it is here that the way is indicated for the true understanding of the nature of carcinomatous processes (cancer). Researches into this matter have had very good results and have been carried out in practice. But one cannot understand carcinoma unless one realises that it is due to the predominance of the etheric body, which is not suppressed by a corresponding activity of the astral and the Ego,

The question then arises, what is to be done in order to strengthen the elements of the astral body and the Ego which correspond to the diseased organ, so that the superabundant energy of the etheric organisation can be reduced? This brings us to the question of the therapy of carcinoma, which shall be dealt with in due course.

Thus, through an understanding of the etheric body we are enabled gradually to become acquainted with the nature of that most terrible of all human diseases, and at the same time, by investigating the spiritual nature of the action of the remedies, we shall discover the means to combat it. This is just one example of how illnesses can be understood through the etheric body.

But supposing that it is the astral body whose forces predominate—supposing that they are so strong that they predominate practically throughout the entire organism, so that there arises a kind of universal stiffening of the whole astral body due to its excessive inner forces; what does such a state of things bring about? When the astral body is not under the control of the Ego—which is to say, when its disintegrating forces are not cancelled by the integrating forces of the Ego—then symptoms appear which are connected with a weakened Ego-organisation.

This results, primarily, in an abnormal activity of the heart. Further, another occurrence due to a weakened Ego-activity, as described above, is that the glandular functions are disturbed. Since the organisation of the Ego is not sufficiently prominent and cannot exercise enough control, in greater or less degree the peripheral glandular organs begin to secrete too actively. Swollen glands appear—goitre appears.

And we see further how, through this stiffening of the astral body, the silicic acid processes, which should have a reaction inwards, are being pressed outwards, because the Ego is not able work strongly enough in the sense-organs, where it ought to work strongly. So, for instance, the eyes become prominent; the astral body drives them outwards.

It is the task of the Ego to overcome this tendency. Our eyes are actually retained in their right place in our organism by the equipoise that should exist between the astral body and the Ego. So they become prominent because the Ego element in them is too weak to maintain the balance properly. Also, one observes in such cases a general condition of restlessness. One sees, in a word, because the Ego cannot drive back those organic processes which are worked upon by the astral body, that the activity of the whole astral body predominates. In short, the symptoms are those of exophthalmic goitre.

Knowing, therefore, that a disturbance of the balance between astral body and Ego-organisation produces exophthalmic goitre, one can apply the same principles in effecting a cure.

Hence it can be seen with what exactness one can pursue these methods as regards both pathological conditions and therapeutical agencies, when one investigates the human being in a spiritual way.

Before we pass on from the pathological to the therapeutical—and particularly in connection with the two examples mentioned—it would be well to touch upon some of the principles underlying the assimilation of various substances by the human organism.

One only recognises the entire connection that exists between so-called “Nature” and the human being when one perceives not only that the latter is a physico-psychic-spiritual being consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego, but also when one further perceives that the basis of all natural substances and processes is a concrete and comprehensible spiritual one. But one must first be able to penetrate into this concrete spiritual existence.

Just as, in the natural world, one must distinguish between minerals and plants, so one must distinguish quite definitely between the spiritual elements and beings that express themselves through them.

Suppose we take first the mineral kingdom.

A considerable part of our healing agents are taken from this kingdom, and therefore what can be made use of in medicine out of spiritual bases emanates from minerals to a very large extent. We find that the spiritual element is connected in such a way with minerals that it establishes a particular relation between them and the Ego-organisation. It is credible that if a mineral substance is administered, either by mouth or by injection, it works principally upon the human organism itself, and makes for either health or ill-health. But what really takes place is that the physical mineral, as such, as it is regarded and handled by the chemist or the physicist, actually does not work upon the organism, but remains as it is. The physical substance itself, when seen by spiritual observation, shows scarcely any metamorphosis when it is absorbed. On the contrary, what is spiritual in the substance works with extraordinary strength upon the Ego.

So one can say that the spirit, for instance of a rock crystal, affects the Ego. The Ego controls the human being when it contains something silicious—that is, the spiritual element of silicic acid. That is what is so remarkable.

Again, if we take the vegetable kingdom, plants do not only possess a physical form, they possess also what I have characterised as an etheric body. Suppose we administer some plant substance, either by mouth or by injection, what is in the plant works as a rule solely upon the astral body. (These things are described in a general sense; there are always exceptions, which may also be studied.)

Everything derived from the animal kingdom, in whatever way it may be manufactured—out of fluids or solids—when it is administered, works upon the etheric body. This is most particularly interesting, because in this spiritual-medical work results have been attained by using for instance, in certain cases, animal products derived from the secretions of the hypophysis cerebri. These have been used successfully on rickety children or in cases of child-deformity, and so on.

There are also other animal products that work upon the human etheric body, either strengthening it or weakening it. In short, this is their principal function.

Anything injected out of one human being into another affects only the physical body; here there is solely a working of the physical upon the physical. For example, if human blood is transfused, nothing comes into consideration save what can take place as a purely physical phenomenon by means of the blood. A remarkable example of this could be observed when, in vaccinations against smallpox, a change was made from using human lymph to using calf-lymph. It was possible to observe then how the human lymph worked only upon the physical body, and how the effect went, so to speak, a stage higher when calf-lymph was introduced, by its becoming transferred to the etheric body.

Thus it becomes possible to see, by developing spiritual powers of observation, how Nature works, as it were, in degrees, or steps, upon human beings—the mineral being made use of in a certain sense by the Ego, the plant by the astral body, the animal by the etheric body, and the human physical body by the human physical body. In the latter case there is no longer anything spiritual to be described. Indeed, even as regards the animal kingdom, we can no longer speak of the “spiritual” in the animal product, but only of the “etheric.”

It is only through all these various connections that one can gain a true conception of how man—in both health and disease—is really immersed in the whole natural order. But one attains also to an inner perception of a still further continuation of the workings of nature in the human organism.

One may now ask, what is to be one's attitude towards cancer! We have seen how the etheric body is able to develop over-strong forces from itself in some particular organ. The centrifugal forces—that is, the forces that tend outwards into the Cosmos—become too powerful; the astral body and the Ego are too weak to counteract them. Spiritual knowledge now comes to one's aid. One can now try either to make the astral body stronger, in which case one administers something from the plant kingdom, or one must restrain the etheric body, and in that case one makes use of the animal kingdom.

Spiritual investigation has led to the adoption of the former course—that which relates to the astral body. In order to cure cancer, the forces of the astral body must be made stronger. And it may now be admitted that the remedy has really been discovered in the plant kingdom.

We have been accused of dilettantism and so forth, because we make use of a parasitic plant—the mistletoe (which has been used in medicine mainly for epilepsy and similar conditions)—and because we prepare it in a very special manner, in order to discover the way which will lead to the healing of cancer.

If you have observed trees which bear a remarkable outgrowth upon the trunk, resembling swellings, especially if you have seen them in section, you will notice that the whole tendency of growth, which usually has a vertical direction, has at these places a deflection at right angles, becoming therefore horizontal. It presses outwards as though another trunk were beginning to grow; and you find something that is as though drawn out of the tree itself—something parasitic. More closely studied, one discovers that any tree which has such an outgrowth is somewhere or other suppressed, restrained, in its physical development. Sufficient physical material has not been available everywhere, in order to keep pace with the growth forces of the etheric body. The physical body remains behind. The etheric body, which otherwise strives centrifugally to project the physical substance out into the Cosmos, is, as it were, left alone in this portion of the tree. Too little physical substance passes through it, or, rather, matter that has too little physical force. The result is, that the etheric body takes a downward direction to the lower part of the tree, which is connected with stronger physical forces.

Now let us imagine that this does not happen, but, instead, the mistletoe appears; and now there occurs through this plant, which has also its own etheric body, what otherwise takes place through the etheric body of the tree.

From this there results a very special relationship between the mistletoe and the tree. The tree, which is rooted directly in the earth, makes use of the forces which it absorbs from the earth. The mistletoe, growing on the tree, uses what the tree gives it; the tree is, in a sense, the earth for the mistletoe. The mistletoe, therefore, brings about artificially that which, when it is not present, results in the “swellings” which are due to a hypertrophy of the tree's etheric organisation. The mistletoe takes away what the tree only gives up when it has too little physical substance, so that its etheric element is excessive. The excess of the etheric passes out of the tree into the mistletoe.

When the mistletoe is prepared in such a way that this superabundant etheric quality which it has taken from the tree is administered to a person under certain conditions, by injection (and, since we are observing all these facts in a spiritual manner), we gain the following information: that the mistletoe, as an external substance, absorbs what is manifest in the human body as the rampant etheric forces in cancer. [i.e. it becomes a vehicle for the excessive etheric forces.—TRANS.] Through the fact that it represses the physical substance, it strengthens the working of the astral body, which causes the tumour, or cancer, to disintegrate and break up. [The astral body being the destructive principle.—TRANS.]

Therefore we actually introduce the etheric substance of the tree into the human being by means of the mistletoe, and the etheric substance of the tree, carried over by means of the mistletoe, works as a fortifier of the human astral body.

That is one method which can only be known to us when we gain an insight into the way in which the etheric body of the plant acts upon the astral body of the human being—an insight into the fact that the spiritual element in the plant, which in this case is drawn out of it by the parasitic growth, works upon the human astral body.

Thus it can be seen how concretely what I have said may be verified—namely, that it is a question of not merely administering remedies in the manner of the chemist—in the sense in which the chemist speaks and thinks of remedies—but it is a question of administering the spiritual, the super-physical, which the various substances contain.

I have also referred above to the fact that in exophthalmic goitre (Graves' disease) the astral body becomes stiffer, and that the Ego-organisation is unable to deal with this condition. The symptoms are as I have described. This is a case in which it is necessary to strengthen the forces of the Ego. We must consider for a moment something which plays quite an unimportant part in our ordinary associations with the external world; but it is just such apparently unimportant substances which, as regards their spiritual element, have the greatest effect upon the spiritual in the human being. For example, one finds

that oxide of copper has the greatest imaginable effect upon the Ego-organisation of man; it really strengthens it. So, if one gives oxide of copper to a person suffering from Graves' disease, the effect is that one creates a strong Ego-organisation that dominates the stiffened astral body; the oxide of copper comes, as it were, to the rescue of the Ego, and the correct balance is thus restored.

I have quoted these two examples especially in order to show how every product in all the expanse of Nature may be studied, and the question asked: “How does this or that product work upon the physical body of man? how does it work upon the etheric body? and how upon the astral body and the Ego-organisation?”

It all rests, therefore, upon our penetration into the profound secrets of Nature. This search into Nature's secrets—into the mysteries of Nature—is the only possible way to combine the observation of human disease with the observation of the healing agencies. If I know how, let us say, a magnet will affect iron filings, then I know what is taking place. Similarly, if I know in what respect oxide of copper is “spiritual,” and on the other hand what is lacking in the human being when he has the symptoms of exophthalmic goitre, that is to permeate what is called medicine with spiritual knowledge.

One can look back upon the evolution of humanity, that is to say upon the evolution of the spirit of humanity which has given birth to the various civilisations, and which brought forth knowledge also and science; and if, in such a retrospect, one looks into a past so remote that it is only possible to reach it by means of the spiritual vision which I have described, one comes upon centres of knowledge quite unlike our present-day schools, wherein men were led to penetrate into a knowledge of Nature and of humanity, after their souls were first prepared in such a way that they could perceive the spiritual in all the external world.

These centres of knowledge, which we have become accustomed to speak of as the “mysteries,” were not just merely “schools,” but fundamentally they were representative of certain things which are regarded quite separately from one another in the life of to-day. They were centres of religion and of art, as well as of knowledge concerning all the various departments of human culture.

They were so organised that those who were set apart as teachers did not instruct their pupils by means of mere abstract concepts, but by means of pictures—of imagery. These pictures, by reason of their inner characteristics, represented the living relationships and connections between all things in the world. Therefore this imagery was able to produce its effects through ceremonial, as we should call it to-day. In its further development this imagery became permeated with beauty. Religious ceremony became artistic. And later, when what had been gained—not from arbitrary fantasies, but from out of these images or pictures, which had been extracted from out of the world-secrets themselves—was expressed in ideas, it became, at that time, science. The same pictures when presented in such a way that they called forth an essential quality of the human will that could be expressed as goodness—that was religion. And again, presented so that they ravished and exalted the senses, touched the emotions, and lifted the soul to the contemplation of beauty—that was art.

The centres of art were indissolubly linked with the centres of religion and of science. There was no one-sided appreciation of anything through the human reason alone, or through sense-perception alone, or through external physical experiment alone, but the whole human being was involved—body, soul, and spirit.

There was penetration into the profoundest nature of all things—to those depths where reality revealed itself; on the one hand stimulating to goodness, on the other hand to the true expression of ideas. To follow this path, which leads to truth, to beauty, and to goodness, was spoken of, and is still spoken of, as the way of initiation—to the knowledge of the “beginnings” of things. For men were aware that they indeed lived in these beginnings when they conjured them forth in religious ceremonial, in the revelations of beauty, and in the rightly created world of ideas; and so called this attitude which they bore towards the things of the world, “initiation-knowledge”—the knowledge of the beginnings from out of which alone man is able to grasp the true nature of things, and so use them according to his will.

So men sought for an initiation-science which could penetrate into the mysteries of the world—to the “beginnings.”

A time had to. come in the course of human development when this initiation-science withdrew; for it became necessary for men to direct their spiritual energies inwards in order to attain to greater self-consciousness. Initiation-science became as though dreamlike—instinctive. It was not at that time a matter of developing human freedom, for such a development towards freedom has only come about because mankind has been for a time driven away from the beginnings; he has lost the initiation-vision, and turning away from the beginnings, contemplates what is related more to the endings of things—to the external revelations of the senses, and to all that, through the senses, may be discovered by experiment concerning the ultimate, concerning the endings.

The time has now come when, having achieved an immeasurably extensive science of the superficial—if I may call it so—which can have only quite an external connection with art or religion, we must once again seek an initiation-science; but we must seek it with the consciousness which we have evolved in ourselves by means of exact science; a consciousness which, in respect of the new form of initiation-knowledge, will function no less perfectly than it does in connection with the exact sciences.

A bridge will then be built between that world-conception which links the human soul with its origins by means of inwardly conceived ideas, and the practical manipulation of the realities contained in those ideas.

In the ancient mysteries, initiation-knowledge was especially bound up with all that was connected with the healing of humanity. There was a real art of healing. For indeed, the mystery-healing was an art, in that it aroused in man the perception that the process of healing was at the same time a sacrificial process.

In order to satisfy the inner needs of the human soul, there must once again be a closer bond between healing and our philosophical conception of the world. And it is this which a knowledge of the needs of the age seeks to find in the Anthroposophical Movement.

The Anthroposophical Movement, whose headquarters are in Dornach, Switzerland, does not interpose anything arbitrary into life; neither does it stand for any sort of abstract mysticism. It desires rather to enter in a wholly practical way into every sphere of human activity. It seeks to attain with complete self-consciousness what was striven for in ancient times instinctively.

Even though we are only making a beginning, at any rate we are creating the possibility of a return to what, in the ancient mysteries, was a natural, a self-evident thing—medicine existing in closest communion with spiritual vision.

• 1. The “Ego-organisation” denotes the whole of those attributes of the human being by means of which he attains his “sense of I am”. As hearing, sight, taste, etc. each have their “organs” of expression, so also has the Ego. In this case the “organ” is the entire physical body in its self-conscious contact with the outer world.

It may well be that the fourth century A.D. has emerged from our considerations as a particularly significant turning point in human development, and I would like to say a few words about what actually took place in this 4th century.

One of the characteristic minds of this 4th century is, of course, Augustine, and when we look at Augustine, we have a true representative of this period before us. To a certain extent, with a part of his being, which he lived out primarily in his youth and in his early years, Augustine points quite clearly back to ancient education. And then we see a rather abrupt transition in his case, which led him to absolute submission to the Roman Catholic Church, so that Augustine became the one who, in a certain respect, set knowledge and insight aside for himself and inwardly and subjectively practically took the concepts of faith completely seriously by professing the opinion that he did not see what the basis of the truth was that he should recognize, and that he professed the truth to which he had finally decided only because the Catholic Church prescribed it. Augustine came to this opinion through hard struggles in life. For a certain period of time, he paid homage to the doctrine known as Manichaeism, the orientalizing doctrine of Mani. This doctrine is one of those that I have already characterized from a certain point of view in these evening reflections. I said: Again and again, from the times that we have come to regard as Indian, Persian, Chaldean-Egyptian, from these ancient times, views emerge as a kind of reaction against what is built up from the development of the primarily intellectual capacity of humanity. The Manichaean doctrine was one such. It just so happens that in those days, in the times when Augustine became acquainted with the Manichaean doctrine in his African homeland, such views actually appeared in a somewhat dubious form. Augustine was initially quite captivated by the Manichaean doctrine. But then he came into contact with a bishop of the Manicheans, Faustus, and the whole way in which this man represented the Manichean doctrine then disgusted Augustine. But through much of what was presented to Augustine, certainly not only as shallow dialectics but perhaps as empty verbiage, one must nevertheless glimpse something essential in this Manichaean doctrine, and this essence can only be inwardly understood if one approaches this Manichaean doctrine from the points of view have been asserted in these considerations, this Manichaean doctrine.

Not much of the true records of such teachings to mankind in modern times has been preserved; only what the Christian teachers of the first centuries quoted and then fought against has been preserved. Thus the most important information from ancient times has come down to us only through the quotations of opponents. But perhaps someone who can empathize with such things will also sense something of the essence of the Manichaean doctrine itself from Augustine's particular attitude towards it. Augustine turns away from the Manichaean doctrine for the reason that he says he has sought the truth, sought the truth in the sun, in the stars, the clouds, the rivers, the springs, the mountains, in the vegetable, in the animal beings, in short, in all that which could confront him as visible. He did not find it there, because all of this offered him only external material things, but he was looking for the spiritual. Then Augustine turned away from the Manichaean doctrine to Neoplatonism, which I have already characterized from a certain point of view. Neoplatonism turned away from the sensual world. It took little account of it and wanted to connect with the All-One in its inner being in a kind of mystical abstraction. This is what attracted Augustine in his later years, and what he presents against the Manichaean doctrine already contains what he had acquired through his immersion in Neoplatonism, in the non-representational, immaterial, non-sensual, abstract world. In relation to the world in which he now placed himself, what Manichaeism could offer him seemed to him, to a certain extent, to be no more than a registering of external, material things, which are then passed off as the divine. But those who come to spiritual science today will first learn to see these things in the right way. Let us consider, from the point of view of today's spiritual science, what may actually be at hand. I have already characterized to you: when one ascends to imaginative, to inspired knowledge, then one gradually becomes acquainted with the inner organs of the human being, concretely acquainted, and it does not result in that mystical world of fog that so many false mystics dream of, but rather it results in an objective insight into the inner organicity of the human being. It is precisely by understanding this inner organicity of man as a result of the spirit, by being able to see through it spiritually, that one gets to know it as material. I will give you an example of this. Let us say that a person who thinks more abstractly gets to know a so-called hypochondriac. An abstract thinker will easily say of a hypochondriac: There is actually nothing particularly wrong with him physically, he is only mentally ill. He is always dwelling too much on his own inner life, he lives entirely absorbed in introspection, as it were, and as a result judges the things of the outer world wrongly, often judging them as if they were persecuting him or the like. In any case, however, he comes into a false relationship with the outer world. And so it easily comes about that we say of the hypochondriac: there is nothing actually wrong with him physically, he is only mentally ill. Such an abstraction comes about because we have not yet penetrated to the actual inner structure of the human organization. This inner structure of the human organization is such that the human being is a threefold creature. There we have the head organization, which, as I have often explained, extends throughout the whole organism, but whose main seat is in the head and is therefore referred to as such; there we have the rhythmic organization of the chest organs, which includes breathing and blood circulation; and there we have everything that exists in the metabolic organism and the limb organism that is connected to it.

Now the fact is that in the head organization the individual organs are turned towards the outer world and are therefore outer sense organs. But in the other limbs of the human organism, too, we find that the organs, in addition to being digestive organs, are also sensory organs to a certain extent, and we find a kind of correspondence, a kind of polarity, between the organs of the head and the organs of metabolism. The organs of metabolism are also sense organs, only they are sense organs that are not directed outwards, but rather to the processes within the human skin. And so we find, for example, that the human being, in his head organization, directed outwards, has the sense of smell; with this he smells what is outside in his environment. Corresponding to this sense of smell, among the digestive organs, is the liver. The liver, so to speak, smells what is inside the person, in its environment. These things must be spoken about quite objectively if one wants to ascend to knowledge at all.

Now, you see, you have to direct your attention to the fact that what is, so to speak, the relationship of the organ of smell to the outside world corresponds to the relationship of the liver to the inner human processes. Now, in a hypochondriac, the liver is always out of order, quite simply as, if you will, a physical organ out of order. That is precisely what occurs in spiritual science, that it not only leads up into a nebulous spiritual realm, but that it also recognizes the material in its essence through the application of its methods, that it can therefore look into the functions of the material. And because liver complaints are usually associated with very little or no pain, they do not appear as a physically perceptible illness, but rather as a mental experience when the liver is not in order and therefore smells wrong on the inside. To the person who really sees through things, the hypochondriac is no different than someone whose liver is not in order and who therefore internally perceives what it very easily perceives as not exactly pleasantly smelling, not in a normal way, but in an overly sensitive way with his sick liver. He constantly smells himself inside, and this smelling, that is what actually underlies the hypochondriacal disposition. You see, you cannot characterize spiritual science as nebulous mysticism, because it leads to a truly objective knowledge of the material world as well. Materialism in particular does not come to these things because it only ever looks at them in abstract forms. Imaginative and inspired knowledge always explains so-called mental illnesses in terms of their physical foundations. From a spiritual scientific point of view, there are many more reasons to explain so-called physical illnesses from a spiritual point of view than there are to explain so-called mental illnesses. As a rule, mental illnesses are the most physical, that is to say, they are based on the most physical causes. And so it must be clear that anyone who sees through the spiritual world will also come to recognize the working of the spiritual in the material. He does not see the liver merely as what it presents itself as to the anatomist who dissects the corpses, but he sees the liver as an organ formed within, which in its outer form differs from the organ of smell, but nevertheless represents a metamorphosis of this organ of smell. And so much of what the spiritual researcher has to say about the material world will be, because he traces it back, I might say, to its spiritual causes, that he points precisely to the revelations of the material, because one recognizes the spiritual much more through the revelation of the material than through all kinds of mystical ravings and mystical nebulous so-called immersions into the inner self. They all arise, after all, from a certain reluctance to concern oneself with real knowledge and to brood over it in one's innermost being, which, after all, arises from nothing more than a certain disposition of physical organs. To practice mysticism in a nebulous sense is itself a kind of mental illness on a physical basis.

You see, something like the seeing of the spiritual in the material, that was what Augustine encountered in Manichaeism. But he was already too much born into - as is well known, he had the Greek mother Monica - the longing to get out of the physical, so that he could not have stuck with it. Therefore, he turned to Neoplatonism, and in this detour through Neoplatonism, he turned to Roman Catholicism.

We can see, then, how in this 4th century, in which the formative years of Augustine's education fall, people actually turned away from the spiritual contemplation of the external world and also of the inner world of man. This turning away was bound to happen. This turning away was bound to happen because man could never have become free, could never have become a free being, if he had felt himself to be only a part of the outer world, as I characterized it in the past evenings. Man had to, so to speak, get out of this amalgamation with the outer world. He had to turn away from the outer world for once. And the culmination of this turning away from the outer world, I would say, the point where man left consciousness: You are a member of the outer world, as the finger is a member of your organism - the culmination lies in this 4th century AD. What characterized the period before this fourth century AD was an evolution of humanity that basically came entirely from the human organism, I would say from the blood. In the southern regions of Europe, in North Africa and the Near East, human beings had already come to be abandoned, as it were, from their own human essence, in so far as it is a physical, an etheric one, and to ascend to an indeterminate state. For one might say that people had to develop into such an emptiness, into a void, where nothing is dependent on blood any more, where what is the view of life is no longer formed from the racial nature of man, people had to develop into such an emptiness in order to enter into intellectuality. What all the individual peoples had developed in terms of worldviews, knowledge and so on before this 4th century AD - of course, this is an approximation when specifying such a point in time - had arisen from their blood blood, just as we develop up to the change of teeth, which we also do not form out of our intelligence, but out of our organic substances, or how we develop up to sexual maturity, finally also out of the organism, and at the same time to the maturity of judgment. Thus everything that these peoples had produced in their old, instinctive imaginations and inspirations developed out of the blood. This had a racial origin everywhere. And when two races, two peoples of different bloods mixed somewhere, then the one people remained down below, they became slaves, while the other population rose to a certain extent, forming the upper ten thousand. Both these social differences and that which lived in the knowledge in the souls of men was entirely a result of race, of blood. But now these southern peoples, these peoples sitting around the Mediterranean, worked their way out of their blood. Now they worked their way through to a, if I may say so, purely spiritual level. For it was in the sphere of the purely spiritual that intelligence had to be developed.

You see, if man had continued to develop only from these Mediterranean peoples after the 4th century AD, he would have been, so to speak, without a foundation. The blood had nothing more to give. From the racial foundations nothing more developed in the way of soul abilities. Man was, so to speak, dependent on developing out of these regions into a vacuum, figuratively speaking.

This vacuum, that is to say this area of development free of racial factors, was now entered by the people of this Mediterranean region. They had to have something else to lean on. They had to receive from outside what used to come to them through their blood. And they received it in that calculating people, who at that time still knew from the old wisdom teachings how things actually are, transferred the old state views of the Roman Empire to the religious realm and founded the outer Catholic Church. This outer Catholic Church preserved what had previously emerged from the different races in the way of spiritual life; it preserved what the ancient times had kept and condensed it into dogmas. These dogmas were to be propagated. Nothing more was brought forth from man, but what was there was condensed into dogmas. And with that, an inanimate element was introduced from which man could really receive from outside what he had previously received from within. For the Latin language was propagated as a dead language, and the life of knowledge proceeded in the Latin language.

And so one had the one spiritual current, which consisted in the fact that what the old view of life had brought ran out, so to speak, in a dead element. If nothing else had come, this dead element would gradually have had to die out. The whole so-called culture would have had to die out. Admittedly, one would have had a high point, for it was a high point that had been lived up to at that time. The Catholic Church itself has taken over many Gnostic, Manichaean elements, only it has discarded the terminology. It has propagated the old world views. She also took up the old cult forms, preserved them and passed them on in a dead language. What thus continued to live was just as incapable of bringing forth anything that could have advanced civilization as, for example, a woman alone is incapable of bringing forth a child.

That was only one side of the being that was now necessary to move forward. The other side of the nature consisted in the fresh blood that the Germanic and other peoples migrating from Eastern Europe had in them. There was blood again. And the peculiar thing was that these peoples, in their development, if we do not take the word now in a judgmental way, but purely objectively in terms of terminology, were lagging behind the southern peoples. The southern peoples had, as it were, advanced at a gallop to the highest level of civilization, from which intellect then emerged. This stood at its highest level of development in the 4th century AD and was now to become established, to continue to live on as a dead intellect. Thus we have the survival of this dead intellect and the emergence of the Germanic blood of the other peoples who emerged to meet it.

If we now study the external historical processes, we come to something extraordinarily interesting. We come to say that in a certain period of time a complete transformation, a metamorphosis of Western life, is taking place. We see, in fact, that in a large, wide area of Europe, the old culture is dying out and a kind of peasant culture is emerging as a result of the so-called migration of peoples. What the upper crust had as their culture in the old Roman Empire is dying out. What remains is what the broad, settled population had, and something similar, albeit different, was also brought by the Germanic tribes. Within this rural way of life, where people actually lived in small village communities and told each other very different things in these small village communities than what the Catholic priests preached to them, within these areas where the village communities were, the Catholic religion was now spread by external power.

That was the one current that was in Latin. What did the people know who saw how their churches were built, how wisdom was passed on in Latin? What did these people, who were the mainstay of the villages at the time, know about what was going on? What they knew about were the stories they told each other in the evening after work, stories that consisted largely of musings, as we have come to know them from the ancient Egyptians and the like.

It was quite a worldview here, going through the time from the 4th to the 8th, 9th, 10th century through the village communities, which had long since been abandoned in the southern regions, at least among the upper crust. A fine culture had long since emerged from these foundations among the upper classes. And now, in the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th centuries, we see - I have recently explained this in more detail in Dornach, I will only mention it here briefly - how the cities gradually crystallized from the mere village communities. The culture of the city begins, and it is as if the human being is torn away from the outer nature when he is concentrated together in the cities. This city culture, which we can follow from Brittany to Novgorod, deep into the Russian Empire, from above down to Spain, into Italy, everywhere this strange pull towards the city.

And if we look at what actually lives in this transition to urban life, then for those who can study history inwardly, it has a great similarity, an essential similarity to what happened when, after the Trojan War, the cities in Greece developed more out of a farming culture. What happened in Greece in the year 1200 BC was repeated up here now, around the year 950 or thereabouts – all these numbers are approximate – and much as 1200 and 950 years make a difference, so much were these people, who came over from the east as Germanic people, actually behind those in whose area they were now invading. If you add these numbers, the pre-Christian to the post-Christian, you get 2150 or 2160 years, and that is approximately the number of years that lies between two such successive cultures. You can see this from history if you really want to study history. If you ask yourself: how far behind were these Germanic peoples? - it is the length of a cultural epoch. A cultural epoch has lasted just that long, and so one can calculate the degree of maturity of backward peoples by their degree of backwardness.

Now we can also gain a certain clue as to why the fourth cultural epoch, which brought about the actual development of the intellect, begins around 747 BC and, let us say, ends in 1413. That gives you 2160 years. That is the length of such a cultural epoch. Of course, if we go further back, these numbers become somewhat blurred. But that is natural, because historical development cannot be characterized with mathematically exact numbers. These peoples brought something into the blood of the other, the southern population, which was basically there earlier. That was the other current.

And now the world-historical marriage was concluded between what was floating over in the Latin language and what was working its way up to the surface in the vernaculars, in very backward vernaculars. What could develop further had to emerge from these two elements. This then led to the development of the so-called consciousness soul in the 15th century, as I have often mentioned.

The old culture would have had to disappear completely if this new element had not been integrated into it, which in turn was now surrounded by this southern element. The backward and the advanced balanced each other out, and in place of a purely intellectual culture there arose a culture of consciousness.

In this culture, the intellect became a mere shadow. One no longer lived in it as in a grave, but it became a shadowy product, something that only lives in inner activity. And in this way the human being was, as it were, freed from being inwardly possessed by the intellect. He could apply the intellect in his inner activity and could now pass over to the outer observation of nature, as Galilei, Copernicus and Kepler did. But first the intellect had to be freed. If you look at everything that has emerged in European civilization since the beginning of the 15th century, you will see everywhere how it can be traced back to the penetration of this Germanic element into the old Latin-Roman. You can see this quite clearly down to the individual personalities.

Man had, so to speak, stepped into the void by developing from the south. But there was a strong awareness among the leading spirits that with the development of the intellect one enters into something empty. Certain personalities did not want to steer towards something new. If I now hypothetically put this under the aspect of historical development, then what could be said in the time that followed the 4th century AD can be expressed something like this. One could say: We either release the intellect, we let it develop, then the following happens. Whereas in the past what permeated man inwardly with spiritual and soul forces arose from him, he has now reached a highest point where his development has become free, so that he can develop into the void. What no longer clings to his body must, further developed, lead to man penetrating into a spiritual world from without. That was one thing one could have said to oneself. Or one could also say: We retain the old wisdom, we preserve it. Then we can say to people: By developing yourself intellectually up to the 4th century, you have now come to an end. You must not go further. You have come to nothing. Look back now, behind you, not ahead of you; do not continue to walk in the void, so that you may find a new spirituality by walking further. Steeped in this instinct to preserve the old and to hold the intellect back so that it does not develop further, the Eighth General Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 869 was convened, which made a Catholic dogma out of what is then expressed in the words: Man has “unam animam rationalem et intellectualem”, he has a soul that is thinking and spiritual. But beyond this soul he has nothing, nothing further that is spiritual, for if anything spiritual had been ascribed to him, the way would have been open for him to develop into a new spirituality. Therefore, the tripartite human being was denied the spirit after body, soul and spirit, and only individual spiritual properties were attributed to his soul. He did not have body, soul and spirit, but body and soul, and the soul had thinking and spiritual properties, was rational and intellectual. It could not go further. That had now become dogma. It was nothing more than a statement of what actually existed in the matter of preserving the old and rationally processing the old, which was also intended to prevent further progress on the path of spiritual development. What was to become the child of the two merging currents was to be extinguished.

And that is what has continued to have an effect over the course of the 15th century and into our time. On the one hand, the human being has instinctively matured to gradually engage the intellect, of which he was already completely master, in inner activity. On the other hand, he was unable to keep this activated but shadowy mind in his spiritually empty interior, where it could have become active only on its own shadowiness. Although one would think that one would not try to process a shadow inwardly, that became the subject of all philosophy of that time, which therefore has only a shadowy quality. This is how Kantianism ultimately came about, which only has forms and categories, and which, like the other philosophies of the time, only splashes around in this shadowy realm.

It thus became clear that a shadowy intellect alone could not be used; it had to be filled with something else, and that is now the other side, and that could only be the outside world, that could only be external nature. This did not happen for some reason, for example, because man was once childlike and now gradually came to an understanding of nature, but because man needed it for his development. He needed fulfillment. In the last four to five centuries, we have experienced this fulfillment. The shadowy mind has taken hold of nature. This led to a climax. Right in the middle of the 19th century, the mind had become most shadowy.

While the mind itself is the most spiritual, it had been completely disregarded because it had become a shadow. But they had a developed, extensive natural science. The intellect had become filled with what nature offered from the outside, but the possibility of seeing the soul was fading more and more. This soul could be seen less and less, because when one turned to the outside world, one actually had only the shadowy intellect. That is why psychology, the study of the soul in the 19th century, became more and more, I would say, nominalistic, pure word skirmishing. It is downright bleak to read in the psychologies of the 19th century how people keep talking about feeling, wanting, thinking, and actually only have the words, until Fritz Mauthner finally comes and makes the great discovery that all knowledge consists of words and that people have only ever been mistaken when they sought for something behind the words.

This is characteristic of the 19th century, not of humanity, but of the 19th century. In this respect, Mauthner's discovery is not so bad after all. The 19th century, especially when it spoke of the soul, only wove in words, until people finally recognized this weaving in words, this constant juggling with thinking, feeling and willing, apperception ion and perception and everything possible, that which has emerged in English psychology since Alume, especially in the 19th century since John Stuart Mill, this juggling with mere words, until it became too stupid for people. And they said: Now we have found out something so beautiful in natural science through experimentation, so we also experiment with the soul. - Devices had been developed that could emit signals when a person had a perception. One could then know when this perception became conscious, when a person moved his hand as a result of this perception; one could experiment nicely. Until recently, the tendency has been to assess children's abilities, not by putting oneself in the child's place, by a certain devotion to this childlike mind, but by using apparatus to test memory, thinking, and all sorts of other things, as is reported, for example, in Russian schools, where the old style of testing is no longer used, but where abilities are determined from the outside with the help of apparatus. However, this Bolshevik view has already penetrated into our areas. Certain opponents of anthroposophy would also like to determine in such an external way whether this anthroposophy is based on truth, but that only corresponds to a Bolshevik prejudice. All this has its origin in the fact that, by ignoring the spirit, people have gradually come to apply the shadowy intellect to nature and, while producing a magnificent natural science, have left the soul-life unconsidered. But now this soul is asserting itself again, from the depths of the human being, and wants to be explored. To do this, it is necessary to go back the way we came, to remember it, so to speak.

Even if modern science believes itself to be independent, it is still under the influence of the dictate of the Church that man consists only of body and soul and has no spirit. We must come to the spirit again. And basically, spiritual science is just this striving to come to the spirit again and thus to explore the soul of man again, that is, to explore man himself. One will pass through an element that is indeed unpleasant for many, through the organization of man; but it is precisely through this that one will find the truly spiritual in man. But that means that spirit must be reintroduced into the contemplation of humanity. Today, however, there is a considerable obstacle to this, a formidable obstacle. One would almost be afraid to speak of this obstacle, because it is very slippery ground, but the whole signature of the time must be examined. People must become aware of what is actually the impulse of our time. You see, we must consider the following.

Since the middle of the 15th century, when man has lived in the shadowy mind and actually experienced his entire soul existence as a shadow, since that time man has been completely dependent on external nature. And so he gradually came to investigate the external phenomena of nature experimentally, not only in the way that Goethe, who was still inspired by the spirit of antiquity, investigated them, but to seek behind the phenomena for something that is basically also only a kind of phenomenon, but which must not be placed within them. Man came to atomism. Man came to think of the sense world as having another invisible sense world, smaller beings, demonic beings, the atoms. Instead of moving on to a spiritual world, he moved on to a duplicate of the sensual world, again to a sensual but fictitious world, and in this way his cognitive faculty froze for the external sense world. And in the course of the 19th century, this produced more and more something that had always been present, but which only emerged with full radicalism from this complete paralysis of the ability to perceive the external sensory world in the 19th century. That was the over-intellectualization of the law of the conservation of energy. It was said: In the universe, new forces do not arise, but the old ones merely change; the sum of the forces remains constant. If we consider any given moment, so to speak cutting out of world events, then up to this moment there was a certain sum of energies; in the next moment these energies have grouped themselves somewhat differently, they have moved around differently, but the energies are the same; they have only changed. The sum of the energies of the cosmos remains the same. You could no longer distinguish two things. It was perfectly correct to say that measure, number and weight remain the same in the energies. But that is confused with the energies themselves.

Now, if this energy doctrine, this law of the constancy of energy, which today dominates all of natural science, were correct, then there would be no freedom, then every idea of freedom would be a mere illusion. Therefore, for the followers of the law of the constancy of energy, freedom increasingly became an illusion. Just imagine how people like Wundt, for example, explain the freedom that one does feel after all. If I, let us say, am the donkey of the famous Buridan between two bundles of hay, left and right, which are the same size and the same taste, then if I were free, that is, if I were not pushed to one side or the other, I would have to starve to death because I could not make up my mind. When I have to decide not only between two such things, but between many, then, according to such psychologists, I am driven to it nevertheless, but because there are so many concepts that shoot into each other, what obsesses me inside and what works in confusion there, I decide at last and, because I cannot see what actually compels me to do it, I get the feeling of freedom. Yes, it is not ridiculous, it is really not ridiculous for the reason that what I have told you now – I did not expect at all that one would begin to laugh – is stated in numerous very learned works as a great achievement of modern thinking, which is born out of natural science; thus it is actually indecent toward science to laugh about something like that. Well, you see, freedom would be impossible if the law of conservation of energy were true. Because then I would be determined by everything that has gone before at every moment, the energies would merely be transformed, and freedom would have to be a mere illusion. This is what has happened as a result of the development of mankind in the 19th century, through the establishment of the law of the constancy of energy, that we have a view of nature that excludes freedom as an idea, makes it impossible, that makes man unconditionally a product of the necessary order of nature. Things were already prepared, I would like to say, people have felt this way for centuries. What about things like moral responsibility, ethics, religious conviction, which really cannot exist if there is only a natural order? The materialists of the 19th century were honest in a way, they therefore denied these ethical illusions of the old days and really did explain man as only a product of natural necessity. But others could not go along with this, partly because they did not have the courage, like David Friedrich Strauf? or Vogt, or partly because they had sinecures within which they were obliged to speak of freedom, ethics, and religion. You can't go into such things there. The matter had been awkward for a long time, and so it came about that people said to themselves: Yes, with science, you can only do something about necessity. This science proves that the world has emerged from a primeval nebula and that each successive state has always necessarily developed from the earlier one, that the sum of forces has remained constant and so on. With this science, there is no starting point for ethics, religion and so on. So away from this science! Nothing with science, only faith! You have to have a double accounting, on the one hand for the outside world, for the natural world: science; on the other hand, faith, which now determines ethics, even proves God. So we save ourselves to a completely different area than that of science.

The after-effects of this peculiar state of affairs can be seen everywhere since the emergence of newer spiritual science. Those who want to save this belief are called Zaun, Niebergall and Gogarten, and I could tell you a whole series of people, Bruhn, Leese, who think that the field of faith must be saved; when science breaks in, things get bad. So science, everything is accepted, everything is allowed to go, only what we want is called something else: faith. Now, as I said, it was the law of the conservation of energy, but that is only a dogmatic, now a scientific-dogmatic prejudice. Because in the end, what does it actually mean? You see, someone can do the experiment, can say: Yes, I stand in front of a bank building and watch how much money is brought in, and form statistics from that. And then I observe how much money is carried out and also make statistics about that, and I see, nevertheless, the same amount of money is carried out that was carried in. Now I am supposed to still rise to the idea that people work in there! What comes out is only the converted money. It is purely the law of the constancy of the size of money. Very nice experiments have been carried out, which, it seems, have been extended to students. The heat energy of the food has been calculated, and it has been calculated what these people have done, and it has been correctly calculated what was eaten and worked out: the law of conservation of energy! This law of conservation of energy is based on nothing more than a whole series of such prejudices. And if we do not rise above this law of conservation of energy, we will continue to extinguish the spiritual with this law of conservation of energy. For this law of conservation of energy is the implantation of intellect in external nature and the disregard of the soul.

We can only penetrate further into the soul if we in turn penetrate into the spiritual , and to penetrate into this spiritual realm means nothing other than to truly understand what actually entered into world evolution at the beginning of the Christian era as a completely new impulse, the Christ Impulse. I have already mentioned that it was understood in the way that it could be understood by one or other school of thought. But today we are compelled to understand it anew. For a time it was understood in such a way that people did not want to admit that the intellect, going out into the void, could come to a new spiritual realization. I have already told you that Neoplatonism took the Christ into the human soul. This has remained the custom until now. As we penetrate outwards, we must also think of the Christ as being connected with the outer world, that is, we must bring him into the evolution of the outer world. But that is precisely what is being fought against in anthroposophy: not only talking about the Christ in empty phrases, but also seeing him in connection with the whole evolution of the world. And when it is said that it is truly a cosmic event, that a cosmic being has really appeared in a human body, in Christ, that just as sunlight on the earthly plane unites with the earth every day, permeating the earth as something cosmic, so too in the spiritual realm such things take place, this is still not understood, especially by today's scholars. But it is necessary that what has been gained in the field of natural science should be applied to the inner world, so that this intellect, which has become a shadow, but precisely for that reason has become applicable to the outer world as a free human faculty, should also become applicable to the inner world. Therefore, the ascent to imagination, to inspiration, must come about, and thus the ascent to real spiritual knowledge must come about.

The necessity of natural science arises from the historical development of humanity, and the necessity of ascending to spiritual science arises from the existence of natural science. Turning to spiritual science in the anthroposophical sense is not a quirk, but an historical fact of development in itself. But, as I said, it is necessary to tread on thin ice in order to point out where the obstacles are. On the one hand, the obstacles are to be found in something like the law of the conservation of energy. In the 19th century, two laws were intended to limit the human intellect in two ways to that which lives only in the earthly-sensual, in the material. One of these laws was decreed by a council of natural scientists as the law of conservation of energy. If this law is correct, then human knowledge cannot advance to the acknowledgment of the spiritual and of freedom, but must remain at the level of a mere mechanical necessity, and then it must remain at the level of a mere soul, which gradually becomes shadowy. But then one cannot go beyond what has already been established by the eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 869.

These are the two councils: one that started from the natural science side. The other council stands in polar opposition to it. It is the one that in 1870 declared the infallibility of the papal chair when it speaks ex cathedra. In order to arrive at knowledge, people no longer appeal to the spiritual, but to the Roman Pope. The Pope is the one who decides ex cathedra on what is to be true or false as Catholic doctrine. The decision about truth and error is brought down from spiritual heights to earth, into the material world. Just as our knowledge is immersed in the material world through the law of the constancy of force, so is the living development of the human being in the spiritual immersed in the material through the dogma of infallibility. The two belong together, the two relate to each other like the north and south poles.

What we need in the development of humanity, however, is a free spirituality. The ruler must be the spiritual itself, and man must find his way into the spiritual. Therefore, we need the ascent into the spiritual. We need this ascent to raise ourselves up, on the one hand, from the defeat that the spirit has suffered as a result of the law of the conservation of force being established, and from the other defeat that it has suffered as a result of all that is religious having been materialized by the decision about right and wrong being brought down to earth from Rome. It is understandable that a breakthrough in the path of the spirit is not easy today, because the world is thoroughly superficial and is terribly proud of its superficiality. It lets authorities decide, but the authorities sometimes decide in a very strange way. I recently read an article written by a professor who teaches here but lives in a neighboring town, because a local paper had asked him to give an authoritative judgment on this anthroposophy. This professor wrote all sorts of things in this article. Then, in the middle of it, you come across a strange sentence. It says that I claim, in describing the spiritual world, that one can see in this spiritual world how spiritual entities move freely like tables and chairs in physical space. Now that is Traub's logic! Seeing tables and chairs move in physical space – I don't want to examine the mental state of the author at the moment when he wrote such a sentence! But today the journals turn to people of such spiritual caliber when an authoritative decision is to be made about spiritual science. People are strange sometimes. For example, there is a fence. Because I have to give a lecture tomorrow, I read this booklet by Laun yesterday. I always asked myself: Yes, why does Laun talk such nonsense? I actually couldn't understand it because I didn't hear any human voice; it was something very hollow. However, I did come across a very strange sentence, which roughly reads – I don't have the pamphlet here –: It is true, however, that a Catholic Christian, if he were to judge anthroposophy, would actually be like a person who could not know anything about anthroposophy. – That is literally what it says. You can really believe Canon Laun, because then he says quite correctly: Yes, it would be self-evident that a Catholic Christian cannot know anything, because since July 18, 1919, Christians have been forbidden to read the books. They are not forbidden to write counter-writings, but they are forbidden to read the books! - They are not allowed to know anything. There are really strange people.

And that is just the other extreme, this state of having arrived at a completely passive devotion, now not to a spiritual thing, but to something very worldly, to something that definitely exists in the material world. And so one could enumerate many more examples. If one wanted to describe the morality of our time in a little cultural history, one would find many a cute little document. But I will give you just one more example. Here a dangerous heresy – you can guess what it is – is discussed in a feature from Göttingen. But the editors apparently count on the fact that the readers who read this have not read anything at all, have actually not heard anything correct about the subject under discussion. Therefore, a note of fourteen lines is made, and in these fourteen lines, Anthroposophy and Threefolding. I will spare you the treatise on Anthroposophy; I will just read you the last sentence, which is about the threefolding: “The movement strives for the highest possible development of humanity. It has also defined its views with regard to the state. It seeks a division into economic, financial and cultural states!” There you have the threefold order: in the economic, financial and cultural state! So you see, this is how one tries to educate those one is addressing in such criticisms, and one can educate them in such a way. One writes such articles by making comments in which one shows oneself to be so well informed! It is difficult to really struggle through to an understanding of the spiritual world, especially when on the one hand there is the impulse of world-historical development and on the other hand there is the scientific way of thinking, which, one might say, has only been perverted into its opposite with the discovery of the law of the constancy of energy or power. Much will rise up against this work, which consists in the cognizant grasping of the spiritual world. But this work must be done, and even if the opponents have the power to crush it for a time, it must arise again, because if we are to learn from history, we must not only learn to speak from this history, but we must learn to fuel our will and warm our hearts from this history! If we allow history to have this effect on us, then it will show us what our deeds must fulfill, what must penetrate into the spiritual, into the legal-national, into the economic as spiritual.

That is what I wanted to say in conclusion. I wanted to give you an objective presentation of how natural science grows out of the course of human development, and to give, at the end, this perhaps only as an appendix, the realization that it is a lesson of real history, not an agnostic history, that we have lived through in the 19th century, but that it is a teaching of real history: we human beings, we must through to spiritual knowledge!

You will have gathered from the remarks I have made during the last two days that there is a fundamental change in the inner constitution of the human being at every single stage of his life. Today, certainly, modern psychologists and physiologists also take this into account. They too reckon with these changes which take place in the course of life, firstly up to the change of teeth, then up to puberty, and again from puberty into the twenties. But these differences are more profound than can be discovered by means of the methods of observation customary today, which do not reach far enough, however excellent they may be. We must take a further step and examine these differences from aspects demanded by spiritual science. You will hear many things that are already familiar to you, but you must now enter more deeply into them. Even when the child enters this world from the embryo condition, that is, to take an external characteristic, when he adapts himself to the outer process of breathing, even then, physiologically speaking, he is not yet received directly by the outer world, for he takes the natural nourishment of the mother's milk. He is not nourished as yet by what comes from the outer world, but by what comes from the same source as the child himself. Now today people study the substances they meet with in the world more or less according to their external, chemical, physical properties only and do not consider the finer attributes which they possess through their spiritual content. Nowadays everything is considered in this way. Such methods are not to be condemned; on the contrary they should be recognised as justified. Nevertheless because the time came when man was concerned only with the outer aspects of things, aspects which could not be so regarded in earlier civilisations, he has now reached a point of extreme externalisation. If I may make a comparison, things are observed today in some such way as this. We say: I look upon death, upon dying; plants die, animals die, human beings die. But surely the question arises as to whether dying, the passing away of the various forms of life with which we come in contact, is in all three kinds of living beings the same process, or whether this only appears outwardly to be so. We can make use of the following comparisons: If I have a knife there is a real difference whether I cut my food with it, or whether I use it for shaving. In each case it is a knife, but the properties of “knife” must be further differentiated. Such differentiation is in many cases not made today. No differentiation is made between the dying of a plant, an animal or a man.

We meet the same thing in other domains too. There are people who in a certain way want to be philosophers of nature, and because they aim at being idealistic, even spiritual, they assert that plants may well have a soul; and they try to discover in an external way those characteristics of plants which seem to indicate that they have certain soul qualities. They make a study of those plants which, when they are approached by insects, tend to open their petals. The insect is caught, for it is attracted by the scent of what is in the plant. Such a plant is the Venus Flytrap. It closes its petals with a snap and the insect is trapped. This is considered to be a sort of soul quality in the plant. Well, but I know something else which works in the same way. It is to be found in all sorts of places. The mouse, when it comes near, feels attracted by the smell of a dainty morsel; it begins to nibble, and—hey presto! snap goes the mousetrap. If one were to make use of the same thought process as in the case of a plant, one might say: the mousetrap has a soul.

This kind of thinking, however, although quite legitimate under certain conditions never leads to conclusions of any depth, but remains more or less on the surface. If we wish to gain a true knowledge of man we must penetrate into the very depths of human nature. It must be possible for us to look in a completely unprejudiced way at things which appear paradoxical vis-à-vis external methods of observation. Moreover it is very necessary to take into consideration everything which, taken together, makes up the entire human organisation.

In man we have, to begin with, the actual physical organism which he has in common with all earthly beings and particularly with the mineral kingdom. In man, however, we have clearly to distinguish between his physical organism and his etheric organism. The latter he has in common only with the plant world, not with the minerals. But a being endowed only with an etheric organism could never experience feeling, never attain to an inner consciousness. For this again man has his astral organism, which he has in common with the animal world. It might appear that this is an external organisation, but in the course of these lectures we shall see how inward it can be. In addition to this man still has his ego-organisation, which is not to be found in the animal world and which he alone possesses among earthly beings. What we are here considering is in no sense merely an external, intellectual pattern; moreover, in speaking, for instance, of an etheric or life-body, this has no connection whatever with what an outmoded natural science once called “life-force,” “vital-force” and so on. On the contrary, it is the result of observation. If, for instance, we study the child up to the age of the change of teeth, we see that his development is primarily dependent on his physical organism. The physical organism must gradually adapt itself to the outer world, but this cannot take place all at once, not even if considered in the crudest physical sense. This physical body, just because it contains what the human being has brought with him out of the spiritual world in which he lived in pre-earthly existence, cannot forthwith assimilate the substances of the outer world, but must receive them specially prepared in the mother's milk. The child must, so to say, remain closely connected with what is of like nature with himself. He must only gradually grow into the outer world. And the conclusion of this process of the physical organism growing into the outer world is indicated by the appearance of the second teeth at about the seventh year. At approximately this age the child's physical organism completes the process of growing into the world.

During this time, however, in which the organisation is chiefly concerned with the shaping and fashioning of the bony system, the child is only interested in certain things in the outer world, not in everything. He is only interested in what we might call gesture, everything that is related to movement. Now you must take into account that at first the child's consciousness is dream-like, shadowy; to begin with his perceptions are quite undefined, and only gradually do they light up and gain clarity. But fundamentally speaking the fact remains that during the time between birth and the change of teeth the child's perception adheres to everything in the nature of gesture and movement and does so to such an extent, that in the very moment when he perceives a movement he feels an inner urge to imitate it. There exists a quite definite law of development in the nature of the human being which I should like to characterise in the following way.

While the human being is growing into the physical, earthly world, his inner nature is developing in such a way that this development proceeds in the first place out of gesture, out of differentiation of movement. In the inner nature of the organism speech develops out of movement in all its aspects, and thought develops out of speech. This deeply significant law underlies all human development. Everything which makes its appearance in sound, in speech, is the result of gesture, mediated through the inner nature of the human organism.

If you turn your attention to the way in which a child not only learns to speak, but also learns to walk, to place one foot after the other, you can observe how one child treads more strongly on the back part of the foot, on the heel, and another walks more on the toes. You can observe children who in learning to walk tend to bring their legs well forward; with others you will see that they are more inclined to hold back, as it were, between two steps. It is extraordinarily interesting to watch a child learning to walk. You must learn to observe this. But it is more interesting still, although much less attention is paid to it, to see how a child learns to grasp something, how he learns to move his hands. There are children who, when they want something, move their hands in such a way that even the fingers are brought into movement. Others keep their fingers still, and stretch out their hands to take hold without moving the fingers. There are children who stretch out their hand and arm, while keeping the upper part of the body motionless; there are others who immediately let the upper part of the body follow the movement of arm and hand. I once knew a child who, when he was very small and his high-chair was placed at a little distance from the table on which stood some dish he wished to get at, proceeded to “row” himself towards it; his whole body was then in movement. He could make no movements at all without moving his whole body.

This is the first thing to look out for in a child; for how a child moves reveals the most inward urge of life, the primal life impulse. At the same time there appears in the child's movement the tendency to adapt himself to others, to carry out some movement in the same way as his father, mother or other member of the family. The principle of imitation comes to light in gesture, in movement. For gesture is what appears first of all in human evolution, and in the special constitution of the physical, soul and spiritual organism of man gesture is inwardly transformed; it is transformed into speech. Those who are able to observe this know without any doubt that a child who speaks as though the sentences were hacked out of him is one who sets his heels down first; while a child who speaks in such a way that the sentences run one into the other tends to trip on his toes. A child who takes hold of things more lightly with his fingers has the tendency to emphasise the vowel element, while a child who is inclined to stress the consonants will bring his whole arm to his aid when grasping something. We receive a very definite impression of a child's potentialities from his manner of speaking. And to understand the world, to understand the world through the medium of the senses, through the medium of thought, this too is developed out of speech. Thought does not produce speech, but speech thought. So it is in the cultural development of humanity as a whole; human beings have first spoken, then thought. So it is also with the child; first out of movement he learns to speak, to articulate only then does thinking come forth from speech. We must therefore look upon this sequence as being something of importance: gesture, speech, thought, or the process of thinking.

All this is especially characteristic in the first epoch of the child's life, up to the change of teeth. When little by little the child grows into the world during the first, second, third and fourth years of life, he does so through gesture; everything is dependent on gesture. Indeed, I would say that speaking and thinking take place for the most part unconsciously; both develop naturally out of gesture, even the first gesture. Therefore speaking approximately we can say: From the first to the seventh year gesture predominates in the life of the child, but gesture in the widest sense of the word, gesture which in the child lives in imitation. As educators we must keep this firmly in mind for actually up to the change of teeth the child only takes in what comes to him as gesture, he shuts himself off from everything else. If we say to the child: Do it like this, do it like that, he really does not hear, he does not take any notice. It is only when we stand in front of him and show him how to do it that he is able to copy us. For the child works according to the way I myself am moving my fingers, or he looks at something just as I am looking at it, not according to what I tell him. He imitates everything. This is the secret of the development of the child up to the change of teeth. He lives entirely in imitation, entirely in the imitation of what in the widest possible sense comes to meet him from outside as gesture. This accounts for the surprises we get when faced with the education of very young children. A father came to me once and said, “What shall I do? Something really dreadful has happened. My boy has been stealing.” I said, “Let us first find out whether he really steals. What has he done?” The father told me that the boy had taken money out of the cupboard, had bought sweets with it and shared them with the other boys. I said “Presumably that is the cupboard out of which the boy has often seen his mother taking money, before going shopping; he is quite naturally imitating her.” And this proved to be the case. So I said further, “But that is not stealing; that lies as a natural principle of development in the boy up to the change of teeth. He imitates what he sees; he must do so.” In the presence of a child therefore we should avoid doing anything which he should not imitate. This is how we educate him. If we say: You should not do this or that, it does not influence the child in the slightest degree up to the change of teeth. It could at most have some effect if one were to clothe the words in a gesture, by saying: Now look, you have just done something that I would never do!—for this is in a way a disguised gesture.

It comes to this: with our whole manhood we should fully understand how up to the change of teeth the child is an imitating being. During this time there is actually an inner connection between the child and his environment, between all that is going on around him. Later on this is lost. For however strange and paradoxical it may sound to people today, who are quite unable to think correctly about the spirit, but think always in abstractions, it is nevertheless true that the whole relationship of the child to gesture and movement in his surroundings has an innate religious character. Through his physical body the child is given over to everything in the nature of gesture; he cannot do otherwise than yield himself up to it. What we do later with our soul, and still later with our spirit, in that we yield ourselves up to the divine, even to the external world, as again spiritualised, this the child does with his physical body when he brings it into movement. He is completely immersed in religion, both with his good and his bad qualities. What remains with us as soul and spirit in later life, this the child has also in his physical organism. If therefore the child lives in close proximity with a surly, “bearish” father, liable to fall into rages, someone who is often irritable and angry, expressing uncontrolled emotions in the presence of the child, while the inner causes of such emotions are not as yet understood by the child, nevertheless what he sees, he experiences as something not moral. The child perceives simultaneously, albeit unconsciously, the moral aspects of these outbreaks, so that he has not only the outer picture of the gesture, but also absorbs its moral significance. If I make an angry gesture, this passes over into the blood organisation of the child, and if these gestures recur frequently they find expression in his blood circulation. The child's physical body is organised according to the way in which I behave in his presence, according to the kind of gestures I make. Moreover if I fail in loving understanding when the child is present, if, without considering him I do something which is only suitable at a later age, and am not constantly on the watch when he is near me, then it can happen that the child enters lovingly into something which is unfitted for his tender years, but belongs to another age, and his physical body will in that case be organised accordingly. Whoever studies the whole course of a man's life from birth to death, bearing in mind the requirements of which I have spoken, will see that a child who has been exposed to things suitable only to grown-up people and who imitates these things will in his later years, from the age of about 50, suffer from sclerosis. One must be able to examine such phenomena in all their ramifications. Illnesses that appear in later life are often only the result of educational errors made in the very earliest years of childhood.

This is why an education which is really based on a knowledge of man must study the human being as a whole from birth until death. To be able to look at man as a whole is the very essence of anthroposophical knowledge. Then too one discovers how very strong the connection is between the child and his environment. I would go as far as to say that the soul of the child goes right out into his surroundings, experiences these surroundings intimately, and indeed has a much stronger relationship to them than at a later period of life. In this respect the child is still very close to the animal, only he experiences things in a more spiritual way, in a way more permeated with soul. The animal's experiences are coarser and cruder, but the animal too is related to its environment. The reason why many phenomena of recent times remain unexplained is because people are not able to enter into all the details involved. There is, for instance, the case of the “calculating horses” which has made such a stir recently, where horses have carried out simple arithmetical operations through stamping with their hooves. I have not seen the famous Elberfelder horses, but I have seen the horse belonging to Herr von Osten. This horse did quite nice little sums. For instance Herr von Osten asked: How much is 5 + 7? And he began to count, beginning with 1, and when he got to 12 the horse stamped with its foot. It could add up, subtract and so on. Now there was a young professor who studied this problem and wrote a book about it which is extremely interesting. In this book he expounds the view that the horse sees certain little gestures made by Herr von Osten, who always stands close to the horse. His opinion is that when Herr von Osten counts 7 + 5 up to 12 and the horse stamps when the number 12 is reached, this is because Herr von Osten makes a very slight gesture when he comes to 12 and the horse, noticing this, duly stamps his foot. He believes that it can all be traced back to something visible. But now he puts a question to himself: “Why,” he says, “can you not see this gesture which Herr von Osten makes so skilfully that the horse sees it and stamps at the number 12?” The young professor goes on to say that these gestures are so slight that he as a human being cannot see them. From this the conclusion might be drawn that a horse sees more than a professor! But this did not convince me at all, for I saw this wonder of an intelligent horse, the clever Hans, standing by Herr von Osten in his long coat. And I saw too that in his right-hand pocket he had lumps of sugar, and while he was carrying out his experiments with the horse he always handed it one lump after another, so that feeling was aroused in the horse associating sweet things with Herr von Osten. In this way a sort of love was established between Herr von Osten and the horse. And only when this is present, only when the inner being of the horse is, as it were, merged into the inner being of Herr von Osten through the stream of sweetness that flows between them, only then can the horse “calculate,” for it really receives something—not through gesture, but through what Herr von Osten is thinking. He thinks: 5 + 7 = 12, and by means of suggestion the horse takes up this thought and even has a distinct impression of it. One can actually see this. The horse and his master are in a certain way merged in feeling one into the other: they impart something to one another reciprocally when they are united through the medium of sweetness. So the animal still has this finer relationship to its environment, and this can be stimulated from outside, as, in this case, by means of sugar.

In a delicate way a similar relationship to the outer world is still present in children also. It lives in the child and should be reckoned with. Education in the kindergarten should therefore never depend on anything other than the principle of imitation. The teacher must sit down with the children and just do what she wishes them to do, so that the child has only to copy. All education and instruction before the change of teeth must be based on this principle.

After the change of teeth all this becomes quite different. The soul life of the child is now completely changed. No longer does he perceive merely the single gestures, but now he sees the way in which these gestures accord with one another. For instance, whereas previously he only had a feeling for a definite line, now he has a feeling for co-ordination, for symmetry. The feeling is awakened for what is co-ordinated or uncoordinated, and in his soul the child acquires the possibility of perceiving what is formative. As soon as this perception is awakened there appears simultaneously an interest in speech. During the first seven years of life there is an interest in gesture, in everything connected with movement; in the years between seven and fourteen there is an interest in everything connected with the pictorial form, and speech is pre-eminently pictorial and formative. After the change of teeth the child's interest passes over from gesture to speech, and in the lower school years from seven to fourteen we can work most advantageously through everything that lies in speech, above all through the moral element underlying speech. For just as the child before this age has a religious attitude towards the gesture which meets him in the surrounding world, so now he relates himself in a moral sense—his religious feeling being gradually refined into a soul experience—to everything which approaches him through speech.

So now, in this period of his life, one must work upon the child through speech. But whatever is to work upon him in this way must do so by means of an unquestioned authority. When I want to convey to the child some picture expressed through speech, I must do so with the assurance of authority. I must be the unquestioned authority for the child when through speech I want to conjure up before him some picture. Just as we must actually show the little child what we want him to do, so we must be the human pattern for the child between the change of teeth and puberty. In other words, there is no point whatever in giving reasons to a child of this age, in trying to make him see why we should do something or not do it, just because there are well-founded reasons for or against it. This passes over the child's head. It is important to understand this. In exactly the same way as in the earliest years of life the child only observes the gesture, so between the change of teeth and puberty he only observes what I, as a human being, am in relation to himself. At this age the child must, for instance, learn about what is moral in such a way that he regards as good what the naturally accepted authority of the teacher, by means of speech, designates as good; he must regard as bad what this authority designates as bad. The child must learn: What my teacher, as my authority, does is good, what he does not do is bad. Relatively speaking then, the child feels: When my teacher says something is good, then it is good; and if he says something is bad, then it is bad. You will not attribute to me, seeing that 30 years ago I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom a point of view which upholds the principle of authority as the one and only means of salvation. But through the very fact of knowing the true nature of freedom one also knows that between the change of teeth and puberty the child needs to be faced with an unquestioned authority. This lies in the nature of man. Everything is doomed to failure in education which disregards this relationship of the child to the unquestioned authority of the personality of the teacher and educator. The child must be guided in everything which he should do or not do, think or not think, feel or not feel, by what flows to him, by way of speech, from his teacher and educator. At this age therefore there is no sense in wanting to approach him through the intellect. During this time everything must be directed towards the life of feeling, for feeling is receptive to anything in the nature of pictures and the child of this age is so constituted that he lives in the world of pictures, of images, and has the feeling of welding separate details into a harmonious whole. This is why, for instance, what is moral cannot be brought to the child by way of precept, by saying: You should do this, you should not do that. It simply doesn't work. What does work is when the child, through the way in which one speaks to him, can feel inwardly in his soul a liking for what is good, a dislike of what is bad. Between the change of teeth and puberty the child is an aesthete and we must therefore take care that he experiences pleasure in the good and displeasure in what is bad. This is the best way for him to develop a sense of morality.

We must also be sincere, inwardly sincere in the imagery we use in our work with the child. This entails being permeated to the depths of our being by everything we do. This is not the case if, when standing before the child we immediately experience a slight sense of superiority: I am so clever—the child is so stupid. Such an attitude ruins all education; it also destroys in the child the feeling for authority. Well then, how shall I transform into a pictorial image something that I want to impart to the child? In order to make this clear I have chosen the following example as an illustration.

We cannot speak to the child about the immortality of the soul in the same way as to a grown-up person; but we must nevertheless convey to him some understanding of it. We must however do so in a pictorial way. We must build up the following picture and to do this may well take the whole lesson.

We can explain to the child what a butterfly's chrysalis is, and then speak in some such words as these: “Well, later on the finished butterfly flies out of the chrysalis. It was inside all the time only it was not yet visible, it was not yet ready to fly away, but it was already there inside.” Now we can go further and tell him that in a similar way the human body contains the soul, only it is not visible. At death the soul flies out of the body; the only difference between man and butterfly is that the butterfly is visible and the human soul is invisible. In this way we can speak to the child about the immortality of the soul so that he receives a true picture of immortality and one suited to his age. But in the presence of the child we must on no account have the feeling: I am clever, I am a philosopher and by no means of thought can I convince myself of the truth of immortality; the child is naive, is stupid, and so for him I will build up the picture of the butterfly creeping out of the chrysalis. If one thinks in this way one establishes no contact with the child, and then he gets nothing whatever from what he is told. There is only one possibility. We must ourselves believe in the picture, we must not want to be cleverer than the child; we must stand in the presence of the child as full of belief as he is. How can this be done? An anthroposophist, a student of spiritual science knows that the emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis is actually a picture of the immortality of the human soul placed into the world by the gods. He can never think otherwise than that the gods inscribed into the world this picture of the emerging butterfly as an image of the immortality of the human soul. In all the lower stages of the process he sees the higher processes which have become abstract. If I do not get the idea that the child is stupid and I am clever, but if I stand before the child conscious that this actually is so in the world and that I am leading him to believe in something which I too believe with all my heart, then there arises an imponderable relationship between us, and the child makes real progress in his education. Then moral imponderabilia continually enters into our educational relationship. And this is the crux of the matter.

When we are quite clear about this we shall, out of the whole nexus of our studies, come to see how we can find the right approach to an instruction which is truly educational, an education which really instructs. Let us take an example. How must the child learn to read and write? There is actually a great deal more misery connected with this than one usually imagines, though human intellectualism is far too crude to perceive it. One recognises that learning to read and write is a necessity, so it follows that the child must at all costs be drilled into learning reading and writing. But just consider what this means for a child! When they are grown-up, people have no inclination to put themselves in the child's place, to imagine what he undergoes when he learns to read and write. In our civilisation today we have letters, a, b, c and so on; they are there before us in certain definite forms. Now the child has the sound a (ah, as in father). When does he use it? This sound is for him the expression of an inner soul experience. He uses this sound when he is faced with something which calls up in him a feeling of wonder, of astonishment. This sound he understands. It is bound up with human nature. Or he has the sound e (eh, as in they). When does he use this? He uses it when he wants to show he has the feeling: “Something has come up against me; I have experienced something which encroaches on my own nature.” If somebody gives me a blow, I say e (eh).¹ It is the same with the consonants. Every sound corresponds to some expression of life; the consonants imitate an outer, external world, the vowels express what is experienced inwardly in the soul. The study of language, philology, is today only approaching the first elements of such things.

Learned scholars, who devote themselves to research into language, have given much thought to what, in the course of human evolution, may have been the origin of speech. There are two theories. The one represents the view that speech may have arisen out of soul experiences in much the same way as this takes place in the animal, albeit in its most primitive form—“moo-moo” being the expression of what the cow feels inwardly, and “bow-wow” what is experienced by the dog. And so, in a more complicated way, what in man becomes articulated speech arises out of this urge to give expression to inner feelings and experiences. In somewhat humorous vein this is called the “bow-wow theory.” The other point of view proceeds from the supposition that in the sounds of speech man imitates what takes place in the outer world. It is possible to imitate the sound of a bell, what is taking place inside the bell: “ding-dong—ding-dong.” Here there is the attempt to imitate what takes place in the outer world. This is the basis for the theory that in speech everything may be traced back to external sounds, external event. It is the “ding-dong theory.” So we have these two theories in opposition to one another. It is not in any way my intention to make fun of this, for as a matter of fact, both are correct: the “bow-wow” theory is right for the vowel element in speech, the “ding-dong” theory for the consonantal element. In transposing gestures into sounds we learn by means of the consonants to imitate inwardly outer processes; and in the vowels we give form to inner experiences of the soul. In speech the inner and the outer unite. Human nature, itself homogeneous, understands how to bring this about.

We receive the child into the primary school. Through his inner organisation he has become a being able to speak. Now, suddenly he is expected to experience—I say experience deliberately weighing my words, not recognise, experience—a connection between astonishment, wonder, (ah) and the demonic sign a. This is something completely foreign to him. He is supposed to learn something which he feels to be utterly remote, and to relate this to the sound “ah.” This is something outside the sphere of a young child's comprehension. He feels it as a veritable torture if at the very outset we confront him with the forms of the letters in use today.

We can, however, remember something else. The letters which we have today were not always there. Let us look back to those ancient peoples who had a picture writing. They used pictures to give tangible form to what was uttered, and these pictures certainly had something to do with what they were intended to express. They did not have letters such as we use, but pictures which were related to their meaning. Up to a certain point the same could be said of cuneiform writing. These were times when people still had a human relationship to things, even when these were fixed into a definite form. Today we no longer have this, but with the child we must go back to it again. We must of course not do so in such a way that we study the cultural history of ancient peoples and fall back on the forms which were once used in picture writing; but we must bring all our educational fantasy into play as teachers in order to create the kind of pictures we need. Fantasy, imagination [The German phantasie is often more equivalent to the English imagination than to fantasy. In this lecture the latter is probably more appropriate.] we must certainly have, for without it we cannot be teachers or educators. And so it is always necessary to refer to the importance of enthusiasm, of inspiration, when dealing with some characteristic feature of anthroposophy. It never gives me any pleasure, for instance, when I go into a class in our Waldorf School and notice that a teacher is tired and is teaching out of a certain mood of weariness. That is something one must never do. One simply cannot be tired, one can only be filled with enthusiasm. When teaching, one must be absolutely on the spot with one's whole being. It is quite wrong to be tired when teaching; tiredness must be kept for some other occasion. The essential thing for a teacher is that he learns to give full play to his fantasy. What does this mean? To begin with I call up in the child's mind something that he has seen at the market, or some other place, a fish for example. I next get him to draw a fish, and for this I even allow him to use colours, so that he paints as he draws and draws as he paints. This being achieved I then let him say the word “Fish,” not speaking the word quickly, but separating the sounds, “f-i-ssh.” Then I lead him on so that he says only the beginning of the word fish (f...) and gradually I transfer the shape of the fish into a sign that is somewhat fish like, while at the same time getting the child to say f ... And there we have it, the letter “f!”

Or I let the child say Wave (W-a-v-e) showing him at the same time what a wave is (see sketch). Once again I let him paint this and get him to say the beginning of the word—w—and then I change the picture of a wave into the letter w.

Continuing to work in the same way I allow the written characters gradually to emerge from the painting-drawing and drawing-painting, as indeed they actually arose in the first place. I do not bring the child into a stage of civilisation with which as yet he has nothing in common, but I guide him in such a way that he is never torn away from his relationship to the outer world. In order to do this there is no necessity to study the history of culture—albeit the writing in use today has arisen out of picture-writing—one must only give free play to one's fantasy, for then one brings the child to the point at which he is able to form writing out of this drawing and painting.

Now we must not think of this only as an ingenious and clever new method. We must value the fact that the child unites himself inwardly with something that is new to him when his soul activity is constantly stimulated. He does not “grow into it” when he is pushed, so that he is always coming into an unfamiliar relationship with his environment. The whole point is that we are working on the inner being of the child.

What is usually done today? It is perhaps already somewhat out-of-date, but not so long ago people gave little girls “beautiful” dolls, with real hair, dolls that could shut their eyes when one laid them down, dolls with pretty faces and so on. Civilisation calls them beautiful, but they are nevertheless hideous, because they are inartistic. What sort of dolls are these? They are the sort which cannot activate the child's fantasy. Now let us do something different. Tie a handkerchief so that you have a figure with arms and legs; then make eyes with blobs of ink and perhaps a mouth with red ink as well; now the child must develop his fantasy if he is to imagine this as having the human shape. Such a thing works with tremendous living force on the child, because it offers him the possibility of using his fantasy. Naturally one must do this first oneself. But the possibility must be provided for the child, and this must be done at the age when everything is play. It is for this reason that all those things which do not stimulate fantasy in the child are so damaging when given as toys. As I said, today these beautiful dolls are somewhat out-dated, for now we give children monkeys or bears. To be sure, neither do these toys give any opportunity for the unfolding of a fantasy having any relationship to the human being. Let us suppose that a child runs up to us and we give him a bear to cuddle. Things like this show clearly how far our civilisation is from being able to penetrate into the depths of human nature. But it is quite remarkable how children in a perfectly natural, artistic way are able to form imaginatively a picture of this inner side of human nature.

In the Waldorf School we have made a transition from the ordinary methods of teaching to what may be termed a teaching through art, and this quite apart from the fact that in no circumstances do we begin by teaching the children to write, but we let them paint as they draw, and draw as they paint. Perhaps we might even say that we let them splash about, which involves the possibly tiresome job of cleaning up the classroom afterwards. I shall also speak tomorrow about how to lead over from writing to reading, but, quite apart from this painting and drawing, we guide the child as far as possible into the realm of the artistic by letting him practise modelling in his own little way, but without suggesting that he should make anything beyond what he himself wants to fashion out of his own inner being. The results are quite remarkable. I will mention one example which shows how something very wonderful takes place in the case of rather older children.

At a comparatively early age, that is to say, for children between ten and eleven years old, we take as a subject in our curriculum the “Study of Man.” At this age the children learn to know how the bones are formed and built up, how they support each other, and so on. They learn this in an artistic way, not intellectually. After a few such lessons the child has acquired some perception of the structure of the human bones, the dynamic of the bones and their interdependence. Then we go over to the craft-room, where the children model plastic forms and we observe what they are making. We see that they have learned something from these lessons about the bones. Not that the child imitates the forms of the bones, but from the way in which he now models his forms we perceive the outer expression of an inner mobility of soul. Before this he has already got so far as to be able to make little receptacles of various kinds; children discover how to make bowls and similar things quite by themselves, but what they make out of the spontaneity of childhood before they have received such lessons is quite different from what they model afterwards, provided they have really experienced what was intended. In order to achieve this result, however, these lessons on the “Knowledge of Man” must be given in such a way that their content enters right into the whole human being. Today this is difficult.

Anyone who has paid as many visits to studios as I have and seen how people paint and model and carve, knows very well that today hardly any sculptor works without a model; he must have a human form in front of him if he wishes to model it.

This would have had no sense for a Greek artist. He had of course learned to know the human form in the public games, but he really experienced it inwardly. He knew out of his own inner feeling—and this feeling he embodied without the aid of a model—he knew the difference between an arm when it is stretched out or when, in addition, the forefinger is also extended, and this feeling he embodied in his sculpture. Today, however, when physiology is taught in the usual way, models or drawings of the bones are placed side by side, the muscles are described one after another and no impression is given of their reciprocal relationship. With us, when the children see a vertebra belonging to the spinal column, they know how similar it is to the skull-bone, and they get a feeling for the metamorphosis of the bones. In this way they enter livingly right into the different human forms and so feel the urge to express it artistically. Such an experience enters right into life; it does not remain external.

My earnest wish, and also my duty as leader of the Waldorf School, is to make sure that wherever possible everything of a fixed nature in the way of science, everything set down in books in a rigid scientific form should be excluded from class teaching. Not that I do not value science; no one could value science more highly. Such studies can be indulged in outside the school, if so desired; but I should be really furious if I were to see a teacher standing in front of a class with a book in his or her hand. In teaching everything must come from within. This must be self-understood. How is botany taught today for instance? We have botany books; these are based on a scientific outlook, but they do not belong to the classroom where there are children between the change of teeth and puberty. The perception of what a teacher needs in the way of literature must be allowed to grow gradually out of the living educational principles I shall be speaking about here.

So we are really concerned with the teacher's attitude of mind, whether in soul, spirit and body he is able to relate himself to the world. If he has this living relationship he can do much with the children between the change of teeth and puberty, for he is then their natural and accepted authority. The main thing is that one should enter into and experience things in a living way and carry over into life all that one has thus experienced. This is the great and fundamental principle which must form the basis of education today. Then the connection with the class will be there of itself, together with the imponderable mood and feeling that must necessarily go with it.

Answers to a Question

Question: There are grown-up people who seem to have remained at the imitative stage of childhood. Why is this?

Dr. Steiner: It is possible at every stage of human development for someone to remain in a stationary condition. If we describe the different stages of development, adding to today's survey the embryonic stage, and continuing to the change of teeth, and on to puberty, we cover those epochs in which a fully developed human life can be formed. Now quite a short time ago the general trend of anthroposophical development brought it about that lectures could be held on curative education, with special reference to definite cases of children who had either remained backward or whose development was in some respect abnormal. We then took the further step of allowing certain cases to be seen which were being treated at Dr. Wegmann's Clinical-Therapeutic Institute. Among these cases there was one of a child of nearly a year old, about the normal size for a child of this age, but who in the formation of his physical body had remained approximately at the stage of seven or eight months embryo. If you were to draw the child in outline with only an indication of the limbs, which are somewhat more developed, but showing exactly the form of the head, as it actually is in the case of this little boy, then, looking cursorily at the drawing, you would not have the faintest idea that it is a boy of nearly a year old. You would think it an embryo, because this boy has in many respects kept after his birth the embryonic structure.

Every stage of life, including the embryonic, can be carried over into a later stage; for the different phases of development as they follow one after the other, are such that each new phase is a metamorphosis of the old, with something new added. If you will only take quite exactly what I have already said in regard to the natural religious devotion of the child to his surroundings up to the change of teeth, you will see that this changes later into the life of soul, and you have, as a second attribute the aesthetic, artistic stage. Now it happens with very many children that the first stage is carried into the second, and the latter then remains poorly developed. But this can go still further: the first stage of physical embodiment can be carried over into each of the others, so that what was present as the original stage appears in all the later stages. And, for a superficial observation of life, it need not be so very obvious that an earlier stage has remained on into a later one, unless such a condition shows itself particularly late in life. Certain it is however that earlier stages are carried over into later ones.

Let us take the same thing in a lower kingdom of nature. The fully grown, fully developed plant usually has root, stalk, with it cotyledon leaves, followed by the later green leaves. These are then concentrated in the calyx, the petals, the stamen, the pistil and so on. There are however plants which do not develop as far as the blossom, but remain behind at the stage of herbs and other plants where the green leaves remain stationary, and the fruit is merely rudimentary. How far, for instance, the fern has remained behind the buttercup! With the plant this does not lead to abnormality. Man however is a species for himself. He is a complete natural order. And it can happen that someone remains his whole life long an imitative being, or one who stands in need of authority. For in life we have not only to do with people who remain at the imitative stage, but also with those who in regard to their essential characteristics remain at the stage that is fully developed between the change of teeth and puberty. As a matter of fact there are very many such people, and with them this stage continues into later life. They cannot progress much farther, and what should be developed in later years can only do so to a limited extent. They remain always at the stage where they look for the support of authority. If there were no such people, neither would there be the tendency, so rife today, to form sects and such things, for sectarian associations are based on the fact that their adherents are not required to think; they leave the thinking to others and follow their leaders. In certain spheres of life, however, most people remain at the stage of authority. For instance, when it is a question of forming a judgment about something of a scientific nature people do not take the trouble to look into it themselves, but they ask: Where is the expert who must know about this, the specialist who is a lecturer at one of the universities? There you have the principle of authority. Again in the case of people who are ill the principle of authority is carried to extremes, even though here it may be justifiable. And in legal matters, for instance, nobody today will think of forming an independent judgment, but will seek the advice of a solicitor because he has the requisite knowledge. Here the standpoint is that of an eight or nine year old child. And it may well be that this solicitor himself is not much older. When a question is put to him he takes down a lawbook or portfolio and there again you have an authority. So it is actually the case that each stage of life can enter into a later one.

The Anthroposophical Society should really only consist of people who are outgrowing authority, who do not recognise any such principle but only true insight. This is so little understood by people outside the Society that they are continually saying: “Anthroposophy is based on authority.” In reality the precise opposite is the case; the principle of authority must be outgrown through the kind of understanding and discernment which is fostered in anthroposophy. The important thing is that one should grasp every scrap of insight one can lay hold of in order to pass through the different stages of life.

• 1. In English we tend to prefix an aspirate to the vowel, saying “Ha” when something astonishes us, or “Heh” when something impinges on us, e.g. “Heh, stop it!”

Arising out of yesterday's lecture a further question has been put to me in connection with our subject and I should like to deal with it here. The question is this: “With reference to the law of imitation in a child's movements I regard as important an explanation of the following fact. My grandfather died when my father was between eighteen months and two years old. When he was about forty-five my father visited one of my grandfather's friends who was astonished at the similarity of all my father's movements and gestures with those of my grandfather. What was the cause of this, seeing that owing to my grandfather's early death there could hardly be any question of imitation!”

So a man died when his son was between eighteen months and two years old and long afterwards, when the latter was in his 45th year, he heard from this friend, who was in a position to know, that as late as his 45th year he still imitated, or rather had the same gestures as his father.

Of course we are dealing here with matters of such a nature that it is scarcely possible to do more than give certain guiding lines, omitting detailed explanations. Unfortunately our courses of lectures are short, and the theme, if it were to be gone into fully, would need many lectures and ample time, six months for instance, or even a whole year. Very many questions are therefore likely to arise, and it may well be possible to answer these if they are brought forward. I must however point out that owing to the limited time at our disposal a certain lack of clarity will inevitably arise and this could only be cleared up if it were possible to enter fully into every detail. With reference to the question which has been put I should like to interpolate the following remarks.

If we take the first epoch of a child's life, that is, the time between birth and the change of teeth, the organisation of the child is working and developing in such a way that those predispositions are incorporated into the organism which I described yesterday as consisting of walking, which includes the general orientation of the human being, of speaking and thirdly of thinking.

Now this is how things follow one another. Between the first and seventh year of life the child is so organised that he is mainly concerned with gesture; between approximately the seventh and fourteenth year he is concerned with speech, as I explained yesterday; and, again speaking approximately, between his fourteenth and twenty-first year he is so organised that he is mainly concerned with thinking. What thus makes its appearance in the course of twenty-one years is however already taking shape as predisposition in the first period of life, between birth and the change of teeth. In so far as the assimilation of gesture is concerned, and this includes walking freely in space without need of support, so that the arms and also the muscles of the face can move in an expressive way—in other words a general orientation, finding a living relationship with gesture and movement—all this is developed mainly in the first third of these years, that is to say in the first 2⅓ years. The main development of the child during this time lies in the unfolding and building up of gesture. The gestures then continue to develop, but in addition something more intimate and inward is now impressed into the speech organism. Although the child has already uttered a few words nevertheless the experience of speech as predisposition takes place after 2⅓ years. The actual experience and feeling for speech is fully developed between the seventh and fourteenth year, but as predisposition it is there between 2⅓ and 4⅔ years old. Naturally all this must be taken as an average. From then on the child develops the faculty of experiencing inwardly the first beginnings of thought. What unfolds and blossoms later, between the 14th and 21st year is already developing germinally between 4⅔ and 7 years old. The forming of gestures continues of course throughout these years, but other faculties enter in. We see therefore that in the main we have to place the time for the unfolding and forming of gestures right back to the first 2½ years. What is gained during this time lies deepest. This is only natural, for we can well imagine how fundamentally the principle of imitation works in the very first years of life.

If you take all this together you will no longer find anything astonishing in what gave rise to the question that has been put here. The grandfather died when the father was between 1½ and 2 years old. Now this is precisely the time in which the forming of gesture is working most deeply. If the grandfather died then, the gestures the child imitated from him made by far the deepest impression. That is in no way altered by what may have been imitated later from other people. So just this particular case is extraordinarily significant when we consider it in detail.

We tried yesterday to explain how in the second period of life, between the change of teeth and puberty, the child in the course of his development experiences everything that finds its expression through speech, in which the self-understood authority of the teacher and educator must play its part. The intercourse between teacher and child must be of such a kind that it works in a pictorial, imaginative way. And I pointed out how at this age one cannot approach the child with moral precepts but can only work effectively on his moral nature by awakening in him such feelings as can be awakened by pictures: so that the child receives pictures described by his teacher and educator, who is also his model. These work in such a way that what is good pleases him and what is bad gives him a feeling of distaste. Therefore at this preparatory or elementary school age morality must be instilled in pictorial form by way of the feelings.

I explained further how writing must be brought to the child in a pictorial way and I showed how the forms of the letters must be developed out of the drawing-painting and the painting-drawing. Of all the arts this must be cultivated first, for it leads the child into civilisation. Everything which introduces the child at the very outset into the forms of the letters, which are completely strange to him, is quite wrong from an educational point of view; for the finished forms of the letters used in our present day civilisation work on the child like little demons.

Now in an education built up on a knowledge of man, learning to write must precede learning to read. If you want to come near to a child of this age, immediately after the change of teeth, you must as far as possible approach the whole being of the child. The child when occupied in writing does at least bring the whole of the upper part of the body into activity; there is an inner mobility which is quite different from when only the head is kept busy learning the forms of the letters. The emancipated, independent faculties of the head can only be made use of at a later age. For this reason we can make a transition by allowing the child also to read what he has written. In this way an impression is made on him.

By carrying out our teaching in this way at the Waldorf School it transpired that our children learn to read somewhat later than others; they even learn to write the letters a little later than children in other schools. It is necessary however, before forming a judgment in regard to this to be able really to enter into the nature of man with understanding. With the limited perception and feeling for a knowledge of man usual at the present day, people do not notice at all how detrimental it is for the general development of the human being if, as a child, he learns too early things so remote from him as reading and writing. Certainly nobody will experience any deficiency in his capacity to read and write, whose proficiency in these arts is attained somewhat later than others; on the other hand everyone who learns to read and write too early will suffer in this very respect. An education based on a knowledge of man must from the very beginning, proceed out of this ability to read human evolution and by understanding the conditions of life help the child in furthering the development of his own nature. This is the one and only way to a really health-giving education.

To gain deeper insight we must enter somewhat into the being of man. In man we have in the first place his physical body which is most intensively developed in the first epoch of life. In the second epoch the higher, finer body, the etheric body, develops predominantly. Now it is a matter of great importance that in this study of man we should proceed in a truly scientific way, and we must conjure up the same courage as is shown today in other branches of science. A substance showing a definite degree of warmth, can be brought into a condition in which that warmth, hitherto bound up with substance, becomes freed. It is liberated and then becomes “free” warmth. In the case of mineral substances we have the courage to speak scientifically when we say that there is “bound” warmth and “free” warmth. We must acquire the same courage when we study the world as a whole. If we have this courage then the following reveals itself to us in regard to man.

We can ask: Where are the forces of the etheric body in the first epoch of life? During this time they are bound up with the physical body and are active in its nourishment and growth. In this first epoch the child is different from what he becomes later. The entire forces of the etheric body are at first bound up with the physical body. At the end of the first epoch they are freed to some extent, just as warmth becomes free from the substances with which it was formerly bound up. What takes place now? Only a part of the etheric body is working after the change of teeth in the forces of growth and nourishment; the freed part becomes the bearer of the more intensive development of the memory, of qualities of soul. We must learn to speak of a soul that is “bound” during the first seven years of life and of a soul that has become free after the 7th year. For it is so. What we use as forces of the soul in the second seven years of life is imperceptibly bound up with the physical body during the first seven years; this is why nothing of a psychic nature becomes body free. A knowledge of how the soul works in the first seven years of life must be gained from observation of the body. And only after the change of teeth can any direct approach be made to what is purely of a soul nature.

This is a way of looking at things which leads directly from the physical to the psychological. Just think of the many different approaches to psychology today. They are based on speculation pure and simple. People think things over and discover that on the one hand we have the soul and on the other hand the body. Now the following question arises: Does the body work on the soul as its original cause, or is it the other way round? If they get no further either way, they discover something so extraordinarily grotesque as psychophysical parallelism, the idea of which is that both manifestations run parallel, side by side. In this way no explanation is given for the interaction of one with the other, but one speaks only of parallelism. This is a sign that nothing is known about these things out of experience. Out of experience one would have to say: In the first seven years of a child's life one perceives the soul working in the body. How it works must be learned through observation, not through mere speculation. Anthroposophy as a means of knowledge rejects all speculation and proceeds everywhere from experience, but of course from physical and spiritual experience.

So in the second period of life, in the time between the change of teeth and puberty the etheric body of man is our chief concern in education. Both teacher and child need above all those forces which are working in the etheric body, for these release the feeling life of the child, not yet judgment and thought. Deeply embedded in the nature of the child between the change of teeth and puberty is the third member of the human being, the astral body, which is the bearer of all feeling life and sensation. During this second period of life the astral body is still deeply embedded in the etheric body. Therefore, because the etheric body is now relatively free, we have the task to develop it in such a way that it can follow its own tendencies, helped and not hindered by education. When can it be so helped? This can happen when in the widest possible sense we teach and educate the child by means of pictures, when we build up imaginatively and pictorially everything that we wish him to absorb. For the etheric body is the body of formative forces; it models the wonderful forms of the organs, heart, lungs, liver and so on. The physical body which we inherit acts only as a model; after the first seven years, after the change of teeth, it is laid aside, and the second physical body is fashioned by the etheric body. This is why at this age we must educate in a way that is adapted to the plastic formative forces of the etheric body.

Now, just as we teach the child by means of pictures, just as, among other things, he learns to write by a kind of painting-drawing—and we cannot introduce the child too early to what is artistic, for our entire teaching must be permeated with artistic feeling—so must we also bear the following in mind. Just as the etheric body is inseparably associated with what is formative and pictorial, so the astral body, which underlies the life of feeling and sensation, tends in its organisation towards the musical nature of man. To what then must we look when we observe the child? Because the astral body between the change of teeth and puberty is still embedded in the physical and etheric bodies every child whose soul life is healthy is inwardly deeply musical. Every healthy child is inwardly deeply musical. We have only to call up this musicality by making use of the child's natural liveliness and sense of movement. Artistic teaching therefore must, from the very beginning of school life, make use both of the plastic and pictorial arts and also of the art of music. Nothing abstract must be allowed to dominate; it is the artistic approach which is all-important, and out of what is artistic the child must be led to a comprehension of the world.

But now we must proceed in such a way that the child learns gradually to find his own orientation in the world. I have already said that it is most repugnant to me if I see scientific text books brought into school and the teaching carried out along those lines. For today in our scientific work, which I fully recognise, we have deviated in many respects from a conception of the world which is in accordance with nature. We will now ask ourselves the following question, bearing in mind that in the course of discussion other things may have to be added. At about what age can one begin to teach children about the plant world?

This must be done neither too late nor too early. We must be aware that a very important stage in a child's development is reached between the 9th and 10th year. Those who see with the eye of a teacher observe this in every child. There comes a time in which the child, although he does not usually express it in words, nevertheless shows in his whole behaviour that he has a question, or a number of questions, which betray an inner crisis in his life. This is an exceptionally delicate experience in the child and an exceptionally delicate sense for these things is necessary if one is to perceive it. But it is there and it must be observed. At this age the child learns quite instinctively to differentiate himself from the outer world. Up to this time the “I” and the outer world interpenetrate each other, and it is therefore possible to tell the child stories about animals, plants and stones in which they all behave as though they were human beings. Indeed this is the best approach, for we should appeal to the child's pictorial, imaginative sense, and this we do if we speak about the kingdoms of nature in this way. Between the 9th and 10th year however the child learns to say “I” in full consciousness. He learns this earlier of course, but now he does so consciously. These years, therefore, when the consciousness of the child is no longer merged with the outer world, but when he learns to differentiate himself from it, are the time when we can begin, without immediately renouncing the pictorial element, to lead the child to an understanding of the plant world, but to an understanding imbued with feeling.

Today we are accustomed to look at one plant alongside of another, we know their names and so on; we do this as though the single plant was there for itself. But when we study the plant in this way, it is just as if you were to pull out a hair, and forgetting that it was on your head examine it for itself, in the belief that you can know something about its nature and life-conditions without considering it as growing out of your head. The hair only has meaning when it is growing on the head; it cannot be studied for itself. It is the same with the plant. One cannot pull it up and study it separately, but one must consider the whole earth as an organism to which the plants belong. This is actually what it is. The plants belong to the entire growth of the earth, in the same way as the hairs belong to our head. Plants can never be studied in an isolated way, but only in connection with the whole nature of the earth. The earth and the world of plants belong together.

Let us suppose that you have a herbaceous plant, an annual, which is growing out of the root, shooting up into stalk, leaves and flowers, and developing the fruit which is sown again in the following year. Then you have the earth underneath, in which the plant is growing. But now, think of a tree. The tree lives longer, it is not an annual. It develops around itself the mineralised bark which is of such a nature that pieces of it can be broken off. What is this in reality? The process is as follows: If you were to pile up around a plant the surrounding earth with its inherent forces, if you were more or less to cover it with earth, then you would bring this about in an external, mechanical way, through human activity. Nature however does the same thing by wrapping the tree round with the bark; only in this case it is not completely earth. In the bark there is a kind of hill of earth, the earth heaps itself up. We can see the earth flourishing and growing when we see the growing tree. This is why what surrounds the root of the plant must most certainly be reckoned as belonging to it. We must regard the soil as belonging to the plant.

Anyone who has trained himself to observe such things and happens to travel in a district where he notices many plants with yellow flowers will at once look to see what kind of soil it is. In such a case, where specifically many yellow flowers are to be seen, one is likely to find, for instance, a soil which is somewhat red in colour. You will never be able to think about the plant without taking into consideration the earth in which it grows. Both belong together. And one should lose no time in accustoming oneself to this; as otherwise one destroys in oneself a sense for realities.

A deep impression was made on me recently, when at the request of certain farmers, I gave an agricultural course, at the end of which a farmer said: Today everybody knows that our vegetables are dying out, are becoming decadent and this with alarming rapidity. Why is this? It is because people no longer understand, as they understood in bygone days, as the peasants understood, that earth and plants are bound together and must be so considered. If we want to foster the well-being of our vegetables so that they flourish again we must understand how to treat them in the right way, in other words, we must give them the right kind of manure. We must give the earth the possibility of living rightly in the environment of the plant roots. Today, after the failure of agricultural methods of development, we need a new impulse in agriculture based on Spiritual Science. This will enable us to make use of manure in such a way that the growth of plants does not degenerate. Anyone as old as I am can say: I know how potatoes looked 50 years ago in Europe—and how they look today! Today we have not only the decline of the West in regard to its cultural life, but this decline penetrates deeply also into the kingdoms of nature, for example, in regard to agriculture.

It really amounts to this, that the sense for the connection between the plant and its environment should not be destroyed, that on school outings and similar occasions die plants should not be uprooted and put into specimen containers and then brought into the classroom in the belief that thereby something has been achieved. For the uprooted plant can never exist just for itself. Today people indulge in totally unreal ideas. For instance they look upon a piece of chalk and a flower as having reality in the same sense. But what nonsense this is! The mineral can exist for itself, it can really do this. So the plant also (they say) should have an independent existence;

but it cannot, it ceases to be when it is uprooted from the ground. It only has earthly existence when it is attached to something other than itself, and that other only has existence in so far as it is part of the whole earth. We must study things as they are in their totality, not tear them out of it.

Almost all our knowledge based on observation teems with unrealities of this kind. This is why Nature Study has become completely abstract, although this is partly justified, as with the theory of relativity. Anyone, however, who can think in a realistic way cannot allow abstract concepts to run on and on, but notices when they cease to have any relationship with what is real. This is something he finds painful. Naturally you can follow the laws of acoustics and say: When I make a sound, the transmission of this sound has a definite speed. When I hear a sound anywhere, at any particular place, I can calculate the exact time its transmission will take. If now I move, no matter at what speed, in the direction the sound is travelling, I shall hear it later. Should my speed exceed the speed of the sound I shall not hear it at all; but if I move towards the sound I shall hear it earlier. The theory of relativity has its definite justification. According to this, however, we can also come to the following conclusion: If I now move towards the sound more quickly than the sound travels, I shall finally go beyond it, so that I shall hear the sound before it is made! This is obvious to anyone able to think realistically. Such a person also knows that logically it is absolutely correct, wonderfully thought out, to say that a clock (to take the famous comparison of Einstein) thrown with the speed of light into universal space and returning from thence, will not have changed in any respect. This can be wonderfully thought out. But for a realistic thinker the question must necessarily arise: What will the clock look like on its return? for he does not separate his thinking from reality, he remains always in the sphere of reality.

This is the essential characteristic of Spiritual Science. It never demands a merely logical approach, but one in accordance with reality. That is why people today, who carry abstractions even to the splitting of hairs, reproach us anthroposophists with being abstract, just because our way of thinking seeks everywhere the absolute reality, never losing the connection with reality, although here certainly the spiritual reality has to be included and understood. This is why it is possible to perceive so clearly how unnatural it is to connect plant study with specimens in a container.

It is therefore important when introducing the child to plant study that we consider the actual face of the earth and deal with the soil and plant growth as a whole, so that the child will never think of the plant as something detached and separate. This can be unpleasant for the teacher, for now he cannot take the usual botany books into class with him, have a quick glance at them during the lesson and behave as though he knew it all perfectly. I have already said that today there are no suitable botany text-books. But this sort of teaching takes on another aspect when one knows the effect of the imponderable and when one considers that in the child the subconscious works still more strongly than in older people. This subconscious is terribly clever and anyone able to perceive the spiritual life of the child knows that when a class is seated facing the teacher and he walks up and down with his notes and wants to impart the content of these notes to the children, they always form a judgment and think; Well, why should I know that? He doesn't even know it himself! This disturbs the lesson tremendously, for these feelings rise up out of the subconscious and nothing can be expected of a class which is taught by someone with notes in his hand.

We must always look into the spiritual side of things. This is particularly necessary when developing the art of education, for by doing so we can create in the child a feeling of standing firmly and safely in the world. For (in lessons on the plant) he gradually grasps the idea that the earth is an organism. And this it actually is and when it begins to become lifeless we must help it by making the right use of manure. For instance, it is not true that the water contained in the air is the same as that in the earth below. The water below has a certain vitality; the water above loses this vitality and only regains it when it descends. All these things are real, absolutely real. If we do not grasp them we do not unite ourselves with the world in a real way. This then is what I wished to say in regard to the teaching about the world of plants.

Now we come to the animal world and we cannot consider the animals as belonging to the earth in the same way. This is apparent from the mere fact that the animals can move about; in this respect they are independent. But when we compare the animals with man we find something very characteristic in their formation. This has always been indicated in an older, instinctive science, the after-effects of which still remained in the first third of the 19th century. When however a modern man with his way of looking at things reads the opinions expressed by those philosophers of nature who, following old traditions, still regarded the animal world in its relation to the human world, these strike him as being utterly foolish. I know that people have hardly been able to contain their laughter when in a study circle, during the reading from the nature philosopher, Oken, the following sentence occurred: “The human tongue is a cuttlefish.” Whatever could he have meant? Of course in actual fact this statement of Oken's can no longer be regarded as correct, but it contains an underlying principle which must be taken into account. When we observe the different animal forms, from the smallest protozoa up to the fully developed apes, we find that every animal form represents some part of the human being, a human organ, or an organic system, which is developed in a one-sided way. You need only look at these things quite crudely. Imagine that the human forehead were to recede enormously that the jaw were to jut right out, that the eyes were to look upwards instead of forwards, that the teeth and their whole nexus were also to be formed in a completely one-sided way. By imagining such an exaggerated, one-sided development you could get a picture of a great variety of mammals. By leaving out this or that in the human form you can change it into the form of an ox, a sheep and so on. And when you take the inner organs, for instance those which are connected with reproduction, you come into the region of the lower animals. The human being is a synthesis, a putting together of the single animal forms, which becomes softer, gentler, when they are united. The human being is made up of all the animal forms moulded into one harmonious structure. Thus when I trace back to their original forms all that in man is merged together I find the whole animal world. Man is a contraction of the whole animal world.

This way of looking at things places us with our soul life once more in a right relationship to the animal world. This has been forgotten, but it is nevertheless true; and as it belongs fundamentally to the principles of evolution it must again be brought to life. And, after having shown the child how the plant belongs to the earth, we must, in so far as it is possible today, proceed at about the nth year to a consideration of the animal world; and we must do this in such a way that we realise that in its various forms the animal world belongs, strictly speaking, to man himself. Think how the young human being will then stand in his relation to animal and plant. The plants go to the earth, become one with the earth; the animals become one with him! This gives the basis for a true relationship to the world; it places man in a real relationship to the world. This can always be brought to the child in connection with the teaching matter. And if this is done artistically, if we approach the subject in a living way, so that it corresponds with what the child in his inner being is able to grasp, then we give him living forces with which to establish a relationship to life. Otherwise we may easily destroy this relationship. But we must look deeply into the whole human being.

What really is the etheric body? Well, if it were possible to lift it out of the physical body and so impregnate it that its form were to become visible—then there would be no greater work of art than this. For the human etheric body through its own nature and through what man creates within it, is at one and the same time both work of art and artist. And when we introduce the formative element into the child's artistic work, when we let him model in the free way I described yesterday, we bring to him something that is deeply related to the etheric body. This enables the child to take hold of his own inner being and thereby place himself as man in a right relationship to the world.

By introducing the child to music we form the astral body. But when we put two things together, when we lead what is plastic over into movement, and when we form movements that are plastic, then we have eurythmy, which follows exactly the relationship of the child's etheric body to his astral body. And so now the child learns eurythmy, speech revealing itself in articulated gestures, just as he learned to speak quite naturally in his earlier years. A healthy child will find no difficulty in learning eurythmy, for in eurythmy he simply expresses his own being, he has the impulses to make his own being a reality. This is why, in addition to gymnastics, eurythmy is incorporated into the curriculum as an obligatory subject from the first school years right up into the highest classes.

So you see, eurythmy has arisen out of the whole human being, physical body, etheric body and astral body; it can only be studied by means of an anthroposophical knowledge of man. Gymnastics today are directed physiologically in a one-sided way towards the physical body; and because physiology cannot do otherwise, certain principles based on life-giving processes are introduced. By means of gymnastics, however, we do not educate the complete human being, but only part of him. By saying this nothing is implied against gymnastics, only in these days their importance is over-estimated. Therefore in education today eurythmy should stand side by side with gymnastics. I would not go as far as a famous physiologist did, who once happened to be in the audience when I was speaking about eurythmy. On that occasion I said that as a means of education gymnastics are over-rated at the present time, and that a form of gymnastics calling on the forces of soul and spirit, such as is practised in eurythmy side by side with the study of eurythmy as an art, must be introduced in addition to gymnastics as usually understood. At the end of my lecture the famous physiologist came up to me and said: Do you say that gymnastics may have their justification as a means of education because physiologists say so? I, as a physiologist, must say that gymnastics as a means of education are nothing less than barbarism! You would certainly be very astonished if I were to tell you the name of this physiologist. At the present time such things are already apparent to people who have some right to speak; and we must be careful not to advocate certain things in a fanatical way without a full knowledge of what is involved. To stand up fanatically for certain things is utterly out of place in connection with the art of education, because here we are dealing with the manifold aspects of life.

When we approach the other subjects which children have to be taught and do so from the various points of view which have here been considered, we come first to the years during which the child can only take in the pictorial through his life of feeling. History and geography, for instance, must be taught in this way. History must be described pictorially; we must paint and model with our words. This develops the child's mind. For during the first two stages of the second main epoch of life there is one thing above all to which the child has no relationship and this is what may be termed the concept of causation. Before the 7th year the child should most certainly not go to school. [i.e. to school as distinguished from a kindergarten.] If we take the time from 7 to 9⅓ years old we have the first subdivision of the second main epoch; from 9⅓ to 11⅔ years old we have the second stage and from 11⅔ until approximately the age of 14 we have the third stage. During the first stage of this second main epoch the child is so organised that he responds immediately to what is pictorial. At this age therefore we must speak as one does in fairy-tales, for everything must still be undifferentiated from the child's own nature. The plants must speak with one another, the minerals must speak with one another; the plants must kiss one another, they must have father and mother, and so on. At about 9⅓ years old the time has come which I have already characterised, when the ego begins to differentiate itself from the outer world. Then we can make a more realistic approach in our teaching about plants and animals. Always, however, in the first years of life history must be treated in fairy-tale, mythical mood. In the second subdivision of this longer epoch, that is to say, from 9⅓ until 11⅔ years old, we must speak pictorially. And only when the child approaches the age of 12 can one introduce him to the concept of causation, only then can one lead over to abstract concepts, whereby cause and effect can be allowed to enter in. Before this time the child is as inaccessible to cause and effect as anyone colour blind is to colours; and as an educator one often has absolutely no idea how unnecessary it is to speak to the child about cause and effect. It is only after the age of 12 that we can speak to him about things which today are taken for granted when looked at from a scientific point of view.

This makes it essential to wait until about the 12th year before dealing with anything that has to do with the lifeless, for this involves entering into the concept of causation. And in the teaching of history we must also wait until about this age before passing over from a pictorial presentation to one which deals with cause and effect, where the causes underlying historical events have to be sought. Before this we should only concern ourselves with what can be brought to the child as having life, soul-imbued life.

People are really very strange. For instance, in the course of cultural development a concept has arisen which goes by the name of animism. It is maintained that when a child knocks himself against a table he imagines the table to be alive and hits it. He dreams a soul into the table, and it is thought that primitive people did the same. The idea is prevalent that something very complicated takes place in the soul of the child. He is supposed to think that the table is alive, ensouled, and this is why he hits it when he bumps up against it. This is a fantastic notion. On the contrary those who study the history of culture are the ones who do actually “ensoul” something, for they “ensoul” this imaginative capacity into the child. But the soul qualities of the child are far more deeply embedded in the physical body than they are later, when they are emancipated and can work freely. When the child bumps against a table a reflex action is set up without his imagining that the table is alive. It is purely a reflex movement of will, for the child does not yet differentiate himself from the outer world. This differentiation first makes its appearance at about the 12th year when a healthy child can grasp the concept of causation. But when this concept is brought to the child too early, especially if it is done by means of crude external methods, really terrible conditions are set up in the child's development. It is all very well to say that one should take pains to make everything perfectly clear to a child. Calculating machines already exist in which little balls are pushed here and there in order to make the operations of arithmetic externally obvious. The next thing we may expect is that those of the same frame of mind will make moral concepts externally visible by means of some kind of machine in which by pushing something about one will be able to see good and evil in the same way as with the calculating machines one can see that 5 plus 7 equals 12. There are, however, undoubtedly spheres of life in which things cannot be made externally apparent and which are taken up and absorbed by the child in ways that are not at all obvious; and we greatly err if we try to make them so. Hence it is quite wrong to do as is often attempted in educational books and make externally apparent what by its very nature cannot be so treated. In this respect people often fall into really frightful trivialities.

In the years between the change of teeth and puberty we are not only concerned with the demonstrably obvious, for when we take the whole of human life into consideration the following becomes clear. At the age of 8 I take in some concept, I do not yet understand it fully; indeed I do not understand it at all as far as its abstract content is concerned. I am not yet so constituted as to make this possible. Why then do I take in the concept at all? I do so because it is my teacher who is speaking, because the authority of my teacher is self-understood and this works upon me. But today we are not supposed to do this; the child is to be shown what is visual and obvious. Now let us take a child who is taught everything in this way. In such a case what a child experiences does not grow with his growth, for by these methods he is treated as a being who does not grow. But we should not awaken in the child ideas which cannot grow with him, for then we should be doing the same thing as if we were to have a pair of shoes made for a three-year-old child and expect him to wear them when he is 12. Everything in the human being grows, including his power of comprehension; and so the concepts must grow with him. We must therefore see to it that we bring living concepts to the child, but this we can only do if there is a living relationship to the authority of the teacher. It is not achieved if the teacher is an abstract pedant who stands in front of the child and presents him with concepts which are as yet totally foreign to him. Picture two children. One has been taught in such a way that he takes in concepts and at the age of 45 he still gives things the same explanation that he learned when he was 8 years old. The concept has not grown with the child; he paid careful attention to it all, and at 45 can still explain it in the same way. Now let us take a second child who has been educated in a living way. Here we shall find that just as he no longer wears the same size shoes as he did when he was 8 years old, so at a later age he no longer carries around with him the same concepts that he learned when he was 8. On the contrary; these concepts have expanded and have become something quite different. All this reacts on the physical body. And if we look at these two people in regard to their physical fitness we find that the first man has sclerosis at the age of 45, while the second has remained mobile and is not sclerotic. How great do you think the differences are which come to light between human beings? In a certain place in Europe there were once two professors of philosophy. One was famous for his Greek philosophy; the other was an old Hegelian, an adherent of the school of Hegel, where people were still accustomed to take in living concepts, even after the age of 20. Both were lecturers at the same university. At the age of 70 the first decided to exercise his right to retire on a pension, he felt unable to continue. The second, the Hegelian professor, was 91 and said: “I cannot understand why that young fellow is settling down to retirement already.” But the conceptual life of this second professor had retained its mobility. People criticised him for this very reason and accused him of being inconsistent. The other man was consistent, but he suffered from sclerosis!

There exists a complete unity in the child between the spiritual and the bodily, and we can only deal rightly with him when we take this into consideration. Today people who do not share the views of materialists say that materialism is a bad thing. Why? Many will say that it is bad because it understands nothing of the spiritual. This, however, is not the worst, for little by little people will become aware of this lack, and as a result of the urge to get the better of it they will come to the spiritual. The worst thing about materialism is that it understands nothing of matter! Look into it yourselves and see what has become of the knowledge of the living forces of man in lung, liver and so on under the influences of materialism. Nothing is known about how these things work. A portion is removed from the lung, the liver and so forth and this is prepared and examined, but by means of present-day scientific methods nothing is learned of the spirit working actively in the human organs. Such knowledge can only be gained through spiritual science. The material reveals its nature only when studied from the aspect of spiritual science. Materialism has fallen sick, and the cause of this sickness is above all because the materialist understands nothing of matter. He wants to limit himself to what is material but he cannot penetrate to any knowledge of what is material in a real sense. In saying this I do not mean the “thought-out” material, where so and so many atoms are supposed to dance around a central nucleus: for things of this kind are not difficult to construct. In the earlier days of the Theosophical Society there were theosophists who constructed a whole system based on atoms and molecules; but it was all just thought out. What we have to do now is to approach reality once again. And if one actually does this one has a feeling of discomfort when one is supposed to grasp some concept which is entirely devoid of reality. One experiences pain when, for instance, someone propounds a theory such as this: Fundamentally it is one and the same thing whether I drive my car to a town, or whether the car stands still and the town comes to me. Certainly things of this kind are justified when looked at from a certain point of view. But drawn out to the extent that occurs today among those who hold completely abstract opinions, they impoverish the entire life of the human soul. And anyone who has a sense for such things experiences great pain in regard to much of what people think today, which works so destructively on teaching methods. For instance, I see the tendencies of certain methods applied already to little children in the kindergarten, who are given ordinary cut-out letters and then learn to pick them out of a heap and put them together to form words. By occupying the child in this way at such an early age we are bringing him something to which as yet he has absolutely no relationship. When this happens to him the effect is the same as if in real thinking one were to say: I was once a man who still had muscles, skin and so on; now I am merely a skeleton. So it is today under the influence of this propensity for abstractions in the spiritual life of mankind: one sees oneself suddenly as a skeleton. With such an outlook, however, which is the bare skeleton of reality, we cannot approach the child in education.

Because of this I wanted to show today how everything depends on the teacher approaching life in a true and living way.

The indications given yesterday as to the treatment of manure by the use of cows' horns were intended, of course, only to show a method of improving manure. Manuring as such remains, and we shall speak today of the way in which manure has to be applied by those who have grasped that all that is living must be kept within the realm of life. We saw that the etheric life forces should never be allowed to leave that which is within the region or sphere of growth. That is why we found it to be so important to know that the soil, out of which the plant grows and which surrounds its roots, is itself a kind of continuation of the living plant-like nature of the earth being. Moreover, I pointed out yesterday how we can imagine the transition from the heaped-up mound of earth, inwardly vitalized by the humus in it to the bark which surrounds the tree and encloses it. It is only natural, in modern times, when all understanding has been lost of the great inter-relations in Nature, that insight into the fact that the life which embraces soil and plant alike extends into such secretions of the living realm as appear in the form of manure should also have been lost. An understanding of how the forces of this all—embracing life work on in the manure was also bound to go as time went on. As I said in the discussion yesterday, it is no part of the methods of Spiritual Science to attempt by fanatical agitation and turbulence forcibly to interfere with the achievements in all the different spheres of modern life, rather it gives full recognition to the advances which have been made. And only those things should be opposed, If I may use the word, which rest on completely false assumptions and are the outcome of the modern materialistic conception of the world. These achievements, however, must be completed by the results issuing from a living conception of the world in the varied spheres of life. I shall therefore not deal with the different ways of preparing manure—whether from stable manure, from liquid manure or from compost—as much has already been said in this connection. Besides we shall have the opportunity of dealing with this in this afternoon's discussion. I only wish to assume now that we are right in saying that in the practice of agriculture we are bound to exploit the soil, because in distributing the produce of agriculture far and wide we are actually depriving the earth and even the air of forces. These forces have to be replaced, and that is why the manure must be prepared in such a way as to contain the forces which the impoverished soil needs to become vitalised again. Now it is precisely on this point that a number of errors have arisen through a materialistic conception of the world.

In the first place a careful study is made nowadays of bacteria, of micro-organisms. To these is attributed the power of creating the proper proportions of the different substances in the manure. Great stress is laid upon the activity of the bacteria in the manure. Experiments have been made in inoculating the soil with bacteria. Such experiments are clever, even logical—but as a rule have no lasting influence and are of small use. This is because they are based on assumptions somewhat resembling the following: A large number of flies are found in a room and because of this the room is considered dirty. But the truth is that the flies are there because the room is dirty. Nor will the room ever become any cleaner by our devising methods of increasing the number of flies on the supposition that they will eat the dirt, nor by diminishing their number. Far more will be achieved by a direct attack upon the dirt than by any such speculative methods as these. In the same way, when animal excrements are used as manure, the tiny living beings which appear through the processes at work in the manure substance can only really be regarded as a very valuable symptom of certain conditions which the manure substance is passing through? and therefore not something which it is important to implant or breed: one might just as well do the reverse and suppress them. Our thoughts on these things should weave within the whole living content of the farm and not be limited to an atomistic view of these micro-organisms. Now obviously on6 should not make such a statement unless one can show the ways and means of carrying it out. True, what I have said about the bacteria has been emphasised in various quarters! but it is important not only to be able to make a correct statement, for a negative statement has no value in practice. One must be able to make positive suggestions. If one ha3 no positive suggestions to make it is better to refrain from emphasising the merely negative view, as this only causes annoyance.

A second point is this. Under the influence of the materialistic outlook of modern times, the practice has come into favour of treating manure with all manner of inorganic compounds or elements. Experience has shown, however, that this method produces no lasting results. Nor can it do so, for we must clearly understand that in attempting to improve the manure by adding minerals, we vivify only the watery part of the soil. But to ensure sound growth in a plant, it is not enough to organise and vivify the water for this does not distribute any vitality as it trickles through the soil. The soil must be vitalised directly. This cannot be done with mineral substances, but only with organic substances which have been suitably prepared so as to organise and quicken the solid earth element. This is the contribution of Spiritual Science to agriculture: to provide knowledge of the way to stimulate life in manure, either solid or liquid—indeed anything that can be used in this way—but what we do must remain within the realm of the living. Spiritual Science always seeks to gain an insight into the larger connections of life, and does not pay much regard to the Microscopic view and the conclusions drawn from it, because this view is not of primary importance. The observation of the Macroscopic, of the larger range of Nature's activities—that is the task of Spiritual Science. But we must first know how to penetrate into these activities.

In all agricultural literature, you will find the following statement, based no doubt upon the experiences which have been collected. It is said that nitrogen, phosphoric acid, calcium, potash, chlorine, etc.—even iron, all these are of great value to soil which is to be used for plants; but silicic acid, lead, arsenic, mercury, even soda have only value as so-called stimuli in promoting plant growth. People show by such statements that they are really working in the dark, and it is fortunate that—because of their traditional knowledge—they do not strictly adhere to this “principle” in their treatment of plants. Indeed, it cannot be adhered toj for what is the truth of the matter?

The truth is that Mother Nature will abandon us without mercy, if we do not pay proper regard to potash, limestone or phosphoric acid. We can, however, with comparative impunity disregard her silicic acid, lead, mercury, arsenic, etc. The heavens give us the silicic acid, lead, mercury and arsenic we need; they give them freely whenever the rain falls. In order, however, to have the right amount of phosphoric acid, potash and limestone in the soil, it must be worked upon and manured in the right way. These elements are not supplied freely by the heavens I Thus by continuous use of the soil it becomes impoverished, and therefore needs to be manured. This compensation by way of manure may, and in many cases, does become too weak in time. When this happens, we rob the earth and leave it permanently impoverished. We must see to it that the true Nature-process can take place to the full. What have been called merely “stimuli” are actually the most important factors. All round the earth are the very substances though in highly diluted form which are generally held to be unnecessary, but which the plants require as urgently as they do those which come to them from the earth. Mercury, arsenic and silicic acid are sucked in by the plants from the earth after these substances have been radiated into the earth from the universe. Now we, as human beings, can prevent the soil from thus absorbing from the periphery what the plants need. By continued, unthinking use of manure, we can quite well prevent the earth from seeking, out and absorbing the silicic acid, lead and mercury which come to it in the finest homeopathic doses from the surrounding universe and which are required by the plant. The plant needs the help of these substances in order to build up its carbon structure. To ensure, therefore, that the plant gets all it needs from the surrounding universe, we must work on our manure, not only as I explained yesterday, but with other things as well. It is not enough to add.to the manure substances which we think it requires; we must add living forces. For living forces are far more important to the plant than mere material forces and substances. Be a soil never so rich in this or that substance, we should still not promote plant growth if we did not give the plant by manuring the power to absorb into its body the active forces contained in the soil. Now when it comes to living principles, it is not generally known how very powerfully minute quantities will work. Since Frau Dr. Kolisko's research work on the activity of “smallest entities” so brilliantly established as fact what until then had been more guess-work in homeopathy, we can, I think, regard it as a scientific fact that it is from the small entities (quantities) that the radiating forces necessary for the organic world are released, when these small entitles are used in the appropriate way. And in manuring we shall not find it at all difficult so to use the smallest entitles.

We have seen how we can prepare these “smallest entities” quite readily within cows' horns, and how we are able to add to the forces contained in ordinary manure these other forces which are applied in homeopathic doses. But we must try out all ways of properly vitalizing the manure, so that it retains the right amount of nitrogen and other substances and is thus vivified and enabled to convey the necessary vitality to the soil.

Today I should like to give indications for the addition in small doses of certain preparations to the manure (quite apart from what can be done with the contents of the cows' horn) to vivify it to such an extent as will enable it to carry its own vitality into the soil from which the plants spring,

I shall mention various things, but wish to emphasise that in places where the ingredients are difficult to obtain, substitutes can, if necessary, be found. (There is only one plant for which there is no substitute, because its properties are so unique that they are scarcely to be found in any other species). In the first place, it is necessary to ensure that the basic substances in the organic world—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur—are combined in the right way with other substances in the organism, especially with potash salts. We must not have regard merely to the quantity of the potash salts which the plant requires (as is well known, it is the potash salts which give the plant organism its scaffolding what it has of solidity and structure) the main thing is that this potash content shall be so worked up [Note: This “working-up” is effected by means of Preparation No. 502.]) that when it comes within the ambit of what takes place between soil and plant, it acts properly within the organic process towards that which constitutes the actual body of the plant, viz. the albuminous substances. To accomplish this, we proceed as follows:—

You take common yarrow (or milfoil) a plant which it is generally quite easy to obtain. In any place where it does not grow, the dried plant can be used. This yarrow is a wonderful work of creation. (The same is true of every plant, but if we compare yarrow with any other flower, we realise how particularly wonderful it is). It contains that substance with which, as I told you, the spirit moistens its fingers when it wishes to send carbon, nitrogen and other substances to their places in the organism where these are needed. Yarrow is like the ideal model which some creator of plants must have had before him when he had the task of bringing sulphur into its true relationship with other vegetable substances. One may say, the spirits of Nature have never brought the distribution of sulphur to such perfection as in yarrow (milfoil). And if we know the effects this plant can produce in the animal or human organism—how with correct biological use, it can set right all troubles which are caused by any weakness in the astral body, then we can further trace its particular nature (Dr. Steiner says “its milfoil-ness”) throughout the whole process of plant growth in Nature. Its effect is extremely salutary when growing wild at the edge of fields planted with cereals, potatoes or any other cultivated plants. Yarrow should never be extirpated. It should, of course, not be allowed to spread so as to become a nuisance—it can never be harmful—but like some human beings whose mere presence is felt to be beneficent, so yarrow growing freely has an extraordinarily beneficial effect on its surroundings.

This is what can be done with milfoil: take the blossoms, the umbrella-like inflorescence, just as you do when the plant is intended for medicinal use. They should be plucked as fresh as possible and allowed to dry for a short time. If you cannot obtain fresh flowers, then take some that have “been dried and sprinkle them with some of the liquor strained off from dried leaves which have been boiled in water. Then take one or two handfuls of the yarrow blossoms well pressed together (mark that we remain always within the region of the living) and place them in a deer's bladder. Tie the bladder up and hang it in a sunny place, leaving it there throughout the summer. When autumn comes, take down the bladder and bury it in the sail but not too deeply, leaving it there throughout the winter. Thus, during a whole year, the yarrow flowers (there is no harm in using flowers in which the fruit has begun to set) in the deer's bladder have been exposed, partly above and partly below the earth's surface, to the right influences. You will find that during the winter, they have assumed a very peculiar consistency and in this condition, they will keep for as long as you like. You can add some of this substance from the deer's bladder to a manure heap as big as a house by a simple distribution (very little work is required) and the radiation works. However much the substance is scattered through the heap the radiation is so powerful (and the materialist who talks about radium will believe in radiation) that it will work on any sort of manure, whether liquid, solid or compost. The substance obtained from the yarrow has such a quickening and refreshing effect upon the manure, that when it is used in the usual way it does much to restore that' of which we have robbed the soil. The manure is again given the possibility of so vivifying the soil that it can once more absorb the other cosmic substances, the silicon, lead, etc., which come to the earth in the finest homeopathic doses. The Members of the Agricultural Circle should test this out by experiment. You will see how well it will succeed.

Now let us put the following question, for we should always act out of insight and not without it. We have learned the virtues of the common yarrow. Its content of sulphur in highly homeopathic distribution, standing in an ideal combination with potash, works so splendidly from the plant alone that it is able to radiate its activities over a large area. Then why is there need for a bladder and that of a deer?

The reason why we use a deer's bladder is found when we gain insight into the whole process which is bound up with it. The deer is an animal which stands in a peculiarly close relation, not so much to the earth as to that which is of a cosmic nature in the periphery of the earth; hence its antlers, whose function I pointed out yesterday. Now the properties of the yarrow are preserved by means of that process which takes place between the kidneys and the bladder, and this applies to both human and animal organisms. This process is itself dependent upon the nature of

the substance of the bladder. In the bladder of the deer, however tenuous its substantiality may be, there are forces which are connected not, as in the case of cattle, with the animal's interior, but with cosmic forces; the deer's bladder is almost a reflected image of the cosmos. And in putting the yarrow into the bladder, we greatly increase its capacity to combine its sulphur with the other substances. In the treatment I have given for yarrow, we have therefore something fundamental for the improvement of manure. Moreover, we have not gone outside the region of the living, and have certainly not entered the realm of inorganic chemistry. That is the important point.

Let us take another example. If we wish to enable the manure to absorb so much life that it can transmit it to the soil on which the plant is to grow, we must also render the manure capable of closely binding together all substances necessary for plant growth: not only potash but also calcium and its compounds. In yarrow potash forces are predominant. If we wish to capture calcium as -well, we require a plant which, though it does not arouse one's enthusiasm to the same extent as yarrow, nevertheless contains sulphur in homeopathic distribution. With this sulphur, it attracts the other substances and blends them into an organic process. I refer to camomile or chamomilla officinalis. It is not enough to say that camomile is distinguished by the amount of potash and calcium it possesses. The yarrow plant develops its sulphur forces especially in the potash-formative process, and for this reason it possesses exactly that amount of sulphur required to “workup” potash. The camomile, however, “works-up” calcium for the purpose of excluding certain tendencies towards fruit formation which are harmful, and in this way, keeps the plant healthy. The camomile plant has some sulphur in it, but in a different proportion, because it is calcium that has to be. worked upon. Now, bearing in mind that Spiritual Science always looks at the large, the macrocosmic cycles of events and not so much at that which is microscopic, let us, follow the process undergone by camomile which has been absorbed by a human or animal organism. For all the processes which the camomile undergoes there, the bladder has hardly any importance, while the substance of the intestinal walls has great importance. If, therefore, we wish to work with camomile as we did with yarrow the beautiful delicate little yellow-heads of blossom must be plucked and treated in the same way as the umbels of the yarrow, but instead of putting them in a bladder, we must put them in the intestines of horned cattle. This is quite an amusing proceeding. Instead of following the customary usage and making ordinary sausages, we have to make sausages filled with camomile prepared in the way indicated (for yarrow). Here again, using only ingredients taken from the realm of the living world, we have something which only needs to be exposed to the right natural influences to become of value. In this case, we have to allow those living forces to work which have the closest possible kinship to the soil. We must therefore place these precious little sausages (for they really are precious) under the ground, not very deeply, in soil which is as rich as possible in humus, and leave them all through the winter. For this purpose, we should select places where the snow will remain lying a fairly long time, and where the sun will shine upon the snow. This will be the best way of attracting the cosmic-astral influences to the place where these precious little sausages lie buried. In Spring, they are dug up and put aside as before. Their contents are added to the manure in exactly the same way as was done with the prepared yarrow. It will be found that manure so treated will have a more stable nitrogen content than other manure, and it will also have the property of so vivifying the soil that this will promote very strongly the growth of plants. Furthermore, the plants will be more healthy, really healthier, than they would otherwise be.

I know well enough that these may appear rather crazy notions, but you must remember that many things which have at first seemed to be crazy have been accepted a few years later. You should have read the Swiss papers and seen the offensive objections raised when the idea of constructing mountain railways was first mooted, yet in a very short time the mountain railways were built and nowadays nobody thinks that the man who planned them was a fool. It is all a question of putting aside prejudice.

As I said before if these two plants are difficult to obtain, others can be used in their stead, though not with such good results. The plants can, of course, be used after they have been dried. There is, however, one plant which it is difficult.to find a substitute for its good influence upon manure. It is one which is not very popular, for if we like a thing we usually want to stroke it: I refer to the stinging nettle. The stinging nettle is really the greatest of benefactors to plant growth and can scarcely be replaced by any other plant. If unobtainable fresh it must be used dried. It is a regular Jack-of-all-trades. It can do extraordinary things. It, too, bears that within it, which introduces the spiritual element everywhere and works with it as I have explained. Again, in addition to the potash and calcium which the nettle bears along in its radiating and streaming currents it also possesses a species of radiating iron forces which as regards the whole course of Nature, are almost as health promoting as are the iron forces in our blood. The stinging nettle does not really deserve to be despised as it so often is. Indeed, it ought to win everyone's heart, be cherished by everyone, for in its wonderful inner workings it plays a similar part in Nature to that played by the heart in the human organism. The stinging nettle is really a great boon. In order, therefore, to draw iron from the soil, it is necessary to plant stinging nettles in it somewhere where they will do no harm. We should do this because these plants like iron, they attract it to themselves and thus free the top layer of soil from it. If we cannot remove the iron as such, we can at least weaken its effects upon plants in this way» (If Count Keyserlingk will excuse my making a personal reference, I would say that the planting of nettles on this estate would be of particular benefit). I wish to point out that the mere presence of nettles has a significance for plant growth in the whole district.

Now if you wish still further to improve your manure, take some stinging nettles, allow them to wither a little, press them together slightly and then place them, not in a bladder nor in intestines, but directly into the soil, surrounded, perhaps, by a thin layer of peat dust, so that they will be separated a little from immediate contact with the soil. Make a note of where they are placed, so that when you afterwards dig them out you do not take merely soil. They must be left there all through one Winter and a Summer, they must lie burled for a whole year, and then their substance will have become enormously powerful. If this is then added to the manure in the manner mentioned before, it will cause it to be inwardly sensitive. The manure will actually become sensitive, as though it really had some nous. It will not allow anything to decay in a wrong way nor give off nitrogen in ä wrong way and so on. By adding this substance to the manure in a sense we really give it nous and enable it to make the soil into which it is mixed intelligent too, so that the soil will behave individually towards the different plant species growing in it. This addition of Urtica dioica has the effect of impregnating the soil with nous.

Modern methods of improving manure, however surprising they may be in their external effects, are, in the last resort, only methods for turning out fine-looking agricultural produce destined merely to fill human stomachs. There will come a time when it will no longer possess any real nutritive value. We must not be deceived by large and blown-out products of the soil. The point is that they should be firm and solid and have real nutritive value.

Now it may be that somewhere on our farm, plant diseases occur. I shall speak of these in a general way. People today are fond of specialisation and speak of this or that disease. This is all right from a theoretical-scientific point of view: one must know how the symptoms of one disease differ from those of another. But just as in the case of a doctor for human beings, it is not so useful to describe an illness as it is to cure it.

It is possible to describe an illness very accurately, to know exactly what is going on in the organism in terms of modern physiology and physiological chemistry, and yet one may be unable to heal it. Healing is not based on the microscopic changes in tissues and cells, but on a knowledge of the larger connections; this must also be our attitude to the plant nature. And since plant nature is in this respect simpler than that of the animal or man, so its healing is a more general process and when sick it can be healed with a kind of “cure-all” remedy. If this were not so, we should often be in a fix with regard to plants, as we are with animals, though not with human beings. For a man can tell us where he feels pain. Animals and plants cannot; and it is fortunate that, here the curative process is almost the same for all plants. A large number of plant diseases (although not all of them) can really be arrested as soon as they are noticed by a rational management of our manuring—namely in the following way:

We must then add calcium to the soil by means of the manure. But it will be of no use if the calcium is not applied in a living condition. If it is to have a healing effect it must remain within the realm of the living. Ordinary lime or the like is of no use here. Now we have a plant which is very rich in calcium—seventy-seven per cent, of its substances is calcium albeit in very fine distribution. This is the oak and more especially its bark. In the bark, we have something which is at an intermediate stage between plant and living earth. You will remember what I said to you about the kinship between bark and live earth. For calcium as required in this connection the calcium structure in the bark of the oak is almost ideal. Calcium in a living state (not dead, though even then it has an effect) has the property which I have already described to you: it restores order where the etheric body is working too strongly so that the astral element is prevented from reaching the organic substances. Calcium, kills (damps down) the forces of the etheric body and so sets free those of the astral body. This is characteristic of all limestone. But if it is necessary for an over-powerful etheric element to be damped down and contracted in a regular way—not suddenly nor jerkily so that shocks are produced—but in a steady and orderly fashion, we should use calcium in the particular form in which it is to be found in the bark of the oak tree.

For this purpose, we collect some oak bark just as it comes to hand« We do not need much« We collect it, chop it up until it has a crumbly consistency and put the crumbs into the hollow part of a skull or cranium of any one of our domestic animals—it is almost immaterial which one we choose. The skull should be closed up again with bony material and put into the ground—not very deeply. Then we cover it with peat moss and direct on to the spot, through a gutter or some such contrivance, a maximum amount of rainwater. Alternatively, one might put some rotting plant substance into a wooden tub into which rainwater could flow and drain off again. This would produce a sort of plant slime and in this the bony receptacle with its content of oak-bark crumbs could be buried. It should be left there through the autumn and the winter, snow water being just as effective as rainwater. Prepared thus, this substance contains something which, when it is added to our manure, endows it with the power—the prophylactic property—of fighting and arresting harmful plant disease.

We have now dealt with four substances to be added to manure. All this involves a certain amount of work. But if you think it over, you will see that it involves less work than the complicated trouble taken in agricultural-chemical laboratories, and which, moreover, has to be paid for. The methods I have outlined to you today are more profitable from the point of view of general economy.

We still need something, however, which will attract silicic acid from the cosmic environment in the right way, for we must have silicic acid in the plant, and in the course of time the soil loses the power to absorb this very substance. The loss is very gradual and therefore passes unnoticed. Those who look only at the microcosmic and do not consider the macrocosmic set little store by this loss in silicic acid, because they think it has no importance for plant growth. It is of the utmost importance, however, although to be aware of this one must know the following. Such knowledge is, however, no longer regarded in learned circles as a sign of mental confusion, as was the case heretofore, for these circles are themselves already speaking of the transmutation of elements. Observation of various chemical elements has in this respect brought the materialistic lion to heel. But there are certain things constantly going on around us of which science knows nothing. If people knew something about them it would be easier for them to accept such things as I have been expounding. I know very well that the hard-boiled modern thinker will exclaim: “But you have told us nothing of how the nitrogen content in the manure is increased.” As a matter of fact, I have spoken of this all the time, in what I said about yarrow, camomile and nettles. For in organic processes there is a secret alchemy. This hidden alchemy will, for example, transform potash into nitrogen provided only that the potash is working in the right way and. will do the same even with lime if the lime is active in the right way.

In the plant, there are the four elements of which I have spoken. Besides sulphur there is also hydrogen. I have told you of the significance of hydrogen. Now there is a mutual relation between lime and hydrogen, just as there is the well-known relation between oxygen and nitrogen in the air, and even according to the purely external standards of analytical chemistry, this ought to betray the fact that there is a kinship between the way in which oxygen and nitrogen are connected in the air and that in which lime and hydrogen are connected in organic processes. Under the influence of hydrogen, lime and potash are constantly being changed into nitrogenous matter, and finally into actual nitrogen. And the nitrogen which has come into being in this way has a tremendous value for plant growth? but it must be such as has been produced in the way I have described.

Silicic acid, as we know, contains silicon and this in its turn undergoes transmutation in the living organism. It is changed into a substance which is of exceptional importance but which is not reckoned by present-day science to be among the elements. The silicon which we require in order to attract the cosmic element is transmuted. And now there must take place in the plant a real interaction between the silicic acid and the potash—but not the calcium. In order to set up this interaction we must quicken the soil with manure. We must therefore find a plant which, by reason of the particular proportion of potash and silicon in it, is able when added in homeopathic doses, to give the manure the required power. Such a plant exists and, once again, it is a plant which always has a beneficial effect wherever it is found in our fields. It is the dandelion (Taraxaeum).

The harmless yellow dandelion does untold good in any area in which it grows, for it is the mediator between that silicic acid in minutest distribution in the cosmos and the other silicic acid actually present in the area in question. The dandelion is indeed a kind of messenger from heaven; but if it is to become active in manure, it must be applied in the right way. It must be exposed to the influences of the earth during winter. But in order to capture the forces in the environment of the earth, this plant must be treated in the same way as the other plants with which we have dealt. Collect some yellow dandelion heads, let them wither a little, press them together, sew them into the mesentery of an ox and bury them in the ground for a whole winter. In the spring, take out the balls (they will keep until they are wanted), which will then be permeated with cosmic influences. Here also, as described before, the substance thus obtained can be added to the manure, which will then give the soil the ability to attract to itself .out of the atmosphere and the cosmos as much silicic acid as is required for the plants. The plants become sensitive to the influences that surround them and can of themselves attract what they need. For in order to grow, plants must have a kind of sensibility. Just as I, as a man, can pass unnoticed before some dull fellow, so can everything in the soil and above it pass unnoticed before a dull plant. The—plant does not sense it and cannot make use of it for its own growth. But let the plant be permeated, however finely, with silicic acid in the way described, and it will become sensitive to its surroundings and able to attract what it needs. It is quite easy, of course, to make the plant attract what it wants from only a small distance around it. But naturally this is not good. If the soil is worked upon in the manner I have described, the plant will be prepared to draw for its needs upon a very wide area. The plant can then make use not only of what is in its own field, but also Of that which is in the soil of the neighbouring meadow or wood. It only needs to be made inwardly sensitive in this way. So we can bring about an interplay in Nature, by giving the plants the forces which can be transmitted to them in this way by the dandelion.

It seems to me therefore that it would be worth while trying to prepare some manure to which these five ingredients Tor their substitutes) have been added in the manner described. The manure of the future should be treated not with chemical trifles, but with common yarrow, with camomile, with nettle, with oak bark and with dandelion. Such a manure, will have much of what is actually needed.

As a final effort before using the prepared manure, take the blossoms of valerian, Valeriana officinalis, squeeze out the Juice and dilute it with plenty of warm water (this can be done at any convenient time and the result put on one side). If this highly diluted juice of valerian be added to manure, it can arouse in it a proper behaviour towards phosphorous substances. With these six ingredients, the most excellent manure can be obtained from either stable manure, solid or liquid, or compost.

Discussion

QUESTION: In speaking of the bladder of a wild deer do you mean that of the male deer (stag)?

ANSWER: Yes, I meant the male deer.

QUESTION: Did you mean the annual or the perennial nettle?

ANSWER: Uritica dioica.

QUESTION: Is it advisable to roof in the manure yard in districts where there is a great deal of rain?

ANSWER: The manure should be able to stand the normal amount of rain. On the other hand, to be completely without rain does it no good, and to be soaked in it is equally harmful. One cannot make any general pronouncement on this matter. On the whole rainwater is good for the manure.

QUESTION: Should one not have roofed-in sheds for manure in order not to lose the liquid manure?

ANSWER: In a certain sense rainwater is necessary to the manure. It might possibly be good to keep the rain off by spreading peat-moss over it. But there is no object in keeping the rain off completely. The manure would only suffer.

QUESTION: Does this method of manuring stimulate the growth of useful plants and of weeds to the same degrees and must special methods be adopted to destroy the weeds?

ANSWER: This question is a very reasonable one. I shall be speaking of weeds and ways of attacking them during the next few days. The method of manuring I have described is favourable to plant growth in general and will not help to remove weeds. But the plants that have benefited by it are better able to resist parasites and pests, being supplied, as it were, with a remedy against them. Weed control has not been covered by what we have been discussing so far. The weed shares in the general growth of plants. We shall have more to say about this later. All these things are so connected that it is not good to take any one of them separately.

QUESTION: What is your view of Captain Krantz's method? By piling up the manure in loose layers and thus causing it to produce its own warmth he has succeeded in making it odourless.

ANSWER: I have purposely abstained from speaking of methods which have been developed on rational lines. I preferred to relate what Spiritual Science can give as an improvement of such methods. The method you mention certainly has a great many advantages. But it is relatively new, it has not been tried for long, and I think one may suspect that it is one of those methods which are a great success at first, but which in the course of time are found to be not so practical as had been expected. At first, while the soil still has its “tradition” so to speak, anything can serve to freshen it up. But if you go on too long, the same thing happens as with medical remedies. Any remedy, even the most unlikely, may help the first time it enters an organism! but after a time it ceases to work. With such a method, also it takes some time before one discovers that it does not work so well as one had originally believed it would. The important thing is the generation of heat in the manure, for the activity thus called into play is highly beneficial to the manure. The loose piling up of the manure may prove a drawback to the method, and—well; I am not convinced that it really loses its smell. If it does it would be a good system. But the method has not been tried out over a period of many years.

QUESTION: Is it not better to store the manure above ground rather than sink it into the earth?

ANSWER: In principle, it is right that the manure heap should be placed as high as possible. But the place chosen should not be too high, because the manure must remain in the appropriate relation to the forces that are under the earth. The manure should not be placed on a hillock; but if it be piled up at the earth-level, that will be the most satisfactory position.

QUESTION: Can the same compost methods be applied to the vine which has suffered so much recently?

ANSWER: It can, with a few modifications. When I come to speak of fruit and vine cultivation I shall mention these. But what I have said today holds good in general as an improvement of any kind of manuring. I shall' deal later on with the special cases of meadow, pasture, or cereals and fruit and vine cultivation.

QUESTION: Should the foundation of the manure heap be paved?

ANSWER: If we go by what we know of the whole structure of the earth and of its relation to manure, we do mischief if we pave the manure area. If we do so we ought really to limit the paving to a: ring outside the manure area, so as to allow for the interaction between the earth and the manure. We spoil the manure if we separate it from the earth.

QUESTION: Does it make any difference whether the soil underneath is 3and or clay? Often people put a ground layer of clay where the manure is to be, so as to make the ground impervious.

ANSWER: It is quite true that different kinds of soil have a definite influence which proceeds from the particular qualities of the soil in question. A sandy soil does not retain water; it is therefore necessary to put some clay with it before laying the manure on it. If, on the other hand, you have a clay soil, you should break it up and strew sand over it. A middle course would be to have alternate layers of sand and clay. Then you have the earth consistency as well as the watery influences. Without this combination of the two kinds of soil the water will percolate away. For the same reason, loose soil should certainly not be used as a foundation for the manure heap as it would have no value for the manure placed over it| in this case it is better to make your own foundation.

QUESTION: With regard to the growing of the remedial plants you have mentioned, is it possible to introduce a plant into a district where it did not previously grow, simply by sowing? In cattle-farming the Greenland Society have generally supposed that yarrow and dandelion were dangerous to cattle and the Society do their best to keep their pasture-land free from them. We are engaged upon this very task at the moment. And the same with the thistle. Should we now sow them round our arable fields but not on our meadows and pasture land?

ANSWER: (Question by Dr. Steiner) Well—in what way did you suppose these plants to be harmful to cattle?

ANSWER: (Count Keyserlingk): Yarrow is said to contain poisonous substances, and dandelion to be unsuitable for cattle food. ,

ANSWER: (Dr. Steiner): This should be watched. In the open field, you will not find an animal eating what is harmful.

COUNT LERCHENFELD: With us the reverse is the case. The dandelion is looked upon &ä an excellent milk-producer.

ANSWER: These views are very often only the prevailing opinions and nothing more. Nobody knows whether they have been tried out. It is possible for there to be

something harmful among the hay, but I believe that in that case the animal would leave the hay untouched. An animal will not eat what is not good for it.

QUESTION: Has not yarrow been largely removed by large doses of lime? It surely requires a moist and acid soil?

ANSWER: If you want to have yarrow growing wild then a very small quantity properly spread out will suffice for a large farm. This is the sort of homeopathic use I meant. If we had a little yarrow growing wild in the garden here there would be enough for the whole estate.

QUESTION: I have noticed that on my meadows the cattle enjoy eating the dandelion shortly before it flowers, but cease taking it once it had begun to flower.

ANSWER: You must remember the following: this is the general rule. You must remember that an animal has an exceptionally fine instinct for what is good for it and may be trusted not to eat dandelions if they will do it harm. There is also another thing to remember. When preparing a product for a particular purpose we often use an ingredient which we would not eat by itself. For example, we use yeast to bake our bread for daily consumption. But no one would dream of eating yeast every day. What can even act as a poison when consumed in large doses can in other circumstances have the most beneficial effects. After all, medicines are usually poisonous. The important thing is the process not the substance. I think we may take it that the view that dandelions are harmful to animals can readily be dismissed. These contradictory opinions are strange. It is a curious thing to hear emphasis being laid upon the harmfulness of the dandelion when at the same time, Count Lerchenfeld talks of it as the best promoter of milk to be found. In districts lying so close to one another, the effects cannot be so very different. One of the two conflicting views must be wrong.

QUESTION: Perhaps the sub-soil is the decisive factor. My statement was based on veterinary observations. Should one then deliberately plant yarrow and dandelion in meadow and pasture land?

ANSWER: Quite a small area is sufficient.

QUESTION: Does it depend upon how long the preparations should be kept with the -manure after they have been taken out of the earth?

ANSWER: Once they are mixed with the manure it is meaningless to ask how long they should be kept with it. But it should all have been done before the manure is spread on the fields.

QUESTION: Should the various manure preparations (in cow-horn, “sausage” etc.) be buried together, or each separately?

ANSWER: A certain importance attaches to this because one preparation should not disturb the other while this reciprocal action is going on. If I were working a small farm, I should look for the most widely separated points on its. boundaries and bury the preparations at the greatest possible distances from each other in order to prevent any one of them disturbing the other. On a large estate, you can quite easily choose suitable sites.

QUESTION: Can the earth above the buried preparations be allowed to grow anything?

ANSWER: The earth can do what it likes. As a matter of fact, it is quite a good thing for something, even cultivated plants, to be grown on the covering earth.

ANSWER: I recommend the following procedure:” where the manure heap is a large one, bore a hole about ten inches deep into it and place the preparation inside it so that the manure closes around it. The exact measurement does not matter. The important thing is that the preparation should be completely shut in by the manure. The whole thing depends upon radiation (see Diag. 20). If this is the manure heap and this is a little of the preparation, then the radiations go so. If it is too near the surface, it will not be so good. At the surface the streams of force are deflected and take on a particular curve. They do not leave the heap. A depth of 20 inches will do. If it is too near to the surface it will lose a considerable part of the rays of force.

QUESTION: Should the holes be made close together at one place, or should they be evenly spaced around the heap?

ANSWER: It is better to space them out, not to make all the holes in one place. Otherwise the streams of force disturb each other.

QUESTION: Should all the preparations be put into the manure heap at the same time?

ANSWER: When the preparations are being put into a manure heap they can be placed side by side. They do not influence each other, but only the manure as such.

QUESTION: Can the preparations all be put into one hole?

ANSWER: Theoretically it ought to be possible to do this without their disturbing each other. I could not, however, guarantee beforehand that no disturbance would take place. I would therefore suggest that the preparations be placed in proximity to each other but not actually in one hole.

QUESTION: What kind of oak had you in mind?

ANSWER: Quercus robur.

QUESTION: Should the bark used be taken from a living tree or from one that has been cut down?

ANSWER: If possible from a living tree, and even from one in which the resin may be presumed to be still fairly active.

QUESTION: Should the whole of the bark be used?

ANSWER: Actually, only the upper layer, the part which crumbles as one' picks it off.

QUESTION: In burying the manure-preparations should one go no deeper than the cultivated spit or should the cow-horns be buried deeper?

ANSWER: It is best to leave them in the cultivated spit. There is even reason to think that if put into the sub-soil the material would not be so fruitful. It must also be considered that should the cultivated spit extend further down than is usual, that would provide the best possible conditions. Look, therefore, for a place where the cultivated depth is as thick as possible, but remember that below it no useful effect can arise.

QUESTION: In the cultivated spit the preparation would always be exposed to frost. Would this do any harm?

ANSWER: The time when it was exposed to frost would be the time when the earth was exposed through this very frost, to the most powerful cosmic influences.

QUESTION: How does one grind quartz and silica? In a small hand-mill, or in a mortar?

ANSWER: The best method is first to grind it to a fine powder in an iron mortar and you will need too, an iron pestle. In the case of quartz, the process must be continued on a glass surface. For the powder must be very fine, and this is difficult to obtain with quartz.

QUESTION: The experience of farmers shows that when a beast is well fed the substances which were lacking in its body increase. There must therefore be a relation between feeding and the intake of nourishment out of the atmosphere.

ANSWER: Remember what I said. I said: The essential thing about nourishment is that forces should be developed in the body. Whether the animal develops enough forces to enable it to take in and transform the substances in the atmosphere depends upon whether it absorbs its food in the right way. To make a comparison. If you want to put on a close-fitting glove you don't do it by squeezing your fingers into it. You first enlarge the glove with a stretcher. In the same way, we must bring elasticity into those forces which are to take out of the atmosphere what is not produced by food. Through the food, the organism is stretched and thereby enabled to take in more of what it needs from the atmosphere. This may even lead to hypertrophy if too much food is taken in. This has to be paid for by a shortened life span. The middle course must be found between the maximum and minimum.

Do not think that I wish to take the floor this evening for the purpose of speaking of an understanding between the various classes of the present population, in the same way that the ruling classes, the hitherto ruling classes in particular, so often speak of reconciliation and understanding. I would like to speak to you this evening about a quite different kind of understanding, about the understanding that is being challenged by the social facts that are speaking loudly today and by the great historical forces that are currently entering the course of human development. I would like to speak of what seems to me to be demanded of the proletarian movement in particular, of these historical forces that are today, one might say, revolutionizing the world.

To speak of a different understanding is forbidden by almost the whole of modern life, the life that certain people call modern civilization. What voices have we heard within this modern civilization over the last few decades! Let us remember how the hitherto ruling classes have perceived this modern civilization, one might say, right up to the terrible catastrophe of war which has come as a horror to mankind in recent years. How often has it been said how far we humans have come in creating, in producing! How we have brought it about that thought can be sent far across the earth in a short time, how connections have been created between the most distant countries, how spiritual life in all its forms has gained a tremendous expansion. Well, I could go on singing the praises of modern civilization for a long time, not the way I want to sing them, but the way they have been sung by this ruling class. But let us now look at things from the other side. How was this modern civilization, to which so many songs of praise have been sung, actually possible? It was only possible because it was, so to speak, undermined by those who, from the innermost essence of their humanity, could not agree with what the bearers of this modern civilization were doing. And so, alongside all this, which one could also call a kind of luxury culture, one could hear the voices coming from the other side, which essentially always ended with the words: It can't go on like this! As wonderful as your civilization may be for you, it is impossible for it to go on any other way than for the vast majority of the earth's population to have no direct share in it. They have to feel excluded from this civilization, they have to watch from the outside, so to speak, but on the other hand they have to work hard for this civilization!

Has anyone on the other side shown any understanding in recent decades for the reasons and background from which such a call has emerged? You can't say that. In general, certain people today speak a very strange language. Over the last few days, I have witnessed some of what has taken place here in Bern at the League of Nations Conference. You could hear all kinds of beautiful speeches, that is, speeches that the gentlemen thought were very beautiful. But anyone who is able to look a little deeper into what is being expressed in the world-changing deeds that are going through Europe today could hear, above all, in what was said there, that the most important question of the present, the question that is of ever-increasing concern to a large part of humanity, was being talked and thought past. The actual nerve of the social question was talked and thought past! This conference showed extraordinarily little understanding for this question, and one was reminded of something else, namely the weeks of the spring and early summer of 1914, when one could hear many a strange speech from the hitherto ruling circles and their leaders. One could cite many similar speeches, such as the one made by a leading statesman in a Central European country to a parliament in 1914, in which he said: “Thanks to the energetic efforts of the European cabinets, we can hope that peace among the great powers of Europe will be secured for the foreseeable future. - This was still being said, with all possible modifications, in May and June 1914.

And then? Then came what killed millions of people, what crippled millions of people. So well foreseen was that which also asserted itself alongside that to which one sang such hymns of praise as modern civilization!

I myself, if I may make this personal remark, had to speak differently from these statesmen at the time. Before a meeting in Vienna in the spring of 1914, I had to say: Anyone who looks at the life of contemporary European humanity sees in it something like a creeping cancer that must break out. - Well, we can leave it to the judgment of mankind today as to who was a better prophet: the one who spoke of a cancerous disease that broke out so terribly in the so-called world war, or those who thought that, thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, a longer peace was in prospect. Just as in those days these gentlemen talked past what was gathering as a black cloud in the political sky of Europe, so today certain people talk past what is most important: the social powers and forces entering the life of the nations of the earth. Since things are like this, there is really very little prospect of bringing about an understanding through reason, so to speak. But an understanding on the other side, as I have already said, can be sought. And this understanding seems to me to arise if we take the following starting point.

Until our time, the proletarian population was basically in a completely different situation than it will be from now on. Anyone who has not only thought about the proletarian movement from a certain theoretical point of view, but who has experienced this proletarian movement in such a way that he has lived with it, knows that what the modern proletariat experienced was the great, penetrating criticism of what the institutions and maxims of the hitherto leading circles have done for centuries, for three to four centuries. What the modern proletarian experienced was the living, world-historical critique of everything they believed they had to impose on humanity. And basically, what was going on within the proletariat was a great, powerful critique. While the hitherto leading circles lingered within their bourgeois culture, to which they sang such hymns of praise, while they could hear in their lecture halls that which served their state, while they heard in their theaters the illusory world of their affairs, while they did many other things, what they perceived as such a salutary modern civilization, the proletarian masses came together in the hours they could spare from the heavy, arduous work of the day to reflect on the serious questions of human development, the serious questions of world history. After all, modern technical development and the capitalist development connected with it had taken the modern proletarian away from all other human contexts, which, for example, the old craft had provided, had placed him next to the machine, harnessed into the capitalist world order and thus excluded from the immediate feeling of what the leading, leading circles were doing. Then the proletarian's spiritual gaze turned to the general and, from a certain point of view, the highest interest of humanity. And in the proletarian assemblies that was driven which then always had to sound out again in the cry: It can't go on like this!

But what developed there was also a powerful, magnificent criticism of the previous policy, the previous economic management of the leading circles. This has now entered a new stage. And to really follow this entry into a new stage with attention seems to me to be one of the most necessary social tasks today.

How has the modern proletarian felt about the social order that has developed over the last three to four centuries, since the time when modern capitalism and modern technology entered the development of mankind? How did the modern proletarian feel about all this, which he had to look at as if he were standing on his feet, which he, as far as he could use it, wanted to absorb with his intimate share, so that he would also have something for his soul? The old leading circles spoke to him of various powers and forces at work in the historical development of mankind; they spoke to him of all kinds of moral world orders and the like. But he, the modern proletarian, who looked up to what these ruling classes were doing, felt little of the power, of the inner originality of such moral world orders; He felt that the actions, the thoughts, the feelings of the leading, governing circles are essentially shaped by the way they can live by virtue of their economic forms, their economic order, through which they are able to establish their civilization as a kind of superstructure on the misery, on the oppression of larger masses of humanity who had to work for them.

And so there arose in the modern proletariat what was the truth in relation to the reality of these newer thoughts about the development of mankind. The modern proletarian felt a truth about what the others fantasized about in a certain lying way; they spoke of a moral, of a divine world order, through which people are brought into mutual social relations on earth. The proletarian felt this to be a profound lie. And he felt that the truth in all this is that people live as they can by exploiting economic life for their own convenience, for their own benefit. And so the materialistic conception of history arose - and one must now say, as the proper inheritance of what was bourgeois science - the conception which did not admit that the actually effective forces in the historical development of mankind were anything other than economic forces. And that became the belief that everything that is human religion, human science, human spirituality, rises above the economic forces like a kind of “superstructure”, and that below it the economic forces reign as the only reality on which at most the superstructure acts back. The modern proletariat was right in the face of what the bourgeois world order has made of social life - a mere economy.

The second thing that emanated from Karl Marx's power of thought and spread into the proletarian assemblies, into the proletarian souls, is not the intellectual question, as I have just characterized it in the materialist view of history, but the legal question. This culminates in the one word that you all know, but which had an electrifying effect within the modern proletarian movements, which evoked understanding in the innermost feelings of the modern proletarian souls when it was presented to these proletarian souls by Marx and his successors: it is the word of surplus value. And behind much of what has been said around this word of surplus value, what the modern proletarian actually feels to be his most important human question, lies the question which is more or less consciously or unconsciously, more or less merely felt or posed with the intellect, but which is deeply felt. What sense does my work actually have within the modern social order? And it must be said that Karl Marx's various answers are brilliant. - But today we live in a time in which we must go further than even Marx went, especially if we understand Marx in the right way, not in the direction of the opportunist politicians, but in a completely different direction, as we shall see in a moment.

When the modern proletarian raised the question of the meaning of his labor and this became for him the question of his position within modern society, of his human dignity, he was repeatedly confronted with the problem that his labor was, as it were, absorbed by the capitalist economic process. He experienced that his labor had become something that it could only appear to be, namely: a commodity. The modern proletarian, who can only acquire his labor power anew as his only “possession”, experienced that he must also carry his labor power to the market, must have his labor power treated according to the rules of supply and demand, as otherwise objective commodities separated from man are treated on the commodity market.

Now the peculiarity of human life is that things can occur in this human life which are real, but which are not truths, which are lies of life. And one such lie is that human labor can ever become a commodity. For human labor power can never enter into any comparisons, any price comparisons with commodities. It is something fundamentally different from commodities. It is therefore a lie if that which can never become a commodity is nevertheless made into a commodity. Even if this is not expressed in such a clear manner, it is nevertheless something that is perceived as, I would say, the center of the proletarian question of modern times. Because human labor power has become a commodity, the legal relationship that should exist between the entrepreneur and the worker over work has become a purchasing relationship. And modern bourgeois national economists do indeed talk as if it were possible within economic life to exchange commodity for commodity on the one hand, and commodity for labor on the other.

The fact that a so-called labor contract exists in the modern sense of the word does not change the matter; for a legal contract can only be concluded about the relationship between entrepreneur and worker in the sense that we shall see later. Human labor could only be liberated from its commodity character - and it must be liberated - if the only contract possible between the employee and the employer were not the contract for the work performed, but the contract for the distribution of the jointly produced goods or services in a way that serves the healthy organism in the right sense. This is the demand that lies behind the Marxist theory of surplus value. At the same time, this is the way in which one must go beyond the merely Marxist conception. And the question must be asked: How does the wage relationship end? How does a commodity distribution contract take the place of the labor contract?

But with this we have indicated the second thing that repeatedly ran through the soul of the modern proletarian and which was hurled at the leading circles as a powerful criticism.

And the third, that was the conviction that everything that takes place in modern life and which has led to these conditions into which we have now got, does not consist in a harmony, not in a work of modern men arising from a common purpose, but in a struggle between groups of men in which one of them has the advantage at first; that is the class struggle of the modern proletariat with the leading classes.

Truly, these three points: the materialist conception of history, the theory of surplus-value and labor-power, and the theory of class struggle have been studied with more contemporary force than anything that has been written within bourgeois society in recent times. For it was recognized that what human development has come to in the last centuries is merely a result of economic forms. All other interpretations are basically a great lie of humanity.

And so the whole intellectual life, as it had become a kind of cultural luxury for the ruling class, became an “ideology” for the modern proletariat, a word that was heard again and again. It became a mere fabric of thoughts and feelings and sentiments, which were expressed as smoke emanating from the true reality of economic life.

But one does not understand the matter if one only understands it in this way. One only understands the matter correctly if one knows that in the face of this desolating ideology, this soul-killing ideology, which is essentially a legacy of the thinking of the hitherto ruling class, in the modern proletarian soul, which had time to think about human dignity and about truly becoming a human being on the machine and in the enclosure of the capitalist economic process, a real longing for a true spiritual life, not for a spiritual luxury, not for abundance, awoke. One can still often hear in bourgeois circles today how the modern proletarian question, viewed from this or that side, is actually a bread-and-butter question. Certainly, it is a bread-and-butter question; but there is really no need to talk about the fact that it is a bread-and-butter question in an assembly where proletarian understanding prevails. For it is not a question of thinking in the same way as a bourgeois sociologist and pedagogue, for instance, who now travels about a great deal in many regions, and who, among other things, recently coined the words: You only have to really know modern poverty once, then you will already come to the longing for a humanization of human society. - Behind such words there is usually nothing more than the question: How can one continue in the delusion of the old life of the ruling circles and how can one in the best way let chunks fall off for those who should not participate in this life of the ruling class? How can labor be dealt with while maintaining the existing social order? - It is not a question of bread. If it is a question of bread, then it is above all a question of how bread is fought for, out of which soul motives.

This has to do with much deeper historical forces than those who often talk about history from this perspective even suspect. And today the three questions which I have just characterized have reached a new stage in that there is much in them which one is not yet able to express clearly, but which can be heard by those who have an ear for the workings of historical forces, for the sounds which herald the great world-historical upheavals. Today the proletarian movement is no longer a mere criticism, today it is that which is called upon by the world-historical powers themselves to take action, to raise the great question: What must be done? - And here it seems to me that what I characterized earlier must be transformed somewhat, transformed in such a way that, in contrast to the purely material life as it has developed up to now, another life should develop that allows the oppressed part of humanity to have an existence that is truly humane in soul as well. That is the first question, the question of spiritual life: How can we transform the luxury ideology, the affluent spiritual life, into that which, from the innermost nature of man, man must really experience for an existence worthy of man?

The other thing that has developed, apart from this spiritual life, is precisely that which has turned the proletarian's human labor power into a commodity in the field of legal life. This could only develop because in the social order that emerged under capitalism and modern technology, law became a prerogative in many respects. How can the prerogative be replaced by law, within whose order the human labor power of the proletarian is stripped of the character of a mere commodity?

And the third question is: how can what has developed as class struggle continue to develop in other forms? The proletarian has felt very well that what must happen in life can only develop in this mutual struggle. But he perceives the struggles that have taken place in the course of modern history as those that must be overcome. And so the question of the necessity of class struggles will now, at the present stage of development, be transformed into the question: How do we overcome class struggles? - The question of surplus value, which has moved into the realm of privileges within the social order as it has developed over the last few centuries, this question of surplus value gives rise to the other question: How to find in human society, in the true sense of the word, a state of law satisfactory to all men?

With regard to the first question, the spiritual side of the social question, one only has to see how deep the abyss is between the hitherto ruling classes and those on the other side who are striving for a new world and social order. And here it must be said that what fills the modern proletarian with spiritual life has basically been inherited from the bourgeois class, which has been able to cultivate science, art and so on. - But this spiritual life had a different effect within the proletariat, for the proletarian was in a different position in relation to what he had inherited in the way of science and the like than in relation to what arose as modern spiritual life among those who were bourgeois, the leading circles. One could be a very convinced follower of modern intellectual life, one could consider oneself very enlightened, but one stood as a member of the ruling class within such a social order, which was not at all organized according to this modern intellectual life. One could be a natural scientist like Vogt, a scientific popularizer like Büchner, one could believe oneself to be completely enlightened - that was perhaps good for the head, for the intellectual conviction; but it was not suitable for understanding the position of man in real life. For the way these people stood in life could only be justified by the fact that the social order derived from quite different powers, from religious, from outdated moral world views, or at any rate from other powers than those which had presented themselves as scientifically certified powers to these ruling, leading classes. Therefore, that which is the modern scientific spirit and to which the proletarian simply brought himself from the culture of modern times had a completely different effect on the proletarian soul.

I may recall a small scene that illustrates this particularly well, this different effect of modern spiritual life on the proletarian, who was compelled to grasp this modern spiritual life not just for the head, but for the whole person, for his entire position within humanity.

Many years ago, I once stood on the same podium in Spandau with Rosa Luxemburg, who has now come to such a tragic end. At that time she spoke about science and the workers, and as a teacher at the workers' education school I had a few things to add to her words on the same subject. This topic, “Science and the workers”, gave her the opportunity to express precisely that which is so characteristic of the intellectual life of the modern proletariat. She said: “The sentiments - despite the conviction of the head - the sentiments of the modern leading class of humanity are still rooted in views as if man came from angelic beings who were originally good; and from this origin, in terms of feeling and sentiment, these ruling classes justify the differences in rank and class that have emerged in the course of development. But the modern proletarian is driven in a quite different way to take bourgeois science seriously. He must take seriously when he is taught how man was not originally an angelic being, but climbed about on trees like an animal and behaved most indecently. Looking back to this origin of man in the sense of the modern world view does not justify differences in life, class and status in the same way that others believe it to be justified, it justifies a completely different idea of the equality of all people.

You see, that's the difference! The proletarian was compelled to take what the others took as a head conviction, which did not go very deep, no matter how enlightened they were, he was compelled to take it up with his whole person, to take the matter with the bitterest seriousness of life. As a result, however, it wove itself into his soul in a completely different way. One must simply become attentive to such things, then one will already recognize in what sense the modern social question is above all a question of spiritual life and strives for the development of a spiritual life that satisfies all people.

Then, if you look into the causes of everything that I have only been able to describe today, I would like to say, in a stammering manner, because if you really wanted to describe it in detail, it would require too much elaboration, if you research the causes and then ask yourself: what development must be striven for? - then we can say the following: today it is really not a question of whether materialistic culture is the real foundation of spiritual life, but of how we can arrive at a spiritual life that can truly satisfy the human soul, the soul of all human beings. Today it can no longer be about a critical interpretation of what surplus value is, what human labor power represents itself as within the capitalist world order, but today the question arises: How can human labor power be freed from the character of a commodity and how can we ensure that “surplus value” does not remain a prerogative but becomes a right? And if there must be struggles within the human social order, can they be class struggles, can they be the struggles that have gradually emerged over the course of recent centuries?

Today we are at a stage of development where criticism alone is no longer decisive, but where the question is decisive: What is to be done? - For those who look at the foundations of life, the answer is, I would say, very radical. It may look less radical to some than it is, but it is a radical answer. Because proletarian thinking is in many respects only the legacy of bourgeois thinking, because proletarian habits of thought are the legacy of bourgeois habits of thought, the first questions to be considered are: How can the damage caused by capitalism be eliminated? How can the oppressive nature of the commodification of human labor power be eliminated? How can the class struggle be overcome in a humane way?

These questions must be asked from a much deeper perspective today. And great demands are made today by the historical facts themselves on the habits of thought, on the thoughts of the proletarian. For it is up to him to be equal to the times, to ask himself: How can we get beyond the unhealthy foundations of today's material historical life? How can we get beyond the devastation that the cycle of surplus-value production has wreaked on life, on legal life? How do we get beyond the devastation of modern class struggles? The three most important modern social questions are transformed from the negative into the positive.

If we look at the causes of current living conditions, we find that there is actually a tendency to continue what the bourgeois world order has brought about. Many people are asking themselves today: How can we overcome capitalism? How can we overcome private ownership of the means of production? - And they then come to the ancient order of human social institutions, that of the cooperative and the like, that is, they come to regard a common ownership of the means of production as an ideal.

This is understandable, and truly, it is not out of any bourgeois prejudice that these things should be discussed here, but solely from the point of view of: Is it possible to achieve what the modern proletarian wants in the way that some socialist thinkers believe they can achieve it today? Is it possible, by resorting to the framework of the old state and inserting into this old state what is the economic order, only in a different form, to bring about a redemption from the oppression brought about by the past?

Let us look at the modern state. It came into being because at a time - in the 16th and 17th centuries - when modern technology and modern capitalism were also developing, the leading circles, who then had to call the proletariat more and more to the machine, found that their interests were best satisfied within the framework of the state. And so they began to allow economic life to run into the state in those branches where it was convenient for them. And especially when modern achievements came along, large parts of economic life, such as the postal, telegraph and railroad systems, were taken over into the economy of the state, which had been handed down from time immemorial. At that time, intellectual life was also incorporated into the modern state structure!

And more and more this fusion of economic life, the legal life of the state and intellectual life took place. This fusion not only led to all the unnatural conditions associated with the oppressive conditions of modern times, but this fusion also ultimately led to the devastating effects of the world war catastrophe.

Those who think today from the historical facts will not ask: What should the states do? - on the contrary, they may be forced to ask: What should states refrain from doing? - For what they do and thereby bring about, we have indeed experienced in the killing of ten million people and in what crippled eighteen million people.

And so perhaps the question does come to mind: What should states refrain from doing? - This is what I can only hint at here, but what can truly be asked from the deep foundations of a true social science. If you look at certain political and social conditions as they have, I would say, typically developed, but also as they have typically led to their well-deserved end, then you need only look at Austria, for example, which in the 1960s turned towards a common constitutional system in the Austrian Reichsrat.

What had emerged at that time - I spent three decades of my life in Austria, got to know the conditions thoroughly, got to know what developed as constitutional life in the Austrian state at that time - truly fitted the mishmash of different nations like a glove. And for anyone who can really follow historical facts, it is clear that it was precisely what was founded in Austrian constitutional life at that time, what became Austria's policy in the sixties and seventies, that contributed to the end to which the present years have led.

Why? Well, at that time an Austrian Imperial Council was founded. Initially, the purely economic curia, the curia of the large landowners, the curia of the markets, the cities and industrial towns, the curia of the rural communities were elected to this Austrian Imperial Council. They had to represent their economic interests in the state parliament. And they made rights, they made laws out of their economic life. Only rights that were a transformation of economic interests were created. With regard to the law, however, we are not dealing with the same thing that we are dealing with on the ground of economic life. On the ground of economic life one has to do with human needs, with the production of goods, the circulation of goods, the consumption of goods. In the field of legal life, however, one has to do with that which, apart from all other interests, concerns man, in so far as he is purely only man, in so far as he as man is equal to all other men. Judgment must be based on quite different grounds when the question is asked: What is right? - than: What must be done in order to introduce any product into the cycle of economic life? - The unnatural coupling of the economic curia with legal life is what is eating away at the so-called Austrian state as a cancer.

These things could be illustrated by many examples throughout the modern states. It is not a question of merely studying these things, but of finding the right point of view from which one can gain an insight into true reality, into that which lives and weaves, not into that which people imagine to be the right thing politically or economically.

And again, look at the German Reichstag, of blessed memory, at this democratic parliament with equal voting rights, in which there could be a representation of interests like the Farmers' Union, but in which there could also be a representation of a mere spiritual community, like the Center! There we see something welded, melted into purely political life that belongs only to intellectual life. And to what unnatural conditions has this led! Again, one could cite many examples in addition to this one. If one wants to get to know the life of modern mankind, one must be able to approach it radically from this point of view. One must really have the courage to look such things in the face, then one will come to something that modern people do not yet want to admit, I would even like to say that people of all parties do not want to admit it. But what alone can be the impulse for a recovery of our social organism is the recognition that from now on there can no longer be a welding together, a coupling together of the three areas of life - spiritual life, legal life and economic life - but that each of these areas has its own laws of life, that each of these areas must therefore also give itself its social formation from its own sources.

In economic life only the interests of commodity production, commodity consumption and commodity circulation can prevail. The fundamental laws of this economic life must be decisive for administration and legislation. In the field of legal life that must prevail which springs directly from the human consciousness of law, that in which all men are really equal as men. In the field of spiritual life, that which can flow from the natural human endowment in full free initiative must prevail.

Modern Social Democracy has made inroads - I would like to say, from a completely different point of view, but that cannot affect us here today - in a single area, in that it has the proposition in its views: Religion must be a private matter. - The proposition must be extended to all branches of spiritual life. All spiritual life must be a private matter in relation to the rule of law and to the cycle of economic life. That spiritual life alone which is directed to its own powers, that spiritual life alone which always proves its reality out of its own impulse, that will not be a spiritual luxury, that will not be a spiritual abundance, that will be a spiritual life which must be longed for by all men in the same way. In looking at medieval spiritual life, for example science in relation to religion and theology, the following sentence has often been uttered: Philosophy, the wisdom of the world, is trailing behind theology. - Well, it was also believed that this had changed in more recent times. It has changed, but how has it changed? The secular sciences have become the servants of secular powers, of states, of economic cycles. And they really haven't gotten any better as a result. And why have they not become better? When one sees that there is basically a unified current, a unified force, from the highest branches of spiritual life down to the utilization of man's individual abilities, as they are carried by capital and capitalism, then one sees to the bottom of the question that arises here. Anyone who does not separate the functions and activities of capital in the modern social order from the rest of spiritual life is not looking at the bottom of the matter. Working on the basis of capital is only possible in a society in which there is a healthy, emancipated intellectual life, from which the development of such abilities based on capital can also grow.

What has happened in more recent times need not always be as grotesque as it once was when a modern, very important researcher, a physiologist, wanted to characterize what the Berlin Academy of Sciences, that is, the learned gentlemen of this Berlin Academy of Sciences, actually were: he called them, these learned gentlemen, “the scientific protection force of the Hohenzollerns”. You see, things had changed. Science was no longer the servant of theology; but whether it had risen to a higher dignity by becoming the servant of the state is another matter.

I would have to speak a great deal if I wanted to offer you the well-founded, well-reasoned truth in all its parts that only the reversal of that movement which has occurred in recent times, namely the liberation of spiritual life in all branches from state life, can lead to the recovery of our social organism. How differently will the lowest teacher feel if, in all that he has to represent, he knows himself to be dependent only on administration and legislation, which is built on the basis of spiritual life itself, than if he has to carry out the maxims, the impulses of political life! The teaching profession was once supposed to develop. It is precisely in this area that the servant class has developed. And this servant state in this field truly corresponds to what has developed in the field of economic life. In antiquity it was called the “nourishing state”. The exploitative and exploited classes have developed in more recent times. However, the two went hand in hand. One is not possible without the other.

All that which relates to the personal relationship between man and man - and this personal relationship from man to man also relates to what employees and employers agree with each other - all this can only be administered by that part of the social organism which is organized independently on the basis of spiritual life. Everything connected with rights, and with rights above all the labor relationship, must remain the domain of the political, the constitutional state. But that which is connected with commodity production, commodity circulation and consumption must become a separate member of the social order, in which only the laws of life of this organism are active.

Thus, by entering into the foundations of these things, one arrives at the radical view, which for some will prove uncomfortable, that for the health of our social relations three independent social organizations must develop side by side, which will work together in the right way precisely because they do not have a uniform centralization, but are centralized in themselves: a parliament which administers spiritual affairs, an administration which serves only these spiritual affairs; a parliament and an administration of the constitutional state, the political state in the narrower sense; a parliament and an independent administration of the economic cycle for itself; like sovereign states side by side, so to speak. Through their coexistence, they will be able to realize what the modern proletarian soul wants, but which cannot be achieved by a mere centralist nationalization of the social order.

Just take economic life for example. Today it is attached on the one hand to the natural foundations. One can also improve these natural bases by improving the soil and the like, then the working conditions can become more favorable by improving the working bases; but there is a limit beyond which one cannot go. Such a limit must also be reached on the other side. Just as economic life is attached to nature, which is outside, so on the other side must stand the rule of law. From this constitutional state, rights and laws are determined in such a way that they are separate from economic life. Just as the judge has to judge separately from his family or human relations when he judges according to the law, just as he allows his human will to function from a different source than in everyday life, so, even if it is the same people - for it will be the same people who rule through all three areas of social organization - when they judge from the modern constitutional state, they will judge according to quite different principles. For example, to cite just one, the measure of work that a person can perform, the time in which a person can work, will result precisely from the human demands of life. All this must be independent of the price formation that prevails in economic life. And just as, on the one hand, nature imposes pricing on economic life, so, on the other hand, free, independent humanity must always first decide on labor out of a sense of justice. And from the political state, which stands outside economic life, labor must be placed within economic life. Then labor is price-forming; then the character of a commodity will not be imposed on labor, then labor participates in the formation of the price, is not dependent on the price formation of the commodity. Just as nature acts on economic life from without, so must law, which is embodied in human labor, act from without.

It may be - for this may be objected - that the prosperity of a social organism becomes in a certain way dependent upon it, when labor first asserts its right; but this dependence is a healthy dependence, and it will lead to a healthy improvement in the same way as, for example, the improvement of the soil by technical means, when it is necessary or expedient or proves possible. But labor will never be able to set prices in the same way that it must set prices in accordance with human dignity if economic life is placed within the framework of the modern state as in a large cooperative. Economic life must be removed and left to its own devices. Legal life, political life, security life must be taken out and placed on its own. People have to speak from the most democratic basis about that which affects all people. Then this will have the right effect on economic life and what must come from it. This will never be able to happen from a cooperative or state institution of any kind. We will see that, if things remain the same as the present oppressors have developed from other, historical foundations, the new oppressors will also develop in the same way if real democratic foundations are not created outside of economic life.

Just as the legal life of the state must stand outside economic life, so must the entire intellectual life from the lowest school up to the university. Then that which develops out of this spiritual life will be able to be a real spiritual administration of the other two branches of life. Then it will be possible for that which is formed as profit in economic life to be genuinely supplied to the community from which it is taken. Then it will be possible for something similar to take place for the material goods, as today only for the beautiful spiritual goods. For the spiritual goods of modern society are actually the most precious of all. It is so: with regard to this spiritual good, it is true that what is produced is given to the general public at least thirty years after death, becomes free property, can be administered by everyone. People today truly do not put up with this with regard to material goods

Possession in social life is not what these or those social economists so often dream of in a strange way; it can only be understood in this way for social life: Possession is the exclusive right of disposal over a thing; possession in the productive sense, in the sense of land, is a right. And this right can only be made into a right, instead of a privilege, which corresponds to the legal consciousness of all men, if the formation of judgement takes place on a ground where only the right is determined, if it becomes possible that that which has resulted as profit can be transferred through the rule of law into the disposal of the spiritual organization, so that the spiritual organization has to find the right individual abilities for that which is no longer used for production, that is, for human service, but becomes mere profit. In this way it will become possible to bring ever new individual abilities to mankind.

But in order that there may really be a power which leads in the right way, not into bureaucratism, but into the free administration of the individual mental faculties of men, that which must be taken as property from one side, it is necessary that the constitutional state should supervise property, that is, the right of property, and that it should not itself become the owner, but that it should be able to hand over free property to that intellectual circle from which it can best be administered. From this you can see that from such backgrounds one arrives today at radical views which will surprise even you; but for my part I am convinced that the facts of world history demand such things of men today. I am convinced that what the modern proletarian wants cannot be achieved in any other way than by extending his hand to the separation of powers. That is the only possible “foreign policy” today. And strangely enough, each individual territory can carry it out for itself. If Germany were to take up this idea for itself today, as I recently expressed in an “Appeal to the Germans and the Cultural World”, which has attracted many signatures, if the Germans were to take up this tripartite division today, then perhaps they could negotiate with the others in a different way than they can today, when they stand there as a unified state that has been completely overcome, completely overcome precisely by its former centralization, and is basically incapable of doing anything.

I do not mean to take sides, but only to say that what I am saying can become the basis not only of all domestic policy, but also of true foreign policy, for the reason that each individual country, each individual people can carry it out for itself alone. Today, if one considers the enormously telling facts, one is led to the conviction that it is no longer merely a matter of changing some of the conditions according to the old ideas, but that it is necessary to base them on new ideas, new facts. In recent years we have heard quite often that there have never been such terrible events as those of the last four and a half years as long as mankind has had a history. You can hear that more often today. But what should be the echo to this assertion is not heard so often today, namely: Never before have people had such a need to rethink, to relearn as they do today, when the social question points to what most needs to be relearned, points to what is most talked and thought past.

Today it is clear that it is the people who have to act. You don't have to come up with ready-made programs! What I have developed here is not a program, is not a social theory. What I have developed here is a realistic theory of humanity. I do not imagine that I can draw up a program for all the conditions that are to arise; the individual cannot do that on his own. For just as individuals cannot form language, which is a social phenomenon, on their own, but just as language is formed in the coexistence of people, all social life must develop in the coexistence of people.

For this, however, people must first be in the right relationship to one another. [The same person can be in the economic parliament, in the democratic parliament, in the spiritual parliament at the same time; he will only have to see how he always has to find the judgment from the objectivity of the circumstances from the different sources.

How people will administer legal, economic and spiritual life when they are properly related to each other, what people will say about the social, that is what one should fathom; not put forward an abstract, theoretical program about what is right in all cases! To bring people into such a relationship that they work together in the right way - one might think - is something the modern proletariat in particular would understand, and this for the simple reason that the modern proletariat has seen how the various interests, the legal, the economic and the spiritual interests work against each other. In this way they are brought into such mutual action that they produce, out of their own forces, a humane existence for each, a viable organism for the whole. Even if it is radical, I believe that nothing else is needed than good will and insight to translate this social program, which is not a program in the common sense - it has to be called that because there are no other words - into life. However, this will make the social question appear to be what it really is. There are certain people who believe that the social question that has arisen will be solved if we do this or that, [...] no, the social question has arisen because people have reached a certain stage of development. And now it is there and will always be there and will always have to be solved anew. And if people are not prepared to accept ever new solutions, the forces will ultimately lead to such disharmonies that they must increasingly lead to revolutionary upheavals of the social order. Revolutions must be defeated step by step on a small scale; then they will not occur on a large scale. But if one does not defeat that which enters into life day by day as legitimate revolutionary forces, then one need not be surprised if that which one does not want to be aware of discharges itself in great upheavals. Rather, in a certain sense, this must be seen as something understandable.

So I believe that it is precisely in the proletariat that an understanding could develop for a truly far-reaching overview of the social question as it arises in this tripartite organization of the social organism. And I am convinced that if some understanding develops, the proletarian will only then realize how he is the true modern man in the true sense of the word. He, who has been torn out of the old legalities, placed next to the barren machine, harnessed into the soulless economic process, has the opportunity to think about what is worthy of man, about what makes human life truly worthy of man, alongside this killing and destroying of man; he has the opportunity to think about it from the fundamental bases and to consider man as a pure human being. That is why one can also believe that if what is hidden in the modern proletarian class consciousness, what lies behind it, develops out of it: the consciousness of human dignity - “an existence worthy of man must be granted to all men” - then with the solution of the proletarian question, with the liberation of the proletariat, the solution of a great world-historical question of humanity will take place. Then the proletarian will not only redeem himself, then the proletarian will become the redeemer of all humanity in humanity. Then, with proletarian liberation, the whole of humanity, that which is worth liberating in this humanity, can be liberated at the same time.