The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees,

What arose out of anthroposophical spiritual science as the impulse for the threefold social order needs to be explained, not defended, time and again in the face of the view that the threefold social order is utopian. Anyone who really delves into my essay 'The Key Points of the Social Question' or into the wealth of literature that has since been written on it can see the fundamental difference between what is intended here, precisely on the basis of anthroposophy, and what is usually associated with utopias, utopian ideas in social, economic or other respects.

Otherwise, it is pointed out, and it is even taken for granted that it should be pointed out, how one or other institutions must be set up in order to lead to this or that satisfactory result or condition for humanity. The view of life that underlies the impulse for the threefold social order knows that, in the face of today's conditions, the assertion of any utopian ideas would be quite meaningless. Yes, I have stated in the new edition of my 'Key Points of the Social Question', which is just being published, in the rewritten preface, that I would not expect anything from any purely theoretical descriptions, however it should be in the future, even if these descriptions were to be written with the greatest of spirit. For today it is not at all a matter of expressing any ready-made, ingenious ideas about social institutions, but rather, today, in the face of humanity proud of its maturity, it is a matter of pointing out the opportunities under which, through social cooperation, people can bring about what is desirable. Thus, the impulse for the threefold social organism is not meant to characterize how the world should look, but how this social organism itself should bring people into certain mutual relationships so that people, according to their respective abilities and needs, create the conditions in which they can live in the future.

The idea is that the social organism should be structured not into three classes, but into three particular social entities, in each of which every person has a share. This structure should be into a free spiritual life, a state or political life and an independent economic life. And at the root of this lies the view that if people shape their circumstances through such a threefold social organism, then what is socially viable must come from the people themselves. So it is not a matter of presenting something utopian, but rather of characterizing opportunities under which people themselves, each individual, one might say, can gain influence over the social shaping of life that is commensurate with their abilities and needs and that must carry the necessary weight to bring about conditions that are conducive to life.

This is the fundamental difference between the impulse for the threefold social organism and, one might say, everything else that has understandably sprung up in our time out of the deep need of this time. But precisely this necessity, this basic principle, of peeling the social organism, which has become abstractly unified, into its three natural parts so that they can in turn work together all the more intimately, is still little understood in wider circles today. And that, my dear ladies and gentlemen, can on the one hand be found quite understandable, on the other hand it must be deeply regretted, because today we really do not have unlimited time to get out of the crisis and out of the decline, but because we need to get to the real spirit in spiritual, political and economic terms as soon as possible. But I said it is understandable. And one must consider the way in which it is understandable, in order to perhaps also find the way to improvement from it.

I would like to take as my starting point a judgment that has been made recently, not because it appears in a book by an economist, but because it is characteristic, despite being expressed by an individual here, of the way of thinking of the broadest circles - of the way of thinking that is precisely the sharpest obstacle to the intervention of such an impulse as that of threefolding.

It may be said that the economist and Jena professor Fritz Terhalle has written a very readable book about free and controlled price formation. The problem of price formation is, after all, the one that must be at the center of economic thinking. Terhalle sharply criticizes the price formation processes that took place during the war. It may be said that much of this writing is downright brilliantly illuminating what is actually present in current economic thinking. Terhalle asks what the benefits and effects were of the various price regulations that were issued by the state during the war. And I am allowed to share with you his four points, in which he summarizes his judgment. After he has presented in detail how the effects have shown, after again and again official bodies have issued price regulations, laws about prices – after he has examined these effects, carefully examined them, he summarizes his overall judgment in the following four points:

[First: Most of the time, the interested and relevant circles had a false conception of what should be striven for. Second: The uncertainty caused by this, as well as by the application to practice and by the practice of thoroughly opposing theoretical constructions, as well as, finally, by the most diverse jurisprudence, brought the participating circles of buyers into very undesirable confusion and agitation. Thirdly: The fight against price gouging was almost unsuccessful in some areas, particularly in primary production, and only partially successful in others, and often to an excessive extent, especially in some branches of retail trade.

And the fourth point, in which this economist sums up his judgment, is particularly characteristic. He says:

All these factors combined to damage the real business in favor of profiteering.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is how a man expresses himself who expressly wants to be scientific, who wants to scientifically examine the corresponding phenomena. And this is his scientific judgment of what the state did to regulate prices during the time of need.

But there is something else: the fact that this economist, from his scientific point of view, which he calls the national economic point of view – and one should believe that it is self-evident that economic demands must be judged from the national economic point of view – he states that from his scientific, national economic point of view, this way of the state influencing economic life is to be condemned. So he names these phenomena, which have come to light as a result of these state interventions, as those that he must fight from his scientific point of view. And then he says something quite extraordinarily characteristic. He says:

Yes, that is the [economic] judgment, but perhaps this [economic] judgment is one that must not be decisive, perhaps something more important, something more significant comes into question much, much more. And as such a more important, more significant factor, he cites the economic policy points of view, behind which what must be asserted from the economic point of view must recede.

So we are told that one can know that something is economically justified, but the economist must keep quiet, because anything that may come from one side or the other that is harmful from the point of view of economic policy must be put in its place.

Well, my dear attendees, one cannot resign more clearly from economic thinking than in this way. It cannot be stated more clearly that economic thinking cannot come into its own within the unified social organism of the state if those who feel professionally called to make this judgment say: This is our honest scientific conviction, but it must take a back seat to the state's economic policy measures. These are more important in the given case.

Do we not have a clear indication from the facts of life: economic life must be placed on its own ground; it is necessary that within the social organism this economic life be detached from that which it must damage when it places itself above it.

Those who today judge such things not from theoretical considerations but from full life practice, who in particular from life practice overlook the helplessness of people in these matters, can grasp with their hands how necessary it is to place economic life on its own healthy basis. And that this is only possible if, on the other hand, spiritual life is placed on its own basis, I have often stated here, and I will have to touch on it again in the further course of today's lecture. But I would still like to start from a remark that is made precisely by the side that I have characterized.

After the helplessness of economic thinking in the face of current social conditions has been admitted in this way, the emphasis is on what will actually matter in the future. And there Terhalle says:

In the future, it will be more important than ever to educate the masses about economic necessities so that they are able to think in economic terms.

It is remarkable that on the one hand the old unitary state is invoked as the higher authority, and then the demand is made not for some beautiful economic institutions – that is quite clever of Terhalle – but the demand is made that the people be taught about economic interrelations. And if you read on, this knowledge that the people should acquire about economic interrelationships extends even to the constitution of the market and market conditions. It is demanded that the people be enlightened in order to place themselves in the economic organism under the influence of this enlightenment in such a way that this economic organism can flourish. On the one hand, then, a remarkable judgment on economic policy, on the other hand, an appeal to the economic education of the people. And it is clearly recognized that it is precisely here, as a necessity, for the economic politician, the economist, that the economic actions themselves, that the whole economic behavior should change, so that people no longer how prices are determined, with a complete lack of knowledge about the structure of the market, about other economic relationships, but that each individual acts with economic enlightenment, and brings this economic enlightenment into the immediate economic activity itself. In abstracto, a very, very reasonable demand! But an important question arises from this whole context, my dear attendees, and that is this: where should this enlightenment about economic necessities come from in the future?

It is interesting that Terhalle quotes the socialist Richard Calwer with reference to a thought that the same expresses. He once said:

You need sufficient, well-founded knowledge of the goods in stock in order to be able to operate the economic supply in an appropriate manner; in other words, to arrive at appropriate economic pricing. You need knowledge of the goods in stock.

Yes, but how can this be applied? Where can it come from? And how can one educate the people with such knowledge of the supply of goods – and of course a lot of other things are necessary to educate the people about economic necessities – how can one educate the people with such knowledge?

You see, certain people, I might say, chew and chew on certain questions and get nowhere. These are the questions that the impulse for the threefold social order has envisaged in a concrete, appropriate, practical way. He started from the knowledge that a certain realization, a certain insight into economic conditions, into economic activity itself, must penetrate. But he does not declaim that such an enlightenment must be created, regardless of who is to create it. Nor does he declare that it should be created by the old unitary state. He also knows that this education must not be of a very specific kind, because an education of a certain kind, which such people probably always think of, would not be of any use at all. Because let us assume that the “clever” idea - I say “clever” in quotation marks, of course - of setting up state commissioners, state councils or whatever they are called, somehow expert councils, which, according to the known methods of today, by means of all kinds of statistics or the like, would gain knowledge of the constitution of economic conditions, and they would then, in the ways that are popular today, go among the people and create enlightenment, so that the people would then do business under the influence of this enlightenment - what would be achieved? Exactly the same would be achieved, my dear attendees, which in numerous places Terhalle criticizes with regard to the education that has always been created by the authorities during the war. There are many passages in his very interesting book in which he points out how all possible explanations, more as a sedative, were quickly thrown behind the people in rapid succession from all possible sources in the agitated times. But he states this not only for the reason, which was indeed also present, that people were so inundated with such explanations that they did not take them into account at all, but also for the other reason that such things have no effect at all when they are brought to the people in this way. Why don't they work? For the simple reason that such explanations only speak to the human mind, only speak to the human intellect, because such explanations have to be grasped with the head. And then, after what one has found reasonable, one would have to act accordingly. One would always have to say to oneself: “You must do what is reasonable!”

That is not the way to spread economic enlightenment. Oh no. This is how economic enlightenment is spread by abstract theorists who judge not by life but by their ideas about life; one could also say, by their illusions about life. Those who know what life is like have a different kind of enlightenment: an enlightenment built on the trust between the one who enlightens and the one who is to be enlightened. An enlightenment that does not speak in general terms, but in the individual, concrete terms that are currently present according to economic needs or economic circumstances, and that has an enlightening effect at the same time as action is taken. In other words, those who work together must be united in such a way that simply by meeting in economic action, one has an enlightening effect on the other. One is more familiar with the conditions of consumption in one area, the other with the conditions of production in another, depending on which branch of economic life he is more familiar with. If you know from life that he is in there, if you have other concrete connections with him in life, then you trust him and believe what he says. And in turn, he accommodates you with regard to what you yourself say, which he cannot know. And while you are communicating in this way, the economic actions are taking place. Economic enlightenment and economic activity do not fall apart, but by negotiating in a circle of trust, where producers and consumers, depending on the different circumstances, are drawn together, by negotiating in such a circle of trust, one clarifies oneself economically. One clarifies oneself within this circle. One clarifies oneself from the facts. Enlightenment is drawn into life. Enlightenment is not treated as something that is poured into the people from the outside. Because, my dear attendees, there can also be a social ethos in economic activity, because what is negotiated from person to person and is done in the negotiation is based on mutual trust, on such a trust that, in its potentization, may already be mentioned as real economic fraternity.

And this, my dear attendees, is the associative principle. The associative principle consists of nothing other than people who have some kind of economic interaction with each other joining together, associating, and the associations associating further. In this way, what is necessary for the maintenance of the economy comes about. In this way, what is effective in the economy itself comes about through direct knowledge of economic life.

Everywhere you can see that what underlies the threefold order is drawn from life itself. Only that this life is not looked at in terms of familiar illusions and illusionist theories, but in such a way that one looks at people, at people's perceptions and feelings, and above all, one asks oneself: how do people gain trust in each other? Imagine what it would mean if price regulations were to arise out of such a relationship of trust, instead of being dictated from outside. It should therefore not be said in any way that in order to arrive at a fair price, it must be done in such and such a way. Rather, it should be pointed out that if such associations exist and deal with pricing, then the corresponding prices will emerge from such a real economic life. It is not said that one should do it this way or that, but rather it is said: in this way people should join together, so that out of this union the things necessary arise, and so the other economic institutions, the other economic measures.

That is the reality of thinking about the threefold social organism. And I have often pointed this out, and I would just like to repeat it here briefly, that economic life has its own laws. The size of the associations arises automatically from the economic conditions of a territory. Associations that are too small would work too expensively, and associations that are too large would be unwieldy. I have explained this in more detail in the new preface to my “Key Points”. All the objections that are currently being raised against the associative principle disintegrate into nothing when one considers the real conditions. This associative principle alone will be able to meet the world-historical demands of social life in an appropriate way and to fulfill them. And how are these world-historical demands of social life expressed?

Now, my dear audience, the economic part of social life has actually only in the second half of the nineteenth century become what it is today. It is only from what became of the economic body of civilized humanity in the second half of the nineteenth century and has remained until our days, only from that could arise that which is nevertheless the main basis of our world war catastrophe, the economic confusion of the middle of the second decade of the twentieth century. How did it come about? We can say that if we take the immediately preceding signature of the economy of civilized humanity, then what we can call the world trade principle has gradually emerged from earlier forms of human coexistence. We can already speak of a world trade principle in the eighteenth century, and even more so in the first half of the nineteenth century. But what then emerged from the world trade principle in economic life is the world economy. And the world economy is something other than mere world trade and what it encompasses. A world economy is only present at the moment when different states exchange their production in such a way that what one obtains as raw products, the other processes in industry; that an economic production community arises between different state territories. Before that, it was essentially – always essentially, of course – the case that the states had closed national economies, that they traded their surpluses externally, and obtained from outside what they could not produce themselves. But the fact that a common working practice, as it was particularly brought about by the cotton industry – the characteristic example of what the world economy has created – spread across the whole of civilized humanity, is actually only a result of the very latest times. And one should not believe that what can be characterized as a world economy and what has established a far-reaching dependency of the individual national economies on each other, that this just hangs over humanity like a cloud.

No, dear attendees, what is happening in the world economy is affecting every single household. Every single person is finally under the influence of this world economy. But for this world economy, the earlier communities, which were aimed at something quite different, the unit states, were simply too small. They were also constituted in such a way that they were not geared to this mutual interdependence in the world economy. In short, the associations that existed in the past, which emerged from the household economy into the city economy, then into the state economy, became too small. Economic life went beyond what these associations could achieve. And finally, anyone who does not look at the surface of the phenomena, but who studies with all thoroughness the causes of the war between Central Europe and the western regions of the civilized world, knows that they arose from the breaking down of national borders by the world economy. And if you look at it that way, you have to seriously raise the question: How can we heal what the world economy, which is simply an historical necessity because of the spread of transport conditions and the possibilities it offers, has made unhealthy? The only way is to recognize that This economy and its institutions, which have arisen out of it, that one also asks about the state of mind, the whole ethos of the people who work within this world economy, how one can come out of this world economy itself to a shaping of economic life. The impulse for the threefold social order provides the answer: the kind of cooperation within the world economy that follows from it itself, not from the old institutions, is the associative principle in economic life. Now that the old associations, which came from something else and which coped with the old form of economic life, have been reduced to absurdity, the economy itself must give itself its associations. And these associations, as I have described them today more ethically, otherwise more economically, as they are also clearly characterized in my book “The Core Issues of the Social Question”, these associations, as they arise out of economic life itself, are demanded by the idea of the threefold social organism. And these associations can be created at any moment, without resorting to utopian dreams, if people in the economic sphere simply turn to themselves and thereby bring about the emancipation of economic life. When associations arise, they will initially only be able to do what the outside world allows them to do, but they will prove themselves in what they do, and then they will have to be allowed to exist, because they will prove fruitful for the economy.

But, my dear attendees, when you look at how the necessity for associations arises from the modern organization of the global economy, then on the other hand you have to ask yourself: how can that be brought about which must work in people who associate? Those people who want to work in associations that are built on trust must be able to inspire trust. This means that people must be able to place themselves in the world in such a way that this trust can work within the associations simply out of the whole human soul mood, out of the whole human soul condition. In other words, we need not only economically oriented associations; we need people in the associations who work socially, people whose social work is permeated by moral principles, by spiritual perspectives. That is why it is impossible to imagine any improvement in economic life without a simultaneous metamorphosis of intellectual life itself. For why, one might ask, do people today think, in a perfectly understandable way, that you can educate the people by simply pouring some kind of enlightenment from above down onto them? Why do people think this way? Because, under the spiritual development of the last few centuries, they have gradually become accustomed to the idea that everything that is reasonably thought must only have an effect on the intellect of the human being, must only take hold of the intellect of the human being. In order to show the right thing in this point, I have just pointed out in the lectures that preceded this one, in this week's lecture, but also in earlier lectures, what the most significant characteristic of spiritual science is.

The most significant characteristic of the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here is that it is drawn from such deep sources of human nature and being that, in turn, as it spreads, it must have an effect on the whole person, if this whole person is educated in such a way that he or she opens up to it. Spiritual science is characterized by its effect on the whole human being and its effect from the whole human being. And this is what we need on the other side. We cannot bring economic life up if we do not have people who stand firmly with both feet on this earth and who also receive the soul nourishment from spiritual life that allows them to stand with both feet on this earth. It is a commonly held opinion today that this spiritual nourishment can be obtained simply by spreading the kind of education that is cultivated under the roofs of our schools, in adult education associations, in public libraries and adult education colleges.

But let us look at an example – we must always look at things in concrete terms – of how today's intellectual education works precisely where it is supposed to have an effect on the human mind, where it seeks to take hold of the moral and spiritual content of the human being above all. Anthroposophy is thoroughly explored by the recently mentioned theologian Kurt Leese, who is a pastor; it says so on the title page. I don't know the man, I only know the book. So he is a pastor. He is one of those personalities of whom one would have to assume, within a healthy social organism, that when he speaks, something will resonate from his words that will pour into souls in such a way that the souls will feel within themselves the moral, spiritual and soul impulses that are within them. That people who receive this spiritual life become aware of what a human being actually is to them, what a human being is within the cosmic order that they see around them in the stars, the clouds, in lightning and thunder, in the succession of earthly and world-historical events. Just think what it means for human feeling, for the human soul, when one can say to oneself, from within the spiritual life, I am not only a forsaken child in a physical body, but I am something that has been born out of the whole physical and spiritual and spiritual universe. I belong to the universe in so far as this universe is eternal. Feel what happens in the soul when a person feels at home in the cosmos. This goes as far as the forces of the blood, which gives one the strength to act in life; this permeates and spiritualizes the will when one knows what one is as a human being in the universe. But this should come to him through the cultivation of spiritual life. Anthroposophy tries to give people such a spiritual life. But what does the pastor, licentiate of theology Kurt Leese, say? He says:

What is all this talk about the service of knowledge, about the riddles of life and their solution? What is all this surge of knowledge into the depths of the primeval world and into the distance when anthroposophy

- here it says: “theosophy” -

cannot say why it is better to be an ego than a non-ego. And why, in fact, are seven world ages necessary?

And then this pastor and licentiate in theology says: the anthroposophist knows just as little about this as we do, so he also adheres to mere facticity.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, here we have the representative of the present-day spiritual life, and it is not just one person speaking, the individual can only be cited as one example, thousands and thousands are speaking, and they speak in the name of the spiritual life. They say: one cannot arrive at this, at this why it is better to be an I than a non-I, that is, to be in the eternal unconsciousness of the external natural existence.

In contrast to this, anthroposophical spiritual science emphasizes – this may emerge as a result of many lectures I have given here – anthroposophical spiritual science emphasizes what it means to become aware of how one stands in this universe. Let us just take our starting point for comparison from everyday life. We human beings in our everyday lives have gone through certain experiences since the time when we can remember back to our earliest childhood. We feel connected to these experiences. These experiences emerge in our memory as either friendly or painful. But what we bring up here is basically ourselves. We feel merged with what we have gone through in suffering and joy and what we can remember. We are aware that we are what has passed through us as pain and joy and then, through this passing, has been drawn into our soul. In our ordinary lives, we only become aware of something as a small human being by connecting with that which we have been connected with since our birth, that which has approached us and, in a sense, belongs to us. What does anthroposophy do? It expands, as it were, this sense of belonging together of the human being with the environment to the whole world, which can enter into his consciousness. As otherwise the human being only feels as one with his personal experiences, anthroposophy draws his attention to how he is connected in his being with the whole being of the world that can be perceived and experienced by him. The small consciousness of the personality expands into world consciousness. Together we grow with all the historical development of humanity, in that we recognize how we are always and again involved in it. We become one with the world. And in the same measure in which this consciousness of the world expands, this consciousness, which we otherwise have through our natural development with our experiences in suffering and joy, this consciousness, through which we also become participants in the suffering and joy of the whole world, by feeling ourselves as a human being as a member of the whole world, in the same measure in which this consciousness expands, in the same measure our consciousness of our humanity grows, and to the same extent we become stronger in this consciousness, our inner moral strength grows, because we know - although, and this is right, our sense of responsibility also grows - something grows in us through which we know that we are human within the world; through which we know what it means to be an I and not a non-I.

This awareness of what the human being is, of what he is in relation to the world and to all existence, this awareness, which, as we see and as we have tangible examples of, has been lost to the world in present-day spiritual life, this awareness is what spiritual science wants to bring back to people. And in the same measure that this consciousness, arising out of the knowledge of the spirit, which is to be imparted not as abstract knowledge but as knowledge that has been experienced, wells up out of the whole human being, in the same measure will our moral and spiritual strength grow. And what grows in us will find its way into the economic associations and assert itself as the basis for human interaction and the trust we need.

This, my dear audience, must be said if one is to describe how spiritual knowledge must take its place alongside economic demands. For the spiritual knowledge that we have today is expressed in such a way that it is indifferent whether one knows why one is an ego or a non-ego. We need a renewal in the field of spiritual knowledge. And this renewal will lead us to something quite different, which has already been hinted at in these or those lectures that I have given, which always seems bold when it is spoken out loud, but which is absolutely a result of this spiritual science, as surely as any scientific result can be.

Let us take what follows from the world view that is customary today. We look back into the distant past of our world system, when something arose out of some cosmic nebula and became what the world is in which we live. The sun and planets emerged from this nebula in a certain way, according to external natural forces. We live on this earth as lonely human beings, who feel the moral ideals sprouting up in their souls, which also signify the ultimate impulses of their social actions. They stand there with their moral ideals, which basically constitute their actual mental nervous strength as human beings; they stand there with them, and they know that without them they cannot be human in the full sense of the word.

But then again he looks up at what, according to the conventional world view, may be the end of this planetary system with our sun and our earth. What happens in our external world does not ask about our ideals, our moral and spiritual impulses. It proceeds according to external natural laws and arrives at a final state that signifies a kind of solidification, whether solidification into warmth or cold, it does not matter; it is then the charnel house at the same time, the great cemetery for all They emerged as illusions in the midst of this world-becoming, they gave man an illusory sense of his human dignity, and they will be carried to the grave with the planetary system itself.

The fact that many people do not admit to themselves that it is so does not change the fact that the present world view unconsciously flows into their feelings. And basically, it is also a saying like that one could never understand why it is better to be a self than a non-self, which arises from the desolate feeling that one must have when one sees this natural course of world events, with the spiritual and moral illusions of humanity right in the middle, giving people an illusory sense of their human dignity, but which they will one day have to carry to the grave with all of humanity.

This is countered, even if so many prejudices still speak against it today, by the view of spiritual science. I have often explained it here individually and will only describe it briefly today. Spiritual science also looks at the external world events from which the human being has emerged as a physical being. But then it recognizes that these world events, which are subject to natural laws, are in the whole, to our universe, the relative universe itself, as the plant, which sprouts in leaves, becomes a flower, develops the fruit casing to the germ inside. That which arises in the plant until the germ develops, what is the covering, passes away; the germ passes over, and the new plant life arises from it. The old covering must pass away so that the new plant life can arise from the germ.

Anthroposophy shows that everything that is physical in us, as belonging to the external physical world, belongs to such a transient part of the universe, but that a germ lives. That a germ lives in the human being, that is the spiritual, the moral of the impulses that live within. These are our moral ideals, they are a still young world. Just as the sheaths around the plant germ dry up and fall away, so will the visible stars, the visible external objects of the three natural kingdoms, fall away. They fall away. That which is the germ of the future lies in our moral soul content. The world of the future arises from this. What we do today, what we want today, becomes a real, outwardly perceptible world-forming force.

However, the sense of responsibility grows when one becomes aware that what we have in our moral intentions today will one day become as perceptible to the world as the stars are perceptible to us today. But many a word that has been said in religious documents only makes sense when one is aware of what flows from a real knowledge of the spirit. One must always remember with elevated feelings that it was once said in a particularly paradigmatic way that what lives in man as ideals and pours out into words is the creative [germ] for future worlds, to which those who are now present as external nature will not be added; they will no longer be there when new worlds have arisen from our moral ideals. “Heaven and Earth will pass away,” said the founder of Christianity, ‘but my words will not pass away.’ That means: They will be worlds when the world of heaven and earth, which one now sees with eyes, will have passed away.

This is the anticipation of a spiritual scientific truth, my dear attendees. And if we are so connected with the becoming of the world through our moral ideals, then our consciousness of our true nature as human beings also grows. In turn, we have to draw from spiritual science itself moral forces, which then become social forces.

Spiritual science does not merely theorize, spiritual science does not merely present abstract teachings, spiritual science presents something into the world that becomes strength in the human soul. And strength, ladies and gentlemen, is what we need if we want to become social human beings. For strong, morally social people must place themselves in the associations. That is what it is about.

In what I have just said, however, there is something that may appear to today's scientists to be somewhat lay and very amateurish. That is why I was also taught, when I recently expressed the same thing in Zurich, by a Zurich private lecturer, that I “reify” my ideas in this and other areas, as he said. Now, he speaks of this reification as if I were speaking of ideas as realities. Of course, he has no idea how the things are meant. He speaks of this reification very dismissively and says that I would even have claimed:

In his two lectures, Steiner literally says:

- he says explicitly, and now he wants to quote words because this seems to him to be something outrageous - I would have taken it so far in reifying that I would have said:

“Anthroposophical spiritual science recognizes the moral as being just as real as the physical. In our moral life, it recognizes indestructible seeds for emerging later worlds.”

You see, this ruler of contemporary science makes the logical mistake of reifying ideas when, from the basis of real spiritual research, he presents the truth that, not through logical error but through the great, very promising world processes for humanity, the moral ideas that we carry within us become reified, become things, become realities. Today, you are already criticized if you dare to claim - then it is put in quotation marks - that anthroposophical spiritual science recognizes the moral life as an indestructible germ for future worlds, for everything physical. You are not allowed to do that from the point of view of today's, correct university philosophies, because you are scolded as someone who understands nothing about the world.

Because the one who understands something about the world, in the opinion of these people, cannot judge otherwise than that the world has arisen out of a fog according to real laws, that it runs according to mere external physical laws and falls back into the sun as slag, while the non-reified moral impulses, which resemble mere ideas, must be buried in the same world churchyard.

But, my dear attendees, if economic life is to recover, if economic demands are to be taken seriously, then this cannot happen without

at the same time the spiritual knowledge, which places the moral and thus also the religious life alongside the economic. For the economic associations will give rise to the living insight that others also demand, but do not know where to get. And from that which is spiritual knowledge will come the social ethos, the socio-ethical power to bring these insights into reality. This is what we must bear in mind when we speak of economic demands today. We cannot seriously speak of them without at the same time pointing out what can give people the strength to fulfill these economic demands.

But, esteemed attendees, how did it come about that people in the spiritual life are already saying that one cannot know why it is better to be an I than a non-I? Even if it is unpleasant to say so, it must be said: the one who gets the drive for his spiritual work only from what the economy alone, what the state can give, which puts the individual in a certain place, the one who must succumb to this drive because it has become has become a vital necessity, he, no matter how strongly he may be an idealist as an individual, may even be a spiritualist, but he is increasingly coming to regard the spirit as no more than a mere appendage of life. Then the final consequence is this, which has become a ruling one in the broadest circles of our socialists, that the spiritual life is only an ideology, something that arises as if out of a haze and fog from the only reality, the external, material, economic reality.

That this view prevails today in broader socialist circles, that this view also dominates feelings, emotions and impulses in these circles, is only because the ruling, leading circles, through centuries, have lost direct contact with the real spiritual world; with that spiritual world in which we speak not only of the spirit as a sum of abstract concepts, but as a reality, as we speak of the physical-sensory reality. This spiritual life, which recognizes the spirit in its reality, must unfold freely and independently, emancipated from state and economic life; it must be left to its own devices. For the longer the spiritual life is dependent on any external factors, the more the consciousness of the substantial, independent spirit that weaves and pulses and works and lives through the world is lost. Spiritual knowledge can only exist within a free spiritual life. And this free spiritual life will also be the source of real spiritual knowledge. From this real spiritual knowledge, the strength will flow into the economic interrelations that we need to make progress in economic life as well.

So, my dear attendees, everything that is contained in the impulse for the threefold social order flows from a truly real contemplation of life. So everything is meant to be directly practical, but in such a way that by the practical view we do not just mean the narrow view that looks at the machines and at the length of the working day, but at the whole human being, who wants to and will give us head and heart and mind and feelings, and that will bring them to us when we approach them in such economic and spiritual contexts that trust is the element of life and brotherly love as the highest effect of this connection is the atmosphere of life in these contexts.

This must be emphasized again and again, especially in the face of the numerous misrepresentations that are made today about anthroposophical spiritual science as it is meant here. It must not be said of this spiritual science that it has no place in practical life. On the contrary, it is the science that can be said, as I said here a few days ago, to be that which does not seek to elevate the soul to a mystical, unworldly existence, to a mystical cloud-cuckoo-land. Rather, it is that which is intended to fill the soul with spirit in such a way that this spirit feels strong enough to carry spiritual substance into material life. The mystic should not become unworldly in an egoistic way, seeking refuge somewhere where the world is not to be found. He should be imbued with the spirit so that he can carry this spirit into the world around him, which is a free spiritual world, a democratically equal world, an economic world built on trust, an outwardly material world. It is precisely through spiritual science that the realization must penetrate that it is the most blatant, most sophisticated selfishness to take refuge in a world-unrelated mysticism, to cry out for asceticism, while a truly spiritual penetration should precisely give the strength for life. This strength for life, it alone can lead us out of the impending decline, out of the terrible distress and misery, towards a task.

Then in the middle is the actual state life, which will develop when, on the one hand, the free economic life and, on the other, the free spiritual life are established.

In this way, the threefold social order will be created.

Then, in the middle, there will be the actual life of the state, which will develop when, on the one hand, free economic life and, on the other, free spiritual life are separated.

In this way, the threefold social organism will be able to shape the necessary social order of the future in a way that is full of life.

Sometimes today one hears the judgment, at least ten times, and that always only reminds me of how widespread it is: What will become of the state, of legal life in the middle, if intellectual life and economic life are separated? A famous Swiss legal scholar, the most important legal teacher in Switzerland and at the present time, said this himself when he became acquainted with the threefold social order. He said that he found the threefold order appealing, but he could not understand what would then remain for the state between economic life and the life of the humanities.

Now, my dear attendees, it will be shown that a great deal will remain for a powerful and vigorous state life and that those who judge things according to today's conditions just do not see what will remain remain, because, to a certain extent, what is supposed to be there in the life of the state, built on the same democratic foundations, has been consumed on the one hand by economic life, and it wants to consume it even more where the last consequences are to be drawn from this principle. People who say that the economic-political is a higher point of view than the actual economic one do not usually see this. They do not see that the final consequence of such views is the terrible, world-murdering Bolshevism that follows from them. They will see this gradually, if they do not force themselves to form a reasonable view.

In this way, the life of the state and of the law will stand in the middle, and economic life will be built up on its own forces, while spiritual life will stand free and independent. It is as a social shaping of these forces that the impulse for threefolding wants to work. For he must say, not in some programmatic way, not out of abstract thoughts, but out of a thorough penetration of the real necessities of the present, that only on the foundations, which he can perhaps still only express in an imperfect way today - I fully admit this - but which must be further developed through the collaboration, the very necessary collaboration of a great many knowledgeable personalities. In this qualification, however, those who today feel they are the bearers of this impulse for the threefold social organism are convinced: if social life with its longings for a future design is studied and observed in this thorough way, and if these longings are met with the appropriate measures, then what makes the social organism possible must arise. For in such a social organism there will be the basis for the possibility of life; there will be a truly invigorating and fruitful spiritual life that will bring forth a healthy economic life built on brotherhood. There will be in such a social structure a truly free spirit in an economic order built on trust as the only possible social economic force.

When people see the present distress and misery, they ask what has caused it, and usually they look for the causes in external circumstances. They will first look back at the painful years that have passed, four to five years. Perhaps he will also gradually become aware that what has been so painfully experienced in the last four to five years has been preparing itself over a long period of time, through decades, indeed through centuries of recent human development, just as a thunderstorm prepares itself through the sultriness of the whole day, without its formation being noticed, and then discharges itself. But even those people who look further back in this way to the causes and reasons for our present plight and our misery in this age, they will look more or less at external circumstances. They will also think of appearances when it comes to getting out of the confusion and chaos of this age, of external measures and institutions.

To a great extent, this view is correct. I myself have tried to express the extent to which this is the case, in accordance with my own convictions, in the lecture I was allowed to give here in Ulm a few weeks ago on social issues. But there is another side to this way of looking at things. We need only be attentive to what is a significant contemporary phenomenon in our present time with regard to the inner human life, the human soul life. In line with what I just mentioned, we are rightly striving for a more social organization of the external conditions of life than has been granted to humanity in the last three to four centuries. But is it not noticeable that we are striving towards this social organization from a very strange human state of mind? Do we not notice that basically human souls in the present are permeated with antisocial drives, with antisocial instincts, with little possibility of mutual understanding? And it is out of these antisocial states of mind, and all the more so because they are present, that we must strive for a more social organization of external life than that which the antisocial instincts of our present human life had developed during the last three to four centuries. If we consider the question from this point of view, we find that these antisocial tendencies of the present time are actually connected with the fact that we have lost the way to the innermost core of man's being, the way to that innermost core of being that every human being actually senses within himself, even if more or less brightly or only instinctively and obscurely: the supersensible human being. However strange it may sound, people today do not know exactly what their deeper, darker soul craves. It longs for a realization of the supersensible essence of the human being. And in the difficulties that our age in particular is experiencing in advancing to a satisfactory realization of this innermost human nature - in these difficulties lies much of what then expresses itself externally in confusion and chaos, as little as people want to admit this even today. Many people, however, think that the question I am talking about should be answered in a completely different way from the one I will give you tonight.

Since I have to discuss this question from the point of view of anthroposophical spiritual science, I will not be able to answer it in the convenient way that is sought by many people today, and which is popular in the broadest circles of humanity. When people today are told about the Mountains of the Moon and how one informs oneself about them through physical instruments and physical measures, they believe that acquiring knowledge about the Mountains of the Moon is a complicated matter. The human being overcomes himself and admits that one cannot penetrate to knowledge of, say, the Moon Mountains or the moons of Jupiter or the like in a completely comfortable way. But when it comes to the supersensible world, when it comes to the spiritual existence of the human being himself, the broadest circles today still behave quite differently. They find it too difficult to speak in the way I will have to speak to you today. Even today the widest circles say: Better than this apparent science is childlike confession or childlike belief in the Bible to enter the supersensible worlds. They insist on that which they find comfortable, on the childlike simplicity of the belief in confession or in the Bible, when it is a matter of the highest thing to which man can aspire on the path of the soul, and they reject that which does not lead man along this path in such a comfortable way. But even today people do not see certain inner connections that exist between this striving for comfortable spiritual paths and between our anti-social instincts and the difficulties of getting out of these anti-social instincts. If people realized the connection between what they have been told and believed from certain quarters: that you can seek the paths to the supersensible through childlike, simple creeds, and if they realized the connection between this assertion and this belief and between what is expressed today in terms of anti-social impulses, then one would certainly learn to think differently about what the widest circles today find to be a 'convenient way into the supersensible worlds'. 'But it is not out of some kind of intellectual quirk that spiritual science shows modern man other ways today, but it shows these ways because it feels it has an obligation to do so in view of the needs and tasks of present-day humanity. If present-day humanity were to recognize itself in its very depths, it would say to itself: With regard to supersensible striving, we can no longer be satisfied with the old ways. This lives today as a longing in many souls, and anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to meet this longing.

As already mentioned, people today do ask more or less clearly or more or less unconsciously about the relationship between soul and body; if they have not already come so far as to deny everything of a soul nature, because doubt has always arisen in response to this question, doubt that has wearied them. But what does the modern person fundamentally know about soul and body? He observes the body in such a way that he applies his senses, his external physical mind, or, for that which he cannot directly learn through the senses and the mind, he resorts to natural science, which, through its investigations, is supposed to tell him what the laws are, what the inner nature of this human physical body is. On the other hand, man inwardly perceives that which he calls thinking, feeling and willing. This becomes an inner experience for him. To this thinking, feeling and willing he also attaches certain inner longings, desires and hopes, he attaches the belief that this inner life, living in thinking, feeling and willing, has not only the temporary significance for the world that the life of the physical body has. But then the question arises for the human being that gives rise to the great doubts: What is the relationship between what I perceive inwardly as soul in me, as thinking, feeling and willing, and what I see outwardly in myself and in others as the outer physical body, the laws and essence of which science seeks to explain to me? And if the human being cannot explain this relationship between the soul and the body to himself, then he may well turn to those who, based on certain scientific foundations, have the opportunity to investigate this relationship more deeply. And lo and behold, today's man, who is so eager to have everything explained to him by scientific authority, must then realize that in this question he can be helped little by the scientists he so seeks. If he takes anything at hand in which the researchers in this field have expressed themselves, he will usually find that they say about this question just as uncertainly as he carries within himself. All kinds of hypotheses and conjectures can be found. But something that seizes the human being in such a way that, if only they can truly take a position on it without prejudice, they might get a sense of the truth, is rarely found today. The task of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is to find this.

But we cannot advance along the same paths by which we arrive at external science to that which I must now speak of as a spiritual science, as a real spiritual science. Imagine someone telling you about the paths of research they have taken in the chemical or physical laboratory, in the clinic, to research external nature. You would usually hear from such a researcher, who can justifiably believe that he has become an expert in his field, that he has gone his research ways with a certain calm, with a certain inner equanimous soul mood. There is not much excitement to be found on today's research paths.

But anyone who wants to tell you about the path he took to his insights into the supersensible human being cannot speak of such calmness, of such an inner, equanimous mood of the soul. If he is to tell you about what he went through to arrive at these insights, he will have to speak of inner struggles, of inner soul-searching, of difficult efforts, of repeatedly standing at the precipice of doubt. He will have to tell you about what he had to overcome in abundance, what he had to go through to arrive at what provides information about the actual supersensible human core of being. For one only really enters upon the path to knowledge of the supersensible human being when one has familiarized oneself with everything I have already indicated: when doubts arise when considering the question of the relationship between body and soul, so that one that can only arise from a certain intellectual modesty – while most people today, in such matters, have not at all intellectual modesty, but on the contrary, terrible intellectual arrogance.

But if one really makes an effort with ordinary thinking, with all the ordinary powers of the soul that one otherwise has in life, to approach these questions about the nature of soul and body, then one gradually realizes that one must be modest, that one cannot approach these questions with ordinary human thinking. And gradually, through inner experience, through inner discovery, one comes to realize that with this ordinary human thinking and feeling, one's approach to the supersensible is comparable to the abilities of a five-year-old child when, for example, it is presented with a volume of lyric poetry. This child cannot do anything with the volume of poetry that corresponds to the essence of this volume of poetry. We must first develop his abilities further, then he can do something with the volume of poetry that corresponds to the essence of this volume of poetry. So we must say to ourselves with regard to the thinking abilities that we have for our ordinary lives, with regard to the powers of knowledge that we have for our ordinary lives: you cannot use them to recognize the actual essence of the world and your own existence; you are initially confronted with this essence of the world and this essence of your own existence in such a way that you can do with it as little as a five-year-old child can with a book of poetry.

Only when one has developed this mood in one's soul, when one has conquered intellectual modesty so that one says to oneself: You must not remain with the way you can think now, feel and will now - only then does one stand at the starting point of the path into the supersensible worlds. For anyone who has something to say about the supersensible worlds must not only speak about something different from the ordinary external sense world, but must speak in a different way. This means, however, that one can only become a spiritual researcher if one first takes into one's own hands the faculties of thinking and cognition that one has for ordinary, everyday life and for ordinary science. Just as a child is educated by others, and its abilities developed by others, so must one take one's own inner soul abilities, first of all one's thinking ability, into one's own hands and develop them further, from the point of view at which thinking comes naturally in life.

In my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” I have described in detail the systematic structure of the thinking process by which man can take his thinking ability into his own hands and develop it further than it has been developed by ordinary life and ordinary science.

This evening, due to the limited time, I will only be able to present the fundamentals of the matter. I will only be able to show you how to further develop this thinking, how to take it into your own hands and how to advance it further and further. The following is a prerequisite for this: If you want to educate yourself about the external physical being of a person, as I said earlier, you should turn to natural science. Now, this natural science is not to be disparaged. The spiritual researcher fully recognizes the great triumphs of natural science in modern times, just as the natural scientist can only recognize them himself. He recognizes this natural science as justified; he is all the better a spiritual researcher the better he is able to appreciate the value and significance of natural science. But precisely for this reason the other side must also be stated: if one asks this natural science, it initially presents one with the limits of knowledge. You are all well aware that it is precisely the level-headed natural scientists who speak of such limits of knowledge. Certain concepts, certain ideas are presented to the person who asks about the nature of things, about power, matter, etc. These concepts change from time to time, but certain limits always remain, beyond which the natural scientist says: You cannot go. The natural scientist is right in his field if he stops at these limits. The spiritual researcher cannot do this. But he must not want to go beyond these limits through mere speculation or mere fantasy.

When the spiritual researcher approaches that which science cannot recognize and where it has driven the boundary posts for knowledge, there the great inner soul struggles begin for him, for the spiritual researcher. The spiritual researcher must fight inwardly with what the natural scientist presents as fixed boundary concepts. And here this struggle becomes a first great experience. He overcomes these limitations in his inner experience by struggling, and by overcoming them, a realization dawns on him with the experiences, which is important, fundamentally important for everything that is to lead to the knowledge of supersensible human nature. By devoting himself to this struggle with the limitations of natural knowledge, he realizes how peculiarly the human being is adapted to life. For the spiritual researcher must ask himself, from his experience, what prevents him from looking into the inner nature of things in a purely scientific way? There he discovers something most remarkable, I might say, something most distressing. If nature were transparent, if it did not set limits for us, then we human beings would not possess a quality in our life between birth and death that we absolutely need for our social existence in this life. If man could see into the inner nature of nature, he would have to do without the soul power of love! Everything we call love from person to person, what we call love and brotherly feelings from person to person, what glows in the soul when we approach another person socially, we could not have if nature did not set limits for our knowledge of nature.

This is a truth that cannot be proven logically. Just as little as one can logically prove that there is a whale or that there is no whale – one can only be convinced by seeing it with one's own eyes – so one cannot prove that one would have to do without love if knowledge of nature had no limits. But as an experience it presents itself to him who really struggles into spiritual knowledge. There you see what secrets our human existence holds. It is such a secret that man must pay for limited knowledge of nature by developing love. And vice versa: he must pay for his ability to love by initially having no unlimited knowledge of nature.

But this also shows us what the one who really wants to penetrate into the spiritual world, to which man himself with his innermost core of being belongs, has to overcome. One of the basic principles for the paths up to the supersensible human being and to the supersensible world in general is that one's ability to love, one's devotion to all beings in the world, must be greater than it is in ordinary life between birth and death, so that one does not lose love when one now tries to shape one's thinking more and more so that it becomes different from the way one thinks in ordinary life. It must be a preparation for the spiritual path of knowledge, to make oneself much, much more capable of love than one has to be for the ordinary social life. One gradually realizes that one actually only gets to know the world in one's full human nature as long as one is in the physical body, through love, through no other method of research.

But if you want to penetrate into the spiritual world, you must at the same time develop your thinking higher than it develops naturally in human nature. This is achieved by systematically applying certain inner soul activities, which in life are otherwise only applied incidentally, by forcing yourself to do so. Today I can only give you a small excerpt of what you will find described in detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” But I can at least hint at what this higher development of human thinking is based on.

You know that when something from outside stimulates us in some way, we become aware of it. We hear a sound and we are interested in what is happening in the direction of that sound. So being interested in something and turning our attention to it are inner soul activities that are usually stimulated in people from the outside world. What is important when entering the spiritual path of knowledge is that we apply such forces as the forces that lead to attention and interest in us, for example, by meditating on an idea for a very, very long time, as they say, by putting our soul completely into this idea. In the ordinary, natural course of life, attention and interest in this idea are lost. But if you deliberately immerse yourself in such an idea with all your soul, and remain in it, so that you maintain from within the attention that is in danger of fading, that you maintain from within the interest when it is in danger of fading, through the length with which you devote yourself to the idea - and if you keep doing this, then you invigorate your thinking; your thinking becomes something quite different from what it used to be. Then one comes indeed to a thinking that is full of inner activity, but in which one must also exert oneself, as one must exert oneself in an external manual labor. One comes to a thinking that relates to ordinary thinking as ordinary thinking relates to the thinking of a five-year-old child, for example, in relation to lyrical poems. But one comes to a kind of thinking of which one says to oneself: if one has achieved it, then one had to exert an inner strength in order to achieve it, which really took the physical, which also cooperates, so that one feels it like a fatigue from hard external work, to which one has devoted oneself for years. If one learns to recognize that one can work at something in one's soul that costs as much effort as chopping wood costs for me, then one comes to grasp the living thinking in one's soul, while ordinary thinking only accompanies external phenomena, external experiences. Think about how you actually think in ordinary life: you do your work in ordinary life, and your thinking runs along dreamily alongside this outer life. Try to make this thinking more strenuous by reading a difficult book, and you will notice that just when thinking wants to be inwardly active, it must tire, like any other activity. But what is developed from within through this activity must be pushed further and further with the thinking. When it is pushed further and further, one notices that a great change is taking place in thinking. Then one learns to recognize something of which one had no idea before: one learns to recognize that one lives in a thinking of which ordinary thinking is only a reflection, an image: one learns to know a thinking that lives inwardly, a thinking that is completely independent of the tool of the brain, of the tool of the body. However grotesque, however paradoxical, however insane it may appear to present-day humanity, in this way, which you will find described in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, the human being can come to know very precisely: by thinking, by developing the soul activity of thinking, you live outside the body with your thinking, while ordinary thinking is tied to the instrument of the body, to the nervous system. But one also learns to recognize exactly how little the inner soul being, which one grasps in one's thinking, is bound to the instrument of the brain. For one does not develop this inner soul being in the first place, but one only gets to know it. I am not talking to you about something that is being developed anew today, but about the knowledge of the supersensible human being. One learns to recognize the great error to which ordinary natural science and external popular opinion about thinking succumb, especially in our materialistic age.

Natural scientific thinking says: the brain is the instrument of thinking. But that is an error, just as it would be an error if you were to see wagon tracks or the marks of human footsteps in a muddy country lane and then to reflect – let us assume for the moment – on the forces at work from below, from the earth, that have produced the wagon tracks or the marks of human footsteps. That would, of course, be foolish. You cannot see from the structure of the earth itself how the furrows were formed. You have to realize that a cart has driven there, that people have walked over it with their feet, that this has left an impression. In this way you come to see the error of science with regard to the human soul life when you really get to know thinking that is independent of the body. There you learn that what is in the brain as nerve furrows does not have the forces in the brain itself that produce the soul; rather, you learn that all these furrows are driven in — like furrows in soft earth driven in by carts and footsteps — that these furrows are dug in by soul activity independent of the body. And now you also understand the error that can arise in science. Such traces arise in the brain for everything that is engraved there; you can follow them all; but this did not arise from the body, it is engraved into the body.

But it is not always easy to grasp this active being. In order to get even a brief glimpse into this human thinking, which is independent of the body, one needs what could be called presence of mind, because it does not last long, such a glimpse of the spiritual into our ordinary perception. One can prepare oneself well – you will also find something about this in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' – by developing in everyday life what can be called presence of mind, rapid orientation in situations and the ability to act quickly in a situation. If we develop this quality more and more, we prepare ourselves to see what can appear out of the spiritual, the supersensible world, and what we otherwise do not see because we do not have time to muster the necessary presence of mind while it occurs; because we do not have time to look at it before it is over. But if you really learn to look into the spiritual world in this way, if you learn to recognize what lives in the human being and can be grasped in this way through developed thinking, then you see not only into the ordinary human life of everyday life, but then a completely different perspective arises.

There is one thing that this spiritual knowledge does not have: it is not memorable in the ordinary sense. The one who wants to tell you something from the spiritual world must always create the conditions to see it. He cannot just develop a memory for his earlier spiritual vision. But even if that spiritual insight, I would like to say, passes quickly like a fleeting dream that is soon forgotten, it contains within itself a meaningful memory. And at this point something must be said that will naturally strike the people of the present time as highly peculiar. But it certainly did strike people as peculiar when they were told that there are not just glowing points up there, but countless worlds spread throughout space! Just as men centuries ago were slow to believe it, but became so accustomed to it that today it is a matter of course for them, so what the spiritual researcher presents as his experience through his developed thinking will still seem unusual today, but it will have to be a matter of course for the coming centuries. And one of the tasks of our time will be to develop people's understanding for such an expansion of human knowledge and human perception. In the moment when man has an inwardly living thinking and knows that with this thinking he is independent of the body, he looks back - while he cannot have the ordinary memory in this moment - to the spiritual-soul that he has gone through in a purely spiritual world before he united with the physical human body through birth or conception and thereby descended from a spiritual world into the sensual world. The view expands beyond the life one has been living since birth; life expands into the contemplation of the spiritual world from which we have descended to our physical existence.

This also gives a new meaning to our entire social life. In our social life, we relate to this or that person. We quickly develop an affinity for one person, while with another we do not find ourselves so quickly united in sympathy. The most diverse relationships arise with other people here in this life between birth and death. If, as a spiritual researcher, you learn to recognize life as I have just indicated, then you will find that what attracts you to one person and what more or less alienates you to another person – in short, what arises in your relationships with others – is the result of what we have lived through with other souls in another world before we descended to this physical existence. Everything we experience in the physical world is a reflection of experiences in the spiritual world. In this way, human spiritual endeavor in our time will be able to give rise to insight into the spiritual world from this physical world.

There may still be many people today who cannot relate to such a view. But one can still think about such people. When the first railroad was built in Germany, a council of physicians and other scholars were called together to decide whether or not to build railroads. These learned gentlemen delivered the verdict that railways should not be built because traveling would be harmful to health and only fools would want to travel in them. In any case, a high board wall would have to be erected so that those along whom the railroad passes would not get concussions. Today there are people who, figuratively speaking, believe that one gets a concussion when the spiritual researcher speaks of the insights of the supersensible world. But the development of time will overcome these prejudices as it has overcome other prejudices.

What I have described to you is one way of crossing over from the physical world into the superphysical world. One must struggle with the limitations of knowledge of nature. But one must also come to terms with another limitation if one is to enter the spiritual world and gain insights into the supersensible nature of the human being. Just as one must come to terms with the limitations of knowledge of external nature, one must also come to terms with the limitations of knowledge of one's own being.

A great many people despair of finding satisfaction for their inner soul life in their old religious traditions and turn to so-called mysticism, believing that if they delve deeper and deeper into their souls, their inner soul life, their human nature, will become clear to them. Many people believe that what they truly are as human beings can arise mystically. The spiritual researcher must also learn this limit. He must be able to be a mystic, just as he must develop knowledge of nature. But he must not stop with mysticism, just as he must not stop with knowledge of nature. He must learn that mere mysticism leads to nothing but illusions about the supersensible human being, but not to a real knowledge of this supersensible human being. A true spiritual researcher is truly not an illusionist. He does not succumb to any illusions about what he has to recognize as reality. Therefore, unlike the ordinary mystic, he does not set out to conjure up all kinds of fantasies from within himself. No, there he knows one thing again: by struggling with his own inner being, by going through his own personal struggle, he knows that what mystics find is basically nothing other than what has made an impression on their souls since birth. They may have only grasped it dimly, it may not have come to their perception quite clearly, but it has remained in their memory.

Scientific research has already made some very interesting observations in this regard. I will briefly share one with you that is recorded in scientific literature, but which could be multiplied a hundredfold, a thousandfold. A natural scientist passes a bookstore window. His eye falls on a book. And as he looks at the title of the book, he has to laugh. Just imagine, a naturalist has to laugh when he sees a serious book title! He cannot explain to himself why he has to laugh. Now he closes his eyes because he thinks he will be able to figure it out more quickly if he is not distracted by the external impression. By closing his eyes, he hears in the distance what he had not heard before, as long as he was distracted: a barrel organ. And by continuing his investigation, he realizes that the organ is playing a melody to which he once danced. At the time, it made no strong impression on him; he was more interested in the dancer, or even in the dance steps. The impression of the melody itself was weak at the time, but still strong enough to resurface in later life when the researcher hears the same melody from the organ!

The spiritual researcher is very familiar with such things and their essence, for he has no illusions. He knows that when some mystic speaks of experiencing the divine human within himself, of experiencing something that brings him together with his eternal self, then it is the 'sounds of the barrel organ': he has once taken something in, that has transformed itself – for such things transform themselves – that rises as reminiscence. In the path of ordinary mysticism you find nothing but what you have once absorbed, and you can give yourself up to the most terrible illusions by wanting to be a mere mystic.

It is precisely this limitation that the spiritual researcher must overcome. Through experience one comes to know that what cannot be proved “logically” can be attained by the spiritual researcher through direct experience: one learns to recognize that one may not learn to know oneself by looking inwardly. For if one could see through oneself inwardly, one would in turn lack a human soul power that one must have for ordinary life if one could see through oneself inwardly. If one could see through oneself inwardly, one would not have the power of memory in ordinary life. And that this power of memory, the power of memory, is healthy, depends on whether we are healthy at all in our soul life. If our memory, our recollection, is disturbed, the ego is disturbed, a terrible mental illness occurs. So that we have to say: just as man, in order to have love, must have limits in his knowledge of nature, so too, in order to have memory, he must be placed in the impossibility of coming to the higher human being through mere inner contemplation.

But one can also ensure that this ability to remember is more firmly rooted in human nature than in ordinary life, which can also be done through exercises such as those I have described in the book mentioned.

In the same way that you can move towards consciously elevating your thinking, as I have described, you can also move towards conscious self-discipline by always noticing: You are doing this or that badly, you have to learn from life. In this way, you can take your will development into your own hands, just as you took your thought development into your own hands. When you take your will development into your own hands, something develops that, so to speak, illuminates the otherwise dark will in which you find yourself in ordinary life: you feel everything that you feel as will, interspersed with thoughts. In a sense, you are the spectator of your own will and action. When one comes to be the observer of one's own will and actions in such a tangible, spiritual and soul-like way, then what one receives as a higher willpower coincides with what developed earlier as thought activity. And now another faculty comes into play: one now beholds in one's own human nature something that appears so independent of all physical activity that one knows: What you carry within you, you carry out through death into the spiritual world. Through the culture of the will, one comes to know the spiritual life that a person lives after death, just as one comes to know, through the culture of thought, the spiritual life that a person has experienced before birth or conception. As you can see, spiritual research cannot speak in the usual way about the supersensible human being, but must relate how one experiences being able to look at the life of a person before and after death.

By penetrating into the world of one's own human existence in this way, one encounters social life in a new form. One observes how one experiences this or that together with other people, how one enters into relationships with other people, how one becomes friends with other people or is connected or disconnected again through other circumstances in the world. One learns to recognize that everything that takes place in the physical-sensual world is only the beginning of something that develops further as we pass through the gate of death. The relationships of the soul that are formed here between human and human find their continuation when the human being passes through the gate of death. The life that joins death becomes a very concrete reality in that we know that we are connected to those people here through our relationships in the sensual life, even beyond death.

These are things that still seem strange to people today, but they must be mastered by the tasks of our time. If they are, then something quite different will come to the fore. Then man will recognize in a completely different light what he today calls his own human development, what he today calls history. If one develops abilities such as those of which I have spoken, then one also looks differently into the historical of humanity than the fable convenue indicates, which is called history today and which must become something completely different in the future. I will give you an example at the end of my discussion to show you how the human being of the future must penetrate into the historical development of humanity itself.

We do not usually notice it, but at a certain historical point in recent times, a major turning point occurred in the development of humanity. That was in the middle of the 15th century. We usually say that nature does not make any leaps. It is a saying that is generally believed, although it is false. Nature is constantly making leaps. Consider the development of a plant, how a flower with stamens and pistils develops from a leaf, and finally the fruit! In the same way, historical life also makes leaps. And such a leap occurred in the middle of the 15th century, which we only fail to recognize because we look at history so superficially. The expanded human gaze, which overcomes, as it overcomes the experiences between birth and death, also that which is only presented in external history, in external facts, and it looks into the spirit of historical activity. And so this view shows that we have been living since the middle of the 15th century in the age that will last for a long time, which replaced another age that began in the 8th century BC and lasted until the middle of the 15th century. century. This era, from the 8th century BC to the 15th century AD, encompasses everything that was the magnificent Greek culture, what was Roman culture, and the after-effects of Greek and Roman civilization. And since the middle of the 15th century, we have, as I will characterize it in a moment, our modern culture with modern humanity.

How do these two cultures differ? They differ in something that people in the present time do not yet want to see and acknowledge. Before the 15th century, going back to the 8th century BC, man was capable of development in a completely different way than today. I can make this clear to you in the following way. Think about what the human being is like in the years before he changes his teeth around the seventh year, and how that marks a turning point in his life! You can read more about this in the small booklet on 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science'. You will see what it actually means for the more precise observer of human nature, what the child goes through with the change of teeth. There is a parallelism between the outer development of the body and the inner development of the soul. Then, in turn, there is a next point of development at the time of sexual maturity, in the fourteenth or fifteenth year. Then the parallelism between body and soul becomes less clear, but for present humanity it continues until about the twenty-seventh year. In the twenty-seventh year, one ceases to feel this connection between spiritual-soul development and bodily development strongly. This remarkable fact that the human being completes his physical development at the age of twenty-seven has only emerged since the middle of the 15th century. It was different in the previous period. What can be recognized here through spiritual research is an infinitely significant human developmental truth. In Greek and Roman times, human beings were at such a stage of development that until the age of thirty-three or thirty-five, there was a parallelism between their physical and spiritual-soul development. The Greeks developed qualities such as these, although not to the same extent, until well into their thirties, as evidenced by the change of teeth and sexual maturity. This is what constituted the remarkable harmony of soul and body in the Greeks. The progression that human history shows is that we have less and less of the years of youth, less and less of what emancipated us from the physical and bodily in our earlier years. But this also requires a completely different position of the soul-spiritual to the world being in the human being. In the long period from the 8th century BC to the 15th century AD, human beings developed more of an instinctive mind and an instinctive emotional life. Everything that lives in this period is permeated by this instinctive life of mind and soul. But since the middle of the 15th century, man has developed a more conscious mental and emotional life and with it the demand to place himself on the level of the free personality. This demand of human nature to place itself on the level of the free personality is only developing in history since the middle of the 15th century.

This also explains how the great events in human development fall differently depending on whether they occur in one or the other epoch. In the epoch that preceded our own, in which man remained capable of physical development well into his thirties, the greatest event in the development of the earth occurred in the first third of this epoch: the event that actually gives the development of the earth its true meaning, the event of the Mystery of Golgotha, the founding of Christianity. In the first third of the Greco-Latin era, what is like the central event of the whole human development on earth took place. The way it took place in the human race at that time, it could only be grasped naively by humanity in the age in which instinctive powers of mind and instinctive powers of the soul were present. It was only through these instinctive powers that people were able to relate to the great event in the right way during that period, because they did not yet behave consciously, but naively. They said to themselves: This is not just something that is done by human beings, something superhuman has broken into earthly development. The Christ, the superhuman being, has united with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. What happened at Golgotha is, in its physical facts, only the outer expression of something supersensible that has taken place in the development of the earth.

In those days, therefore, it could be grasped instinctively. This has changed since the middle of the 15th century. Since the middle of the 15th century, the instinctive mind, the instinctive power of mind, has been transformed into conscious mind, into conscious powers of mind. This made it possible to develop natural science to the high level it has reached, but also to develop industry, and to develop the materialism of the age, which had to be there as an adjunct to place the free personality at the top. But this materialism must be transcended by seeking the path to the spiritual world in a new way, as I have described it today. The age became materialistic in the epoch in which the consciousness soul of man developed from the earlier instinctive soul. Then, in addition to external materialism, the materialism of theology also emerged. Consider how, in wide circles, even theology, the religious view, has been grasped by materialism; how man of the age of consciousness became incapable of recognizing the supersensible in the event of Golgotha, how he came more and more to drag it down into the sensual; how he finally became proud of it, how even numerous theologians became proud of no longer seeing in the Christ the supersensible entity that descended to earth in the body of a human being, but only seeing the “simple man from Nazareth,” who is indeed somewhat greater than other people, but is nevertheless merely a human being. That in the Mystery of Golgotha, in the death and resurrection of Christ, the greatest fact in the evolution of the world and of humanity is presented to us, has not yet dawned upon the materialistic age. Religion itself has become materialized. Simple religious belief will not be able to stop this materialization of religion. It can only be stopped by the conscious knowledge of the spirit, of which I have spoken today. It will in turn arise from the realization that in Jesus of Nazareth there lived a supermundane, a supersensible being, which since that time has united itself with the evolution of mankind. The Mystery of Golgotha will be placed in the sphere of human contemplation through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science; but now it will be placed in such a way that it will be freed from the narrow-mindedness of the individual denominations.

What will develop as the spiritual outlook of the supersensible human being, as I have described it today, will make it possible for it to live in every human being across the whole earth, without distinction of race or nationality. From there, however, the path to the mystery of Golgotha will also be found, and all people across the whole earth will understand this Christ event, learn to comprehend it. In our time people enthuse about the so-called League of Nations; one enthuses about this League of Nations in the utopian way in which it originated in the abstract thinking of Woodrow Wilson. It will not be able to arise in this way. It needs a foundation of reality, and this must proceed from the innermost part of the human soul. That is the task of the present time. Only in this ability of the soul, which leads to the path of knowledge of the supersensible human being and unites people of the whole earth, only through such knowledge, which can look at the Christ event as a supersensible event, only in such an impulse, which works across nations, which works across all borders through nations, lies the real power for a future true League of Nations across the earth. In this way, Christianity must strike its new roots into human culture.

This shows you the other side to what I was allowed to say here in the previous lecture. This shows you the side that corresponds to the human inner soul life, which in turn will ignite social instincts in the human being when it fills him. To receive this spiritual science, one does not need to believe in authority as one does to receive the other scientific knowledge that is conveyed, say, from the observatory about astronomy, from medicine about the nature of the physical human being. That must be accepted on authority if one does not want to become an astronomer or a physiologist and so on oneself. But you do not have to believe what the spiritual researcher tells you on authority. You do not have to be a spiritual researcher yourself, just as you do not have to be a painter to find the beauty in a picture. You can absorb spiritual science through your common sense without being a spiritual researcher yourself, if you just sweep away the prejudices that have developed from today's materialism. Because everything in spiritual science is stored in the depths of the human soul, it can be understood without belief in authority. And this understanding, this trust in the revelations of spiritual science, is something that must be lived into the tasks of our age. Then this age will experience a renewal. Then this age will be given the ferment for what, as an external institution of a new structure, will have to play a corresponding role.

For what do we see when we really try to understand the nature of the present time? I would say: We see two paths, one on the left and one on the right. One of these offers us the possibility of stopping at the views that mere natural science has brought, and from this view, which natural science has brought, to now also proceed to social views; thus to start from the belief that one can understand social life with the same faculty of thought with which one understands nature. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels did that, and so do Lenin and Trotsky. That is why they arrive at their conclusions. People today do not yet realize that natural science stands on one side, and that its ultimate consequences find expression in social chaos and social decline. The terrible faith that now seeks to destroy all truly human culture in Eastern Europe, this terrible faith of Lenin and Trotsky, arises from the other faith, that the paths of scientific knowledge must also be followed in social life. What has happened under the influence of this newer materialistic-scientific faith? Our entire spiritual life has been mechanized. But because our spiritual life no longer rises to thoughts about the supersensible human being, because it mechanizes itself on the external mechanistic view of nature, at the same time the souls are vegetarianized, made plant-like, sleepy. Thus we see that in addition to the mechanized mind, we have a vegetarianized soul in modern cultural life. But if the soul is not warmed through by the spirit, if the spirit is not suffused with supersensible knowledge, then animal qualities develop in the body. Today these animal qualities live in anti-social instincts and want to become the executioners of culture in Eastern Europe. Then, under the guise of wanting to socialize, the most anti-social thing develops; then the bodily life becomes animalized alongside the mechanized spirit and the vegetated soul. The wildest instincts and drives arise as historical demands. That is the path that leads left.

The other way, the right way, is to enter into the view of the supersensible human being, the supersensible world, as presented in today's message. This view also sees the development of the human being in the supersensible light, and penetrates to the truly free spirit.

In my book “The Philosophy of Freedom”, I wanted to describe freedom as the basis for human progress, and to show how man can experience his true inner freedom by grasping the spiritual life. Only the spirit that permeates man can truly become free. The spirit that only permeates nature and seeks to shape all social life according to the pattern of modern natural science becomes mechanistically unfree. And the soul, permeated only by this spirit, sleeps like the plant. The soul that is warmed through by the true, pulsating will of spiritual knowledge of supersensible human nature steps forward in social life. It learns to recognize the supersensible human being in the other person. It learns to see the divine in the archetype in every person. It learns social feeling towards every person. It learns how, with regard to this innermost soul, all people here on earth are equal. And in this soul, warmed by the spirit, equality can develop in the other way on the right. And when the bodies are imbued and spiritualized by the supersensible consciousness, when they are warmed through, when they are ennobled by what the soul absorbs, by being awakened by the spirit, not remaining vegetated, then the bodies will not become animalized either; then the bodies become such that they develop what, in the broadest sense, can be called genuine love. Then, then the human being knows that he enters into his earthly body as a supersensible being, that he enters into this body to develop love in this body, to develop love towards the spirit. Then he knows that there must be brotherhood in the earthly body, otherwise the individual cannot be a whole, a full human being in unbrotherly humanity.

Thus the continuation of the old way leads us to the mechanization of the spirit, to the vegetarianization of the soul, to the animalization of the body. The path that is to be shown by spiritual science leads us to the true social virtues, but to the social virtues that are permeated by the spirit and warmed by the soul; that are carried out by the ennobled human body.

Thus spiritual knowledge of the supersensible human being leads us to found the future on a beautiful new building on earth: freedom in spiritual life. The spiritualized human being will be a free human being. Equality in the soul life warmed by the spirit: the soul that takes in the spirit will perceive and treat the other soul that it encounters in social life as truly equal, as if in a great secret. And the ennobled body, the body ennobled by spirit and soul, will become the vehicle of truest, most genuine human love, of true brotherhood. Thus the social order of man in freedom, equality and brotherhood will be able to take place through the correct understanding of body, soul and spirit.

Dear attendees! From a sensitive, unprejudiced assessment of present events, I believe it will be quite natural today to talk about the coming day.

If I may refer to what I took the liberty of saying here the day before yesterday, it may perhaps be said that such descriptions, as given here, of the spiritual state of present-day civilized humanity express very much an evening mood. The results of the development of humanity over the last three to four centuries up to the present had to be described, and it had to be described how, despite the enormous progress and triumphs in the most diverse areas of life – which, as has been emphasized, are also present – the horrific events of the last four to five years have befallen humanity. It is not only possible that these terrible events have befallen humanity, but it has also become possible that today we are in a certain way faced with perplexity, with the question: What should happen? Yes, in many respects we have to admit: If we continue to build only on the results of the emerging developmental forces for our knowledge and our will, then we would have to reckon with hopelessness. There is something of a twilight mood. And this twilight mood suggests that we also speak, so to speak, from the other side of the matter: from the dawn, to speak of the coming day.

But when one speaks today of the coming day, it seems that one thing is not allowed: simply to look at the events as they have unfolded, as they have developed up to the present moment, in order to derive from them reasons for any things that one need only hope for. From the perplexity of the present, few reasons for such hopes can be found. Therefore, anyone who wants to speak of the coming day must start from something other than a description of the possible effects of past events, from a description of what could arise from the general cultural and civilizational conditions and which man can only observe.

No, my dear audience, anyone who wants to speak today of the coming day must speak of what man must do to hasten the coming of that day. Merely pointing to some fate lying outside of humanity will not awaken any hopes today. Attention must be called to man himself, to his possibilities of action, to that which can ignite the deed in him, so that he may be the one who, however the world may be aflame, can bring about the coming day. But the cause for this is not only an observation of the perplexity and hopelessness of the fate of the outer world; it is also caused by a somewhat deeper consideration of the historical development of humanity itself – the historical development of humanity, which one must then, however, consider from the point of view of the spiritual science meant here. Most people today are accustomed, when the historical development of man is mentioned, to follow it only, I might say, by the thread of cause and effect, as if everything that occurs in the subsequent period could be explained by the preceding events, which one then calls causes.

This is no more the case in the historical development of humanity than it is in the case of the individual human being. We cannot possibly be satisfied with a pursuit of human individual development in such a way that we say: Now, we look at the person when he is thirty years old, and we explain what he presents to us as a thirty-year-old as a consequence of what he was as a twenty-nine-year-old, as a twenty-eight-year-old, as a twenty-seven-year-old. Such an explanation would be superficial and abstract, and would not be able to do justice to the real essence of the human being. For if we want to grasp the real essence of the individual human being, then we must look at the individual epochs of his development. We must be clear about how the human being, when he is a child, is subject to certain laws of development, which initially apply until the period when the teeth change. Then we must realize how, after this change of teeth, something lawful takes place in the whole human organism, something that arises from the inner being and cannot be explained by simply tracing the outer facts of human development in about the ninth year back to the outer facts of human development in the fifth or sixth year. Again, we must look at the time when human sexual maturity occurs, at the fourteenth or fifteenth year. Then something arises again from the depths of the human being that must be called upon for help if one is to arrive at an understanding of the human being as a whole. And so it is in the following epochs of the development of the individual human being, even if the changes in human nature are less distinct for these following epochs, but still quite clearly evident to the discerning person.

And just as it is with the development of the individual human being, so it is with the historical development, the historical evolution of all mankind. For its understanding it is not enough to explain the subsequent from the previous, as has become customary. It must be realized that great upheavals also occur in the historical development of humanity, that epochs occur in which laws of development emerge from the depths of humanity, so that the essential way in which this humanity expresses itself changes from that in the previous age.

If we now look at what, I would say, has been working its way up for three to four centuries from below the surface of what was described the day before yesterday – for it initially only wants to work its way up from the depths of the human being – then we have to say that everything, absolutely everything, tends towards and aims at the individual members of humanity developing to full consciousness, to full consciousness in all areas of life. For the student of historical development who does not merely consider external history, as it is taught today, which is basically only a fable convenante, but who delves into the inner workings of human development — as one must delve into the inner being of the individual must enter into the inner life of the individual if we want to understand him. For such a person, the first germ of this new way of being human begins to show up in the 15th century, to grasp in full consciousness what surrounds us in the world. However, there is a fact in the development of humanity that masks, covers up what I have just characterized. From the old epochs, developmental forces always remained behind, which, as a conservative element, intervene in the entire development of humanity – forces that continue to have an effect and that actually not only push into the background what wants to develop from a part of the human being as the actual task of the epoch, but also, so to speak, fight it. And so from the preceding epoch, extending beyond the 15th century into our own age, there remains what I would call unconsciousness in all fields, first and foremost in the field of intellectual life itself.

So strong has this unconsciousness remained in the field of intellectual life that today we have broad intellectual currents that see in the unconscious that which is the deeper, more essential part of the human being. In America, for example, we see the rise of the spiritual movement associated with the name William James, which, in various forms, has many followers precisely among Europe's intellectuals. This spiritual movement says: only part of what man holds in his soul comes fully to his consciousness. From the subconscious, all that is the content of artistic creation rises up; from the unconscious, even ideas rise up, which are then only subjected to the judgment of science. From the subconscious, all that inspires man religiously also rises.

That which spreads as an educated spiritual current, sometimes taking on grotesque forms, as for example in psychoanalysis, has its counter-image in something else. How often do we not still hear today that someone is well-meaning with regard to a supersensible, spiritual world, which he presupposes, but his good opinion comes to an end the moment spiritual science appears, which, with full awareness, wants to penetrate the spiritual world by looking at the signs of the time. A well-meaning person like this often says: There must be something beyond what can be consciously absorbed into the soul from nature and from people. But then he is glad when he can say: That which exists in this way is an unknown, is something that cannot be investigated; it is something that does not enter into full human consciousness. Artists are almost frightened, even afraid, of raising the impulses of their artistry into consciousness. They fear that in so doing they would lose their most elementary powers, their naivete, which they consider necessary for artistic creation. And there are some who do not want to make that which can be brought to full consciousness the driving force of social life, because they would like to point to something unconscious and unknown that should assert itself in the interaction between people. Man should draw the impulses for his social behavior from the unconscious, and that would be destroyed in a certain way if it were raised to full consciousness, as if the dew that refreshes it were taken away.

So in a certain way one offers the unconscious, the unknown, in the most diverse forms, as one does today in enlightened circles. And it is only to be expected that the spiritual science referred to here should be repeatedly criticized for presuming to make definite statements about the spiritual world and its contents, instead of merely pointing to an unknown supersensible realm that lies beyond the bounds of humanity. Instead, it is content to point to spiritual life out of a certain general feeling, out of the most primitive human nature. This belief, which today refuses to listen to the signs of the times, which rejects the specific content of spiritual life that spiritual science strives for, this belief is only the remaining residue of what used to prevail in human development as the unconscious. But what is this unconscious? It was different in earlier epochs of human development than it can be today. This unconscious was an elementary, living force in earlier epochs of human development. The further back we go in this development of humanity, the more we find, as it rises in man - though not by the path of consciousness, which must be ours today, but by the path of unconscious vision - not only the contents of his spiritual life, but also that by which he makes sense of the nature around him.

Just look, dear audience, at the last outposts of this ancient looking of humanity out of the unconscious, and you will find the magnificent myths, the magnificent mythologies, through which the earlier man enlightened himself about himself and the surrounding nature out of his unconscious. We find the source of artistic creation rising from this unconsciousness. And if we really want to educate ourselves and not just educate ourselves according to conventional prejudices, we also find evidence that early man sought the impulses for his social will and social behavior in the circle of his fellow human beings, emerging from the unconscious. Even if not everything, a good part of what connects people socially from the unconscious does lie in human language – in this human language through which we become sister and brother to the other person in whose vicinity we live. We acquire this human language in earliest childhood, at the time when we are still dreaming ourselves into life, when there can be no question of full consciousness. What does that which is born out of the child's life-dream carry into later life?

We are influenced by the genius of language. This language gives us a great deal. It connects us socially with our fellow human beings, but what permeates this language, acting as a social driving force, is hidden in earliest childhood; it is born not out of consciousness but out of the unconscious. And so we can say: the old social life has arisen in many cases out of the unconscious. The unconscious has given the human being something quite different from what it gives him today, up to the time that has occurred for the whole development of humanity around the 15th century. But just as the developmental forces of the individual human being that lie before his or her sexual maturity cannot be present in the same way in man after sexual maturity, and just as completely different abilities and forces must come to the fore, so in human development, in this present age, consciousness must take the place of the earlier unconsciousness. But the element that I had to draw attention to the day before yesterday, which permeates our present civilization, the phrase, is what intensively prevents full consciousness from developing out of the depths of the human being. What used to permeate the human being in all its liveliness from the unconscious is no longer alive today; it has been killed to the point of being a mere phrase.

And I had to point out the day before yesterday that the glorious scientific world view has not found the possibility to educate man about anything other than the non-human, about what is present in inanimate nature. I had to point this out, because anyone who comprehended all the knowledge that science gives him would be at a loss when faced with the question: What is man actually? The science that is still in use today does not provide any information on this question. Why is that? That is because this science has not yet been born out of full consciousness, but that this science, despite its glorious successes, is the continuation of what came to people from very different sources than today's in the age of unconsciousness. Therefore, we see this science in a strange position.

Recently, I came across a brochure about general social concepts and ideas that was by no means worthless. I would like to make it clear that it contains many valuable ideas. But at the end there is something that is extremely characteristic of such a consideration as the one today. It says that the author has considered social conditions purely scientifically, that is, as the scientific customs of the present demand. But because he wants to be scientific, he cannot draw any conclusions from his scientific ideas for moral, artistic, political or cultural life, because science does not have the task of drawing any conclusions for these different branches of life. Whether what he describes in purely scientific terms - so the author believes - whether it heals ulcers or destroys suns, is of no concern to science - that is not what matters to science.

Do we not see, when we consider the expression of such an attitude – which, however, is not an isolated one, but is actually typical of what is often called “science” or “scientific knowledge” today – do we not see how we are confronted with the continuation of a certain asceticism of life that only fails to recognize itself as a continuation. Do we not see there again that asceticism of life which in earlier centuries was connected with a certain disdain for the outer life, which has withdrawn into the human soul, which is unconcerned with what is going on in the outer world of ethical, moral, or social facts, but looks only at the affairs of the soul's interior? This ascetic striving has taken on other forms, but it reappears in this scientific attitude – in this scientific attitude, which, in its kind, is admirably strict and conscientious in its methodology, but which sees its greatness precisely in the fact that it admits: I have nothing to offer from my own resources as an impulse or stimulus for the moral, artistic, political or cultural life. Against this mood, which, however, does not only occur in scientific life but, because scientific life dominates education today, is spreading to all of our public life, against this mood, what wants to present itself here as spiritual science is the most profound protest. At the moment when the great questions for the future arose out of the sad circumstances of our present civilization, it was only natural that an inner vision of social life, of the progress of social life, should arise out of what spiritual science, what real spiritual science, as it is meant here, kindles within the human being. It is not by the whim or arbitrariness of individual personalities that the impulse of the threefold social organism has been added to what has been advocated here for decades as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science – it has arisen as a matter of course. It has turned out that one had to feel that it was inwardly untrue and dishonest of the one who, with his soul, purports to strive for this spiritual science and has no heart for the social question that is shaking and convulsing all of humanity, or at least should be shaking and convulsing it.

I might also mention the other areas of life, but I will mention only this one more thing: in our building in Dornach we have created something that does not rely on any old architectural style, but that deals with the forms of building and the artistic down to the last detail, arising out of the forces that arise out of our spiritual knowledge, out of our spiritual vision. This spiritual science, as it is meant here, protests against the idea that what is effective as art should be left in the unconscious and not raised into the consciousness. Just as spiritual science itself wants to enter the spiritual worlds with full consciousness, so it also wants to bring out of the spiritual worlds that which can lead to new architectural styles, to new artistic creation, here and now. Since spiritual science wants to behold the spirit itself, to which the human being is related in his innermost being, it encounters this innermost human being in such a way that it comes to the core of humanity - where moral will sprouts, where moral will arises. Spiritual science cannot say that it does not concern itself with what takes place in the moral will, but it can claim that by permeating itself with knowledge of the breadth and depth of the human soul, it simultaneously gives birth to the moral impulses from which the human being shapes his will and his actions. This spiritual science cannot say that it is not important to it to do something to heal ulcers or to prevent the suns from going out. It must say that it is important to it that, out of its knowledge, people draw strength to act in a healing way wherever the course of world events has harmful effects. It is important to it to present something that can be a sun for people and that can contribute to the beneficial forces in the development of humanity. Participation and co-action, co-will and co-intention in the whole course of human historical, social development, that is what this spiritual science strives for, not as an abstract goal, but what arises for it through its own nature and essence. It cannot appear otherwise than by continuing in full consciousness that which arose out of unconsciousness in a certain way in an earlier humanity.

From this unconsciousness, in earlier times, one had a very definite perception of the progress of human development. That was that the evolution of humanity, of all humanity, if left to itself, would continually degenerate, would continually be seized by harmfulness, would continually incline towards a kind of dying, would continually fall ill. But there was also an awareness that if man intervenes in this development of humanity, he will become the healer of illnesses and damage by relying on precisely that which, out of the nature of the unconscious, enlightens him. In the times of the unconscious development of humanity, all knowledge, all insight, was felt to be a healing force of human culture, because one did not stop at wanting something in just one corner and not participating in the outer cultural process – on the contrary, one wanted to participate in this cultural process precisely as a healer.

And the word that comes to us from Greek knowledge, characterizing one of the deepest artistic creations, the tragedy, the word “catharsis”, that comes to us from Greek culture and wants to say what the effect of the tragedy is actually based on. This is the basis of this effect: to create images of passions in people, so that these passions can be healed emotionally in the face of the tragic action of the tragedy. The fact that this expression “catharsis” resounds from Greek culture as the dominant element in tragedy suggests to us how the artistic in the Greek way of life, which is so close to life, was also regarded as a healing process of life. For “catharsis” is a word - we can only translate it with the abstract word “cleansing” - which is also used for that phenomenon that leads to a crisis in a person during an illness; and when this crisis leads to the elimination of the harmful, then healing occurs. From the individual human healing process, the Greeks derived the task for tragedy. They did not imagine art to be separate from the rest of culture; they conceived of it as being fully within it.

This is how the humanities, which have been discussed here for a long time and which, in the face of the perplexity that has arisen from the glorious science of modern times in other fields, must now stand as the most serious spiritual challenge of the coming day, want to be in life, in the living will and action. However, in order for it to be recognized as such, many a harsh prejudice still has to be dispelled. As long as people believe that serious science is only that which describes what can be seen through the microscope and telescope, what is stated in the physics cabinet, what happens in clinics, as long as this prejudice will be brought to this spiritual science. But when it is recognized that nothing can be learned about the innermost nature of man himself through all that can be investigated in this external way, however valuable it may be for mankind in other respects, then man will be driven by an inner urge to this spiritual knowledge because he cannot help it if he wants to gain enlightenment about himself. Just as we pay attention to what is stated in the physics cabinet and in the clinics today, we will pay attention to what the spiritual researcher does in his soul by strengthening his thinking to such an extent that this strengthened thinking is no longer dependent on the body, as is ordinary thinking, but makes itself independent of the body.

What most people still sneer at today, what they regard as fantasy, will in the future be seen as a strictly exact method that takes place entirely within the soul itself. It will be recognized that through the so-called meditative life - but now not through the old, mystical meditative life, which only alienates man from the world, but through the inwardly active meditative life - thinking can be strengthened in this way, especially when the strict willpower described in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” is added. Then one is indeed dealing with thinking of which one knows: You are thinking, but you no longer use your brain to help you in your thinking, which has now become a purely spiritual-soul process. - Then one ascends to supersensible knowledge through this inner strengthening of thinking. And just as, from a certain point in time, what was seen through the magnification of the microscope was recognized, so too will it be recognized through the strengthening of thinking and the acknowledgment of the results of research from the supersensible that nature, in which we live, cannot be fully understood through our intellectual soul content, through intellectualism.

This is something that still sounds paradoxical to people today, but which, when the serious demands of the coming day are recognized, will no longer sound paradoxical. For it will be recognized that nature is inwardly infinitely richer in its effectiveness than that which can be grasped by natural laws, which only the human mind can derive from experiment. From our own human inclination, we might say that only that which the human mind can grasp with an intellectual judgment can be seen as something experienced inwardly. But if we want to stop at that, if we want to accept only that as natural law — and everything we are taught today as natural laws is only obtained in this intellectualistic way through experimentation — then we must renounce the real knowledge of nature. For what use is it to keep declaiming: “Clear is only that which comes from the judgment of the intellect, from the intellectualistic judgment” – if all that is the essence of nature cannot be grasped through these natural laws. Nature is such that it does not surrender to natural laws, but only to the images that we recognize in the imaginative when we strengthen our thinking so that it becomes independent of the body and we make it the content of our soul.

However, what is presented in this way as the actual driving force and core of spiritual scientific research, it is not enough to recognize it theoretically. It is not enough to be interested in the results, in the ideas and thoughts of this kind of world view, for the sake of one's own inner soul egoism, but it is necessary that the inner attitude and human soul disposition that can follow from such a view can follow from such a vision, must penetrate our entire public and social life just as the horrors of the last four to five years have gradually - but in preparation - penetrated the merely scientific, intellectualistic way of thinking.

We must begin with the schooling of the human being. This schooling of the human being must finally break with what is still regarded as one of the main purposes of all schooling: that this schooling is dependent on, and supervised by, the state. The state authorities, having the task of organizing the state, will always want to shape the goals of the school system in such a way that the human being becomes an instrument within the state organization. In the future, it will not be a matter of preparing the human being for this or that, but rather of developing in oneself the sense of observing through looking at the spiritual and soul life of the human being, what wants to develop as a spiritual being through the human being's corporeality from the earliest childhood on. It will be essential that the school be founded solely and exclusively on the requirements of spiritual life itself, from the lowest to the highest level.

Today, our public circumstances are such that one can only attempt to implement such an education system in isolated cases, as has been done here under the aegis of Mr. Molt with the Waldorf School. In the Waldorf School, the principle is assumed from the outset that something hidden within the human being is working its way out from childhood on, but that this can be observed through spiritual insight as it develops from week to week, from year to year. The teaching method is designed to help the human being become a whole human being, to develop in the human being from the earliest childhood those powers that will then endure throughout life, that make it possible for the human being at the latest age to bring out of himself what has been developed in him. In many ways, this must be approached differently from the way in which the aims of education have been viewed, due to scientific and materialistic prejudice, especially in recent times. Above all, it must be based on the awareness that If I bring forth from a person everything that is latent in him, he will later integrate himself into social life in such a way that he will make the institutions, not, as is the case today, be made by the institutions, so that he will become only a machine in his occupation, an imprint of the being that his occupation imprints on him. The human being of the future, who is to be

this school is to be aimed at, must stamp his seal on all outer life, but outer life must not stamp its seal on him. When this is stated, it may at first glance seem to be one of those phrases that are often used today to describe educational goals. But they remain empty phrases, like so much of modern life, if they are not linked to the real spiritual insight. This must first be driven out of the depths of the human soul through a strengthening of the thinking, through a self-discipline of the will, until the method of supersensible seeing is attained.

It is an earnest demand of the coming day that, alongside of what is investigated outwardly in laboratories and clinics, there should also be recognized that which can be found through strict inner soul-searching as the revelation of one's own true and real human nature, which at the same time is the supersensible, eternal nature of man. And it is a failure to recognize the signs of the times when religious prejudices dismiss such striving in such a way that what man wants to bring forth out of man's own power is belittled. It is a serious matter that especially from some religious quarters it is repeatedly said that it is a mistake or dangerous when man wants to develop inwardly so that he comes to the contemplation of the supersensible; this supersensible one should accept out of instinctive faith given to the simplest mind. - That sounds very nice to many because it accommodates man's inner egoistic comfort. And it sounds burdensome to many when spiritual science appears to speak about the individual facts of the supersensible world in the same way that external natural science speaks about the external-sensory facts of life. It is burdensome when the claim is made to describe the individual with which the human being is connected as a spiritual-soul being in the same way as one describes this external, sensual world. Out of a very vague feeling, people want to grasp everything possible as “the divine” in the twinkling of an eye; they do not want to embark on the laborious inner path of conquering this divine within themselves. But by not wanting to engage in the laborious process of conquering this divine within himself, by wanting to hold on to it in the abstract of a feeling, the human being will increasingly distance himself from real life. What he will express about nature will be powerless to intervene in social life, in political life, in cultus, even in the moral life. In the end, it will even be powerless to maintain religion itself, because in the present age man is accustomed to striving for the concrete, because man is accustomed to watching natural science cognitively and not merely believing. The education he acquires there will also apply its powers to this area. If man is not given this spiritual science, if he is not told of this spiritual vision, if it is opposed, then he will lose the old traditional religious beliefs that come from the age of unconsciousness. His soul will become desolate. Those religious beliefs that today stand in the way of a living grasp of the spiritual world are the ones that work against the true religiousness of humanity.

And this realization itself is an earnest spiritual demand of the coming day. It is quite out of date to say, as they do today, that religion must arise from the darkest depths of the human soul, that it must remain in the realm of the unconscious, and must not aspire to full consciousness. What I have described to you today as a characteristic of true spiritual striving in this field is intended to reveal how humanity must strive for a conscious experience of the spiritual world. This conscious experience of the spiritual world cannot be achieved for public life other than by making all spiritual striving independent and thus mainly by training all human spiritual forces that are independent of the state-legal forces, that are independent of all economic powers – one can read about this in my book 'The Key Points of the Social Question'. A spiritual life that is self-contained, that works purely from what the innermost soul says about the human spirit, that is independent of all authorities, such a spiritual life alone will awaken in humanity an awareness of the spirit. Man needs this consciousness in order to become aware of the connection between his own spirit within and the spirit that encompasses the whole world. Thus, in the field of knowledge, mankind has actually recognized the necessity of finding the transition from the old unconscious demands to the newer, ever more conscious and aware demands, which must arise ever stronger and stronger.

But in other areas of life, too, serious demands of the coming day arise. If we consider a second area of human life, public human life – that area that arises from the coexistence of person to person, as it develops in the mature adult, as it develops at the same time as a support for the growing up childhood and youth, which is to grow into the following age - when we consider this life and look at earlier epochs of human development, this too goes back to the unconscious; but this life also demands the transition into consciousness.

From what did all right develop? From what has all that developed that has, so to speak, crystallized in state legislation, in legal systems? I can only briefly hint at it here. It has developed from that which arose in older times, in the times of unconscious human development, from the habit that human being developed in relation to human being. Unconsciously, the human being developed a way of looking up to another human being; from this a behavior arose. Unconsciously, man has developed a feeling through the fact that the other person has behaved towards him in a certain way. From this, habits of right and wrong have arisen. Out of unconsciousness, custom and right have arisen. In this area, too, what only had its justification in the age of unconsciousness has survived into the age of consciousness. Into the age of consciousness, clinging to remnants of the old habits has been preserved. Until today, little has been shown of a transition to a different view of the legal and political system, of a transition to the view that, in full consciousness, grasps what the relationship between human beings is in the outer, social life. Just as in pure knowledge the transition from unconsciousness to consciousness must be achieved, so too in the sphere of legal or state life this transition from unconsciousness to consciousness must be found. This must be born out of what man experiences as he inwardly gets to know the spirit through spiritual insight. Out of this knowledge of the supersensible must come the way in which man stands in relation to man in the legal and political order of the social order. Out of man's consciousness of the supersensible must come the earthly consciousness — the consciousness that By standing as a human being and facing another human being, we are both not only what stands as a human body opposite the human body; we are both the bearers of a spiritual-soul. A spiritual-soul is exchanged with a spiritual-soul. This cannot be acquired as soul content through theoretical contemplation. It can only arise as soul content if it is enlivened from earliest childhood by a schooling that links everything natural to the spiritual, that also permeates everything natural from the spiritual. When a person is inwardly grounded in the truth of the spiritual with his innermost feeling, then he will also develop in his dealings with other people those feelings that place him as a spiritual being in relation to another spiritual being. Then, in the state-legal order, he will initially see a result of people's behavior, but he will recognize in it, as a deeper meaning, that which permeates all of humanity as a supersensible reality. Because the remnants of the unconscious from ancient times still extend into our time in this area, what used to be fully animated by the unconscious in people's sense of right and wrong, their sense of state, has been transformed into a mere convention. The convention must in turn absorb into itself that which is living, that which can work elementarily from person to person. But this can only happen if man finds a soil in which - independently of all other human life - only that which develops from human soul to human soul as right takes place. But because the old unconscious, which in a certain respect was justified for our past epoch, has been preserved into our epoch, it has lost its meaning. Right has been preserved according to the outward wording, the outward custom; the inner meaning has been lost. It could therefore not be exercised out of the inner life of the soul; it could only be exercised out of physical power.

And so we see how today, still half unconscious at first, the appeal rises from humanity – but an appeal that today is raised too much from the phrase, that must be stripped of the phrase and clothed with reality – the appeal rises to replace what exists merely under the influence of external power commands with a real right, to transform it into a real right. What lives as power in our external institutions on the legal or state level has come about simply because what previously arose from the unconscious has held on without meaning, so that it cannot now be held on to from the human soul, but is held on to by external power. It must transform itself - on a path that can only be found in the transition from unconscious feeling from person to person to conscious feeling of the individual human being for the real spiritual-soul nature of the other human being.

And just as knowledge developed in the epoch of unconsciousness, just as what was custom and what was right developed out of the elementary, out of what could not be counted among the known and manageable, so too did the customs and rules of conduct for outer life develop. They have developed through man's adaptation to his dealings, through his dealings with external things, through trial and error, through scratching, scraping, grinding in external life; in other words, this is how the skills of economic life have developed. These skills of economic life have developed out of the unconscious. And in the age in which the old, unconscious residue has remained, which has not filled with new, inner soul experience what used to be filled with the soul-unconscious in the treatment of the external world by man, that has become empty, that has become mere routine. But the spirit must seize the human being. The supersensible must enter into consciousness, then the human being will in turn permeate the economic world with what fires him from within. Then he will give meaning to the outer world again. Then he will not do the job, he will do the job. Then it will also be necessary that the human being is not simply placed in some profession and has to adapt to it, but it will be necessary that he is educated out of the demands and forces of human nature. He will place himself in the structure of economic life, in which there will be manageable associations, associations between people of the same and similar professions or related professions, and between those who produce and those who consume. Such associations will attain only such a size that the whole circumstances in them can be overseen by human power, that these overseeable associations can stand in free intercourse of economic exchange with others. There that will develop, what is won in economic life from contemplation, from experience. There it will be impossible - because the

— people are united in manageable associations, it will be impossible for one to offer the other anything that the other does not know about its origin and provenance. In such a case it will be possible to build on what has been formed by the power of the organizations and associations. Then one will know with whom one is dealing, because one will see how the individual comes into being through the economic and social context in associations. Then the spirit will truly prevail in economic life instead of the unspiritual. Thus it may be said that through the associations, and as people get to know each other commercially and economically through these associations, consciousness also enters into economic life. In this way, simply by being part of these associations, conscious economic life will develop.

The transition from unconsciousness to consciousness: this is what people must take hold of in the individual, narrowly defined circles of public, external life, and what people must take hold of on a large scale. We see how the unconscious is working today in one area of the great life of the world. But one could also ask: How few see it there?

We have seen how, under the influence of the events of the last four to five years, a world coalition has risen up against Central Europe, and how the sad events of these years have highlighted the hegemony of the English-speaking population over the earth. And in this respect, humanity still has much to experience. For those who can look at these matters with an unprejudiced mind, a very bitter future lies ahead. If one is able to look straight at the great world events, one must also ask the question from this point of view: What is the character of the public political life of the power that today, as the English-speaking power, is striving for world domination? What is the fundamental character of Anglo-American policy in particular? It is hardly ever stated. This policy is followed almost everywhere in the world today, and it is hardly ever stated. We see how certain phenomena recur again and again in this policy, but we cannot characterize these phenomena correctly. One could have listened to how, in the last third of the 19th century, people in England who were familiar with what was actually being striven for there basically predicted, for example, the fate of today's European East, and predicted, for example, that a great world war would have to come. But this policy has been acted upon under the influence of these impulses.

This is what is so little understood. But it is what must be understood if one is at all to proceed to a practical shaping of life, if one is to gain a practical position in today's public life. But then one must also ask: does this English policy not proceed in such a way that it often seems to take steps forward, then withdraw them again, and so on? We can follow this in English policy towards Egypt and Russia to this day, when we see how Lloyd George behaved a few months ago, how he is behaving today, how he takes steps forward and then withdraws them again. But what is the meaning of all this? One specific goal is to do with the national egoism of the English-speaking population of the earth. This goal is contained in it, as in the earlier epochs of human development, man set himself goals out of the unconscious. Then, in the external, for example in economic life, he began to experiment, to adapt to his surroundings.

If we look at the English political ideal of world domination, which was born out of the unconscious, and observe these steps forward and back, observe what is tried and done in detail, then we find the only really correct description for politics: it has its great goals out of the unconscious, and in relation to the individual actions it is experimental politics. It is so strongly experimental politics, trial politics, politics determined from unconscious goals, that one should not be discouraged if one or the other does not succeed. One then tries another way. One has the unconscious goals, and in consciousness one experiments, one tries, and if one does not get far enough in one way, one tries to get far enough in the other way. In the realm of the great cosmic being and cosmic activity, we have the emergence of the unconscious, which merely tries and experiments. This, too, must be overcome by the demands of the coming day.

Here, my dear audience, you see through and recognize that what is happening today as the main thing in the world, I would like to say, thank God, is not the coming day, but is the dusk of the evening. But the real coming day will arise out of the demand that can only arise out of an inner development of the human soul itself. This development aims to raise to consciousness that which previously ruled in humanity as the unconscious, and rightly so. However, this development must go right to the most intimate, innermost powers of the human soul.

You have been told today that leaflets were distributed after my last lecture. These leaflets contain all sorts of things. Among other things, they reheat the old myth that this spiritual science is an outlook that mocks Christianity and, above all, mocks Christ Himself. Well, my dear audience, that which has come into the evolution of mankind on earth through Christ Jesus is a fact – a fact that is part of the whole evolution of mankind. Each successive age in which humanity progresses must grasp this fact anew in its own way. He is weak-minded who believes that he can only stand on Christian ground if he can accept only the old conceptions and rejects that which arises from a new stage of development of the life of the human soul as a perception of Christianity.

Such people, who condemn precisely what spiritual science has to say about the Christ and about the mystery of Golgotha, do not follow the beautiful Pauline saying: Not I, but the Christ in me. Spiritual science is clear about the fact that the Christ is drawn into this earthly development from transcendental heights and that He is so connected with this earthly development that the human being of today cannot live from passive hope into the coming day, but that he must develop in his own inner being the power as a human being that will bring about this coming day. But because the power of Christ has entered into human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, the one who unites with this power of Christ will not merely have the Christ as the “Saviour of sinful man”, passively counting on his Redeemer. They will be able to say in truth: Not I, but the Christ in me — but the Christ not only as the Redeemer of sins, but the Christ as the inspirer and awakener of all the powers that will be able to emerge in the period to come as the powers of human progress. And those who believe that they have to rebel against something like this out of their beliefs perhaps misunderstand the very serious demands of the coming day, because they understand nothing of the real meaning of this Pauline word. “The Christ in me” is not merely something passively believed, but an active force that moves me forward as a human being. Not I, but the Christ in me – so says spiritual science. But the others, who fight against this spiritual science, they do not say at all: Not I, but the Christ in me – but they say: Not I, but the old opinions that I want to have about the Christ in me. – They do not say: The Christ in me, but: my old accustomed opinions in me; my old accustomed ideas about the Christ in me. — The correct understanding of St. Paul's words, that is what will fulfill a most serious demand of Christian progress.

In this way I have tried to characterize for you today some of the demands of the coming day, and I believe that I may conclude these serious reflections by saying: If humanity is to draw strength from the spirit, then there must also come from the spiritual a new grasp of the true, the genuine Christian essence. And that is truly not the last, not the least serious demand of the coming day.

In the lecture yesterday we turned our attention to the life of Jesus of Nazareth from about his twelfth year to approximately the end of his twenties. You will certainly have realised from what I was able to tell you, that during this period many things took place of profound significance not only for the soul of Jesus of Nazareth but for the whole evolution of mankind. For your theosophical studies will have brought you the knowledge that everything in the evolution of humanity is interconnected, and that an event of such importance in the life of a human soul so deeply bound up with the destiny of mankind is also of importance for the whole of evolution. From many different points of view we are learning to realise what the Event of Golgotha signified for the evolution of humanity. In this particular course of lectures we are learning to realise it by studying the actual life of Christ Jesus. And so having turned our minds yesterday to the period described, we will turn once again to the soul of Jesus of Nazareth and ponder what lived in this soul after the significant events had taken place which led up to his twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth years.

We may perhaps begin to glimpse something of what was living in this soul, from the description of a scene which took place when Jesus of Nazareth was approaching the end of his twenties. This scene which I have to relate concerns a conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and his mother—she who since the amalgamation of the two families had for long years been his mother. For all these years there had been a very deep and intimate understanding between Jesus and this mother, a far closer understanding than prevailed between him and the other members of the family in the house. Jesus himself could have understood them but they, on their side, did not quite know what to make of him. Even in earlier years he had spoken with his mother about many of the impressions that had gradually taken shape within him. But in this particular period of his life there took place a memorable conversation which lets us see very deeply into his soul. The experiences through which he had passed had brought him increasing wisdom; infinite wisdom was stamped upon his very countenance. But as is often the case on a lesser scale, a certain inner sadness had come over him. The first fruit of this wisdom had been that the penetrating insight with which he could behold those around him brought him deep sorrow. Added to this, in hours of quietude at the end of his twenties, his thoughts turned more and more to one particular event in his life—to the great inner change, the revolution that had taken place in his twelfth year as the natural result of the transference of the Zarathustra-Ego into his own soul. During the subsequent years he was aware only of the inexhaustible riches of the Zarathustra-Ego within him. At the end of his twenties he still did not know that the Zarathustra-Ego had reincarnated in him, but he knew well that in his twelfth year a tremendous change had come about in him. And now he often felt: Ah! how different was my life before that change! His thoughts often went back to the preceding years and to the infinite warmth of heart that had characterised his life. As a boy he had lived entirely aloof from mundane affairs; he had been keenly sensitive to everything that speaks to man from the world of nature, to the whole greatness and splendour of nature. But he had little talent for the treasures amassed by human wisdom, human learning. Scholarship as such interested him little. It would be a complete mistake to imagine that up to his twelfth year this Jesus child was, in the outward sense, especially gifted. He had an inner gentleness, a profound understanding of human life, deep and sensitive feelings, tenderness, an angelic quality of being. Then, in his twelfth year, it seemed as if all this had been driven out of his soul. And now he was often mindful of how, before his twelfth year, he had lived in the most intimate communion with the deeper spirit of the universe, how open his soul had been to the infinitudes. Then his thoughts went back to what his life had been since his twelfth year, how he had found himself able to assimilate Hebrew learning which seemed, however, to well up quite spontaneously in his soul, how his journeys had then acquainted him with the heathen cults, with heathen knowledge and religion; he thought of how between his eighteenth and twenty-fourth years he had been brought into contact with the external treasures accumulated by humanity, of how, in about his twenty-fourth year, he had entered into the community of the Essenes and had there become acquainted with a secret doctrine and with men whose lives were dedicated to this doctrine. Many a time his thoughts turned to those years. But he also knew that it was only the store of learning accumulated by men since days of antiquity that had risen up into his soul-treasures of human wisdom, of human culture, great moral achievements. And he often thought of what he had been before his twelfth year, when he felt as if he were united with the divine ground of existence, when everything in him was pristine, spontaneous, welling up from a warm and loving heart and flowing into other forces of the human soul.

All these feelings led to a memorable conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and the mother. The mother loved him very deeply and had often spoken with him about all the beauty and greatness of the gifts that had shown themselves in him since his twelfth year. But he had concealed from his mother in earlier years the inner schism caused within him, so that she had seen only what was great and beautiful. Therefore in this conversation which was really like a full confession, much was new to her; but she received it with a warm and tender heart. She had a profound and intimate understanding of his mood of soul, of his yearnings for all that he had been before his twelfth year. And so she tried to comfort him by speaking of all the noble and splendid gifts of which he had shown evidence since then. She reminded him of the revival of the great Jewish doctrines, the Jewish wisdom-teachings and codes of the law. She spoke of all that had revealed itself through him. But his heart grew heavy while his mother was speaking in this way, prizing so highly what he himself felt had been surmounted. And he replied: Be that as it may. If through me or through another it were possible to-day to bring new life to all the spiritual treasures of ancient Hebrew wisdom, what significance would it have for mankind? All this is, in reality, meaningless. If among the humanity around us to-day there were any with ears still able to hear the wisdom of the ancient prophets, then a revival of that wisdom would be of value. But if Elias himself were to come to-day—so said Jesus of Nazareth—and were to proclaim to our humanity the greatest of his experiences in the realms of heaven—there are no men who would listen to the wisdom of Elias, of the older prophets, even of Moses, and back to Abraham. Everything these prophets might proclaim to-day would fall upon deaf ears. Their words would be preached to the winds. Everything that I believed had been bestowed upon me is valueless for the world to-day.—

This was the sense in which Jesus of Nazareth spoke. He also spoke of a man who had been a great teacher and whose words had only lately ceased to be effective. For—so said Jesus of Nazareth—although the good old Hillel [Hillel lived from 75 B.C. to A.D. 4.] could not rank as an equal of the ancient prophets, nevertheless he was a great and profound teacher. Jesus knew well what the aged Hillel had meant for very many souls in the Jewish world even during the days of Herod when it was hard for any teacher to gain authority. He knew how profound had been the words spoken by Hillel. It was said of Hillel: The Thorah [The Thorah is the collection of the oldest and most important Jewish laws.] has disappeared within the Jewish people and Hillel has established it once again. To those who understood him, Hillel seemed as one who had revived and restored to life the primal, original Hebrew wisdom. Hillel was a teacher who, like other teachers of the wisdom, journeyed about the land. He came among the Jewish people like a kind of new Messiah. All this is narrated in the Talmud and can be confirmed by external scholarship. The people were full of praise for Hillel and had much good to say of him. I can only single out one story in order to indicate the mood and vein in which Jesus of Nazareth spoke of Hillel to his mother ... Hillel is described as a man of gentle and mild disposition, who achieved mighty things through this very gentleness and loving-kindness.

One story that has been preserved about him is deeply indicative as showing him to have been a man of infinite patience with everyone who came to him. Two men once laid a wager about the possibility of rousing Hillel's anger; for it was known that nobody could ever make him angry. Having laid a wager, one of the two men said: I will go to any lengths to make Hillel angry. In this way he sought to win his wager. Just at the time when Hillel was most fully occupied, when he was deeply engrossed in preparations for the Sabbath, this man knocked at Hillel's door and shouted rudely, without any form of deferential address—although as chief of the highest ecclesiastical court Hillel was accustomed to be addressed with respect—Hillel, come out, come out quickly! Hillel threw on his garments and came patiently out. The man said brusquely: I have something to ask thee! Hillel answered: What then hast thou to ask me, dear son? I wish to ask why the Babylonians have such narrow heads? Hillel replied gently: The Babylonians have narrow heads because their midwives have so little skill. The man went off. Hillel had remained unruffled. After a few minutes the man came back again and called out gruffly: Hillel, come out, I have something to ask thee! Hillel threw on his mantle, came out, and said: Now what hast thou to ask, dear son? I wish to ask why the Arabs have such small eyes? Hillel answered gently: The vastness of the desert makes their eyes small; the eyes get small because they are always gazing at the great desert. The man who had laid the wager now grew very uneasy. Hillel returned to his tasks. But after a few minutes the man was back again and called out gruffly for the third time: Hillel, come out, I have something to ask thee! Hillel put on his mantle, came out, and asked as gently as before: Now what hast thou to ask me? I wish to ask why the Egyptians have such flat feet? Because the ground there is so swampy, answered Hillel, and went inside the house again. After a minute or two the man returned and said to Hillel that now he had nothing to ask—he had laid a wager that he would make him angry but he saw this was impossible. Hillel answered mildly: Dear son, better it is that thou shouldst lose thy wager than Hillel his temper ...

This legend is told as evidence of Hillel's patience with everyone who importuned him. Such a man—so said Jesus of Nazareth to his mother—is in many respects like one of the prophets of old; many utterances of Hillel sound like a revival of the ancient wisdom of the prophets. He cited many beautiful sayings of Hillel and then he said: The people say of Hillel that he is like an ancient prophet who has come again. Moreover it is dawning upon me that the knowledge I possess does not come from Judaism alone. And in fact Hillel was born in Babylon and only later found his way into Judaism. But Hillel was a descendant of the House of David, was connected from very early times with the House of David from which Jesus of Nazareth and his kinsmen also traced their descent. And Jesus said: Even if I too, as a son of the House of David, could speak as the great Hillel spoke ... to-day there is nobody to listen; such teachings are untimely. In olden days men would have listened to them but there are no longer any ears to hear. It is useless and meaningless to speak of these things. And as it were gathering together what he had to say on this subject, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother: The revelation of ancient Judaism is no longer suitable for the earth, for the old Jews have passed away; the ancient revelation is worthless on the earth as it is now. With strange feelings in her heart the mother listened to what Jesus was saying about the worthlessness of what she held most sacred. But she loved him tenderly and was aware only of her infinite love. Therefore deep understanding of what he was saying welled up in her heart. Then, leading the conversation further, he spoke of how he had wandered into places where heathen rites were performed and of what he had experienced there. Remembrance came to him of how he had fallen to the ground while standing at the heathen altar, how he had heard the Bath-Kol in its altered form. And then there flashed up within him something that was like a renewal of the old Zarathustrian teachings. He did not yet know with certainty that he bore the Zarathustra-soul within him, but the Zarathustrian teaching, the Zarathustrian wisdom, the Zarathustrian impulse rose up within him during the conversation—and in communion with his mother he experienced the reality of this mighty impulse. All the beauty and glory of the ancient Sun-wisdom came up into his soul. And he reminded himself of the words of the Bath-Kol as I rendered them yesterday, and repeated them to the mother:

AUM, Amen!

Es walten die Übel,

Zeugen sich lösender Ichheit,

Von andern erschuldete Selbstheitschuld,

Erlebet im täglichen Brote,

In dem nicht waltet der Himmel Wille,

Da der Mensch sich schied von Eurem Reich

Und vergass Euren Namen,

Ihr Väter in den Himmeln.

AUM, Amen!

The Evils hold sway,

Witness of Egoity becoming free,

Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred,

Experienced in the Daily Bread,

Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule,

In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdom

And forgot Your Names,

Ye Fathers in the Heavens.

And with these words came a realisation of all the greatness of the Mithras worship. He spoke to his mother at length about the grandeur and the glory of what had been contained in the ancient Mysteries of the different peoples, and of how much of this had merged into the Mystery-cults scattered over Asia Minor and Southern Europe. But at the same time his soul remembered how this worship had gradually deteriorated and fallen prey to demonic powers which he himself had experienced in his twenty-fourth year. All that he had experienced at that time came back to him. The ancient Zarathustra-wisdom itself seemed to him to be something which the people of his day could no longer assimilate. And then he made the second significant utterance: Even if all the ancient Mystery-cults were united into one and all that former greatness could be revived, there are no longer any to respond. Those things are of no avail! And if I were to go forth and proclaim to men what I have heard as the altered voice of the Bath-Kol, if I were to disclose the secret of why it is that in their physical life men are no longer able to live in communion with the Mysteries, no human beings would understand. To-day it would all be distorted into demonic teaching. Even if I were to proclaim it, it would neither be heard nor understood. Men have ceased to be able to hear what was once heard and accepted.—For Jesus of Nazareth knew that what he had heard as the altered voice of the Bath-Kol gave expression to a sacred, primeval teaching and had been an all-powerful prayer in the Mysteries everywhere, a prayer once offered by men in the Mystery-Centres but now forgotten. This prayer had been revealed to him when he had fallen to the ground at the heathen altar. But at the same time he realised and emphasised in that conversation that there was no possibility of making it comprehensible to men. And then in this conversation with the mother he went on to speak of what he had learned among the Essenes. He spoke of the beauty, the greatness and the grandeur of the Essene doctrine, of the gentleness and meekness of the Essenes themselves. Then, however, he made the third mighty utterance, arising from his converse with the Buddha in a vision: that it is neither possible nor is it meet for all men to become Essenes. Hillel spoke words of profound truth when he taught: Sever not thyself from the community but toil and labour in the community: for if I stand alone, what am I! But that is what the Essenes do; they separate themselves from men who thereby suffer unhappiness.—And then Jesus spoke memorable words to his mother, telling her of the experience I described in the lecture yesterday. He said: Once when I was leaving after an intimate and most significant conversation with the Essenes, I saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing from the gate. Since then I have known that by their mode of living and their secret doctrine the Essenes protect themselves in such a way that Lucifer and Ahriman must flee from their gates; but thereby the Essenes send Lucifer and Ahriman to other human beings, in order that they themselves may live in blessedness. These words struck with tremendous force into the tender, loving heart of the mother. And she felt as if she herself were transformed, she felt as if her very being had become one with his. And Jesus of Nazareth felt as if with this conversation everything he had hitherto borne within him had passed away. He was aware of this and the mother, too, perceived it. The more he spoke and the more the mother listened, the more deeply did she discern all the wisdom that had been alive within him since his twelfth year. But from him it all seemed to have departed. He had laid as it were into the heart of the mother what had lived within him and what he had experienced.

And he too, after that conversation, was as if transformed—so greatly changed that the stepbrothers and other kinsmen around him began to think that he had lost his senses. It is sad, they said, for his knowledge was so great. True, he was always very silent but now he has completely lost his senses. He was given up as hopeless. And indeed for days he went about the house as if lost in dream. The Zarathustra-Ego was on the point of leaving this body of Jesus of Nazareth. And his last resolution took the form of impelling him to leave the house as if mechanically and to make his way to John the Baptist with whom he was already acquainted.

And then there took place the event I have often described—the Baptism by John in the Jordan. At that conversation with the mother, the Zarathustra-Ego had withdrawn. The being whom Jesus of Nazareth had been up to his twelfth year was present once again, but now with an added greatness. And at the Baptism in the Jordan the Christ Being sank into this body. At the moment of this Baptism in the Jordan, the mother too was aware of something like the climax of the change that had come about in her. She was then between her forty-fifth and forty-sixth years. She felt as though pervaded by the soul of that mother who had died—the mother of the Jesus child who in his twelfth year had received the Zarathustra-Ego. Thus the spirit of the other mother had come down upon the mother with whom Jesus had held that conversation. And she felt herself as the young mother who had once given birth to the Jesus child of St. Luke's Gospel.

Let us try to picture the infinite significance of this event! Let us try to feel it deeply and also to realise that an absolutely unique Being was now living upon the Earth: the Christ Being within a human body, a Being who until now had never lived in a human body, had had no earthly life, had dwelt only in spiritual realms, to whom the worlds of Spirit were known, not the world of Earth! Of the earthly world this Being knew only what had been garnered as it were in the three bodies: physical body, ether-body and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christ Being sank into these three bodies, into what these bodies had grown to be under the influence of that life of thirty years. He therefore passed through His first earthly experiences as a Being completely free of all antecedents.

The Akasha Chronicle and the Fifth Gospel reveal to us that the Christ Being was led, first of all, into “the loneliness.” Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body the Christ Being dwelt, had abandoned everything that had previously connected him with the rest of the world. The Christ Being had just come down to the Earth. To begin with, He was drawn to the impressions, engraved paramountly in the astral body, which had been made upon that body and had remained as it were in the memory. It was as though the Christ Being said to Himself: This is the body which experienced the fleeing of Ahriman and Lucifer, the body which perceived that the Essenes, by their very aspirations, drive Ahriman and Lucifer to other human beings. It was to these other human beings who had been delivered into the power of Ahriman and Lucifer that the Christ Being felt Himself drawn; for it is with these powers that men have to battle. And so the Christ Being, living for the first time in the body of a man, went out into the loneliness to the contest with Ahriman and Lucifer.

I believe that the following description of the Temptation scene is very largely correct. But it is very difficult to observe such things in the Akasha Chronicle and I therefore emphasise that one point or another could be slightly modified. But the essentials hold good. The Temptation scene is, of course, included in other Gospels but it is narrated there from different standpoints, as I have often stressed. I have made great efforts to investigate this scene of the Temptation and will relate it as it actually transpired.

First of all, the Christ Being within the body of Jesus encountered Lucifer in the loneliness—Lucifer with all his power and influence, who draws near to men when they prize the Self too highly and are lacking in humility and self-knowledge. Lucifer's aim is to play upon the false pride, the tendency to self-aggrandisement in man. Now he confronted Christ Jesus and spoke approximately as recorded in the other Gospels: Behold me! The other kingdoms into which man's life has been set, the foundations of which were laid by the primeval Gods and Spirits—these kingdoms have grown old. I will establish a new kingdom. If thou wilt enter my realm I will give thee all the beauty and the glory contained in these old kingdoms. But thou must sever thyself from the other Gods and acknowledge me! And Lucifer described all the glories of his world, everything that makes an appeal to the human soul whenever an iota of pride exists. But the Christ Being came from the spiritual worlds and knew who Lucifer is, knew how souls on earth must act if they desire to resist the temptation of Lucifer. Untouched as He was by this temptation, the Christ Being knew how the gods are truly served—and He had the power to repel the onslaught of Lucifer. Then Lucifer made a second attack but called Ahriman to his support and both addressed the Christ. The one, Lucifer, desired to goad His pride; the other, Ahriman, to play upon His fear. Therefore it came about that the one Being said to Him: If thou wilt acknowledge me, through my spiritual power, through what I can give to thee, thou wilt be able to dispense with what is now essential for thee inasmuch as thou, the Christ, hast entered into a human body. This body subjugates thee, compels thee to obey the laws of gravity. But I have power to cast thee down, since the human body prevents thee from breaking through the law of gravity. If thou wilt acknowledge me, I will nullify the effects of the fall and no harm will come to thee! Ahriman said: I will keep thee from fear: cast thyself down! And both set upon Him. But as in their onslaught the one held the balance against the other, Christ Jesus could save Himself from them. He found the strength that man must find on earth if he is to stand firm against Lucifer and Ahriman. Then Ahriman spoke: Lucifer, I cannot use thee, thou dost but hinder me, thou hast not enhanced my power but weakened it. Then Ahriman bade Lucifer depart, made the final attack as Ahriman alone, and spoke words of which the Gospel of St. Matthew contains an echo: Turn mineral substance into bread! Turn the stones into bread if thou wouldst boast of Divine power! Then said the Christ Being: Men do not live by bread alone, but by the spiritual forces which come from the spiritual worlds. None knew this better than He for He had just descended from the spiritual worlds. Then Ahriman said: Thou mayest indeed be right but that cannot prevent me from keeping a certain hold upon thee. Thou knowest only how the Spirit acts, the Spirit who descends from the heights; thou hast not yet lived in the world of men. There below, in the human world, there are men who must perforce makes stones into bread, who cannot draw their nourishment from the Spirit alone. That was the moment when Ahriman communicated to Christ something that could indeed be known on earth but that the God who had for the first time come to earth could not yet know. He did not know that there below it was necessary to turn mineral substance—metal—into money, into bread. Ahriman had said that men on the earth below must nourish themselves by means of “gold.” That was the point where Ahriman still retained power. And he said: I shall use this power. That is the true account of the Temptation. And so one thing remained unsolved at the Temptation. The questions were not all of them finally solved: the questions of Lucifer, yes; but not the questions of Ahriman. For that, something more was necessary.

When Christ Jesus went out of the loneliness He felt transported above everything He had experienced and learned from His twelfth year onwards; He felt that the Christ Spirit had united with all that had been alive in Him before His twelfth year. He felt no longer any connection with what had become old and withered in humanity. He was indifferent even to the speech used in His environment—and to begin with, he kept silence. He wandered around Nazareth and still further afield, visiting many places He had known previously as Jesus of Nazareth. And then a very singular thing happened.—Remember, please, that I am relating the contents of the Fifth Gospel and there would be no point in looking for contradictory passages in the other four Gospels. I am narrating from the Fifth Gospel.—In quiet reticence, as if having nothing in common with the environment, Christ Jesus wandered, to begin with, from one dwelling-place to another, working among the people and with the people wherever He went. Ahriman's words concerning bread had left a deep impression upon Him. And everywhere He found people who already knew Him, with whom He had worked before. They recognised Him and He found among them those to whom Ahriman actually had access, simply because it was necessary for them to turn stones into bread—to turn money, metals, into bread. His presence was not, after all, essential among those who observed the moral precepts given by Hillel or by other teachers. Christ Jesus consorted with those whom the other Gospels call the publicans and the sinners for it was their lot to make stones into bread. He was constantly among these men.

But now this strange thing happened. Many of these men had known Him in the period preceding his thirtieth year, for He had already been among them. They had come to know His gentle, tender wisdom when He had gone about as Jesus of Nazareth, and in every house, in every dwelling, He had been deeply loved. This love had remained. In these dwellings the people spoke much of the man Jesus of Nazareth who was so dear to them, who had visited their houses and villages. And the following happened—as if through the operation of Cosmic Law. I am narrating scenes which were very frequent and are revealed again and again to clairvoyant investigation. There were families among whom Jesus of Nazareth had worked and who after their labours would sit together after sunset, liking to speak of the man who as Jesus of Nazareth had come among them. They spoke constantly of His love and gentleness, of how their own hearts and souls had warmed when He had lived under their roof. In many of these dwelling-places, when for hours together they had been talking in this way, it would happen that the picture of Jesus of Nazareth appeared to them in the room, as a vision shared by every member of the family. He came to them in the Spirit, or they, on their side, conjured up a spiritual picture of Him. You can imagine how deeply such families were moved when He appeared to them in a vision in which they all shared, and what it meant to them when after the Baptism in the Jordan He came back again and they recognised His outward form ... only now the light in His eyes was stronger; they gazed at the radiant countenance that had once been so dear to them and the Being whom they had seen among them as a spiritual Presence. You can imagine, too, what an extraordinary stir was created among such families, among the publicans and sinners whose karma had brought them into an environment where all the demonic beings held sway at that time! And now, through the presence of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, the change in this Being was revealed very clearly to these particular men. In earlier years they had felt His love, His goodness, His gentleness; but now a magic power went forth from Him. If in former days they had merely felt comforted by His presence, now they felt that they were actually healed. They went to their neighbours when they too were in distress and brought them to Christ Jesus. And so it was that after He had conquered Lucifer and only the sting of Ahriman remained in men under Ahriman's domination, Christ Jesus was able to perform the deeds described in the Bible as the expulsion of the devils. Many of the demonic beings He had seen when He was lying as if dead at the heathen altar, now departed from the people when He stood before them as Christ Jesus. The demons recognised their adversary. And as He passed in this way through the land, the behaviour of the demons in the souls of men reminded Him ever and again of how He had lain at that ancient altar where instead of gods, demons had gathered and where He had not been able to perform the sacrificial rites. Inevitably His thoughts turned to the Bath-Kol which had proclaimed to Him that ancient Prayer of the Mysteries of which I have spoken to you. And the middle line of the Prayer, especially, came into His mind: “Experienced in the Daily Bread.” These men among whom He sojourned were compelled to turn stones into bread; there were many who depended for their sustenance on bread alone. And the words from that ancient, heathen Prayer, “Experienced in the Daily Bread,” engraved themselves deeply in His soul. He realised and felt the whole process of man's incorporation into the physical world. He felt that because physical embodiment was a necessity in the evolution of humanity, men were prone to forget the “Names of the Fathers in the Heavens,” the names of the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies. And He felt that there were no longer any ears to hear the voices of the old prophets. Now He knew that what had severed men from the Heavens, what must inevitably drive men into egoism and lead them into the clutches of Ahriman, was the life that is bound up with the “Daily Bread.”

As with these thoughts He went about the country, those who were most deeply aware of the change that had come about in Jesus of Nazareth became His disciples and followed Him. From many dwelling-places one or another went with Him, followed Him—followed Him because of the feeling and conviction I described. And so very soon a band of such disciples had gathered together. In these disciples He had around Him people who in their whole mood and attitude of soul were new beings, who had become, through Him, quite different from those men of whom He had once been compelled to say to His mother that they had no longer any ears capable of listening to the ancient wisdom.

And then there dawned in Him ... it was the earthly experience of the God: What I have to tell human beings is not how the gods prepared the path from the Spirit to the Earth but how men can find the path leading upwards from the Earth to the Spirit. And now there came back to Him the voice of the Bath-Kol, and He knew that the ancient supplications and prayers must be re-cast, made new; He knew that now man must seek the path into the spiritual worlds from below upwards. He transposed the last line of the old Prayer, adapting it to the needs of men living in the new era and making it bear reference now not to the multiple spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies but to the one supreme Spirit: “Our Father in Heaven.” And the second line He had heard as the penultimate line of the Mystery-Prayer: “And forgot Your Names,” He transposed into: “Hallowed be Thy Name” as the words must run for men of the new era. And the third line from the end of the old Prayer: “In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdoms,” He transposed into: “To us may Thy Kingdom come.” And the line: “Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule,” He transposed into the form suitable for the ears of men now, since they had no ears to hear the old setting of the words—He transposed them because the direction of the path leading into the spiritual worlds was to be completely reversed: “Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” And the mystery of the Bread, of incarnation in the physical body, the mystery of the sting of Ahriman which had now been fully revealed to Him, He transposed so that men should discern the truth that the physical world too issues from the spiritual world even if this truth is not within their immediate ken. He made this line concerning the Daily Bread into a supplication: “Give us this day our Daily Bread.” And the words: “Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred,” He transposed into: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.” The line which came second in the old Mystery-Prayer: “Witness of Egoity becoming free,” He transposed into: “But deliver us,” and the first line: “The Evils prevail,” He changed into: “From the evil. Amen.” And so the altered voice of the Bath-Kol heard by Jesus of Nazareth when he fell at the heathen altar, was transposed into the “Lord's Prayer” known to Christianity ... it was the Prayer of the new Mysteries taught by Christ Jesus, it was the new Lord's Prayer. In a similar manner—and much remains to be said about this—arose the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings given by Christ Jesus to His disciples.

Christ Jesus worked upon His disciples in a strange and wonderful way. Please remember that I am simply relating what is to be read in the Fifth Gospel. As Christ Jesus went about, His environment was affected in a strange way. He was together with the Apostles and disciples and in communion with them, but—because He was the Christ Being—not as if He were merely present there in the body. As He went about the country, many a one felt as if He, Christ Jesus, were reigning within his own soul, as if this Being were actually within him, and he would begin to speak words which, in reality, only Christ Jesus could have spoken. This band of disciples went about and came into contact with the people ... and the one who spoke was by no means always Christ Jesus, but was often one of the disciples, for everything—even His wisdom—was shared with the disciples. I must confess that I was astonished in the highest degree when I discovered that the words in the conversation with the Sadducees related in St. Mark's Gospel were not spoken by Christ Jesus out of the body of Jesus but out of the lips of one of the disciples. It was a frequent phenomenon, too, that sometimes when Christ Jesus left the band of disciples, He was nevertheless still among them. He either went about with them spiritually or He appeared to them in His ether-body while He was actually far away. His ether-body was among them and also went about the land; and often it was not possible to distinguish whether He was present in the physical body or whether it was the ether-body that had become visible. Such was the manner of the intercourse with the disciples and with individuals among the people when Jesus of Nazareth had become Christ Jesus.

The experience He Himself underwent was as I have indicated. Whereas in the first periods the Christ Being had been comparatively independent of the body of Jesus of Nazareth, He had more and more to become one with it. And the longer His life continued, the more closely was He knit with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In the last years, the union with the body of Jesus of Nazareth—which had itself become increasingly frail—caused Him deep suffering. Nevertheless a great multitude now accompanied Christ Jesus as He went about the country. Here or there one among the band of the Apostles would speak—here or there, another—and the people might easily believe that the speaker was Christ Jesus, for He spoke through all of them. One can listen to the scribes speaking together to this effect: It would be possible, after all, to pick out any one of these followers and put him to death in order to frighten the people; but it might be the wrong one, for they all speak alike. Such an act would be of no use to us, for the real Christ Jesus might still be living. We must find which one He really is.—Only the disciples themselves could distinguish Him but they most certainly did not divulge to the enemy who was the right one. But because of the question that had remained unsolved, the question that Christ could not solve in the spiritual worlds but only on the earth, Ahriman had gained sufficient power. As a result of the most terrible of all deeds, Christ must experience what it means to turn stones into bread. For Ahriman made use of Judas from Karioth. On account of the way Christ worked, there would have been no spiritual means of discovering among the men who revered Him which was, in truth, the Christ. For wherever the Spirit was working, wherever even a trace of convincing power was working, He could not be taken. Only where there was one who employed the means which Christ did not know, which He could only learn to know as the result of the most terrible deed wrought on earth—only where Judas was working could He be seized. The only means of recognising Him was through one who placed himself in the service of Ahriman, who in actual fact betrayed Him for the sake of money alone. Christ Jesus was connected with Judas because at the Temptation there remained something which, in a God, is comprehensible—He did not know that it is only true in the heavens that stones are not needed for bread. Because Ahriman had retained this sting, the Betrayal took place. And then Christ must come perforce under the dominion of the Lord of Death—and Ahriman is the Lord of Death. Such is the connection of the story of the Temptation and the Mystery of Golgotha with the Betrayal by Judas.

Much more could be said about the contents of this Fifth Gospel than has been said here. But as the evolution of humanity proceeds the other portions of this Gospel will assuredly also come to light. What I have tried to do by means of the narratives selected is rather to give you an idea of its character. At the conclusion of these lectures there comes before me what I said at the end of the first, namely, that it is a necessity of the times to speak now of this Fifth Gospel. And I would beg you, my dear friends, to treat what has been said as it should be treated. We have quite enough enemies to-day already and the way they act is really very curious. I do not propose to enlarge upon this for you probably know about it from the News Sheets. You are certainly aware of another strange fact. There are people who have been saying for a long time that the teaching I give is tainted by every kind of bigoted Christian dogma, even by Jesuitism. This malicious allegation is made chiefly by certain devotees of “Adyar Theosophy” as it is called and they talk sheer, unscrupulous nonsense. But our teachings have also been indescribably falsified from a quarter which had violently attacked the intolerance, the distortions and the allegations. A man from America who spent weeks and months getting to know our teachings, transcribed and carried them off in a watered-down form to America, where he has given out a plagiarised “Rosicrucian Theosophy.” True, he says he learnt a good deal from us over here but that he was afterwards summoned to the Masters and learnt more from them. He keeps silence, however, about the source of the deeper information contained in the then unpublished lecture-courses. When something like this happens in America, one may of course emulate the aged Hillel and be lenient; nor need one stop being lenient when these things make their way across to Europe. In a quarter from which the most violent attacks were launched, a translation was made of what these circles in America had taken from us and it was said in an introduction to this translation: True, a Rosicrucian conception of the world is making its appearance in Europe too, but in a bigoted, Jesuitical form; this kind of thought can really only thrive in the pure air of California. Well ... here I will pause! Such are the methods of our opponents. We may regard these things with leniency and even with compassion—but we should not shut our eyes to them. When things like this happen it behoves even those who for years have been remarkably forbearing with people who acted so unscrupulously, to be wary. Perhaps one day everyone will have their eyes opened. If the service of truth did not demand it, I should much prefer not to speak about these matters, but they must be faced fairly and squarely.

Even if on the one side these allegations are spread by others, we are not protected, on the other side, against the battle waged by people—and such there are—who find these things displeasing for rather more honest reasons. I will not bother you with all the foolish stuff which between them these two parties have written. The curious writings of Freimark, Schalk, Maack and others now being published in Germany may be ignored, for they are really too second-rate. But there are people who cannot bear the very thought of anything that resembles the nature of this Fifth Gospel. And perhaps no hatred was as sincere as that voiced by the critics who at once rose up in arms when something of the mystery of the two Jesus children—which also belongs to the Fifth Gospel—reached the outside world. True Anthroposophists will treat this Fifth Gospel which has been given in good faith, as it should be treated. Take it with you, speak about it in the groups, but also say how it ought to be treated! See that it is not irreverently bandied about among those who may scoff at it!

With things of this nature, based as they are upon the clairvoyant investigation that is necessary for our time, we stand opposed to the whole present age, above all to the kind of learning by which the age is dominated. Of this too we have tried to be mindful. Those of us who were together when the Foundation Stone of our Building was laid, tried to envisage the urgent need for spiritual teachings to be proclaimed with faithful observance of truth. We tried to picture what a wide distance separates the culture of our times from this search for the truth. It can verily be said that the cry for the Spirit rings through the age but that men are either too arrogant or too limited to be willing to know the actual truths of the Spirit. The sense of truth in the degree essential for understanding the proclamation of the Spirit, has yet to grow. For in spiritual culture as it is to-day, this sense of truth is not present in the requisite degree and—what is worse—its absence is not noticed. Treat what has been given here in connection with the Fifth Gospel in such a way that it is treated reverently in the groups. This we must ask, not out of egoism but for quite other reasons. For the Spirit of Truth must abide in us and the Spirit must stand before us in Truth. People to-day talk of the Spirit but even when they do so, they have no inkling whatever of the realities of the Spirit. There is a man—and why should names not be given—who has won great respect simply because he is forever talking about the Spirit. I refer to Rudolf Eucken. He talks the whole time of Spirit, but when one reads through all his books (just try it sometime) one finds ad infinitum: The Spirit exists, we must experience the Spirit, commune with the Spirit, be mindful of the Spirit ... and so on, in endless phrases running through every one of these books. Spirit, Spirit, Spirit! This is how men speak of the Spirit to-day because they are too lazy or too arrogant to go to the very wellsprings of the Spirit. And such men are greatly respected nowadays. For all that, it will be difficult in the modern age to make headway with anything drawn from the Spirit in such a concrete form as was necessary in describing the contents of the Fifth Gospel. Earnestness and an inner sense of truth are required for this. One of Eucken's most recent publications is a volume entitled: Können wir noch Christen sein? [Leipzig, 1911. An English translation, Can we still be Christians? was published in 1914.] Pages and pages follow one another merely reiterating Soul and Spirit, Spirit and Soul, and so it goes on through many volumes. For one gains immense repute and authority if one declares to the people that one knows something about the Spirit. In their reading, however, people do not perceive the inner untruthfulness of it all ... One would like to think that ultimately people really will learn how to read ... On one of the pages we find the sentence: Humanity to-day has passed beyond the stage of believing in daemons; one cannot any longer expect people to believe in daemons! But at another place in the same book there is this remarkable sentence: The daemonic arises when Spirit touches Soul. Here the man is speaking seriously of daemons, after having spoken, on another page of the same book, the words I quoted. Is not this the very deepest inner untruth? The time must come at last when such inwardly untruthful teachings about the Spirit are refuted. But I have never noticed that many of our contemporaries are alive to this inner untruthfulness.

And so when we serve the truth of the Spirit to-day we stand opposed to the times. This has to be remembered in order that we may see clearly what we have to do in our hearts if we would be co-bearers of the proclamation of the Spirit, co-bearers of the new life of the Spirit that is essential for mankind. When efforts are made through spiritual teaching to lead the souls of men to the Christ Being, how can one hope for much response in face of contemporary thought which contents itself with truths put forward to-day by all the shrewd philosophers and theologians: that there was a Christianity in existence before Christ! Evidence is produced to show that the cult and also certain typical narratives were already current in the East in pre-Christian times. And then these clever theologians explain to everyone who will listen to them that Christianity is simply the continuation of what was already there before. This kind of literature commands great respect, really tremendous respect among our contemporaries and they have not the slightest inkling what the real relationship is. When the Christ is said to have come down to the Earth as a Spiritual Being and then, later on, is found to be worshipped in forms of cult the same as those connected with the worship of heathen gods—and when such arguments are used, as they are to-day, to disavow the Christ Being ... this is a kind of logic of which the following is an illustration. Somebody or other goes into a house and leaves his clothes behind. It is known that the clothes belong to this particular man. A little later, such a man as Schiller or Goethe comes to the house and owing to certain circumstances is obliged to put on these clothes. Then he comes out in the clothes belonging to the other. And now somebody who has seen Goethe in these clothes, goes about saying: What are people talking about? Why is he supposed to be a man of special importance? I have examined the clothes minutely and I know that they belong to so-and-so who is a person of no importance whatever. Because the Christ Being made use of the garments, so to speak, of the ancient cults, there come these clever people who do not understand that the Christ Being clothed Himself in these forms as a garment only, and that the spiritual reality present in these old ritualistic forms now, is the Christ Being Himself.

And now—look through whole libraries, look through the countless dissertations of scientific monism to-day. All this kind of literature brings evidence concerning the garment around the Christ Being—and moreover the evidence, in itself, is correct! Dabblers in the field of the evolution of culture stand in high repute to-day and their science is accepted as profound wisdom. This is the picture we must have before us if we desire to realise not only intellectually but also in our feeling, what the communication of this Fifth Gospel means. It means that together with the truth known to us we must be alive to how and where we stand in the world to-day, realising how impossible it is to make the new tidings of the Spirit comprehensible to the thought-life of the past. And so when we have again to take leave of one another, reference may be made to words from the Gospel. With the way of thinking now prevailing in humanity, no progress is possible in the coming phase of spiritual evolution. Therefore this way of thinking must be changed, must be given another direction! Those who like to compromise and are unwilling to form a clear picture of things as they are and must be in the future, will not be able to contribute much to the spiritual teachings and spiritual service necessary for mankind.

It was my duty to speak of the Fifth Gospel which is very sacred to me. And I take leave of your hearts and souls with the wish that the bond created between us by many other things, may have been strengthened through this spiritual investigation of the Fifth Gospel—for this investigation is precious to me. Your hearts may perhaps be warmed by the thought that even if we are physically separated in space and in time, nevertheless we will remain together and feel together what we must inwardly assimilate and what is demanded by the duty laid upon the souls of men to-day by the Spirit. May the labours of every individual soul further our aims in the right way.

Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, its Results and its Scientific Justification.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen! I have often had the opportunity to speak here in Basel about the nature of anthroposophical spiritual science. Since I last did so, in September and October, courses were held at the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, the place to which this anthroposophical spiritual science is dedicated. The aim of these courses was to show how this anthroposophical spiritual science, which is the subject of this talk, can have a fruitful effect on the individual sciences. About thirty personalities from the fields of science, art and practical life have tried to present what they could present from the spirit of their particular subject and from the whole sense of anthroposophical spiritual science in these university courses. The aim was to show how, precisely when one proceeds in a strictly professional manner, this anthroposophical spiritual science can reveal itself in its significance.

Now, admittedly, these college courses have touched many in a very strange way. I would like to highlight a remarkable one from the last few days from the series of judgments that have been passed. A German university professor of education and philosophy has now felt impelled, as a result of these university courses, to take a book of mine and read it, which was first published in 1894, my “Philosophy of Freedom”, which I have already mentioned here on the occasion of earlier lectures. He came to this conclusion after decades of neglecting this “Philosophy of Freedom”, that what the efforts set as their goal for a revival of science and public life - as was expressed in the university courses at the Goetheanum in Dornach, that this requires first of all a thorough revision of the ethical foundations, which are illustrated in a questionable way, as he believes, by this philosophy of freedom. There we have - I just want to report - a judgment from one side.

Strangely, this judgment is juxtaposed with another. One could say that recently the brochures that were initially written against spiritual science, as it is meant here, have grown into quite respectable books, and in the last few weeks such a book has appeared, with 228 pages. It cannot truly be said that the author of this book, the theology graduate Kurt Leese, is in any position to understand spiritual science, nor can it be said that he is a follower of it, because the whole book is written — at least apparently — with quite good will, but despite this good will, it is not at all imbued with any understanding of anthroposophical spiritual science. But even this opponent feels compelled to say the following in the preface. I must point out that the book, which is called “Modern Theosophy”, is only about “Anthroposophy”; the author also expresses this by saying here:

When the following remarks speak of Theosophy and Theosophists, they always mean Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical School. The terms Theosophy and Theosophist have been retained only because they are more familiar to the general consciousness than the terms Anthroposophy and Anthroposophist.

So when Kurt Leese speaks of Theosophy, he really means only Anthroposophy. Now, from his opponent's point of view, he says:

If Theosophy were just a collection of random ideas from some obscure sect fishing in troubled waters, it wouldn't be worth the trouble to pay it any attention.

In particular, it wouldn't be worth writing books about it! And then at the end of this paragraph, he said that Anthroposophy

... contains the foundations of a comprehensive and powerfully ethical worldview.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, on the one hand we are told that the ethical foundations need to be revised, and on the other hand we are told that the ethical foundations already exist! Kurt Leese reinforces this in his final remarks by saying:

There are also various ethical recommendations scattered throughout Steiner's writings. These could be separated out from the context of clairvoyant insights and used as practical wisdom. The value of this wisdom would not be affected.

He therefore believes that if one were to throw overboard everything that comes from the supersensible world and only select the ethical and moral wisdom, there would still be enough left for him. I think it is clear from this how unsuitable the judgments of the present day are for really saying anything about the value of what is meant here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. One of them, who is an academic, virtually denies its ethical basis, while the other, who is also an academic, emphasizes that even if it were worthless in all other respects, there would still be a residue of ethical wisdom that should not be dismissed out of hand.

Now, however, it is precisely from this latest book, “Modern Theosophy” — as I said, it should be called “Modern Anthroposophy” — one can see what the discord that emanates from our contemporaneity is actually based on when judging anthroposophy or the anthroposophical worldview. Kurt Leese, as he himself says, does not try to take an external point of view, but has actually read everything that has been published by Anthroposophy, and he even tries in his own way to judge this Anthroposophy from within. But at one point he betrays himself in a most remarkable way. He does talk about how confused this anthroposophy is and the like in a number of places, but at one point he betrays himself in a remarkable way, calling what anthroposophy brings “annoying and unpleasant”. Now, it is certainly not a point of view that one takes within science when one speaks of “annoying and unpleasant”. When one becomes annoyed, something inside one rears up, as it were. One does not want what is confronting one there, not out of logic, but out of one's feelings, because otherwise one would not become annoyed, otherwise one would refute it, otherwise one would present logical counter-arguments and the like. One may well ask: why does an opponent who claims to want to be objective become annoyed, yes, why does he even call anthroposophical spiritual science “unpleasant”?

I believe that if one takes the essentials of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as I will explain again today, one can understand why certain people become annoyed by it, because this anthro posophically oriented spiritual science, on the one hand, departs completely from all present-day scientific habits and aims to carry these scientific habits into the knowledge of the spiritual, of the supersensible. On the other hand, however, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is pushed to start from a completely different, at least seemingly different, state of mind, from completely different conceptions and ideas than this ordinary science. In this way, the thinking habits of a great many scientists are broken in the most eminent sense by anthroposophical spiritual science. It can hardly be doubted by anyone who looks impartially at the more recent spiritual development of civilized humanity that the most significant thing that has emerged in this spiritual development is the methods and results of natural science research. These scientific results have transformed our whole life. These scientific methods of investigation – anyone who can compare them with the so-called scientific views of the time, say still from the 12th or 13th century – these scientific methods of investigation have brought about a certain methodical discipline of all research, of all investigations of knowledge, a scientific discipline that basically no one today should violate if they do not want to be accused of dilettantism.

With this fact, my dear audience, with the importance of scientific thinking, scientific attitude, scientific conscientiousness, anthroposophical spiritual science is reckoning. But precisely because it is reckoning with this, it cannot possibly remain on the ground on which, externally, science still stands today in its investigations, in its observations, in its experiments. Anthroposophical spiritual science cannot remain on this ground. For if it wants to incorporate the supersensible, the spiritual, into human knowledge in the same way that natural science investigates the sensible, then the spiritual science in question, when it moves in its very own field, in the field of spiritual facts, the spiritual entities, precisely because it wants to be a genuine child, a true successor of scientific conscientiousness, must proceed in a completely different way than natural science does in its field, in the sensual field.

And so, in order to be true to it, spiritual science must broaden the concept of knowledge in a very essential way, and we will see that it is essentially this broadening that annoys people who would like to stop at what is there, who find it uncanny. If one is to characterize that by means of which anthroposophy wants to penetrate into the spiritual world as a real science, then one must say: it relates to what is offered in ordinary science as a real thing to a mere formal thing. When a person has reached a certain level of maturity, that is, when he has developed his innate qualities and what his human environment can offer him through his education and studies, when he has thus developed a certain degree of intellectual and observational skills, then he can become a scientist. He can also, as is desired today, extend this scientific thinking to the historical and social fields. But it is always only a formal progression. You continue your work as you began it. You observe, you logically dissect what you have observed, and then you reassemble it.

The process of acquiring knowledge of anthroposophical spiritual science is different. This is something that really intervenes in the development of the human being when it is applied to the human being himself. To begin with, one can say comparatively: the researcher certainly gets further if he researches for five years, he also becomes more adept at handling the methods, but he does not come to use a different kind of cognitive faculty within these five, ten, fifteen years; he always uses the same cognitive faculty. The anthroposophical researcher cannot do that. It must be said of him: just as a child, when it has reached a certain age, has some power of judgment, some ability to observe, how it develops this judgment, this ability to observe, when it is five years older, how it then relates quite differently to the things of the environment - both in terms of thinking and in terms of the power of observation , then anyone who becomes a researcher in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must not merely maintain their cognitive ability like the natural science researcher, making it somewhat more skillful or meticulous or the like, but they must further develop their inner soul abilities in the same way in real terms, they must make something different out of them.

The method of anthroposophical spiritual science demands that a person does not stand still, that he continues to develop in relation to his cognitive abilities. In this way, the person himself attains a completely different inner soul disposition. And just as a child, after five years of development, sees the world differently than before, so the spiritual researcher, after applying the method of spiritual knowledge to himself, sees the world differently than before , that is to say, he sees it spiritually, supersensibly, whereas, as is generally admitted, the methods of natural science see only the sensual facts as such, and, if one watches closely, only want to see these sensual facts. But the fact that man, when he believes he is finished, is now being asked to develop further, is something that annoys many people who believe that they have achieved everything that can be achieved in science; they find it intolerable, because they face it in the same way that a child faces someone who is five years older.

You see, you only have to say this, and you will understand that it annoys contemporaries tremendously, because it is a challenge that first confronts these contemporaries. This challenge, however, why does it confront contemporaries? Here too, one need only look at what scientific research has achieved. It is enough to point out that these natural scientists emphasize everywhere - and their most important representatives admit this - how they are reaching the limits of their knowledge. But beyond the limits of this knowledge lie precisely the great questions that concern the human soul, that concern the human spirit above all. Science does not lead us any further than to an understanding of what lies between birth and death. But the riddles that lie at the depths of a human being's nature confront us with tremendous force: What lies beyond birth and death? What is eternal in the human being in contrast to the transitory? What is the basis of that which we call human destiny, which appears so mysterious because, with regard to this destiny, inner human feeling seems to harmonize so poorly with the outer course of the world, so poorly harmonized that someone who is good inside can be severely affected by fate, and someone who perhaps does not bring any particular goodness to it is initially treated very well by it. These are, however, only the important, the decisive questions of the human soul, those questions that reach into every feeling human heart. Time and again, natural science, which has indeed achieved such tremendous conscientiousness, must confess time and again how it has to stop before that boundary, behind which solutions to these questions can perhaps be sought.

Spiritual science now stands on the following ground in relation to this: precisely because it professes the scientific spirit of modern times in the truest sense, it considers the boundaries of scientific research to be correct. It says: with the ordinary abilities of man, as they are developed in accordance with the present state of human development, one cannot but stop at these boundaries. But these limits are not invincible. Man is capable of developing beyond these limits of knowledge.

First of all, two soul abilities should be mentioned which are capable of a higher development according to a very special, supersensible kind of knowledge. First of all, we should consider what we must have, so to speak, as a fundamental faculty for our healthy life between birth and death: it is human memory, it is the human ability to remember. From other points of view, I have already pointed out in spiritual scientific lectures the special development of this ability to remember through spiritual scientific methods. If only something in this ability to remember is not intact, then the whole human interior is actually torn apart. If we feel that what we have experienced since childhood, up to the point where we can remember back, is interrupted, then our I is, so to speak, not healthy. We feel disoriented within ourselves; we cannot find our way around within ourselves. We do not really know what to do with ourselves inwardly, spiritually. This ability to remember preserves what we experience in our existence for the time between our birth and our death. What we experience in the moment gains permanence through the ability to remember. This is where one of the methodological endeavors of spiritual science begins, in that it takes up, so to speak, the power of the soul that leads to memory, but then develops this power of the soul differently than it develops by itself, so to speak, when the soul is left to its own devices. What spiritual research applies here is what I have called meditation in my writings – an intimate process of the human soul.

But, dear listeners, you must be aware that the paths into the supersensible worlds are intimate soul paths. Anyone who, in the Schrenck-Notzing way, believes that one can see the supersensible by imitating the external method of experimentation, who believes that one can see the supersensible in the sensual as something sensual, will naturally find any interest in the spiritual science referred to here, for this spiritual science must start from the premise that it is absurd to want to get the supersensible into the sensory, that it is absurd to want to make the supersensible sensual. The question cannot be to apply the ordinary scientific method of experimentation in order to experiment with spirits in the same way as one experiments with substances and forces in the laboratory, but it can only be a matter of moving towards the supersensible in intimate soul paths.

Meditation is such an intimate path of the soul. If you would like me to describe it, I can do so briefly in the following; you can find it in detail in my books, especially in my “Occult Science” and in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” Briefly, I would characterize this meditation in the following way: it consists in not merely formulating one's thoughts as they follow from external observations or ordinary life, but in taking in images, thought connections, through willpower, that one either lets a knowledgeable spiritual researcher advise or that one brings to oneself in some other way. While otherwise we only think a thought for as long as our own perception lasts or for as long as our inner organization holds it in our memory in our present soul life, while in the ordinary course of thought we thus surrender to the involuntary, in meditation we bring the thought into our soul through the arbitrariness of a real development of the will, and we then dwell on this thought. One holds fast to this thought in the soul. What I mean here cannot be experienced quickly; it requires years of practice in such holding of the thought if one wants to achieve something. But it must be emphasized that the methods that are recommended by anthroposophy alone in this direction, they certainly keep the soul processes within a certain sphere. And one must actually be well prepared for this sphere before one can develop any kind of useful spiritual scientific method, and that for which one must be well prepared can be attained only through conscientious training within modern scientific research. There one first learns to stick to the objective, not to interfere with arbitrary sympathies and antipathies in the objective. But one also learns to adhere to the pure intellectual context, to a certain logical sequence of thoughts, in that these thoughts follow the external observations at the same time. What one can gain from this ability to follow a thought logically must be preparation, because nothing may be brought up from the subconscious or unconscious, but the whole process must proceed as consciously and deliberately as anything that is done deliberately in a laboratory through experimentation.

When one has struggled through to logical thinking, to thinking that could hold an account with the strictest mathematician, to use Goethe's expression, when one has struggled through to such thinking, when one can dwell purely in the element of thinking, then one can present such thoughts to oneself, in order to now - without the help of memory, without the help of external observation, without any involuntary action - to hold on to this thought through inner arbitrariness. What happens when we continue such exercises over and over again? We continue within the soul-spiritual that process which we have unconsciously allowed to run its course in ourselves by developing the faculty of memory. The child grows up, and as it grows up physically, it develops the faculty of memory at the same time. The spiritual researcher, so to speak, reproduces this process of making the presentation permanent in the pure soul by holding such thought-elements in mind. In so doing, he continues in reality this process, which has developed to the point of the ability to remember. And by continuing this process more and more, one arrives at inwardly feeling how something stirs that was not there before. Just as inner powers are awakening in the fifteen-year-old child that were not yet present in the ten-year-old child, so inner powers awaken through such exercises that were not there before. Before, one only knew how to live in memory with the help of one's body. Now, through a new experience, one knows how to live in the purely spiritual-soul realm. One grasps inwardly, in inner activity, the spiritual-soul, and the result is that the ordinary power of recollection develops further into a special power, the origin of which I will now describe.

There comes a time for the spiritual researcher when something quite different is added to ordinary memory through such exercises, something is added that no longer requires memory, with regard to which memory is basically no longer possible. By inwardly grasping oneself in this way, what is added is that from a certain point in one's life onwards, one has one's previous life since birth, or at least since the point in time up to which one would otherwise remember, as a whole, unfolding in pictures. As if the stream of time were, so to speak, running simultaneously, the tableau of life stands before the spiritual researcher.

But something special has been achieved with this, dear audience. The fact that the spiritual researcher then sees what otherwise only wells up from his inner being in individual memories means that he is confronted with an entity – albeit now his own entity as it has developed since his birth – that he has not previously faced in this inner unity. That from which the memories emerged, like, I would say, individual waves from a sea surface, that stands there like a closed current. But as a result, one's self is outside of this being, which one is otherwise oneself. Consider what is actually happening in the human soul that is so significant. The human soul is, after all, this being from which the memories emerge. Now the consciousness remains completely intact, but one's own being appears objectively, appears separate from oneself. One first surveys that which, as an enduring being, permeates us from birth to death. But the one who now really wants to devote himself completely to spiritual research must continue on this path, which I have now called meditation.

Above all, he must now develop another ability, which is also already present in the soul, but he must develop it in order to progress: the ability to love, to love the world and the world's entities. This is something that is almost annoying for many of our scientific contemporaries, when one has to point this out. Let us take a look at love as it manifests itself in ordinary life. It is the devotion of the soul to another being, to a process or the like. What is love when it occurs in life? We may say: it is an intensified unfolding of attention. Where does love begin? It begins when I turn my special attention to an object as the world passes by me. I single out an object; I concentrate on this one object. By concentrating on an object, as it were, I allow my soul to flow increasingly into the essence of that object, so that selfishness fades away. By becoming absorbed in the other being, attention then turns into love. This love must be developed from an ordinary everyday quality into a true quality of knowledge. This can be done by still further increasing the power of concentration, by becoming more and more aware of the will, just as one has previously introduced duration into the life of the imagination. Before, one applied the will in meditation; now one does not just see to it that one meditates at will, but now one watches oneself unfold this will. One pays special attention to the will. You see how this will concentrates on this or that, which you have brought into consciousness. And by increasing this inner soul activity – it is again an intimate, inner soul activity – you now come to have a new inner experience. One arrives at this by bringing to consciousness what is otherwise immersed in the twilight of the unconscious or subconscious, namely, the interrelationship between waking and sleeping.

Man walks through the world. From waking to falling asleep, he unfolds his consciousness, which represents external objects to him, which he then processes inwardly through his thoughts. He interrupts this consciousness through the unconsciousness of sleep, from which at most the images of dreams emerge. By concentrating in this way on the will and its development, by surrendering, by surrendering in love, one's power of concentration to something that has been brought into consciousness, this inner soul life has gradually strengthened to such an extent that now, by putting himself in a certain state, a person knows that he can consciously repeat the same process that he would otherwise repeat when he falls asleep. And now a person knows, he knows through direct insight: When I fall asleep, I leave my spiritual and soul self with my physical body. From the moment I fall asleep until I wake up, I am a spiritual-soul being outside my body. But before a person has undergone such exercises as I have described, he remains unconscious of the state from falling asleep to waking up: this undifferentiated, initially still quite unorganized spiritual-soul - which in ordinary life is only organized that it is in the body and receives its forms and inner forces from the body. Through the kind of activity I have described, through this human activity, through meditation and concentration, the soul and spirit become inwardly organized in a way that otherwise only the body is. Just as the body with its senses can see within the sensual world in which it is, so the soul-spiritual, when it has organized itself through inner strength, will come to consciously leave the body in the same way as it otherwise leaves it unconsciously when falling asleep; it will come to the point that it can consciously return to the body, as it otherwise only returns when waking up. And one now gets an idea of where one actually is between falling asleep and waking up; because one has awakened to inner activity, one gets an idea of this soul. Now, however, one faces it in a different way from what previously seemed like a panoramic picture of life since birth.

By developing the spiritual and soul life through meditation, one first gets a review of the life since birth, but one does not yet know one's way around in the review. It has become more objective, but one does not yet consciously face it. If you concentrate on the work of will, as I have described it, you are so active that you can now hold that which otherwise can only be outside the body during sleep outside this body. Then you see a process according to its true reality, which you otherwise cannot see because the powers through which you can see it have not yet been developed. Then one sees the process of the incorporation of the spiritual-mental into the physical body and the other process of the re-expulsion of the spiritual-mental from the physical body. If one comes to understand, consciously understand, what falling asleep and waking up means, then with this knowledge one also comes to see and understand what being born and dying means. For just as little as the soul, which begins to unfold in the morning, is reborn when we wake up, it does not perish when we fall asleep. But just as little is born with birth or with conception what is the human being's soul, and just as little does it perish with death. This can be decided by really looking.

If one learns to recognize in inner activity that which really underlies the human being, then one learns to recognize it as that which rises above birth and death. Then one learns to recognize it as that which connects itself with the physical body through birth or conception, in that it simultaneously organizes the physical body and connects itself with it in the same way as otherwise - though now not by reorganizing, but only partially, I might say mending the organization - the spiritual-soul element enters the physical body upon waking, for an existence that continues with its experiences from morning to morning. In this way one learns to recognize that which actually organizes the human being as something that in turn goes out into the spiritual world at death. In this way, through the unfolding of the soul to seeing, one learns to really see clearly the eternal that exists in man. One cannot speculate or philosophize about this eternal - one will only ever come to sophistries. But one can receive an enlightenment about this eternal by recognizing what is otherwise unconscious as eternal, what lives as unconscious without the body from falling asleep to waking up. If one has done this, then one recognizes at the same time that [which is otherwise unconscious] as an eternal.

This shows you how spiritual science actually understands the real development of the ability to know. It is not a matter of us standing still and only continuing logically or experimentally, at most becoming more adept, but rather of us really, as it is with the growth of the body itself, bringing our spiritual and soul life to grow, to unfold anew, so that it grows into the supersensible world and experiences the eternal. By experiencing this supersensible realm, by gaining an overview of life as one might on a day and recognizing what precedes and follows this life, one comes more and more to — especially if one now tries to from the concentration; one can push the concentration so far that one is completely absorbed, but still retains the strength to withdraw again and again; one must not lose consciousness. One comes more and more to the point that one is completely absorbed in what one is concentrating on. Then you also get to know the person in terms of their essence in that state when they are just outside of their body. I have said that you first learn to recognize the life since birth in a kind of pictorial review. You then learn to recognize what becomes this life, what descends from spiritual worlds to be embodied, what passes through the gate of death to return to the spiritual world. But by immersing oneself in this, one learns to recognize: Yes, the ordinary perceptions are not present in this eternal realm; the perceptions that we have in ordinary life are only produced in the physical organization.

One only becomes clear about what this bodily organization actually is for the human being when one gets to know the significance of the outer, bodily organization for the spiritual-soul. Only then does one learn to recognize that in order to form ideas in the ordinary world, one must return to one's body. But he takes the power of thinking, he takes the power of the ability to form ideas with him into the spiritual-soul realm, and he takes, by developing a new imagining for a higher, supersensible consciousness, only a part of what is in his body, I say, only a part of feeling and of will; he does not take the ordinary imagining with him. He must develop a completely new concept for existence outside of the body. But he takes with him from his ordinary existence, which fills him between birth and death, a part of feeling. And the will in its true form, this will, it is indeed something extraordinarily dark, something like what can be experienced in sleep; one need only think of what the ordinary soul teachings and psychologists have to say about this will. This volition is indeed something dark in life. It becomes light when the human being rises in the appropriate way to see, but at the same time it is recognized that it is connected with the eternal. And when one succeeds, through loving concentration, in removing even this last remnant of egoistic individual feeling – that is to say, what still holds one to the body – and thus, as one has developed a new conception in the purely spiritual-soul, to develop now also a pure feeling outside of the body, still remaining is the volition as it is in the body. But now one gets to know it through the new feeling and new imagining; one learns to recognize it in such a way that one must give it a name, perhaps using the word desire. One gets to know the will as a desire, as an ability of desire, as a power of desire. But now, outside of the body, it appears as a power of desire, but what is now desired? It is the existence in the body itself that is desired. One thus now learns to recognize the power by which one actually penetrates from a prenatal life into this life in the body.

One learns to recognize this desire as something that belongs to the world and that permeates us before we become an earthly human being, and that remains with us as we pass through the portal of death. And now one learns to recognize how this desire is something that rules in man and what the content of the desire has to do with becoming human itself; one now gets to know something strange, one gets to know within oneself the desire for becoming human as such. One gets to know this life between death and birth; one gets to know the eternal in it. You get to know the desire to live another life, and you get to know the will that you have discovered as the one that has brought you from the human life of the past, which you yourself have accomplished, into this [present] life. You get to know the will in its spiritual form.

Dear attendees, when you look at the will as such, which you have brought out of the physical body, then you learn to recognize the fact of repeated lives on earth, then you learn to recognize how the content of a life passes through the time between death and a new birth, developing purely spiritually, then one learns to recognize how that which develops purely spiritually again and again generates out of itself the desire to become human. That which we develop here in life between birth and death as desire, whereby we desire external things, is recognized by supersensible vision as a faint reflection of the desires that live in us and carry us over from one earth life to another. That which makes us human, that which organizes us from one earthly life to another, appears in a faint reflection when we desire this or that out of our physical body.

I have only been able to sketch out for you how a person grows into the spiritual and soul world through an intimate development of their spiritual and soul life, how they first become aware of what they are between birth and death, how they becomes aware of his eternal self, which lies beyond birth and death, but also how he becomes aware of how that which lives in him between birth and death includes an eternal element that goes beyond this shell, passes through death but has a desire for a new life. I would have to speak not only for hours but for weeks if I wanted to elaborate on what I have now outlined in detail. It can be described in detail, but the only thing that needs to be shown here is how anthroposophical spiritual science arrives at its results and what those results are. It arrives at them by developing the human capacity for knowledge beyond itself, to results about the nature of its own being, about the eternal, about the repetitive nature of its earthly existence.

One can imagine that what I have just described is unusual compared to today's thinking habits. Above all, people do not want to admit that they still need to develop in order to recognize. They want to stop at what they have already achieved, at most they want to state the limit. But in this way the truth about the highest matters of the human soul cannot be discovered. It can only be discovered if a person has the intellectual humility to say to himself: I must still go further, I must bring the supersensible to consciousness within myself if I want to develop a consciousness of the supersensible and see through my belonging to the supersensible world.

When these things are mentioned, people come and say: Yes, this anthroposophical spiritual science, it wants to overcome materialism, but it is not scientific itself. Because what it describes as images of life since birth, what it describes as inspirations through which the eternal is recognized, what it describes as intuitions that take hold of the desire of the will, which works from life to life, that - so some people say - that cannot be objectively justified, that could just as easily be hallucinations. And strangely enough, it happens that precisely those who, on the one hand, say that anthroposophical spiritual science is trying to overcome materialism — and thus actually express a sympathy for overcoming materialism — that precisely those who, in wanting to refute anthroposophical spiritual science, reduce it to a materialistic level.

So, just recently, here we could read – I cannot speak from my own experience, since I was not present when the matter was discussed, only from a newspaper report: If it does not exactly match what was said, then it refers to what was reported, but one can also speak about what was reported in the sense in which I will now do so. It is claimed that what is now called intimate development is in fact nothing more than the inhibition of mental images, their inward accumulation, so to speak, their initial suppression, so that nervous energy and that then through these suppressed, through these inhibited and suppressed mental images, the spared nerve energy would arise in these images, of which the spiritual researcher speaks as of his seeing.

Now, follow exactly what I have objectively and truthfully described today as the processes that the spiritual researcher really undertakes with his soul in successive states: Has there been any mention of inhibiting and restricting the images of thought? No, the opposite was mentioned. It was mentioned that the images are not suppressed, but that they are precisely raised, that they are precisely placed in the consciousness full of light. The opposite of what is being objected to in order to demonstrate the unscientific nature of anthroposophy has been mentioned. It is simply thoughtlessly asserted that the experiences of the spiritual researcher are the result of restricted, suppressed, inhibited images of thought. No images of thought are inhibited at all; on the contrary, they are brought into the full light of consciousness and unfold. If it were a matter of these images being inhibited, of something being dammed up, of nervous energy being saved, as it were, and then of that which the spiritual researcher has in his visions unfolding, then the same would have to be present in the spiritual researcher as occurs in pathological hallucination or illusion. But the opposite is the case. Pathological hallucination or illusion is linked to the suppression of ordinary consciousness. But what is present in the spiritual researcher is not linked to the suppression of ordinary consciousness. This ordinary consciousness remains fully intact. Therefore, the spiritual researcher can always think with this ordinary consciousness just as the person who fights him, if he wants to be scientific, thinks with this ordinary consciousness. How can the person who faces this fact claim that it is a matter of inhibited nervous activity? The person who is said to be working under the influence of this inhibited nervous activity is not merely working afterwards, but at the same time in exactly the same way as his opponent works with the supposedly uninhibited nervous activity.

What happens here is no different: the person concerned becomes annoyed because, in order to penetrate the spiritual world, he is now expected to bring his own supersensory abilities to consciousness, and he therefore says: These spiritual researchers are all very well to fight materialism, but... - now the man, who is so terribly sympathetic with the fight against materialism, becomes the most blatant materialist, in that he drives down into the subconscious that which the spiritual researcher expressly emphasizes as being entirely within the sphere of the methodical-logical. The spiritual researcher knows exactly where the subconscious begins. The fact that he brings his will into it everywhere is precisely the essential point.

The fact is, therefore, that here a fight is being waged against anthroposophically oriented spiritual science without worrying about what really underlies this spiritual science. One would only have the right to say that it is based on stored nervous energy, one would only have the right to fight against it if anthroposophically oriented spiritual science were to rebel against ordinary science. But that is precisely its starting point. It does not rebel against ordinary science. In the field that ordinary science deals with, it thinks, observes and researches in the same way as ordinary science, it only penetrates what ordinary science can research with what can be spiritually perceived by it. It takes nothing away from ordinary science, it only adds something. And so the opponent must not claim that it takes away from the spiritual abilities, that it dams up, limits, inhibits ideas, because it works with the same uninhibited ideas as he does, only it adds something different.

You see, my dear audience, the point is that people simply do not want to enter the path of spiritual science; they say, “I don't want to, I don't like it” – everyone has the right to do that. But to say: I don't want to, therefore the other person shouldn't either, and therefore nothing about this spiritual science should be said to anyone at all [you don't have the right to do that.] You stand in front of an audience, fight this spiritual science, but you don't know it, you fight it by attributing to it a materialistic structure, from which it is far removed according to its entire method.

Now, while the opponents have at least already come so far as to write books and say that anthroposophy is not a matter of “arbitrary ideas of a fringe sect fishing in troubled waters,” but rather of something to which one must “pay attention,” that it provides “foundations for a comprehensive world view powerfully imbued with an ethical spirit”. The course will be that, although they become “annoyed”, the opponents, out of the depths of their being, will have to make an effort to at least recognize the seriousness of this spiritual science. So the time will also come when all those who fight this spiritual science out of apparent science will disintegrate into nothing. Until now, basically nothing else has happened but that one continually accuses spiritual science of something that one has just invented oneself, and then fights one's own caricature - not what spiritual science really gives.

What, then, can it actually be when there is talk of such a “scientific explanation” that contemporary science alone claims to provide, even for the humanities? If we consider the misunderstandings that prevail from the outset, then we can also come to terms with the matter a little. One cannot demand that the ordinary way of seeing should be scientifically justified, otherwise it should not be used; and in the same way one cannot demand that the higher way of seeing should be scientifically justified, otherwise it should not be used. Nor can anyone demand that the vision through imagination, inspiration, intuition, as I have described it today – imagination gives the lasting of earthly life in images since birth, inspiration gives the eternal, intuition gives the repetitive earthly lives – nor can anyone demand that this vision through imagination, inspiration, intuition first be scientifically justified before it is applied. No, just as the eye does not allow itself to be scientifically justified before it sees, so imagination, inspiration and intuition cannot allow themselves to be scientifically proven before they are applied. That is simply a matter of course.

It is a different matter when one speaks of the scientific basis of anthroposophical spiritual science. Here it is only a matter of trying to investigate the essence of hallucination, the essence of vision, the essence of illusion, the essence of ordinary sensory perception, the essence of memory, the essence of thinking, in the same way that one seeks to understand the physiological basis of the human organism. Here one must say – one could speak even more physiologically, but here I want to put it more popularly: Anyone who studies hallucinations, for example, knows that they are imaginations of images, an imagination of images in the face of which the faculty of will is so strongly suppressed that the person is not aware of himself in what he is hallucinating, therefore considers the hallucination to be an objective, whereas it is not related to any objective at all. The point of anthroposophical spiritual science is that the person is oriented within himself. If he is oriented within himself, he will suppress at the same moment what wants to occur as a hallucination by opposing it with inner activity. This inner activity is what matters. This inner activity is developed precisely in the spiritual research method of anthroposophy. But the person who has an unbiased overview of the soul life also knows that there is always a residue of hallucination. This residue of hallucination comes to light precisely in the act of remembering; in the act of remembering, only the pictorial quality of the hallucination is expressed. There are still residues of hallucination in the act of remembering, only they are imbued with activity. We would have no memory if we did not, to a certain extent, have the capacity to hallucinate and could stop this hallucination in the right way. If, without what is supposed to remain subordinate to the human organic soul capacity, this ability to hallucinate predominates, then it becomes pathological, then the person emerges from the sphere where he has a certain balance between body and soul – in the ordinary imagining that becomes memory – he emerges into the corporeal; he becomes more material than he otherwise is. He descends into the corporeal and thus becomes hallucinatory. Likewise, the illusion arises from a descent into the corporeal.

Everything that leads to imagination, inspiration, intuition, does not descend into the physical, but rises up out of the physical. Therefore, one cannot use any kind of blocking of mental images, any kind of inhibition of mental images, but one must move the mental images up into the bright consciousness in the same way that one otherwise moves the mathematical conception into the bright consciousness. There can be no more question of hallucinating than there can be of hallucinating when imagining mathematically. One learns to distinguish between immersing oneself in the physical world as a human being, as is the case when hallucinating, and rising up from the physical world, as occurs when imagining, when being initiated and so on. These things present themselves to spiritual research with just as much scientific objectivity as any laboratory experiment presents itself to the senses.

Thus one can say: it is precisely the physiological, the psychological knowledge of something like a hallucination that leads to an understanding, to a purely physiological understanding of the imagination. Just as one wants to understand vision, so one can want to understand imagination, inspiration and intuition. That is then real scientific reasoning. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with any kind of science when people say that before imagination or inspiration is used, it should first be 'scientifically proven'. What scientific proof is, one must first know in general. And those who today demand of spiritual science that it should “prove” are only showing that they have not really understood the nature of proof at all, otherwise they would know that one can only prove something if one can trace it back to other, simpler facts. Even in mathematics, one proves something by tracing something complicated back to simple, unprovable axioms. That from which the proofs are taken must first be examined. But the spiritual can only be examined when we first become aware of the supersensible, the spiritual in ourselves.

Now, spiritual science, as it is meant here, is often treated with hostility, especially by scientists. But then again, these scientists complain that spiritual science does not address itself exclusively to them, but, as they say, to the “educated laymen”. And precisely such men as Kurt Leese find this incomprehensible and say - I will translate it for you again, as he himself wants it translated, “Theosophy” into “Anthroposophy”:

But are all those who consider anthroposophical propaganda to be a swindle that does not require psychological clarification and is not worthy of epistemological treatment aware that anthroposophy undertakes a remarkable examination of the history of philosophy, in particular of Kant, Schelling and Hegel, and seriously seeks an epistemological foundation for its teachings? If philosophy considers itself called upon to lead intellectual life, it cannot be indifferent to what is happening outside the field of its specialized research, how and for what purposes philosophy and philosophers are used to profoundly affect the world of educated laymen. The philosophical side of anthroposophy has so far been far too neglected, if not completely unknown.

The man says, then, that researchers cannot be indifferent to what is made of their philosophy – and he admits that anthroposophy dominates it – by educated laymen. There is a kind of lament in the fact that what anthroposophy is does not first turn to the university chair and from there, in the jargon concerned, only speaks to those who are considered authorized to do so from some particular side.

Now, in response to this, one thing must be said: what is now available in my Anthroposophy, albeit in a more extensive and detailed form, is something that I began to describe in spirit and attitude at the beginning of the 1880s; in fact, in terms of its direction, it has been in place for forty years. I first carried it out by applying it to an interpretation of Goetheanism. At that time I wrote my “Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings”, steeped in this anthroposophical spirit.

What happened? I was not treated as badly as I am now by my contemporaries. These writings, which are based on Goethe, were largely recognized, but they were understood as something that some literary historian or some modern historian writes about Goethe. They were understood as something that is written about Goethe. That there should be something in it that is directed to the time as a renewal of human thinking in the spiritual was not seen. Why? Because the scientific world had lost its drive. It was true that they still wanted to rise to the level of acknowledging that Goethe had thought this or that, but they lacked the courage to recognize truths that had to be grasped directly in the spiritual, in the supersensible, and to deal with these truths themselves. They felt justified in saying: Goethe believed this or that — but one did not have the courage to recognize such truths directly. And so all that was said about the further development of Goetheanism at the time faded away. And finally, my “Philosophy of Freedom” — those who study it as “educated laymen” will know that they have a tough nut to crack. It is written in such a way that it can be presented to those who deal with specialized philosophy.

Anthroposophy did not address itself to “educated laymen” until it had become clear that those who would have been called upon to deal with it had simply ignored it, had not taken an interest in it. For that is the gratitude of scholars towards anthroposophy: at first the scholars, the scientists of the present day, did not care about it; one had to go to the “educated laymen”, because truth must prevail, no matter by what means. And now that they see that among the “educated laymen” there are some after all who could cause their own learning to falter a little, now that they see that these “educated laymen” even go to Dornach to hear scientific lectures by thirty lecturers thirty lecturers speak differently from the way they speak at the other educational institutions. Now they feel - but without having studied the matter, for which they would have had decades of time - now they feel, without knowing the matter, called to refute it.

Well, there will have to be other things. But this may be said: When spiritual science has turned to the “educated laity”, it was because it is necessary for the truth to be done right. Truth must seek its own way, and if those who are called to seek it do not take care of it, then it must turn to those who are perhaps considered “uncalled” by the former, but who can show precisely by doing so that they are the truly called. And so the urge for supersensible knowledge must come from the educated laity, which did not want to come from those who had to deal with the search for truth professionally.

Dear attendees, from what I have presented to you today in a more conceptual way and by showing the observed methods, by showing what can be experienced supersensibly, I will show tomorrow what value it can have for direct human life, for human morality, for human satisfaction, for human understanding of fate, for human peace of mind in the passage through birth and death. And I will show how the spiritual world that reveals itself in spiritual research can work in art and how it, penetrating into the human heart, can truly make man religious. Today I wanted to show only what the paths of this anthroposophical spiritual science are and how one has to think of its relationship to science. I wanted to show that man must, as it were, develop the strength within himself to grow together with the truth that permeates the world.

For only in this way – let me emphasize this once more – only by awakening in himself that which is supersensible in him, by raising it to consciousness, does he rise to behold the supersensible, and not only integrates himself as a body into the sensual world, as is otherwise the case, but integrates himself as spirit and soul into the spiritual-soul world. But man has the urge to recognize himself as spirit, as soul, out of the dark feeling that he himself is spiritual-soul. In man, spiritual-soul truth seeks spiritual-soul truth. And the one who can thus understand the relationship to truth can and may be reassured that this truth cannot be destroyed by its opponents. For truth must triumph in the course of time just as surely as human development itself must advance. Man needs the development of truth, because only out of this truth can he develop his own true nature.

It gives me great satisfaction to be able to speak to you once again, to be able to speak to you in the branch of our Anthroposophical Society in which I was able to develop the main part of my work for many years. Today I would like to speak to you about a number of things that I believe are important to consider in the present day. I would like to speak to you about the relationship between the human being and the supersensible world.

This is actually the constant theme of our discussions within the anthroposophical movement. But you will already have become accustomed to the fact that the truths about the supersensible worlds can only come into the full possession of the human mind when they are viewed from the most diverse points of view, so that, as I have often said, an overall impression can arise through the assimilation of images from the most diverse sides.

You know that spiritual scientific observation shows that human life on earth falls into two parts that are separated by time: the fully conscious waking state and the sleeping state. They also know that during sleep, those parts of the human being that we call the physical body, the etheric or formative body, the astral body and the ego are separated, so that the human being, so to speak, physical body and his etheric body, and that he initially leads an unconscious existence in his astral body and in his ego-being outside of the physical body and the etheric body. When one ascends to higher knowledge, it is not the case that one gains something for the human being through this ascent itself, through the knowledge, any more than we gain something for our digestion by having theoretical knowledge about this digestion, or at least we gain nothing for the immediate nature of digestion, as it takes place in our normally organized human being. It can be said that higher knowledge brings nothing new into the human being. Everything that higher knowledge provides is already in the human being. But it is the case that what can definitely be said to bring nothing new into the human being points to what remains unknown to the human being for ordinary consciousness and what, by not only is recognized but is experienced with the full content of the soul, with all the soul's powers, it does indeed bring something higher into the human being: not knowledge as such, but the experience of this knowledge.

In saying this, I have indicated what I would like to present as a threefold aspect of anthroposophical endeavour. First of all, there is the fact that there must be individuals who acquire spiritual-scientific methods in such a way that they can bring about knowledge of the supersensible worlds through higher vision in the supersensible worlds. What one calls the acquisition of these cognitions during one's existence on earth is not so important. If one does not associate the nebulous mystical ideas that are very often associated with the term clairvoyance, then one can speak of clairvoyant knowledge. Through this, then, what must increasingly become the purpose in life in our present age comes about.

The second thing is that through the ordinary, as one says, healthy human understanding, if it is only unbiased enough, that which is revealed through clairvoyant knowledge can be understood. I have often emphasized that one does not need to be a clairvoyant oneself to understand what is revealed through clairvoyant research. But it is also important for those who come to clairvoyant insight themselves to translate what they see into ordinary human terms. For that is precisely the significance that the clairvoyant has for man in the present time of his development: that it can be translated into those terms that we have in today's civilization as the terms of man in general. Therefore, whether one is clairvoyant or not, one must understand what is revealed through clairvoyant research.

And the third thing is this: what can be translated from clairvoyant research into concepts, what can be presented from clairvoyant research, must become an inner purpose in life, must become such that the human being thereby understands: I am a being that is not only bound to earthly existence between birth and death, but I am a being for whom earthly existence is only one phase, only one temporary metamorphosis. And everything that can appeal to the human soul will enter the soul if anthroposophy becomes the purpose in life in this sense. Firstly, the human being knows that he belongs to the spiritual worlds and he also knows that his earthly existence must receive its tasks from the spiritual worlds. Secondly, however, the human being knows that he is responsible to the spiritual worlds. All this elevates him above mere earthly existence, but not in such a way that he leaves it in a rapturously mystical way and holds it in low esteem, but rather by drawing his tasks for earthly existence from the supersensible world and thereby influencing the whole character, the whole status of his earthly existence.

This is especially important for our time, that we first learn to listen to what can be said through clairvoyant research; that we then endeavor to understand the content of this research through common sense, and that we make this content our life's work, to illuminate life with tasks, to increase our responsibility in life towards the spiritual worlds. In saying this, I would like to convey the color nuance that I would like to permeate my remarks today. I would like to give you some new information about man's relationship to the supersensible world.

The human being who lives here on earth opens his senses to the physical world. By looking into himself, he perceives his thinking, feeling and willing in a certain way. What he perceives through his senses and makes the content of his soul is what he calls his earthly surroundings. Note that, as earth people in this physical environment, we are actually quite familiar with what we call the outside world, the natural outside world, as far as it lies within our horizon, but that, basically, we are quite unfamiliar with what lies within our own being, even often physically. Man does indeed learn to know his inner organs through an external science, but only when he makes these inner organs external beings on the dissecting table or the like. Man cannot get to know his lungs, his heart and so on through looking inside himself with ordinary knowledge. At most, we learn to feel our inner organs, to perceive them when they are diseased. In a healthy state, man does not really perceive his inner self. He lives in his inner being, it is active in him. But precisely because he lives in it, is in it, is himself in it, he does not perceive it as he perceives the outer world, which is not himself.

This shows us that during our time on earth we focus on the outside world and have a world with content around us, and that when we look inward, we have a general, vague feeling of an ego, of which, if we are honest with ourselves, we have to say: it is very dark and very unclear. And that we can alternate between this looking into our inner selves, in which we experience something quite unclear and dark in our soul, and the experience of the external world, which is concrete in itself, determined and full of content everywhere. We can alternate between the two with our consciousness. This is essentially our experience between birth and death.

Between death and a new birth, the experience is essentially different. Especially in those times of existence between death and a new birth, which can be compared to the middle part of our life on earth, when we are at the height of our physical strength as thirty- or forty-year-olds, just in the time that is the middle part between death and a new birth, it is the opposite of life on earth. There we look into our inner being through a different consciousness that we then have, and by looking into our inner being, we have something so concrete and so full of content as when we look into the outer world here on earth. Only when we look at the external world here on earth do we have the beings of the three or four realms around us, the beings of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms and of the physical human kingdom. We have them around us in that they present themselves to us as sensory content. When we look into ourselves between death and a new birth in the marked time – that is already the case – then we do not have things of nature in us, but we have a world of entities in us, a world of those entities that we describe as the entities of the higher, of the spiritual hierarchies. Here we have world perception, external perception, perception of things; in the spiritual world we have inner perception, perception of beings. We look into ourselves, but we do not find such organs as we carry in us here on earth; rather, we find the whole world of entities when we can have the right awareness for it. And he who describes these entities of the higher hierarchies actually describes nothing other than the external experience of man between death and new birth. And just as we can turn our gaze back from the external world to ourselves, now, conversely, between death and new birth, we can turn our gaze from within, where we find the beings of the higher hierarchies within us, to the outside world, and there we find ourselves. The external world is actually the internal world there, the internal being is the external being, in the way I have just explained it.

But what we see there as an inner, fully-fledged world of spiritual beings within us is presented to us here, during our earthly existence, in its image, presented to us in such a way that we see the sensual images of those beings that we otherwise perceive within us between death and new birth. However, we do not see the same beings here, but, so to speak, the dwelling places of these beings, and that is - because there are always a number of these beings in common - the world of stars around us. So what do we describe when we speak of the stars, for example of the sun, full of knowledge - not with the knowledge between birth and death that is inherent in ordinary consciousness? The sun presents a certain image to our senses: but what presents itself here as the image of the sun, we experience between death and a new birth as a realm of spiritual beings. We do not see the sun as it is here now, but as a realm of spiritual beings. From our earthly existence, we have something like a memory, which tells us that this realm of spiritual entities corresponds to the sun, as seen from Earth. And it is the same for the other stars. That is, our spiritual consciousness between death and new birth becomes a cosmic consciousness. We are not just here within our own skin; we truly are the whole world. But you must not imagine it spatially. But we are the whole world, we carry the starry sky within us. And it is like this: just as we carry our lungs, our heart, our stomach and so on within us here on earth, so we carry the sun, the moon, Saturn, the other stars within us between death and new birth as our inner organs, but they are spiritual beings. It is their spiritual correlate, their spiritual archetype, that we then carry within us.

If we were always in this state, we would never come to ourselves in the spiritual world; we would always feel at one with the world of the higher hierarchies. But that cannot be. It would be just as if we only wanted to breathe in here on earth and never breathe out. Therefore, our life between death and new birth consists of a rhythmic change: in a life in these higher hierarchies and - in cosmic consciousness - in looking out; that is, there: coming to ourselves. Just as we have inhalation and exhalation here, I could also say waking and sleeping, so we alternate there between experiencing the hierarchical spiritual world and experiencing ourselves, where we are alone in our own soul, where we come to ourselves. This is how the rhythmic change in a person's experience arises between being spread out over the whole of world existence and coming to oneself: Being spread out over the whole of world existence – coming to oneself and so on.

This life between death and new birth within the spiritual world, of which the world of the stars is a physical reflection, is truly no less rich than life on earth. But in earthly life we can only recognize the result – and in a very unclear state – of what we experience between death and new birth. Let us imagine the following: we live here on earth, one of us makes shoes, the other skirts, the third cuts people's hair, the fourth builds locomotives and so on. By doing this here on earth in our physical existence, so-called human culture, civilization, comes about. Now, imagine that all of this civilization, in its manifestations, were to be summarized from time to time in a kind of result in a completely different area, for example on the sun. Let us assume that everything that comes into being here on earth, as I have indicated, would simply produce many copies on the sun. This is in fact the reality of what we do in the context described with the beings of the higher hierarchies between death and new birth: we work there with these beings on the spiritual form of our physical earthly body. And this work that is being done, where the human being between death and new birth works together with the beings of the higher hierarchies to bring about the spirit form of the physical earthly body, this work is truly a richer, a more diverse one than what we here as cultural work in physical existence, even if the physical human body that stands before us does not immediately reveal to us that it is the result of the work of divine beings in connection with man in the time of his existence between death and new birth. But older worldviews knew what they were talking about when they called the human body a “temple of the gods.” For this human body is actually, as little as we pay attention to it with our ordinary consciousness here on earth, the most complicated thing in the universe. And what a single human body is, that is precisely the combined work of innumerable beings, to which we ourselves also belong; for we work on the body with which we clothe ourselves in an earthly incarnation, only we cannot work on it individually for ourselves, but we must work on it in community with innumerable spiritual beings of the most diverse hierarchies.

If we speak from the point of view of earthly life, we are accustomed to calling a germ that which is small at first and then grows large in the physical sense. If we call that which man develops between death and a new birth the spirit germ of the physical body, we must say that this spirit germ is as great as the universe and then, as it passes through the embryonic life of man, becomes 'small' in the physical life. The small human germ contains an image of the great spirit germ, which has been worked out by the human being in connection with the higher beings. So that, by looking into the world that the human being passes through between death and rebirth, we actually see how the microcosm, the human body, is formed in ever new specimens from the tasks of the macrocosm. And that is a more sublime task than all the cultural work that a person does between birth and death. And the life that a human being undergoes by working on the human germ from the universe is a more varied and richer life than the one we spend here on earth, for example, by making shoes, making skirts, teaching children, governing states, and so on. Anyone who wants to understand the world must realize that there is something tremendously exalted in shaping the human body, as it exists here in its physical form, out of the tasks of the universe, and that the experience of this shaping is something tremendous, in terms of sublimity, not comparable to what man accomplishes here, even if he also helps to fabricate the most valuable cultural products of physical life on earth.

Thus man actually stands between death and a new birth in the spiritual world: he has an external world, which is himself; his gaze is directed towards his future life on earth, and in the prospect of this future life on earth lies the fact that he withdraws into himself, that he comes to himself. In the moment when his consciousness is filled with looking at his future life on earth and with looking back at his earlier life on earth, he is with himself. At the moment when he works together with the beings of the higher hierarchies on the task of bringing about the complicated physical body in the spirit-germ, he is, so to speak, outside of himself, but he has become one with the spiritual being, he lives in the spiritual being outside. It is at this highpoint of experience between death and a new birth, which I have called the midnight hour of human existence in one of my Mystery Dramas, that the human being experiences inwardly what he sees here in the image of the fixed starry sky. The firmament of the fixed stars or its representative – as the old worldviews also called it – the zodiac, seen from here, is the physical image of the spiritual world in which the human being lives between death and rebirth, and which he experiences as his inner world.

This continues for some time, and then, as it were, the human being leaves this living, this active, this, from an earthly point of view, sublime direct work with the spirits of the higher hierarchies. And the next thing that is then experienced is the point of view of co-experiencing with those higher beings who are revelations of higher beings. From a certain point in time, the human being knows: Yes, direct participation with the higher beings is no longer there, but the higher beings show themselves to me in an image. Seen from the earthly point of view, one can describe this as follows: the human being finds the transition from the world of the fixed stars to the world of the planets. As man passes through the planetary sphere, moving towards an earthly existence, he no longer feels the life of the higher worlds as his inner life; before, he felt it as his inner life. Here in the physical world, we feel our blood circulation, our breathing and so on, as our inner life; there, in the life between death and a new birth, we feel the life and essence of the higher hierarchies as our inner life. We are in a spiritual reality and we participate. Now, from a certain point in time on, we say to ourselves: Now we no longer participate, now what we used to participate in appears to us as in a picture; before we were in the actuality of the spiritual world, now we are in its revelations. But that means in reality: we have passed from the sphere of the fixed stars to the planetary sphere.

There we have to overcome a certain difficulty first: that is the entry into the sphere of Saturn. Certain spiritual forces radiate from Saturn. When we have passed through death, we first enter the planetary sphere and only then come to the sphere of the fixed stars; because then we take the path that I have just described, in reverse order. So when we leave our earthly life through death, Saturn is the dwelling place of those entities that do not want to leave us on earth, that want to lift us up from the earth, want to free us from our earthly powers and want to transport us into the world of pure spirituality. In my Theosophy, I have described this experience from a different point of view than the transition from the life in the soul's realm to the spirit world. These two descriptions are related to each other in the same way that you can always photograph a tree from different sides: it is always the same, but it always looks different. So, on our return journey, towards a new life on earth, we have the influence of the Saturn beings. And those people who, through their previous life on earth, have such karma that when they return to a new life on earth the forces of Saturn have a great influence on them, easily become alienated from the earth; people who either enthuse about how earthly things are actually worthless and how one should flee into a conceptual cloud-cuckoo-land, or people who, because they only looked at human conditions superficially, develop an inclination to organize spiritualistic séances and the like, in which the most diverse spiritual entities can cavort. All this is caused by the fact that in a previous life on earth a person had acquired such karma that, on returning to the terrestrial sphere, he comes into a stronger relationship with the forces of Saturn.

But when man enters the planetary sphere and approaches the solar sphere, he also comes under the influence of the counterpart of the Saturn forces, that is, those spiritual entities that have their dwelling place in the moon. These beings have above all the task of guiding the human being back into earthly existence, so that the person who absorbs the effects of the moon's forces is indeed firmly rooted in earthly existence , although on the other hand it may of course be the lunar forces that permeate the human being all too strongly with the purely physical existence, that is to say with the preference, with the inclination for this purely physical existence.

So we can say: Here on earth we walk among trees, flowers, grasses, animals and so on, between death and a new birth we walk under stars. And it is not so unreal if you simply imagine in a comprehensive picture that you are here on earth during your life on earth, that after death you pass through the spheres of the planets, leaving the lunar sphere, losing your inclination for earthly life, being transported out through Saturn, spheres, and then return again, enter the planetary sphere, and in particular, by coming under the influence of the moon, you will be prompted to return to earthly life in the supersensible world by what the lunar forces are. It urges you to return to earthly life. Just as we are connected here on earth with what we call our sensory environment, so we are also connected with this life through the world of the stars. And all this has great significance for our work with the beings of the higher hierarchies on the spirit germ of the physical human body. For until we descend to the planetary sphere for a new life on earth, it even remains undecided in our being, which we are building for our future life on earth, whether we will become man or woman. Yes, it even remains undecided for a certain time when we are already in the planetary sphere as soul-spiritual beings. In the sphere of the fixed stars, to speak of anything similar to what we have here as man and woman would be pure nonsense. But in the picture I have now begun to paint, you can well imagine that as you move away from the earth, you first see the moon from the front, then from behind. You also see Venus, Mercury and the Sun from behind, then you see the zodiac sphere and so on. But as you pass through these spheres, what is otherwise a physical image for us here is transformed into a sum of spiritual entities that you look at. When you look at the moon from behind, you see spiritual beings, for example those spiritual beings that were of particular interest to the initiates of the Old Testament: the presence of Yahweh and the beings that belong to it. But if you now return to Earth, you can, through your past karma, approach the lunar sphere by choosing the point in time when, as seen from Earth, there is a full moon in the sky; that is, you see, as seen from Earth, a full moon, the illuminated disc of the moon, but as seen from behind, when approaching Earth, the moon looks black. Choose the time for your approach to Earth so that you are influenced by the black sphere of the moon, unaffected by the sun, when there is a full moon on Earth. If, on the other hand, you choose a time when we do not see the moon here on earth, when there is a new moon and the effects of the sun go out freely into space in all directions, then you will establish a male earthly existence. So you see, we have to derive what we are here on earth in the physical body from the experiences that we have in the stellar sphere, that is, in the spiritual sphere, as it were, from the other side, between death and new birth. These things can be traced in great detail. Just as we on earth can say what a person experiences by eating cabbage or eggs or ox meat, for example, because his physical existence on earth depends on it, so too are there corresponding relationships in the spiritual worlds, the result of which then appears in the formation and inner experience of the person on earth. Here on earth we eat ox meat or eggs; in the spiritual world, between death and a new birth, we choose, according to our karma, the new moon or full moon for the time of our transition and thus become man or woman. But the full human existence in connection with the existence of the world can only be grasped if we do not merely consider what happens here between birth and death, but if we can understand what happens in earthly life in connection with what happens between death and a new birth for man.

This is something that man today does not yet understand in its full, real significance for earthly life either. But man today actually only knows the world as a mole knows museums. The mole that digs through the soil under the museums can perhaps list its experiences about it; but there will not be much of what is above him. This is more or less the position of the world as far as the earth sciences can reveal it. The only difference is that the mole could live without a museum above it. It has little connection with the museum, but man is intimately connected with the supersensible world, with that by which he is connected. Humanity must regain an awareness of this. Once there was a dim, muffled awareness of these things, which was illuminated in the ancient mysteries, but also with the old methods. These ancient mysteries were not merely one-sided cultic places. It is only in recent times that humanity has had a need for one-sided cultic places. Modern humanity must practise separate cults because it has become egotistical and wants to have an assurance of immortality for its own self. This can be given, it is a fact. But today man is inclined to practise all this separately from one another. In Paracelsus' time it was not yet so, there healing was still divine service. We must - although we must have transitions - come again to see all earthly work as a completion of spiritual work. It is only incumbent upon man today, as it were, to go through earthly events cut off from the spiritual world during his earthly existence; otherwise he would not be able to gain his consciousness of freedom. But the time is fulfilled in which man may keep himself cut off from spiritual existence. He must again permeate his consciousness with inner enlightenment from spiritual existence, and for this he cannot use the old methods today. He must go through what can be revealed to him in this direction in the present.

For suppose that some ancient mystery center provided for the affairs of the surrounding area. The care of this mystery center extended to all the affairs of the people who lived around it, to all those affairs that could only be fulfilled and ordered through the connection of earthly life with the spiritual world. Suppose a person fell ill. In those ancient times, people did not ask: What substances have we tried that have had an effect on humans in this or that direction? — They least of all asked themselves about the effect of substances that they had tried out on animals and so on. Today, people have to go through all of this. This is not meant as a derogatory criticism of medicine, but only as a way of putting it in its proper place in the development of the earth and of humanity. But in ancient times, a sick person who was afflicted with something sought refuge in the mystery temples, for the priests were also artists and doctors. Art, religion and science were one; this was cultivated in the mysteries. In those ancient times, there was still an overall view of man. It was known that when a person is afflicted by something at a certain age, it is not only related to the chemical mixture or separation of his substances, but from a higher point of view, it is related to the experiences and adventures he has undergone when he was in the world of the stars and sought his earthly existence from there.

Let us assume, then, that such a sick person came, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, seeking help at a mystery center that was also a medical center. In ancient times, when only instinctive, half-dreamlike knowledge was at work in the mystery centers, when such a sick person came for treatment, the examination that was carried out with him was often nevertheless clearer than today's examinations. I have actually met physicians who, when you entered into conversation with them about the most important thing about the patient and asked, “How old is the patient?” did not know. As if one could possibly contribute to any person's health if one does not have an exact idea of his age! Because in each year of life, man must, so to speak, be cured differently, because human life is constantly changing. No one would think of taking a flower petal, for example, and planting it in the ground, and believing that a new plant would grow from it. Instead, he would take the seed from the fruit and plant it in the ground, because he knows that the development of the plant is something. And so human life must also be considered. If a sick person seeking help came to a mystery doctor between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one – these are approximate figures – the doctor knew that there are a number of illnesses that are simply related to the human being's passage through the solar sphere as he descends from the planetary world into the physical world. If the patient was between the ages of thirty-five and forty-two, the mystery priest knew which diseases had something to do with the passage of man through the sphere of Saturn in his descent. So he asked himself above all about the connection of earthly life with the experiences and adventures of man in existence between death and new birth: then he knew what is here on earth again related to the beings of the higher hierarchies, or rather their physical images, the stars. Now, certain plants on Earth have a more intimate relationship with the Sun than others, and others in turn have a more intimate relationship with Saturn and so on. You will be able to tell by healthy instinct that the sprouting flowering plants, for example, have a different relationship to the Sun than a fungus or lichen on a tree. And someone who, for example, suffers from a stomach or heart condition between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one will certainly not be cured with buckthorn tea, as the ancient mystery doctor would not have treated him with buckthorn tea, but with a sun-related plant juice; but this is based on the knowledge of the connection between human life and the universe.

These things are, so to speak, “buried” knowledge; they must be rediscovered at a higher level, illuminated by our modern intelligence, after humanity has passed through darkness for a period of time. They must be rediscovered and they can be rediscovered, and the anthroposophical world view is the beginning of this rediscovery of spiritual enlightenment for humanity in all areas of life.

I have now described this descent of the human being until he enters the planetary sphere. Then there comes a time, after the influence of the moon has already begun, when the human being loses the spirit germ of his physical body, which has already shrunk very much. The expressions are of course rough, but you will not misunderstand them. This spirit-germ of the physical body descends earlier than the human being himself. It is handed over to a pair of fallopian tubes, sinks into a fertilized human germ, and forms the element of growth there before the human being himself has descended. So there comes a time when the human being has already handed over this physical germ to earthly life, when he looks down on the earth, as it were: This is what he will become, the person to whom I will belong. But for a short time the human being still lives freely in the cosmos. Then the human being draws the forces for his etheric body from the ethereal world of the cosmos, so that he then consists of I-being, astral body and etheric body. And after he has acquired his etheric body in this way, he now unites with what has become his physical germ, which he himself first sent down.

There is an enormous amount of wisdom in this sending forward of the physical human germ and in the subsequent agglomeration, if I may call it that, of the etheric body. For suppose we kept our physical body while we collect the etheric body, and the physical body would not be permeated with physical matter, but rather the forces that could be permeated with physical matter in the womb, but suppose we did not send it ahead, but still permeate it with the etheric body before we arrived in the substance of the physical embryo and in what is offered to us there. What would happen then? Precisely because we can know what might happen, we begin to marvel at the wisdom-filled guidance of the universe. For if it were otherwise, every thought we conceive and every inclination we have for evil would constantly stand before us. There would be, as it were, a living memory of what we had done, even as the slightest evil, only in thought or in feeling on earth. We would be overrun by the contents of conscience, especially from its evil side, and we would not be able to form a neutral thought, we would not be able to come to any knowledge of nature, for example. If we were to look at plants neutrally, according to natural laws, then such thoughts would easily mix into our observation of nature: “Oh, what a bad guy you were at seventeen, what you did then!” This would become ingrained in our observation of nature, and we would never arrive at a neutral view. We are able to distinguish our simple, neutral reflection from our own moral or immoral instincts because we first send down our physical spirit germ and only then, after we have gathered the etheric body, do we connect with the physical body. In this way we keep these two so far apart that the memory can be stored in the physical body, so that it is not always there, and also leaves us free, so that not our whole, namely moral life, is always before us.

I have now described man's descent from the spiritual world to the moment when he unites with the physical substance of the earth in order to continue living on earth. What do we find out now that we have arrived here? I already said that it turns out that we have to say: When I realize that man first sends down the forces that shape his physical body and then follows, I am led to unreservedly admire the wise guidance of world affairs. If I grasp this with all my being, I cannot stand there like a blockhead who makes a machine and does not need to admire it, because I would have to be a very dry person who is revealed such tremendous wisdom of world leadership and does not have admiration for this wisdom welling up within him! And so it is with all anthroposophical insights.

In other words, the ordinary earthly knowledge that we acquire in our waking hours appeals to our intellect, but less so to our feelings. This is not the case with the knowledge that we receive from the spiritual world in our inner experience. They engage our whole being; indeed, our whole nature is organized differently when we acquire these insights. Spiritual knowledge does not want to leave us cold in our minds, as physical knowledge does, but it is no less objective knowledge. If someone were to say, for example, that knowledge that touches the mind is not objective, that it is subjective, then one need only imagine the following: If someone stands before Raphael's Sistine Madonna, then he would have to be a strange fellow if he did not feel admiration for this painting; but no one would be able to say: That is merely subjective, Raphael's Madonna is not objective. For it is not a matter of our not actively feeling forces of sympathy or antipathy in our minds when we look at something objective, but rather of not disturbing the objective through our subjectivity. Of course, if we recognize something because it suits us to take something objectively, then we are not objective, since in this case we assume something because we like it. But if something were to appear before us as objectively as such insights, and we were then to burst into admiration at it, then this admiration would certainly not impair the objectivity of the insight. That is the essential thing about anthroposophical spiritual-scientific insights: they engage not only our intellect, our head, but our whole being. And the more and more we learn about such truths that relate to the life of man between death and new birth, the more our emotional life sprouts and later our life of will. That is, the human being permeates the impulses for his deeds with what he recognizes from the spiritual worlds. He feels here on earth as a fulfiller of what he was in the spiritual life between death and new birth.

Thus, everything that comes from experienced anthroposophy has the power to fulfill the whole person of its own accord, just as the instinctive clairvoyance, that is, the instinctive connection with the spiritual world, was once present in ancient humanity through the whole person. How did we become such intellectual guys today, and why were the ancient people not? Because the ancient people also knew what the instructions from the whole human being were. Today, for example, people learn geometry; they are taught what a perpendicular is. But what a perpendicular is hovers only in the realm of ideas. You can't even say it hovers in the air; it hovers in the realm of ideas, and the connection is simply not known. Man would never have developed a feeling for the vertical if in the course of his life he had not himself become upright and thus felt in his movements what the vertical is. And what the human being experiences in this way is also experienced by his head and made into the vertical. In the same way, what a person experiences when spreading out his arms becomes an experience of the horizontal. Man, who originally was active in his soul life as a whole human being, has gradually limited himself to the head, which can only depict everything figuratively. And how does the head do it in man? Yes, when I walk, I live differently than when I drive in a car: the car goes, and I am quiet. And so it is with the head in man: it is lazy, it has its vehicle in the rest of my organism and lets itself be driven, everything comes to rest, just as when I sit in a train. Therefore everything becomes pictorial, abstract. In the course of our earthly existence, we have come to this abstractness. But we must come again to that which allows us to grasp the spiritual in existence. And this then takes hold of the whole human being. It is the reverse process of what happened with the old man, but through this reverse process we can come again to the study of the whole human being. In this way we then also come again to a culture that fulfills the whole human being.

There are people today who hear what spiritual science has to offer and then say: There are some strange people who are proclaiming a spiritual truth today and think it is necessary for humanity. We do not want to doubt that it may be true that these worlds all exist, as the spiritual scientists talk about them; but what do they have to do with us? We can just wait until we die, then we will see what it is all about. Why should we strain here to understand what it is like in the spiritual world? But it is not like that. It is actually like this: if you want to understand what spiritual knowledge means – that is, the kind of knowledge that can be acquired through common sense after a spiritual researcher has communicated with a person – then the best way to learn about it is to have a spiritual researcher explain how the first step of extrasensory knowledge, imaginative knowledge, is acquired. I will give a few examples of this.

As man usually lives, he has only a consciousness of the present. He has this consciousness through his physical body. It is in space. Space represents the present with its three dimensions. Man therefore always has only a consciousness of the present. And when he has a memory, it is a memory of the present; he does not live himself into what he experienced ten years ago, for instance, but only into the image of what he experienced at that time. This is therefore sufficiently shadowy and abstract. If one seriously practices the exercises I have described in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds” for the purpose of attaining imaginative knowledge, one comes to not only live in the present, but gradually to overcome the shadowy of memory and to live in one's own past experiences. In this way, in 1922, one can still relive one's experiences from 1911 as one experienced them in 1911. And anyone who makes a special effort to live in thoughts, not in abstractions but in a fully concrete way, will be able to grasp how the life of thoughts brings turns of fate and all sorts of , deep sympathy and antipathy, as otherwise only the rough material earth-squeezing - that also comes to experience his time body, as he experiences his space body at all through the ordinary consciousness. If, for example, I cut my big toe, it hurts, and I have not only a memory of this pain in my head, because the head is far removed from the big toe, but I have an immediately experienced sensation of pain. Of course, the head is spatially connected to the big toe, but one does not experience time in this way. When a thirty-year-old person thinks back to what they experienced as a seventeen-year-old, and has now distanced themselves from in terms of time, it seems faded. If you lost a loved one thirteen years ago, how powerful the experience of pain was at the time compared to the present memory. But anyone who, through the exercises described in “How to Know Higher Worlds,” has attained this imaginative knowledge, so that he understands how to live in thought, namely, to live in pure thoughts free of sensuality, as I have described in “Philosophy of Freedom,” lives then, as he lives here in the space body in every part, so there in every part of his time body simultaneously and in every strength. When you place yourself back in time as a fifty- or sixty-year-old person, or even as an eighty-year-old, you see not only five years back — for the present existence extends over the entire course of life —: you are immediately present in every single point. However, this presence is bought at the price of fleetingness. If you are able to have an experience in the most vivid way in your eighteenth year, it does not fade from your mind as quickly as a “dream, but you cannot hold on to it, you have to forget it. And as a spiritual researcher, for example, if there were no other aids, you could get into a very bad situation. You could establish the connections through which you can see something in the etheric world, but you immediately forget it. Therefore, you also have to resort to all kinds of aids - I have given details about this in 'How to Obtain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds' - so that what you acquire in this way as a spiritual-etheric vision does not immediately disappear again. It disappears with great certainty after a few days, and what the person still carries with him as his etheric body after death disappears just as quickly.

One gets to know the whole nature of the etheric from this experience, as I have described it. The things that are told about life after death are not constructed, but gained from a living realization. But if you want to apply such aids, mere mental activity is never enough. I am not afraid to talk about my own experiences when I noticed how fleeting such experiences are in the etheric cosmos. If you see so much, you take recourse to something else to tell your experiences to other people a week later. But these aids are not taken from the mind remedies. One remedy that was very effective was to write down the experience while it was still fresh in my mind, so that the activity was not carried out through the mind but through the writing hand. In this case it is not a matter of mediumistic writing, nor of the purpose of having written it down. Writing things down, even rewriting lectures, is something that is extremely unappealing to someone who works in the spiritual field anyway. But it helps to fix what would otherwise be fleeting by allowing the whole organism to participate, as one would when executing a drawing or a painting. It then remains in one's own organism, one does not need to appropriate it again afterwards. It is only a matter of fixing the things. But for this you cannot use head-aids. If you are a spiritual researcher, you cannot fix it by means of any head-aids; you have to fix it by something that takes up your whole being. One such means would be to write down what you have experienced. But do not take into account that you are incorporating an intellectual activity, but only the characteristic style of the writing; or you can even make a symbolic drawing, a painting, or the like.

From this you can see how intimately connected with the whole human being it is, what must be there, so that one can lead over into the ordinary conceptions, what one sees in the spiritual world. But when one leads it over, then one can communicate it to other people who cannot see spiritually themselves and who then, with their ordinary, healthy human understanding, grasp it through the same conceptions in which one transmits it to them. They then have the same ideas about what the clairvoyant presents to them. To discover spiritual truths, one needs the art of clairvoyance; to live with these truths, one does not need this art of clairvoyance, but only a healthy understanding of what is presented.

But you can see something else from what is presented here. What man is spiritually in his etheric body does not live in space, it lives in time. Now look at the physical organism, for example the eye: with it you see visible things. If you were to tear out your eye, you would no longer be able to see visible things. If you look at the spiritual human being, he is, so to speak, the whole stream that passes from life to life, living once in existence between death and a new birth, then in physical life on earth, then again in life between death and a new birth, and so on. That is a unity. People in ancient times were endowed with instinctive clairvoyance at birth, that is, a connection with the spiritual world through the forces of nature themselves, and this developed in them in such a way that they could take it with them again through death; but the knowledge of the spiritual was not allowed to cease. Nor must it disappear in the newer man. Man must acquire this knowledge of the spiritual here on earth, for he is a continuous stream on earth. If you have had an earthly life that knew nothing at all about the spiritual, then for your spiritual life it is as if you were to pluck out the eye of your physical body. For what you acquire here on earth as knowledge of the spiritual life belongs to you, it is your eye with which you later “see” between death and a new birth. And if you remain “dark” here on earth with regard to knowledge of the spiritual life, then after death you have no eye; then you walk in life between death and a new birth as if through a dark valley. For this eye you must have through what you have acquired here. You tear out the eye of the spirit by excluding knowledge of the spiritual world.

This is a realization that humanity must come to terms with. Now that the old instinctive vision of the spiritual has completely faded away, humanity must realize that organs for the spiritual life must be acquired again along the lines of the path pursued by the anthroposophical movement. It is not a matter of saying: We will wait until after death, we do not need to make an effort now to understand the spiritual worlds, because after death we will see what it is like in the spiritual worlds. Certainly, we will see it after death. But for the soul it will be like a dark dungeon if we have not opened our eyes to life in the spiritual worlds here during our life between birth and death. Therefore you can see how impossible it is when a person virtually sets up a dogma that he need not concern himself with the transcendental existence here in earthly life. For we live rather in a time when, in the true sense of the word, the one who says to himself: Here, in life between birth and death, you must acquire the eye so that it is not dark for you in the spiritual world after death, and so that you can also experience the light that is around you, is also fulfilling his supersensible duty towards the world.

When I was able to speak here in this circle some time ago, I presented man in his relationship to the spiritual world from a certain point of view and concluded by saying: It can be seen from all this how we have arrived at the point in the present age where a core of people must form who recognize the necessity of spiritual-scientific knowledge. From what I have said again today, one can see this necessity even more clearly. We live today in an age in which the spiritual world wants to show itself to us during our earthly lives. We must not close the doors and windows through which it can enter. We must let the light of the spiritual world come in, we must let it come in for the sake of life on earth, we must let it come in for the sake of the life we live between death and a new birth. Man must hear the voices that speak to man from the spiritual world in a spiritual way, and he must say to himself: It is time that man perceived the light of the spirit, that he heard the voice of the spirit. And when we have familiarized ourselves with what can be understood in this way from a spiritual-scientific point of view as the necessities of the time, then the right attitude prevails in such a working space, when one regards oneself as obliged to lead humanity to recognize that now is the time to see the light of the spirit, to hear and understand the voice of the spirit.

It is in this thought, in particular in this feeling and primarily in this attitude that we want to be together and stick together in the times when we are spatially separated again. That is what I would like to say to you as a greeting, a greeting to the effect: Let what we can say to each other when fate brings us together be the occasion for it to prevail as a thought among us, as a sense of belonging together that is there in the spiritual, even when we cannot be together in space! Nevertheless, I hope that it will soon be possible for me to speak to you in person about the continuation of what I have presented today.

This chapter was written and published in the original German for the first time in the year 1902.

[ 1 ] It is Goethe's conviction that man can never solve the riddle of existence within the limits of a synthetic conception of the world. He shares this idea with those who, as a result of certain proofs of inner life, have acquired insight into the nature and substance of knowledge. Such men, unlike some philosophers, find it impossible to speak of a limitation of human cognition; and while realising that there are no bounds to man's search for wisdom, but that it is capable of infinite expansion, are aware that the depths of the universe are unfathomable, that in every unmasked secret lies the origin of the new; and in every solution of a riddle another lies unrevealed. Yet they also know that each new riddle will be capable of solution when the soul has risen to the requisite stage of evolution. Convinced as they are that no mysteries of the Universe are absolutely beyond the reach of man, they do not always desire to reach the contentment of a complete and finished knowledge. They strive only to reach certain vantage points in the life of the soul whence the perspectives of knowledge open out and lose themselves in the far distance.

[ 2 ] It is the same with knowledge in general as it is with knowledge acquired from great works of the spiritual life. They proceed from unfathomable depths of soul life. We may really say that the only significant spiritual creations are those in whose presence we feel this to an ever increasing degree the more often we return to them. It must be assumed that a man's soul life has itself advanced in development each time he returns to the work. Goethe's Faust must surely produce a similar feeling in all who approach it with this attitude of mind.

[ 3 ] Students who bear in mind that Goethe began Faust as a young man and finished it shortly before his death, will guard against entertaining conclusive opinions about it. In his long, varied life, the poet advanced from one stage of development to another, and he allowed his creation of Faust to participate in the fullest sense in this development. He was once asked whether the conclusion of Faust accorded with the words of the “Prologue in Heaven,” written in 1797:

A good man through obscurest aspiration,
Has still an instinct of the one true way.

He answered that this was “enlightenment” but that Faust was finished in old age and then man becomes a mystic. Goethe, as a young man, could not of course realise that in the course of his life he would rise to the conception which at the end of Faust in the “Chorus Mysticus” he was able to express in the words:

All things transitory
But as Symbols are sent.

At the end of Goethe's life the Eternal element in existence was revealed to him in a sense other than he could have dreamed in 1797, when he allows “the Lord” to speak to the Archangels of this Eternal element, in the words:

And what in wavering apparition gleams

Fix in its place with thoughts that stand for ever! [ 4 ] Goethe was fully aware that the truth he possessed had developed within him by degrees, and he would have judged his Faust from this standpoint. On 6th December, 1829, he said to Eckermann: “In old age one's view of things of the world has changed. ... I am like a man who in youth has many small silver and copper coins which in the course of life he changes into more and more valuable coin, so that he finally sees his youthful heritage in gold pieces before him.

[ 5 ] Why was it that old age brought to Goethe a different view of “things of the world?” Because in the course of his life he attained to higher and higher points of view in his soul life, from which new perspectives of truth were perpetually revealed to him. Only those who follow Goethe's inner development can hope to read aright the portions of Faust which were written in the poet's old age. But to such men new depths of this world poem will ever and again be revealed. They advance to a stage where all the events and figures take on an esoteric significance; an inner, spiritual meaning is there beside the external appearance. Those who are incapable of this, will, according to their personal artistic perception, be like the famous aesthetic Vischer, who called the second part of Faust a patched up production of old age, or they will find delight in the rich world of imagery and fable which streams from Goethe's imagination.

[ 6 ] Anyone who speaks of an esoteric meaning in Goethe's Faust will naturally arouse the opposition of those who claim that a “work of art” must be accepted and enjoyed purely “as art,” and that it is inadmissible to turn living figures of artistic imagination into dry allegory. They think that because the spiritual content is barren so far as they are concerned, it must be so for everyone else. But there are some who breathe a higher life that streams from a mighty Spirit, where others hear only words. It is difficult to meet on common ground those who have not the will to follow us into the spiritual world. We have at our disposal only the same words as they; and we cannot force anyone to sense within the words, that totally different element which is perceptible to us. We have no quarrel with such people; we admit what they say, for with us, too, Faust is primarily a work of art, a creation of the imagination. We know how great our loss would be if we were unable to appreciate the artistic value of the work. But it must never be urged that we have no perception of the beauty of the lily because we rise to the spirit which it reveals, nor that we are blind to the picture that in a higher sense is for us like “all things transitory,” which “as symbols are sent.

[ 7 ] We agree with Goethe, who said to Eckermann on 29th January, 1827: “Yet everything (in Faust) is of a sense nature, and on the stage will be quite evident to the eye. I have no other wish. If it should chance that the general audience find pleasure in the representation, that is well; the higher significance will not escape the initiate.” [ 8 ] Those who want truly to understand Goethe must not hold aloof from such initiation. It is possible to indicate the exact point in Goethe's life when he came to the realisation which he has clothed in the words:

All things transitory
But as symbols are sent.

Standing before the ancient works of art his soul was flooded with this thought: This much is certain, that the artists of antiquity possessed equally with Homer a mighty knowledge of Nature, a sure conception of what lends itself to portrayal, and of how it ought to be portrayed. Unfortunately the number of works of art of the first rank is all too small. But when we find them our only desire is to understand them in truth and approach them in peace. Supreme works of art, like the most sublime products of Nature, are created by man in conformity with true and natural Law. All that is arbitrary, all that is invented, collapses: there is Necessity, there is God.” These thoughts are inscribed in Goethe's Diary of his Italian Journey” under the date, 6th September, 1787.

[ 9 ] Man can also penetrate to the spirit of things” by other paths. Goethe's nature was that of the artist; hence for him the revelation of this spirit had to come through art. It can be shown that the scientific knowledge which enabled him to proclaim the scientific views of the nineteenth century in advance, was born from his artistic qualities. One personality will arrive at a similar perspective of knowledge and truth through religion, another through the development of philosophic understanding. (c.f. my book Goethe's World Conception.)

[ 10 ] We must seek in Goethe's Faust for the picture of an inner soul development,—a picture such as an inherently artistic personality is bound to produce. Goethe was by reason of his spiritual gifts able to look into the very depths of Nature in all her reality. We can see how in the boy Goethe there develops, out of his faith, a pro-found reverence for Nature. He describes this in Poetry and Truth: The God who stands in immediate connection with Nature and recognises and loves it as His handiwork, seemed to him the real God, who might enter into closer relationship with man, as with everything else, and who would make him His care, as well as the motion of the stars, times and seasons, plants and animals.” The boy selects the best minerals and stones from his father's collection and arranges them on a music stand. This is the altar upon which he likes to offer his sacrifice to the God of Nature. He lays tapers on the stones and by means of a burning glass lights the tapers with the intercepted rays of the rising morning sun. In this way he kindles a sacred fire through the essence of the Divine Nature forces. We may perceive here the beginning of an inner soul development that—speaking in the terms of Indian Theosophy—seeks for the Light at the centre of the Sun, and for Truth at the centre of the Light. Anyone who follows Goethe's life can trace this Path along which, in inter-mediate stages, he seeks those deeper levels of consciousness where the eternal Necessity, God, was revealed to him. He tells us in Poetry and Truth how he explored every possible region of science, including experimental Alchemy.

Wherefore from Magic I seek assistance,
That many a secret perchance I reach
Through spirit power and spirit speech.
(Faust's Monologue at the beginning of Part I.)

Later on Goethe sought for the expression of eternal law in the creations of Nature and in his Archetypal Plant” and Archetypal Animal” he discovered what the spirit of Nature proclaims to the human spirit when the soul has attained to a mode of thought and conception that is in conformity with the Idea.” Between these two turning points of Goethe's soul life lies the period of the composition of that part of the Drama in which, after Faust's despair of all external Science, he invokes the Earth Spirit. The eternal truth-bearing Light speaks in the words of this Earth Spirit.

In the tides of Life, in Action's storm,
A fluctuant wave,
A shuttle free,
Birth and the Grave,
An eternal sea,
A weaving, flowing
Life, all-glowing,
Thus at Time's humming loom 'tis my hand prepares
The garment of Life which the Deity weaves!

[ 11 ] This is an expression of the all-embracing conception of Nature which we also find in the Prose Hymn Nature, written by Goethe somewhere about the 30th year of his age. Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her, we cannot draw back from her, nor can we penetrate more deeply into her being. She lifts us, unmasked and unwarned, into the gyrations of her dance, and whirls us away until we fall, exhausted, from her arms. She creates new forms eternally. What is, had no previous existence; what was, comes not again; all is new and yet is ever the old. She builds and destroys eternally, and her laboratory is inaccessible ... She lives in the purity of children, and the Mother, where is she? Nature is the only artist. Each of her creations is an individual Being, each of her revelations a separate concept; yet all makes up a unity. ... She transforms herself eternally and has never a moment of inactivity. ... Her step is measured, her exceptions few, her laws are unchangeable. ... All men are within her, she is within all men. ... Life is her fairest device, and Death is her artifice for acquiring greater life. ... Man obeys her laws even when he opposes them. ... She is the All. She rewards and punishes, delights and distresses herself ... She knows not past and future. The present is her Eternity. ... She has placed me within life and she will lead me out of it. I trust myself to her. ... It was not I who spoke of her. It was she who spoke it all, whether it were true or false. Her's is the blame for all things, her's the credit.

[ 12 ] In old age, looking back at this stage of his soul development, Goethe himself said that it represented an inferior conception of life and that he had acquired one more lofty. But this stage revealed to him that eternal, universal law which streams alike through Nature and the human soul. It inspired the grave conception that an eternal, iron Necessity binds all beings into unity, and taught him to consider man in his indissoluble connection with this Necessity. This attitude of mind is expressed in his Ode, The Divine, written in the year 1782.

Let man be noble, resourceful and good! For this alone distinguishes him from all other beings known to us. According to eternal, mighty Laws of iron must we complete the circle of our existence.

[ 13 ] The same conception is expressed in Faust's Monologue written about the year 1787:

Spirit sublime, thou gav'st me, gav'st me all
For which I prayed. Not unto me in vain
Hast thou thy countenance revealed in fire.
Thou gav'st me Nature as a kingdom grand,
With power to feel and to enjoy it. Thou
Not only cold, amazed acquaintance yield'st,
But grantest, that in her profoundest breast I gaze,
as in the bosom of a friend.
The ranks of living creatures thou dost lead
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In air and water and the silent wood.
And when the storm in forests roars and grinds,
The giant firs, in falling, neighbour boughs
And neighbour trunks with crushing weight bear down,
And falling, fill the hills with hollow thunders,—
Then to the cave secure thou leadest me,
Then show'st me mine own self, and in my breast
The deep, mysterious miracles unfold.

[ 14 ] The perspective of his soul was revealed to Goethe by the mysteries of his own breast. It is a perspective which can no longer be revealed in the external world alone, but only when a man descends into his own soul in such a way that in ever deeper regions of consciousness, sublimer secrets may come to light. The world of the senses and intellect then takes on a new significance. It becomes a symbol” of the Eternal. Man perceives that he has a more intimate connection between the external world and his own soul. He learns to know that in his inner being there is a voice destined also to solve all riddles of the outer world.

Here the inadequate
Becomes attainment²

The highest facts of life, the division into male and female becomes the key to the riddle of humanity. The process of cognition becomes that of life, of fecundation. The soul, in its depths, becomes woman, that element which, impregnated by the world Spirit, gives birth to the highest life-substance. Woman becomes a symbol” of these soul depths. We ascend to the mysteries of existence by allowing ourselves to be drawn upwards and on” by the eternal feminine,” the woman soul. Higher existence begins when we experience the action of wisdom as a process of spiritual fecundation. [ 15 ] The deeper mystics of all ages have realised this. They allowed the highest knowledge to grow out of the action of spiritual fecundation as in the case of the Egyptian Horus, the soul-man, born of Isis, who was overshadowed by the spiritual eye of Osiris,—He who was awakened from the dead.” The second part of Goethe's Faust is written from such a point of view.

[ 16 ] Faust's love for Gretchen in the first part, is of the senses. Faust's love for Helena, in the second part, is not merely a sense process, but a symbol” of the most profoundly mystical soul experience. In Helena, Faust seeks for the eternal feminine,” the woman soul; he seeks the depths of his own soul. The fact that Goethe should allow the archetypal figure of Greek feminine beauty to represent the woman in man” is connected with the essential nature of his personality. The realisation of Divine Necessity dawned in him as he contemplated the beauty of the Greek masterpieces.

[ 17 ] Faust became a mystic as the result of his union with Helena, and he speaks as a mystic at the beginning of the fourth Act of Part II. He sees the female image, the depths of his own soul, and speaks the words:

... Towering broad and formlessly,
It rests along the East like distant icy hills,
And shapes the grand significance of fleeting days.
And still there clings a light and delicate band of mist
Around my breast and brow, caressing, cheering me.
Now light, delayingly, it soars and higher soars
And folds together.—Cheats me an ecstatic form,
As early youthful, long foregone and highest bliss?
The first glad treasures of my deepest heart break forth;
Aurora's love, so light of pinion, is its type,
The swiftly-felt, the first, scarce-comprehended glance,
Out-shining every treasure, when retained and held.
Like Spiritual Beauty mounts the gracious Form,
Dissolving not, but lifts itself through ether far,
And from my inner being bears the best away.

[ 18 ] In this description of the ecstacy experienced by one who has descended into the depths of his own soul and has there felt the best within him drawn away by the eternal feminine,” it is as though we were listening to the words of the Greek Philosopher: When, free from the body, thou ascendest to the free Aether, thy soul becomes an immortal god, who knows not death.

[ 19 ] For at this stage Death becomes a symbol.” Man dies from the lower life in order to live again in a higher existence. Higher spiritual life is a new stage of the Becoming”; time becomes a symbol” of the Eternal that now lives in man. The union with the eternal feminine” allows the child in man to come into being,—the child, imperishable, immortal, because it is of the Eternal. The higher life is the surrender, the death of the lower, the birth of a higher existence. In his West-East Diva” Goethe expresses this in the words: And as long as thou art without this ‘dying and becoming’ thou art but an uneasy guest on the dark Earth.” [ 20 ] We find the same thought in his prose aphorisms: Man must give up his existence in order to exist.” Goethe is in agreement with the Mystic Herakleitos when he speaks of the Dionysian cult of the Greeks. It would have been an empty, even a dishonourable cult in his eyes if it had made sacrifices merely to the god of nature and of sense pleasure. But that was not the case. The worship was not alone directed to Dionysos, the god of the immediate sense prosperity of Life, but to Hades, the god of death as well. The Greeks prepared tumultuous fire” both for Hades and Dionysos, for in the Greek Mysteries life was honoured in company with death; this is the higher existence that passes through material death of which the Mystics speak when they say that Death is after all the root of all life.” The second part of Faust represents an awakening, the birth of the higher man” from the depths of the soul. From this point of view we can understand the meaning of Goethe's words: If it should chance that the general audience find pleasure in the representation, that is well; the higher significance will not escape the initiate.

[ 21 ] Those who have developed true mystical knowledge find it in high degree in Goethe's Faust. After the scene with the Earth Spirit in Part I., when Faust has conversed with Wagner and is alone, despairing of the insignificance of the Earth Spirit, he speaks the words:

I, God's own image, from this toil of clay
Already freed, with eager joy who hailed
The mirror of eternal Truth unveil'd,
Mid light effulgent and celestial clay:—
I, more than cherub, whose unfettered soul
With penetrative glance aspir'd to flow
Through Nature's veins, and, still creating, know
The life of Gods,—how am I punished now!³

[ 22 ] What is the Mirror of Eternal Truth”? We can read of it in the following words of Jacob Boehme, the Mystic: All that, whereof this world is an earthly mirror, and an earthly parable, is present in the Divine Kingdom in great perfection and in Spiritual Being. Not only the spirit conceived as a will or thought, but Beings, corporate Beings, full of strength and substance, though to the outer world impalpable. For from the self-same spiritual Being in whom is the pure element—and from the Being of Darkness in the Mystery of Wrath—from the origin of the eternal Being of manifestation whence all the qualities come forth, this visible world was born and created, a spoken sound proceeding from the Being of all Beings.

For the sake of those who love truisms let it be observed that it is not in any sense correct to state that Goethe had precisely this passage of Jacob Boehme in his mind when he wrote the words quoted above. What he had in his mind was the mystical knowledge which finds expression in Boehme's sentences. Goethe lived in this mystical knowledge and it grew riper and riper within him. He created from the kind of knowledge possessed by the mystics. And from this source he derived the capacity for seeing Life,—things transitory” as symbols only, as a reflection. A period of inexhaustible inner development lies between the time (Part I.) when Goethe wrote his words of despair at being so remote from the mirror of eternal truth,” and the time when he wrote the Chorus Mysticus” whose words express the fact that things transitory” are to be seen only as symbols” of the Eternal.

[ 23 ] The theme of the mystical dying and becoming” runs through the Introductory Scene of Part II.:

A pleasing landscape. Faust reclining upon flowery turf, restless, seeking sleep.” The elves, under Ariel, bring about Faust's Awakening.

Who round this head in airy circles hover,
Yourselves in guise of noble Elves discover!
The fierce convulsions of his heart compose;
Remove the burning barbs of his remorses,
And cleanse his being from the suffered woes!
Four pauses makes the Night upon her courses,
And now, delay not, let them kindly close!
First on the coolest pillow let him slumber,
Then sprinkle him with Lethe's drowsy spray!
His limbs no more shall cramps and chills encumber,
When sleep has made him strong to meet the day.
Perform, ye Elves, your fairest rite:
Restore him to the holy Light!

[ 24 ] And at sunrise Faust is restored to the holy Light:

Life's pulses now with fresher force awaken
To greet the mild ethereal twilight o'er me;
This night, thou, Earth! hast also stood unshaken,
And now thou breathest new-refreshed before me,
And now beginnest, all thy gladness granting,
A vigorous resolution to restore me,
To seek that highest life for which I'm panting.

[ 25 ] For what was Faust striving in his study (Part I.), and what had happened at the stage he has reached at the beginning of Part II.? His striving is clothed in the words of the Wise man:

The spirit world no closures fasten;
Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead:
Disciple, up! untiring, hasten
To bathe thy breast in morning-red!

[ 26 ] As yet Faust cannot bathe his earthly breast” in the morning red.” When he has invoked the Earth Spirit he is forced to acknowledge the insignificance of this being. This he is able to do at the beginning of Part II. Ariel proclaims how it comes to be:

Hearken! Hark!—the Hours careering!
Sounding loud to spirit-hearing,
See the new-born day appearing!

[ 27 ] The new-born day” of knowledge and of life born out of the morning red” inspired Jacob Boehme's earliest work entitled Aurora or The Rise of Dawn, which was imbued with mystical knowledge. The passage in Act IV., Part II., of Faust already quoted shows how deeply Goethe lived in such conceptions. The first glad treasures” of his deepest heart” are revealed to him by Aurora's Love.” When Faust has really bathed his earthly breast in the morning red” he is ready to lead a higher life within the course of his earthly existence. He appears in the company of Mephistopheles at the imperial palace during a feast of pleasure and empty amusements and must himself help to increase them. He appears in the Mask of Hades, the God of Wealth, in a masquerade. He is desired to add to the amusements by charming Paris and Helena from the Underworld. This shows us that Faust had attained to that stage in his soul life where he under-stood the dying and becoming.” He participates joyfully in the Feast, but while it is going on he sets out on the path to the Mothers,” where alone he can find the figures of Paris and Helena which the emperor wishes to see. The eternal archetypes of all existence are preserved in the realm of the Mothers. It is a realm which man can only enter when he has given up his existence in order to exist.” There, too, Faust is able to find the part of Helena that has outlived the ages. But Mephistopheles, who has up to now been his guide, is not able to lead him into this realm. This is characteristic of his nature. He says emphatically to Faust:

Thou deem'st the thing is quickly fixed:
Here before steeper ways we're standing;
With strangest spheres would'st thou be mixed.

[ 28 ] Mephistopheles is a stranger to the realm of the Eternal. This may well appear inexplicable when we consider that Mephistopheles belongs to the kingdom of Evil, itself a kingdom of Eternity. But the difficulty is solved when we take Goethe's individuality into account. He had not experienced eternal Necessity” within the realm of Christianity where, to him, Hell and the Devil belong. This idea of the Eternal arose for Goethe in a region alien to the conceptions of Christendom. It is to be admitted of course that the ultimate origin of a figure like Mephistopheles is to be found in the conceptions of Heathen religions too. (Cp. Karl Kiesewetter's Faust in history and tradition.”) So far as Goethe was concerned, however, this figure belonged to the Northern world of Christendom, and the source of his creation was there. He could not in personal experience find his kingdom of the Eternal within the scope of this world of conceptions. To understand this, we need only be reminded of what Schiller said of Goethe in his deeply intuitive letter of 23rd August, 1794: If you had been born a Greek or even an Italian with a special kind of Nature and an idealistic Art around you from the cradle, your path would have been infinitely limited and perhaps made quite superficial. Even in the earliest conception of things you would have absorbed the Form of Necessity and you would have developed a mighty style together with your earliest experience. But being born a German with your Greek spirit thrown into the milieu of this Northern world, you had no choice but to become either an Artist of the North, or to re-establish in your Imagination by the help of the power of thought, what Reality withheld from you, and so, as it were, from within outwards, and on a rationalistic path, give birth to a Greek world.

[ 29 ] It is not our task here to embark upon a consideration of the different conceptions formed by man as to the meaning of the Mephistopheles figure. These conceptions express the endeavour to change figures of Art into barren allegories or symbols, and I have always opposed this. So far as an esoteric interpretation is concerned, Mephistopheles must be accepted, in the sense, naturally, of poetical reality, as an actual being. For an esoteric interpretation does not look for the spiritual value which certain figures in the first instance receive from the poet, but the spiritual value they already have in life. The poet can neither deprive them of this nor can he impart it; he takes it from life, as he would anything visible to the eye. It is, however, part of the nature of Mephistopheles that he lives in the material sense world. Hell, too, is nothing but incarnate materiality, The Eternal in the womb of the Mothers can only be an entirely alien realm to anyone who lives in materiality as intensely as Mephistopheles. Man must penetrate through materiality in order again to enter into the Eternal, the Divine, whence he has sprung. If he finds the way, if he gives up his existence in order to exist,” then he is a Faust being; if he cannot abandon materiality he becomes a character like Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is only able to give to Faust the key” to the realm of the Mothers. A mystery is connected with this key.” Man must have experienced it before he can fully penetrate it. It will be most easy of attainment to those who are scientists in the true sense.

[ 30 ] It is possible for a man to accumulate much scientific learning and yet for the spirit of things,” the realm of the Mothers, to remain closed to him. Yet in scientific knowledge we have, fundamentally, the key to the spiritual world in our hands. It may become either academic erudition or wisdom. If a man of wisdom makes himself master of that dry erudition” which a man who is merely scientific has accumulated, he is led into a region which to the other is entirely foreign. Faust is able to penetrate to the Mothers with the key given him by Mephistopheles. The natures of Faust and Mephistopheles are reflected in the way in which they speak of the realm of the Mothers.

...Naught shalt thou see in endless Void afar,—
Not hear thy footstep fall, nor meet
A stable spot to rest thy feet.

... I to the Void am sent,
That art and power therein I may augment;
To use me like the cat is thy desire,
To scratch for thee the chestnuts from the fire.
Come on then! We'll explore, whate'er befall;
In this, thy Nothing, may I find my All!

[ 31 ] Goethe told Eckermann how he came to introduce the “Mothers ” scene. “I can only tell you,” he says, “that in Plutarch I found that in Greek Antiquity the Mothers were spoken of as Divinities.” This necessarily made a profound impression upon Goethe, who as the result of his mystical knowledge, realised the significance of the “eternal feminine.

[ 32 ] From the realm of the Mothers, Faust conjures up the figures of Helena and of Paris. When he sees them before him in the imperial palace he is seized by an irresistible desire for Helena. He wants to take possession of her. He sinks unconscious to the ground and is carried off by Mephistopheles. Here we come to a stage of great significance in Faust's evolution. He is ready and ripe to press forward into the spiritual world. He can rise in spirit to the eternal archetypes. He has reached the point where the spiritual world in an infinite perspective becomes visible to man.

[ 33 ] At this point it is possible for a man either to resign himself to the realisation that this perspective cannot be gauged in one bound, but must rather be traversed by numberless life stages; or he may determine to make himself master of the final aim of Divinity at one stroke. The latter was Faust's desire. He undergoes a new test. He must experience the truth that man is bound to matter and that only when he has passed through all stages of materiality is he made pure for attainment of the final aim.

[ 34 ] Only a purely spiritual being, born in a spiritual fashion, can unite himself directly with the spiritual world. The human tspirit is not a being of this kind and it must pass through the whole range of material existence. Without this life-journey the human spirit would be a soulless, lifeless entity. The very existence of the human spirit implies that the journey through materiality has been begun at some point. For man is what he is only because he has passed through a series of previous incarnations. Goethe had also to express this conception in Faust. On 16th December, 1829, he speaks of Homunculus to Eckermann: “A spiritual being like Homunculus, not yet darkened and circumscribed by a fully human evolution, is to be counted a Daemon.

[ 35 ] Homunculus, therefore, is a man but without the element of materiality that is essential to man. He is brought into existence by magical methods in the laboratory. On the date above mentioned Goethe speaks further of him to Eckermann: “Homunculus, as a being to whom actuality is absolutely clear and transparent, beholds the inner being of the sleeping Faust. But because everything is transparent to his spirit, the spirit has no point for him. He does not reason; he wants to act.” In so far as man is a knower, the impulse to will and action is awakened through knowledge. The essential thing is not the knowledge or the spirit as such, but the fact that this spirit must be led to pass through the material, through action. The more knowledge a being possesses, the greater will be the impulse to action. And a being who has been produced by purely spiritual means must be filled with the thirst for action. Homunculus is in this position. His powerful urge towards reality leads Faust with Mephistopheles to Greece, into the “Classical Walpurgis Night.” Homunculus is bound to become corporeal in the realm where Goethe found the highest reality. It then becomes possible for Faust to find the real Helena, not merely her archetype. Homunculus leads him into Greek reality. To understand fully the nature of Homunculus we need only follow his journeys through the Classical Walpurgis Night. He wants to learn from two Greek Philosophers how he can come into being, that is, to action. He says to Mephistopheles:

From place to place I flit and hover.
And in the best sense. I would fain exist.
And most impatient am. my glass to shatter;
But what till now I've witnessed, is't
Then strange if I mistrust the matter?
Yet I'll be confidential. if thou list:
I follow two Philosophers this way.
'Twas ‘Nature! Nature!’—all heard them say;
I'll cling to them and see what they are seeing,
For they must understand this earthly being,
And I shall doubtless learn, in season.
Where to betake me with the soundest reason.

[ 36 ] His wish is to gain knowledge of the natural conditions of the genesis of corporeal existence. Thales leads him to Proteus. the Lord of Change, of the “eternal Becoming.” Thales says of Homunculus:

He asks thy counsel, he desires to be.
He is, as I myself have heard him say.
(The thing's a marvell!) only born half-way.
He has no lack of qualities ideal,
But far too much of palpable and real.
Till now the glass alone has given him weight,
And he would fain be soon incorporeate.

[ 37 ] And Proteus gives utterance to the Law of Becoming:

No need to ponder here his origin;
On the broad ocean's breast must thou begin!
One starts there first within a narrow pale.
And finds, destroying, lower forms, enjoyment:
Little by little, then, one climbs the scale,
And fits himself for loftier employment.

[ 38 ] Thales gives the counsel:

Yield to the wish so wisely stated,
And at the source be thou created!
Be ready for the rapid plan!
There, by eternal canons wending,
Through thousand, myriad forms ascending,
Thou shalt attain, in time, to Man.

[ 39 ] Goethe's whole conception of the relationship of all beings, of their metamorphic evolution from the imperfect to the perfect is here expressed in a picture. At first the spirit can only exist germinally in the world. The spirit must pour itself out, must dip down into matter, and into the elements, before it can take on its sublimer form. Homunculus is shattered by Galatea's shell chariot and is dissolved• into the elements. This is described by the Sirens:

What fiery marvel the billows enlightens,
As one on the other is broken and. brightens?
It flashes and wavers, and hitherward plays!
On the path of the Night are the bodies ablaze,
And all things around are with flames overrun:
The Eros be ruler, who all things began!

[ 40 ] Homunculus as a spirit no longer exists. He is blended in the Elements and can arise from out of them. Eros, desire, will, action, must go forward to the spirit. The spirit must pass through matter, through the Fall into Sin. In Goethe's words, the spiritual essence must be.darkened and circumscribed, for this is necessary to a full human development. The second Act of Part II. presents the mystery of human development. Proteus, the Lord of corporeal metamorphosis, discloses this Mystery to Homunculus:

In spirit seek the watery distance!
Boundless shall there be thine existence,
And where to move, thy will be free.
But struggle not to higher orders!
Once Man, within the human borders,
Then all is at an end for thee.

[ 41 ] This is all that the Lord of corporeal metamorphosis can know about human development. So far as his knowledge goes evolution comes to an end when man, as such, has come into existence. What comes after that is not his province. He is only at home in the corporeal; and as a result of man's development the spiritual element separates itself from the merely corporeal. The further development of man proceeds in the spiritual world. The highest point to which the process is brought by the Eros of Nature is the separation into two sexes, male and female. Here spiritual development sets in; Eros is spiritualised. Faust enters into union with Helena, the archetype of Beauty. Goethe was well aware of all that he owed to his intimate connection with Greek beauty. The mystery of spiritualisation was for him of the nature of Art. Euphorion arises out of Faust's union with Helena. Goethe himself tells us what Euphorion is. (Eckermann quotes Goethe's words of 20th December, 1829): “Euphorion is not a human but an allegorical being. Euphorion personifies poetry that is bound neither to place nor person.” Poetry is born from the marriage experienced by Faust in the depths of his soul. This colouring of the spiritual Mystery must be traced back to Goethe's personal experience and nature. He saw in Art, in Poetry, “a manifestation of secret Laws of Nature,” which without them would never be revealed. (Compare his Prose Aphorisms.) He attained the higher stages of soul life as an artist. It was only natural that he should ascribe to poetry not only quite general qualities but those of the poetical creations of his time. Byronic qualities have passed over to Euphorion. On 5th July, 1827, Goethe said to Eckermann: “I could never choose anyone else but Byron as the representative of the most modern school of poetry, for he has unquestionably the greatest talent of the century. Byron is neither ancient nor modern, but like the present day itself. I had to have one like him. Besides this, he was typical, on account of his unsatisfied nature and that warlike temperament which led him to Missolonghi. It is neither opportune nor advisable to write a treatise on Byron, but in the future I shall not fail to pay him incidental tribute and to point to him in certain matters of detail.

The union of Faust with Helena cannot be permanent. The descent into the depths of the soul, as Goethe also knew, is only possible in “Festival moments” of life. Man descends to those regions where the highest spirituality comes to birth. But with the metamorphosis which he has there experienced he returns again to the life of action. Faust passes through a process of spiritualisation, but as a spiritualised being he has to work on in everyday life. A man who has passed through such “Festival moments” must realise how the deeper soul element in him vanishes again in everyday actuality. Goethe expressed this in a picture. Euphorion disappears again into the realm of darkness. Man cannot bring the spiritual to continuous earthly life, but the spiritual is now inwardly united with his soul. This spiritual element, his child, draws his soul into the realm of the Eternal. He has united himself with the Eternal. As a result of the loftiest spiritual activity man enters into the Eternal in his highest being, in the depths of his soul. The union into which his soul has entered enables him to ascend to the All. The words of Euphorion sound forth as this eternal call in the heart of ever-striving man:

Leave me here, in the gloomy Void,
Mother, not thus alone!

A man who has experienced the Eternal in the Temporal perpetually hears this call from the spiritual in him. His creations draw his soul to the Eternal. So will Faust live on. He will lead a dual life. He will create in life, but his spiritual child binds him on his earthly path to the higher world of the spirit. This will be the life of a mystic, but in the nature of things not a life where the days are passed in idle observation, in inner dream, but a life where deeds bear the impress of that nobility attained by man as the result of spiritual deepening.

[ 42 ] Faust's outer life, too, will now be that of a man who has surrendered his existence in order to exist. He will work absolutely selflessly in the service of humanity. But still another test awaits him. At the stage to which he has attained he cannot bring his activity in material existence into full harmony with the real needs of the spirit. He has taken land from the sea and has built a stately abode upon it. But an old hut still remains standing and in it live an aged couple. This disturbs the work of new creation. The aged couple do not want to exchange their dwelling for any nobler estate. Faust must see how Mephistopheles carries out his wish, turning it to evil. He sets the homestead on fire and the aged couple die of fright. Faust must experience once again that “perfect human evolution darkens and circumscribes,” and that it must lead to guilt. It was his material sense life that laid this blow, this test upon him. As he hears the bell sound from the aged couple's Chapel he breaks forth into the words:

Accurséd chime! As in derision
It wounds me, like a spiteful shot:
My realm is boundless to my vision,
Yet at my back this vexing blot!
The bell proclaims; with envious bluster,
My grand estate lacks full design:
The brown old hut, the linden-cluster,
The crumbling chapel are not mine.
If there I wished for recreation,
Another's shade would give no cheer:
A thorn it is, a sharp vexation,—
Would I were far away from here!

Faust's senses engender in him a fateful desire. There still remains in him some element of that existence which he must “surrender in order to exist.” The homestead is not his. In the “midnight hour” four grey women appear. Want, Blame, Care, Need. These are they who darken and circumscribe man's existence. He passes through life under their escort, and at first he cannot exist without their guidance. Life alone can bring emancipation from them. Faust has reached the point where three of these figures have no power over him. Care is the only one from whom this power has not been taken away. Care says:

Ye sisters, ye neither can enter, nor dare:
But the keyhole is free to the entrance of Care.

And Care exhorts him in a voice that lies deep in the heart of every man. No man can eradicate the last doubt as to whether he can with his life's reckoning stand steadfast in face of the Eternal. At this moment Faust has such an experience. Has he really only pure powers around him? Has he freed his “inner man” from all that is impure? He has taken Magic to his aid along his path, and acknowledges this in the words:

Not yet have I my liberty made good:
If I could banish Magic's fell creations,
And totally unlearn the incantations,
Stood I, O Nature! Man alone in thee,
Then were it worth one's while a man to be!

Faust too is unable to cast the last doubt away from him. Care may say of him also:

Though no ear should choose to hear me,
Yet the shrinking heart must fear me:
Though transformed to mortal eyes,
Grimmest power I exercise.

In the face of Care, Faust would first ask himself whether those remains of doubt as to his life's reckoning have vanished:

The sphere of Earth is known enough to me,
The view beyond is barred immutably:
A fool, who there his blinking eyes directeth,
And o'er his cloud of peers a place expecteth!
Firm let him stand, and look around him well!
This world means something to the Capable,
Why needs he through Eternity to wend?

In these very sentences Faust shows that he is about to fight his way to full freedom. Care would urge him on to the Eternal after her own fashion. She shows him how men on the earth only unite the Temporal to the Temporal. And even if they do this, believing that this world means something to the ‘Capable,’ she, nevertheless, remains with them to the last. And what she has been able to do in the case of others, Care thinks she can also do in the case of Faust. She believes in her power to enhance in him those doubts that beset a man when he asks himself whether all his deeds have indeed any significance or meaning. Care speaks of her power over men:

Shall he go, or come?—how guide him?
Prompt decision is denied him;
Midway on the trodden highway
Halting he attempts a by-way;
Such incessant rolling, spinning,
Painful quitting, hard beginning,—
Now constraint, now liberation,
Semi-sleep, poor recreation,
Firmly in his place ensnare him
And, at last, for Hell prepare him!

Faust's soul has progressed too far for him to fall into the power of Care to this extent. He is able to cry in rejoinder:

And yet, O Care, thy power, thy creeping shape,
Think not that I shall recognize it!

Care is only able to have power over his bodily nature. As she vanishes she breathes on him and he becomes blind. His bodily nature dies in order that he may attain a higher stage:

The Night seems deeper now to press around me,
But in my inmost spirit all is light.

After this it is only the soul element in Faust which comes into consideration. Mephistopheles who lives in the material world has no power here. Since the Helena Scene the better and deeper soul of Faust has lived in the Eternal. This Eternal takes full possession of him after his death. Angels incorporeate Faust's immortal essence into this Eternal:

This noble Spirit now is free,
And saved from evil scheming:
Who'er aspires unweariedly
Is not beyond redeeming.
And if with him celestial love
Hath taken part,—to meet him
Come down the angels from above;
With cordial hail they greet him.

The “Celestial Love” is in strong contrast to “Eros,” to whom Proteus refers when he says at the end of the second Act, Part II.:

All things around are with flames overrun:
Then Eros be ruler who all things began!

This Eros is the Love “from below” that leads Homunculus through the elements and through bodily metamorphosis in order that he may finally appear as man. Then begins the “Love from above” which develops the soul further.

[ 43 ] The soul of Faust is set upon the path to the Eternal, the Infinite. An unending perspective is open before it. We can dimly sense what this perspective is. To make it poetically objective is very difficult. Goethe realised this and he says to Eckermann: “You will admit that the conclusion, where the soul that has found salvation passes heavenward, was very difficult to write and that in reference to such highly supersensible and hardly conceivable matters I could have very easily fallen into vagueness if I had not, by the use of sharply defined Christian-Theological figures and concepts, given a certain form and stability to my poetical intentions.” The inexhaustible content of the soul must be indicated, and the deepest inner being expressed in symbol. Holy Anchorites “dispersed over the hill,” “stationed among the clefts” represent the highest states of the evolution of the soul. Man is led upwards into the regions of consciousness, of the soul,—wherein the world becomes to an ever increasing extent the “symbol” of the Eternal.

[ 44 ] This consciousness, the deepest region of the soul, are mystically seen in the figure of the “eternal feminine,” Mary the Virgin. Dr. Marianus in rapture prays to her:

Highest Mistress of the World!
Let me in the azure
Tent of Heaven, in light unfurled
Here thy Mystery measure!

[ 45 ] With the monumental words of the Chorus Mysticus, Faust draws to its conclusion. They are words of Wisdom eternal. They give utterance to the Mystery that “All things transitory are only a symbol.” This is what lies before man in the farthest distance; to this leads the path which man follows when he has grasped the meaning of this “dying and becoming:

Here the Inadequate
Becomes attainment.

This cannot be described because it can only be discovered in experience; this it is that the Initiates of the “Mysteries” experienced when they were led to the path of the Eternal; it is unutterable because it lies in such deep clefts of the soul that it cannot be clothed in words coined for the temporal world:

The indescribable,
Here it is done.

And to all this man is drawn by the power of his own soul, by the powers that are dimly sensed when he passes through the inner portals of the soul, when he seeks for that divine voice within calling him to the union of the “eternal masculine,”—the universe, with the “eternal feminine,”—consciousness:

The Eternal Feminine draws us
Upwards and on.

• 2. The author of this essay is in agreement with the opinion of Ad. Rudolf expressed in his Archives of Modern Languages LXX., 1883, that the writing of the word Ereignis” (event) is only due to an auditory mistake of Goethe's stenographer, and that the correct word is Erreichnis,” attainment.
• 3. Miss Swanwick's translation.

The objection might easily be raised to an address such as this to-day that symbolic and allegoric meanings are forced out of something which a poet has created in the free play of his imaginative fancy. The day before yesterday we set ourselves the task to explore the deeper meaning of Goethe's ‘Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,’ as it was then presented to our eyes. It will always happen that such an analysis or explanation of a work of fantasy will be turned down with the remark: ‘Oh, all sorts of symbols and meanings with profound applications are looked for in the figures of the work.’ Therefore I want to say at once that what I shall say to-day has nothing whatever to do with the symbolic and allegoric interpretations often made by Theosophists about legends or poetic works. And because I know that again and again the objection has been made to similar explanations which I have given: ‘We are not going to be caught by such symbolic meanings of poetic figures,’ I cannot stress the fact sufficiently that what is to be said here must be taken in no other sense than the following. We have before us a poetic work, a work of comprehensive imaginative power or fantasy, that goes to the depths of things: ‘The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.’ We may well be allowed the question, whether we may approach the work from any particular point of view, and attempt to find the basic idea, the true content of this so poetic a product.

We see the plant before us. Man goes to it and examines the laws, the inner regularity, by which the plant grows and flourishes, by which it unfolds its nature bit by bit. Has the botanist, or even someone who is no botanist, but arranges the growth of the plant in his imagination, the right to do it? Can one object: the plant knows nothing of the laws you are discovering, the laws of its growth and development! This objection against the botanist or the lyric poet who expresses the sensations derived from the plant in his poetry would have the same weight as the objection one could bring against such an explanation of Goethe's story. I do not want things to be taken as if I were to say to you: There we have a Snake, which means this or that, there we have a Golden, a Silver, and a Brazen King, who stand for this or that. I do not intend to expound the story in this symbolic, allegoric sense, but more in such a way that as the plant grows according to laws of which it is itself unconscious, and as the botanist has the right to discover these laws of its growth, one must also say to oneself that it does not follow that the poet Goethe was consciously aware of the explanations which I shall give you. For it is as true that we must consider the inevitability, and the true ideal content of the story as it is that we discover the laws of the plant's growth; that the plant grows in accordance with the same inevitability which originated it, though it is itself unconscious of it.

So I ask you to take what I shall say as if it presented the sense and the spirit of Goethe's methods of thought and idea-conception and as if he who, as it were, feels himself called upon to put before you the ideal philosophy of Goethe, were justified—that you might find a way to it—in expounding the product of Goethe's invention, in emphasizing the figures, and in pointing out their correlation—just as the botanist demonstrates that the plant grows in accordance with laws he has discovered.

Goethe's psychology or soul-philosophy, namely, what he considers determinative for the nature of the soul, is illustrated in his beautiful Fairy Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily; and if we are to understand each other in what I have to say it will be a good thing if, in a preliminary study, we make the spirit of his soul-world clear. It has been already pointed out in the previous address that the world-conception represented here starts from the view that human knowledge is not to be looked upon as something stationary once for all. The view is widely held that man is as he is to-day, and being what he is he can give unequivocal judgment on all things; he observes the world with his sense-organs, takes in its phenomena, combines them with his reason, which is bound to his senses, and the result is an absolute knowledge of the world which must be valid for all. On the other side—but only in a certain way—stands the spiritual scientific world-conception which is represented here. This starts from the premise that what is to become our knowledge is continually dependent on our organs and our capacity for knowledge and that we ourselves are, as men, capable of development; that we can work on ourselves, and raise higher such capabilities as we have on a given level of existence. It holds that we can educate them, and they can be developed still further, even as man has developed himself from an imperfect state to his present position, and that we must come to a deeper penetration of things, and a more correct view of the world by rising to higher standards. To put it more clearly, if also more trivially: if we leave out altogether a development of humanity and look only at people as they are around us; and then turn our eyes on those men whom one reckons as belonging to primitive races in the history of civilization, and if we ask ourselves what they can know of the laws of the world around us and compare it with what an average European with some ideas of science can know of the world, we shall see there is a great difference between the two. Take, for instance, an African negro's picture of the world and that, let us say, of an European monist, who has a sense of reality through having absorbed a number of the scientific ideas of the present age: the two are entirely dissimilar.

But on the other hand Spiritual Science is far from depreciating the world-picture of the man who takes his stand on pure materialism, and from declaring it invalid. It is more true to say that in these things it is considered that in every case a man's world-picture corresponds to a stage in human evolution, and that man is able to increase the capabilities in him and to discover by means of the increase other new things.

It lies thus in the purview of Spiritual Science that man reaches ever higher knowledge by developing himself, and what he experiences in the process is objective world-content, which he did not see before because he was not capable of seeing it. Spiritual Science is therefore different from other one-sided world-conceptions, whether spiritualistic, or materialistic, because it does not recognize an absolute, unchangeable truth, but only a wisdom and truth belonging to a given stage of evolution. Thus it adheres to Goethe's saying: ‘Man has really always only his own truth, and it is always the same.’ It is always the same because what we instil into ourselves through our power of learning, viz., the objective, is the same.

Now how does man succeed in developing the capabilities and powers that lie in him? One may say that Spiritual Science is as old as human thought. It always took the view that man has before him the ideal of a certain knowledge-perfection, the object of his aspiration. The principle contained in this was always called the ‘principle of initiation.’ This initiation means nothing other than increasing the powers of man to ever higher stages of knowledge, and thereby attaining deeper insight into the nature of the world around him. Goethe stood completely and all his life long, one may say, on this principle of development towards knowledge, this principle of initiation; which is shown us most particularly in his Fairy Tale.

We shall understand each other most easily if we proceed from the view which is held most often and most widely to-day, and which is to a certain extent in opposition to the initiation-principle.

To-day one can hear in the widest circles those people who think about such things and believe themselves to have an opinion on them representing, more or less consciously, the point of view that in what concerns truth and objective reality only physical observation, or objects of physical observation can be decisive in formulating ideas. You will constantly hear it: that alone can be Science which is based on the objective foundation of observation, and by this one understands so frequently is meant only the observation of the senses and the application of the human reason and capacity to formulate thoughts to these sense-observations. Every one of you knows that the capacity to formulate ideas and concepts is a capacity of the human soul among other capacities and every one of you also knows that these other capacities of the soul are our feeling and our will. Thus, even with this comparative superficial review, we may say: man is not merely an ideating, but also a feeling and willing being. Now those who think they must put forward the purely scientific point of view will always repeat: in science, only the power of thought may enter, never human feeling, never what we know as will-impulses, for otherwise that which is objective would become clouded, and that which the power of thought might achieve by being kept impersonal, would only be prejudiced.

It is correct enough that when a man introduces his feeling, his sympathy or antipathy, into the object of a scientific enquiry, he finds it repulsive or attractive, sympathetic or antipathetic. And where should we be if he were to consider his desire as a source of knowledge, so that he could say about a thing, I want it or I do not want it? Whether it displeases or pleases you, whether you desire it or not, is entirely the same to the thing. As true as it is that he who believes himself able to stand on the firm ground of science can confine himself only to externals, so true it is that the thing itself compels you to say it is red, and that the impression you get concerning the nature of a stone is the correct one. But it does not lie in the nature of the thing that it appears to you ugly or beautiful, that you desire it or not. That it appears to you red has an objective reason; that you do not desire it has no objective reason.

In a certain respect modern psychology has got beyond the point of view just described. It is not my task here to speak for or against that tendency of modern psychology which says: ‘When we consider psychic phenomena and the soul-life, we must not confine ourselves only to intellectualism, we must regard man not merely in what concerns the power of conception, we must also consider the influences of the world of feeling and will.’ Perhaps some of you know that this belongs to Wundt's system of philosophy, which takes the will to be the origin of soul-activity. In a way that is in some respects fundamental, whether one agrees with it or not, the Russian psychologist Losski has pointed out the control of the will in human soul-life, in his last book called ‘Intuitivism.’ I could say much to you if I wanted to show how concerned the theory of the soul is to overcome the one-sidedness of intellectualism, and if further, I wanted to show you that the other powers also play a part in human soul-power.

If you carry the thought a step further, you will be able to say that this shows how impossible the demand is that the power of formulating ideas, limited as it is to observation, may lead to objective results in science. When science itself shows its impossibility, shows that everywhere Will plays a part, on what grounds would you then establish the purely objective observation of anything? Because you prefer to recognize only matter as objective, subject as you are to the tricks played by the will and your habits of thought, and because you have not the habit of thought and feeling to recognize also the spiritual element in things, therefore you omit the latter altogether in your theories. It is not a question, if we want to understand the world, of what kind of abstract ideals we set before us, but of what we can accomplish in our souls.

Goethe belongs to those people who reject the principle most categorically that knowledge is produced only through the thinking capacity, the one-sided capacity to form ideas. The prominent and significant principle expressed more or less clearly in Goethe's nature is that he considers that all the powers of the human soul must function if man is to unravel the riddles of the world.

Now we must not be one-sided and unjust. It is quite correct, when the objection is raised that feeling and will are qualities subjected to the personal characteristics of a man, and when it is asked where we should come to if not only what the eyes see and the microscope shows, but also what feeling and will dictate were considered as attributes of things! All the same that is just what we have to say in order to understand someone who, like Goethe, stands for the principle of initiation and development, namely, that, given the average feeling and will in man to-day, they cannot be applied to the acquirement of knowledge, that, in fact they would lead only to an absolute disharmony in their knowledge. One man wants this, the other that, according to the subjective needs of feeling and will. But the man who stands on the ground of initiation is also quite clear that of the powers of the human soul—thinking, representation, feeling, will—the capacity to construct thoughts and to think has advanced furthest, and is most inclined and adapted to exclude the personal element and to attain objectivity. For that soul-power which is expressed in intellectualism is now so advanced that when men rely upon it, they quarrel least, and agree most in what they say. Feeling and will have not had the chance of being developed to this point. We can also justifiably find differences when we examine the region of ideas and their representation. There are regions of the idea-life which give us completely objective truths, which men have recognized as such, quite apart from external experience, and these truths are the same if a million people differ in their opinions about them. If you have experienced in yourself the reasons for it, you are able to assert the truth even if a million people think otherwise. For instance, everyone can find such truths confirmed as those dealing with numbers and space dimension. Everyone can understand that 3 x 3 = 9, and it is so, even if a million people contradict it. Why is this the case? Because regarding such truths such as mathematical truths, most people have succeeded in suppressing their preference and their aversion, their sympathy and their antipathy, in short, the personal factor, and letting the matter speak for itself. This exclusion of the personal in the case of thought and the capacity to formulate ideas has always been called the ‘purification’ of the human soul, and considered the first stage on the way to initiation, or, as one might also say, on the way to higher knowledge.

The man who is versed in these things says to himself: It is not only with regard to feeling and the will that people are not yet so far that nothing personal enters into it, and that they can verify objectivity, but also with regard to thought the majority are not yet so far as to be able to give themselves up purely to what the things, the ideas of the things themselves say to him, as everyone can in mathematics. But there are methods of purifying thought to such a point that we no longer think personally, but let the thoughts in us think, as we let mathematical thought do. Thus, when we have cleansed thought from the influences of personality, we speak of purification or catharsis, as it was called in the old Eleusinian mysteries. Hence man must reach the point of purifying his thinking, which then enables him to comprehend things with objective thought.

Now, just as this is possible, so is it also possible to eliminate all the personal factor from feeling, so that the appeal of things to the feelings has no longer any say, to the Personal, or to Sympathy and Antipathy; nothing but the nature of the thing is evoked, in so far as it cannot speak to mere concept capacity. Experiences in our souls which have their roots or origin in our feelings, and which therefore lead to inner knowledge, and lead deeper into the nature of a thing, speaking however to other sides of the soul than mere intellectualism, can be purified of the personal element as well as thought, so that feeling can transmit the same objectivity as thought can. This cleansing or development of the feelings is called in all esoteric doctrine ‘enlightenment.’ Every man capable of development, and striving after it in no casual way, (that lies in intention of the personality) must take pains to be stirred only by what lies in the nature of the thing. When he has reached the point where the thing rouses in him neither sympathy nor antipathy, where he allows only the nature of things to speak, so that he says: whatever sympathies or antipathies I have are immaterial and are not to be taken into consideration, then it lies in the nature of the thing that the thought and action of the man assume this or that direction—then it is a declaration of the innermost nature of the thing. In esoteric doctrine this development of the will has been called ‘consummation.’

If a man takes his stand on the ground of spiritual science, he says to himself: ‘If I have a thing in front of me, there is in it a spiritual element, and I can so stimulate my mode of conception, that the essence of the thing is represented objectively through my concepts and ideas. Hence there is present in me the same thing that works externally, and I have recognized the essence of the thing through my mode of conception. But what I have recognized is only a part of the essence.’ There exists in things something which can speak not to thought at all, but only to feeling, and indeed only to purified feeling or to feeling which has become objective. The man who has not yet developed in himself by this cultivation of the feelings such a part of the essence, cannot recognize the essence along these lines. But for the man who says to himself that feeling as well as the capacity to think can provide a basis of knowledge (not the feeling as it is, but as it can become by means of well-founded methods of the teaching of cognition) for such a man it becomes gradually clear that there are things deeper than thought possibilities, things which speak to one's soul and the feelings. There are also things which reach even down to the will.

Now Goethe was particularly convinced that this really is the case, and that man really has in him these possibilities of development. He stood firmly on the ground of the principle of initiation, and he has shown us the initiation of man through the development of his soul and the development of the three powers of will, feeling and thought by representing them in his Fairy Tale.

The Golden King represents the initiation for the thought-capacity, the Silver King represents the initiation with knowledge capacity of objective feeling, and the Brazen King the initiation for knowledge capacity of the will. Goethe has emphasized that man must overcome certain things if he wishes to receive these three gifts. The Youth in the story represents man in his struggle for the highest. As Schiller in his Æsthetic Letters depicts man's aspiration towards complete humanity, so Goethe depicts in the Youth man's aspiration for the highest, wanting straight away to reach the Beautiful Lily, and attaining then inner human perfection, given him by the three Kings.

How that happens is pointed out in the course of the story. You remember that in the subterranean Temple, into which the Snake looks because of the earth's power of crystallization, one King was in each of the four corners. In the first was the Golden, in the second the Silver, in the third the Brazen King. In the fourth was the King who was a mixture of the other three metals, in whom, therefore, the three composite parts were so welded that one could not distinguish them. In this fourth King, Goethe depicts for us the representative of that stage of human development in which will, thought and feeling are mixed together. In other words he stands for that human soul which is governed by will, thought and feeling, because it is itself not master of these three capacities. On the other hand in the Youth, after he receives the three gifts from the three Kings separately, so that they are no longer chaotically mixed, that stage of knowledge is represented which does not allow itself to be ruled by thought, feeling and will, but which, on the contrary, rules over them. Man is ruled by them as long as they flow chaotically and intermingled in him, as long as they are not pure and independent in his soul. Until man has reached this separation, he is not capable of being effective through his three knowledge-capacities. When he has reached this point, however, he is no longer the subject of Chaos, but on the contrary himself controls his thought, his feeling and his will, when each is as pure and unalloyed as the metal of the respective Kings: his mode of Conception, pure as the Golden King (for nothing is mixed in him); his mode of Feeling, where nothing is added or mixed, but pure as the Silver King; and so too the Will, pure as the brass of the Brazen King; Concepts and Feelings no longer govern him, for he stands, in his nature, free; he is capable, in a word, of comprehension by means of thought, of feeling and will as required, making use of each separately. He can grasp according to necessity and the nature of things either by means of thinking, feeling or willing. Then he has advanced so far that the whole pure knowledge-capacity which we see in thought, feeling and will, leads him to a deeper insight, and he really steeps himself in the current of events, in the inner nature of things. Of course only experience can teach that this is possible.

Now it will not be difficult to agree, after what I said just now, that if Goethe makes the Youth represent striving mankind, we may see in the Beautiful Lily another soul-condition, namely, that soul-condition which man attains when the beings lying in things spring forth in the soul, and he thereby raises his existence by blending the things in himself with the nature of things in the external world. What man experiences in his soul by growing out of himself, by becoming master of the powers of the soul, victor over the chaos in his soul; what man then experiences, that inner blessedness, that unity with things; their awakening in him, is shown us by Goethe in his representation of the union with the Beautiful Lily. Beauty here is not merely aesthetic beauty, but a quality of man brought to a certain stage of perfection. So that we shall also now find it easy to understand why Goethe makes the Youth proceed in his effort to reach the Beautiful Lily, in such a way that all his powers at first disappear. Why is this?

We understand Goethe's presentation of such a scene if we hold fast to a thought he once expressed: ‘Everything which gives us mastery over ourselves without liberating us, leads us into error.’ Man must first be free, he must reach the point of being master of his inner soul-powers, and then he can attain union with the highest soul-condition, with the Beautiful Lily. But if he sets out to attain it unprepared, with still immature powers, they are lost and his soul is shrivelled. Hence Goethe points out that the Youth seeks this liberation which will make him captain of his soul. The moment his soul-powers are no longer chaotic, but are purified, cleansed and ordered, he is ready to reach that condition of soul which is symbolized by his union with the Beautiful Lily.

So we see that Goethe constructs these figures in free creative fantasy, and if we look upon them as representing soul-powers, we see that they permeate and work in his whole soul. If we look upon them like this, if we are as sensitive to these figures as in a way Goethe was—Goethe who unlike a second-rate didactic poet was not content to say what this or that soul-quality meant, but used it to express what he felt himself, then we shall realize what is expressed in these poetic figures. And therefore the various figures stand in the same personal relationship to each other as the soul-powers of a man stand to each other.

It cannot be clearly enough insisted upon that there is no question of the characters meaning this or that. That is certainly not the case. Rather is it that Goethe felt this or that in this or that soul-activity and transformed his feelings in connection with one or the other soul-activity into one or the other figures.

Thus he created the sequence of the story's events, which is still more important than the figures themselves. We see the Will-o'-the-Wisps and the Green Snake, and that the former cross over from the other side of the river and reveal quite peculiar qualities. They absorb the gold greedily, even lick it from the walls of the Old Man's room, and then throw it about prodigally. The same gold which in the Will-o'-the-Wisps is a sign of worthlessness, as we are also shown by the fact that the Ferryman has to refuse it—otherwise the river would surge up¹—the Ferryman may take only fruits in payment—this gold—what effect does it have in the body of the Green Snake? The Snake, after taking it, becomes internally luminous! And the plants and other things round her are also lit up because she takes into herself what in the case of the Will-o'-the-Wisps is a symbol of worthlessness.

But a certain importance is ascribed even to them. You know that the Old Man at the critical moment calls upon the Will-o'-the-Wisps to open the Temple gates, so that the whole train can enter in. Precisely the same thing which happens here in the case of the Green Snake, is to be found in the human soul, a thing we came across particularly clearly two days ago in the conversation between Goethe and Schiller. We saw that Schiller, as he spoke with Goethe about the way in which nature should be regarded, was still of the opinion that the drawing with a few strokes by Goethe of the proto-plant was an idea, an abstraction, which one receives when one omits the differentiating features and puts together the common ones. And we saw that Goethe thereupon said that if that was an idea, then he saw his ideas with his eyes. At this moment there were two quite different realities in opposition. Schiller trained himself completely to take Goethe's way of looking at things; so that it shows no lack of honour to Schiller if he is taken as an example of that human soul which moves in abstractions, and preferably in those ideas of things which are comprehended by the mere reason. That is a particular inclination of the soul, which, if a man wishes to attain a higher development, can, in certain circumstances, play a very dangerous part.

There are people whose inclination lies in the direction of the abstract. Now when they combine this abstraction with something they come across as soul-power, this is, as a rule, the concept of unproductivity. These people are sometimes very acute, they can draw fine distinctions, and connect this or that concept wonderfully. But you also often find with such a soul-condition, that the spiritual influences, inspirations, are excluded. This soul-condition, characterized by unproductivity and abstraction, is represented to us in the Will-o'-the-Wisps. They take up the gold wherever they find it; they lack any inventive faculty, are unproductive and can grasp no ‘ideas.’ These ideas are alien to them. They have not the will unselfishly to yield themselves up to things, or to stick to facts or to use concepts only as far as they are interpreters of facts. All they care about is to stuff their reasons full of concepts, and then scatter them about prodigally. They are like a man who goes to libraries, collects wisdom there, and takes it in and then gives it out again correspondingly. These Will-o'-the-Wisps are typical of that soul-capacity which is never able to grasp a single literary thought, or feeling, but which can nevertheless grasp in beautiful forms what creative spirits have produced in literature. I do not mean to say anything against this kind of soul. If a man did not have it nor cultivated it when he was insufficiently endowed with it, he would lack something which must be present when it comes to the real capacity for knowledge. In his picture of the Will-o'-the-Wisps, in the whole circumstances in which they appear and act, Goethe shows the manner in which such a soul-type functions, in relation to other soul-types, how it harms and benefits. In truth, if someone wanted to climb to higher stages of knowledge and had not this faculty of soul, there would not be the means to open the Temple for him. Goethe shows the advantages equally with the drawbacks of this soul-condition. What he gives us in the Will-o'-the-Wisps represents a soul-element. The moment it wants to lead an independent life in one direction or another, it becomes harmful. This abstraction leads to a critical faculty which makes men learn everything indeed, but incapable of further development, because the productive element is missing in them. But Goethe also clearly shows how far there is value in what the Will-o'-the-Wisps represent. What they contain can become something valuable; in the Snake the Will-o'-the-Wisps' gold turns to something valuable in so far as she illumines the objects round about her.

What lives in the Will-o'-the-Wisps, when worked out in another way, will become extremely fruitful in the human soul. When man strives so to regard his experiences of concepts and ideas and ideal creations not as something abstract in themselves, but as capable of leading to and interpreting the realities round him, so that he thinks as selflessly and willingly of his observations as of the abstract quality of the concepts, then he is as regards this soul-power in the same position as the Green Snake: then he can produce light and wisdom out of the purely abstract concepts. Then he is not brought to be in the vertical line which loses all connection and relation to the horizontal plane. The Will-o'-the-Wisps are the Snake's relatives, but of the vertical line. The gold-pieces fall through the rocks, are absorbed by the Snake which thereby becomes inwardly luminous. He who approaches the things themselves with these concepts absorbs wisdom.

Goethe gives us also an example of how one is to work on the conceptions (Begriffe). He has the conception of the proto-plant. Primarily it is an abstract conception, which, were it worked out in the abstract, would become an empty picture, killing all life, as the gold, thrown down by the Will-o'-the-Wisps, killed the Pug-dog. But just think what Goethe does with the conception of the proto-plant. If we follow him on his Italian journey, we see that this conception is only the ‘leit-motif’ going from plant to plant, from being to being. He takes the conception, goes from it over to the plant, and sees how this is made in one or another shape, taking on quite different shapes, in lower or higher places, and so on. Now he follows from step to step how the spiritual reality or form creeps into every physical form. He himself creeps about like the Snake in the crevices of the earth. Thus for Goethe the conception-world is nothing else but that which can be spun into objective reality. The Snake for him is the representative of that soul-power which does not struggle upward selfishly to higher regions of existence in an attempt to raise itself above everything, but which continually and patiently lets the conception be verified by observation, patiently goes from experience to experience. When man not merely theorizes, not merely lives in the conceptions, but applies them to life and experience, then he is as far as this soul-power is concerned, in the position of the Snake. This is so in a very wide sense. He who takes philosophy not as a theory, but as what it is meant to be, he who regards the conceptions of spiritual science as exercises for life, knows that just such conceptions, even the highest, are meant to be applied in such a way that they merge into life and are verified by daily experience. The man who has learnt a few conceptions but is incapable of applying them to life is like a man who has learned a cooking-book by heart, but cannot cook. As the gold is a means to throw light on things, so Goethe illuminates the things round him by means of his ideas.

This is the instructive and grand thing about Goethe's attitude to Science, and his every effort, that his ideas and conceptions have reality and have the effect of lighting up all objects round him. The day before yesterday special importance was laid on the universality in Goethe which gives the reason why we never have the feeling: that is Goethe's ‘meaning.’ He stands there, and when we see him, we find only that we understand things better which before were not so clear. For this reason he was capable of becoming the point of agreement between two hostile brethren, as we saw the day before yesterday.

If we wanted to discuss every feature in this fairy tale and characterize every figure in it, I should have to speak not for three hours but for three weeks on it. So I can give you only the deeper principles contained in the story. But every feature shows us something of Goethe's method of thought and his opinion of the world.

Those soul-powers which are represented in the Will-o'-the-Wisps, in the Green Snake and in the Kings, are on one side of the River. On the other side lives the Beautiful Lily, the ideal of perfect knowledge and perfect life and work. We heard from the Ferryman that he can bring the people (gestalten, forms) from the other side to this, but can take no one back again. Let us apply this to our whole soul-mood or soul-condition and our improvement.

We find ourselves on earth as beings with souls. These or the other soul-capacities work upon us as talents, as more or less developed soul-powers. They are in us; but we have also something else in us. In us human beings if we take ourselves properly there is the feeling, the knowledge that the powers of our soul, which finally interpret the nature of things to us, are closely related to the elemental spirits (grundgeister) of the world, with the Creative, Spiritual forces. The longing for these creative forces is the longing for the Beautiful Lily. Thus we know that everything derived on one hand from the Beautiful Lily, strives on the other to return to her. Unknown forces unmastered by us have brought us from the world on the other side over the river-boundary to this side. But these forces, characterized by the Ferryman, and working in the depths of unconscious nature, cannot take us back again, for otherwise man would return, without his work and co-operation, to the kingdom of the divine, precisely as he came over. The forces which as unconscious nature-forces have brought us over into the kingdom of struggling humanity, may not lead us back again. For this other forces are required; and Goethe is aware of it. But he wants to show also how man must set about being able to re-unite with the Beautiful Lily. There are two ways. One leads over the Green Snake; we can cross by it and gradually find the kingdom of the spirit. The other way goes across the Giant's shadow. We are shown that the Giant, otherwise without strength, stretches out his hand at dusk, and its shadow falls across the River. The second road leads over this shadow. Whoever wishes therefore to cross by clear daylight to the kingdom of the spirit must use the way provided by the Snake; and whoever wishes to cross at dusk can use the way leading across the Giant's shadow. Those are the two ways to reach a spiritual picture of the world. The man who aspires to the spiritual world—not with human concepts and ideas, not with those forces which are symbolized by the worthless gold (as spirits of bare sophistry) and the Will-o'-the-Wisps—but by proceeding patiently and selflessly from experience to experience, succeeds in reaching the other bank in full sunlight.

Goethe knows that real research does not stop at material things, but must lead over beyond the boundary; beyond the river which separates us from the spiritual. But there is another way, a way for undeveloped people, who do not want to take the road of knowledge, but a way represented by the Giant. He himself is powerless, only his shadow has a certain strength. Now what is powerless in a true sense? Take all the conditions possible to man when his consciousness is reduced, as in hypnotism, somnambulism and even dream-conditions; everything by which the clear consciousness of day is subdued, whereby man is subject to lower soul-power than in clear consciousness, belongs to this second way. Here the soul, by surrendering its ordinary daily functional power of the soul, is led into the real kingdom of the spirit. The soul, however, does not itself become capable of crossing into the spiritual kingdom, but remains unconscious and is carried across like the Shadow into the kingdom of spirit. Goethe includes in the forces represented by the Giant's shadow everything which functions unconsciously and from habit, without the soul-powers which are active during clear consciousness taking part. Schiller, who was initiated into Goethe's meaning, once, at the time of the great upheavals in Western Europe, wrote to Goethe: ‘I rejoice that you have not been roughly caught in the shadow of the giant.’ What did he mean? He meant that had Goethe travelled further West, he would have been caught in the revolutionary forces of the West.

Then we see that the objects of man's quest, the height of knowledge, is represented in the ‘Temple.’ The Temple represents a higher stage of man's evolution. Goethe nowadays would say that if the Temple is something hidden, it is under the narrow crevices of the earth. Such an aspiring soul-force as is represented in the Snake can feel the shape of the Temple only dimly. By absorbing the ideal, the gold, she can illumine this shape, but fundamentally the Temple can be there to-day only as a subterranean secret. But though Goethe leaves the Temple as something subterranean for external culture, he points out that to a further-developed man this secret must be unlocked. In this he indicates the current of Spiritual Science which to-day has already caught up wide masses of people, which in a comprehensive sense seeks to make popular the content of Spiritual Science, of the principle of initiation, and of the Temple's secret. The Youth is therefore to be regarded in this truly free Goethean sense as the representative of aspiring mankind. Therefore the Temple is to rise beyond the River, so that not only a few individuals who seek illumination can cross and re-cross, but so that all people can cross the River by the bridge. Goethe, in the Temple of Initiation above the earth puts before us a future state, which will have arrived when man can go from the kingdom of the senses into the kingdom of the spiritual, and from the kingdom of the spiritual into the kingdom of the senses.

How is this attained in the Fairy Tale? Because the real secret of it is fulfilled. The solution of the story is to be found in the story itself, says Schiller, but he has also pointed out that the word that solves it is inserted in a very remarkable way. You remember the Old Man with the Lamp, which illuminates only where there is already light? Now, who is this Old Man, and what is the Lamp? What is its curious light? The Old Man stands above the situation. His lamp has the peculiar quality of changing things, wood into silver, stone into gold. It has also the quality of shining only where there is already a receptivity, a definite kind of light. As the Old Man enters the subterranean Temple he is asked how many secrets he knows. ‘Three,’ he replies. To the Silver King's question, ‘Which is the most important,’ he answers: ‘The open one.’ And when the Brazen King asks whether he would tell it them also, he says: ‘As soon as I know the fourth.’ Whereupon the Snake whispers something in his ear and he says at once:

‘The Time is at Hand.’

The solution of the riddle is what the Snake whispered in the Old Man's ear, and we have to find out what that is. It would lead us too far to say at length what the three secrets mean. I shall only hint at it. There are three Kingdoms which in evolution are so to speak stationary: the mineral, the vegetable and the animal Kingdoms, which are completed, as compared with progressive man, who is still developing. The inner development of man is so vehement and important that it cannot be confused with the development of the other three nature kingdoms. What the secret of the Old Man contains is the fact that one Kingdom of nature has arrived at the present point of a full-stop, and this is what explains the laws of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. But now comes the fourth kingdom, that of man, the secret which is to be revealed in the human soul. The secret which the Old Man must first discover, is of this kind. And how must he discover it? He knows of what it consists, but the Snake has to tell him first. This indicates to ns that man has still to go through something special, if he wants to attain the goal of evolution as the three other kingdoms have done. What this is the Snake whispers to the Old Man. She tells how a certain soul-power must be developed, if a higher stage is to be reached; she says that she has the will to sacrifice herself for this, and she does in fact sacrifice herself. Hitherto she has made a bridge when here and there someone wished to cross; but now she will become a permanent bridge, by falling in pieces, so that man will have a lasting connection between this side and that, between the spiritual and the physical. That the Snake has the will to sacrifice herself must be taken as the condition of revealing the fourth secret. The moment the Old Man hears that the Snake will sacrifice herself, he can even say: ‘The time is at hand!’ It is that soul-power which adheres to the external. And the way to be trodden is not to make this soul-force and inner science the ultimate end but self-surrender. That really is a secret, even if it is called an ‘open secret,’ that is, when any who will can know it. What is regarded in a wide circle as end in itself—everything we can learn in natural science, in political science of civilization, in history, in mathematics and all other sciences can never be an absolute end. We can never come to a true insight into the depths of the world, if we consider them as ends in themselves. Only if we are at all times ready to absorb them and regard them as means, which we offer as a bridge to let us cross over, do we come to real knowledge. We bar ourselves off from the higher, true knowledge unless we are also ready to sacrifice ourselves. Man will get an idea of what initiation is only when he ceases to carve for himself a world-conception out of external-physical concepts. He must be all feeling, with all-attuned soul, such a soul as Goethe describes in his ‘Westöstlichen Divan’ as the highest acquisition of man:

‘And so long thou hast not this, Death and Birth!
Thou art but a sorry guest, on this dark Earth.’

Death and Birth! Learn to know what life can offer, go through with it, but surpass, transcend yourself. Let it become a bridge for you, and you will wake up in a higher life and be one with the essence of things, when you no longer live in the illusion that, cut off from the higher ego, you can exhaust the essence of things. When Goethe speaks of the sacrifice of the idea and the soul-material, in order to acquire new life in higher spheres, and of the deepest inner love, he likes to think of the words of the mystic Jacob Böhme, who knows from experience this self-surrender of the Snake. Perhaps Jacob Böhme has pointed out just this to him and made it so clear to him that a man can live, even in the physical body, in a world which otherwise he would tread only after death, in the world of the eternal, the spiritual. Jacob Böhme knew also that it depends on the man, whether he can, in the higher sense, slide over into the spiritual world. He shows it in the saying: ‘Who dies not before he dies, is ruined when he dies.’ A significant saying! Man, who does not die before he dies, that is, who does not develop in himself the eternal, the inner kernel of being, will not be in a position, when he dies, to find again the spiritual kernel in himself. The eternal is in us. We must develop it in the body, so that we may find it outside the body. ‘Who dies not before he dies, is ruined when he dies.’ So it is also with the other sentence: ‘And so death is the root of all life.’

Thus we see that the things of the soul can only illumine a place where light already is: the Lamp of the Old Man can only shine where there is already light. Once more our attention is directed to those special soul-powers, of devotion and religious self-surrender, which for hundreds and thousands of years have brought the message of spiritual worlds to those who could not seek the light by way of Science or otherwise. The light of the different religious revelations is represented in the Old Man, who has this light. But to him who does not bring an inner light to meet the sense of religion, the Lamp of Religion gives no light. It can shine only where light already is and meets it. It is the Lamp which has transfigured man, which has led all mortality across to a life of soul.

And then we see that the two Kingdoms are united through the Snake's sacrifice. After it goes, so to say, through incidents symbolic of what man has to go through in his higher development in an esoteric sense, we see how the Temple of Knowledge is brought by means of all the three human soul-powers across the river, how it rises and each soul-power performs its service. This is meant to show that the soul-powers must be in harmony, since we are told: the single personality can achieve nothing; but when all work together at a favourable moment, when the strong and the weak co-operate in the right relationship, then the soul can acquire the ability to reach the highest state, the union with the Beautiful Lily. Then the Temple moves out of the hidden crevices up to the surface for all who strive in truth after knowledge and wisdom. The Youth is endowed with the knowledge-powers of thought by the Golden King: ‘Know and recognize the highest.’ He is endowed with the knowledge-powers of feeling by the Silver King, which Goethe expresses beautifully with the words: ‘Tend the sheep!’

In feeling are rooted art and religion, and for Goethe both were a unity—already at the time when he wrote on his Italian journey concerning Italy's works of art: ‘There is necessity, there is God!’

But there is also the doing—when man does not apply it to the struggle for existence, but when he makes it into a weapon for gaining beauty and wisdom. This is contained in the words spoken by the Brazen King to the Youth: ‘The Sword in the left hand, the right free!’ There is a whole world in these words. The right hand free to work the self out of human nature.

And what happens with the Fourth King, in whom all three elements are mingled together? This mixed King melts into a grotesque figure. The Will-o'-the-Wisps come and lick what gold there is off him: man's soul-powers here still want to examine what sort of stages of human development, now overcome, there once were.

Let us take yet another feature: namely, when the Giant comes staggering in and then stands there like a statue, pointing to the hours: when man has brought his life into harmony, then the subordinate has a meaning for what is intended to be methodical order. It ought to express itself like a habit. The unconscious itself will then receive a valuable meaning. Hence the Giant is depicted like a clock.

The Old Man with the Lamp is married to the Old Woman. This Old Woman represents to us nothing else but the healthy, understanding human soul-power, which does not penetrate into high regions of spiritual abstractions, but which handles everything healthily and practically, as, for instance, in religion, represented by the Old Man with the Lamp. She is the one to bring the Ferryman his pay: three heads of cabbage, three onions and three artichokes. Such a stage of development has not passed beyond the contemporary. That she is so treated by the Will-o'-the-Wisps is no doubt a reflected picture of how abstract minds look down with a certain amount of scorn on people who take things in directly by instinct or intuition.

Every point, every turn of this story is of deep significance, and if we enter into one more explanation, it must be of an esoteric kind, and you will find that one can really only give the method of explanation. Bury yourselves in the story, and you will discover that a whole world is to be found there, very much more than it has been possible to indicate to-day.

I should like to show you in two examples how much Goethe's spiritual world-view runs through his whole life, how in things of spiritual knowledge he stands in agreement in extreme old age with what he had written earlier.

While Goethe wrote ‘Faust’ he adopted a certain attitude which harks back to a symbol of a deeper evolution-path of nature. When Faust speaks of his father, who was an alchemist, and had taken over the old doctrines credulously, but had misunderstood them, he says that his father also made

‘... a Lion red, a wooer daring, Within the Lily's tepid bath espoused.’

Faust I, Scene II, p. 32.

That is what Faust says, without knowing its significance. But such a saying can become a ladder leading to high stages of development. In the Fairy Tale Goethe shows in the Youth the human being striving for the highest bride, and that with which he is to be united he calls the Beautiful Lily. You notice this Lily is to be found already in the first parts of ‘Faust.’

And, again, the very nerve of Goethe's philosophy which found expression in his Fairy Tale, is to be found also in ‘Faust:’ in Part II, in the Mystic Chorus, where Faust confronts the entry into the spiritual world, where Goethe sets down his avowal of a spiritual world-conception in monumental words. He shows there how the ascent on the road of knowledge follows in three successive stages, namely, the purification of the thought, the illumination of feeling and the working out of will. What man attains through the purification of the thought leads him to recognize the spiritual behind everything. The physical becomes a symbol of the spiritual. He goes deeper still, in order to grasp what is unattainable to thought. He then reaches a state at which he no longer regards things by means of thought, but is directed into the thing itself, where the essence of it, and what one cannot describe become accomplished fact. And that which one cannot describe, that which, as you will hear in the course of the winter addresses, must be thought of in another way, that whereby one must advance to the secrets of the will, he labels simply ‘the indescribable.’ When man has completed the threefold road through thought, feeling and will, he is united with what is called ‘eternal womanhood’ in the Chorus Mysticus, the goal of the human soul's development, the ‘Beautiful Lily’ of the Fairy Tale.

Thus we see that Goethe utters his deepest conviction, his secret revelation there also, where he brings his great confessional poem to an end, after rising up through thought and feeling and will to union with the Beautiful Lily, up to that state which finds its expression in the passage of the Chorus Mysticus, which expresses the same thing as Goethe's philosophy and spiritual science, as well as the Fairy Tale:

‘All things transitory
But as symbols are sent:
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to Event:
The Indescribable,
Here it is done:
The Woman-Soul leadeth us
Upward and on!’

• 1. and the waves rear up like horses—aufbäumen. Ed.

Periodical Re-Births

Enq. You mean, then, that we have all lived on earth before, in many past incarnations, and shall go on so living?

Theo. I do. The life-cycle, or rather the cycle of conscious life, begins with the separation of the mortal animal-man into sexes, and will end with the close of the last generation of men, in the seventh round and seventh race of mankind. Considering we are only in the fourth round and fifth race, its duration is more easily imagined than expressed.

Enq. And we keep on incarnating in new personalities all the time?

Theo. Most assuredly so; because this life-cycle or period of incarnation may be best compared to human life. As each such life is composed of days of activity separated by nights of sleep or of inaction, so, in the incarnation-cycle, an active life is followed by a Devachanic rest.

Enq. And it is this succession of births that is generally defined as re-incarnation?

Theo. Just so. It is only through these births that the perpetual progress of the countless millions of Egos toward final perfection and final rest (as long as was the period of activity) can be achieved.

Enq. And what is it that regulates the duration, or special qualities of these incarnations?

Theo. Karma, the universal law of retributive justice.

Enq. Is it an intelligent law?

Theo. For the Materialist, who calls the law of periodicity which regulates the marshalling of the several bodies, and all the other laws in nature, blind forces and mechanical laws, no doubt Karma would be a law of chance and no more. For us, no adjective or qualification could describe that which is impersonal and no entity, but a universal operative law. If you question me about the causative intelligence in it, I must answer you I do not know. But if you ask me to define its effects and tell you what these are in our belief, I may say that the experience of thousands of ages has shown us that they are absolute and unerring equity, wisdom, and intelligence. For Karma in its effects is an unfailing redresser of human injustice, and of all the failures of nature; a stern adjuster of wrongs; a retributive law which rewards and punishes with equal impartiality. It is, in the strictest sense, "no respecter of persons," though, on the other hand, it can neither be propitiated, nor turned aside by prayer. This is a belief common to Hindus and Buddhists, who both believe in Karma.

Enq. In this Christian dogmas contradict both, and I doubt whether any Christian will accept the teaching.

Theo. No; and Inman gave the reason for it many years ago. As he puts it, while "the Christians will accept any nonsense, if promulgated by the Church as a matter of faith . . . the Buddhists hold that nothing which is contradicted by sound reason can be a true doctrine of Buddha." They do not believe in any pardon for their sins, except after an adequate and just punishment for each evil deed or thought in a future incarnation, and a proportionate compensation to the parties injured.

Enq. Where is it so stated?

Theo. In most of their sacred works. In the "Wheel of the Law" (p. 57) you may find the following Theosophical tenet: -"Buddhists believe that every act, word or thought has its consequence, which will appear sooner or later in the present or in the future state. Evil acts will produce evil consequences, good acts will produce good consequences: prosperity in this world, or birth in heaven (Devachan). . . in the future state."

Enq. Christians believe the same thing, don't they?

Theo. Oh, no; they believe in the pardon and the remission of all sins. They are promised that if they only believe in the blood of Christ (an innocent victim!), in the blood offered by Him for the expiation of the sins of the whole of mankind, it will atone for every mortal sin. And we believe neither in vicarious atonement, nor in the possibility of the remission of the smallest sin by any god, not even by a "personal Absolute" or "Infinite," if such a thing could have any existence. What we believe in, is strict and impartial justice. Our idea of the unknown Universal Deity, represented by Karma, is that it is a Power which cannot fail, and can, therefore, have neither wrath nor mercy, only absolute Equity, which leaves every cause, great or small, to work out its inevitable effects. The saying of Jesus: "With what measure you mete it shall be measured to you again" (Matth. vii., 2), neither by expression nor implication points to any hope of future mercy or salvation by proxy. This is why, recognising as we do in our philosophy the justice of this statement, we cannot recommend too strongly mercy, charity, and forgiveness of mutual offences. Resist not evil, and render good for evil, are Buddhist precepts, and were first preached in view of the implacability of Karmic law. For man to take the law into his own hands is anyhow a sacrilegious presumption. Human Law may use restrictive not punitive measures; but a man who, believing in Karma, still revenges himself and refuses to forgive every injury, thereby rendering good for evil, is a criminal and only hurts himself. As Karma is sure to punish the man who wronged him, by seeking to inflict an additional punishment on his enemy, he, who instead of leaving that punishment to the great Law adds to it his own mite, only begets thereby a cause for the future reward of his own enemy and a future punishment for himself. The unfailing Regulator affects in each incarnation the quality of its successor; and the sum of the merit or demerit in preceding ones determines it.

Enq. Are we then to infer a man's past from his present?

Theo. Only so far as to believe that his present life is what it justly should be, to atone for the sins of the past life. Of course — seers and great adepts excepted — we cannot as average mortals know what those sins were. From our paucity of data, it is impossible for us even to determine what an old man's youth must have been; neither can we, for like reasons, draw final conclusions merely from what we see in the life of some man, as to what his past life may have been.

WHAT IS KARMA?

Enq. But what is Karma?

Theo. As I have said, we consider it as the Ultimate Law of the Universe, the source, origin and fount of all other laws which exist throughout Nature. Karma is the unerring law which adjusts effect to cause, on the physical, mental and spiritual planes of being. As no cause remains without its due effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. Though itself unknowable, its action is perceivable.

Enq. Then it is the "Absolute," the "Unknowable" again, and is not of much value as an explanation of the problems of life?

Theo. On the contrary. For, though we do not know what Karma is per se, and in its essence, we do know how it works, and we can define and describe its mode of action with accuracy. We only do not know its ultimate Cause, just as modern philosophy universally admits that the ultimate Cause of anything is "unknowable."

Enq. And what has Theosophy to say in regard to the solution of the more practical needs of humanity? What is the explanation which it offers in reference to the awful suffering and dire necessity prevalent among the so-called "lower classes."

Theo. To be pointed, according to our teaching all these great social evils, the distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of life, the unequal distribution of capital and of labour — all are due to what we tersely but truly denominate KARMA.

Enq. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat indiscriminately are not actual merited and INDIVIDUAL Karma?

Theo. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual generated in a previous life. We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law. Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National Karma is that of the World? The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human interdependence that the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.

Enq. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?

Theo. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of power in the world's life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line of action. It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and its relief. It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as "Separateness"; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.

Enq. And are there no means by which the distributive or national Karma might be concentred or collected, so to speak, and brought to its natural and legitimate fulfilment without all this protracted suffering?

Theo. As a general rule, and within certain limits which define the age to which we belong, the law of Karma cannot be hastened or retarded in its fulfilment. But of this I am certain, the point of possibility in either of these directions has never yet been touched. Listen to the following recital of one phase of national suffering, and then ask yourself whether, admitting the working power of individual, relative, and distributive Karma, these evils are not capable of extensive modification and general relief. What I am about to read to you is from the pen of a National Saviour, one who, having overcome Self, and being free to choose, has elected to serve Humanity, in bearing at least as much as a woman's shoulders can possibly bear of National Karma. This is what she says: —

"Yes, Nature always does speak, don't you think? only sometimes we make so much noise that we drown her voice. That is why it is so restful to go out of the town and nestle awhile in the Mother's arms. I am thinking of the evening on Hampstead Heath when we watched the sun go down; but oh! upon what suffering and misery that sun had set! A lady brought me yesterday a big hamper of wild flowers. I thought some of my East-end family had a better right to it than I, and so I took it down to a very poor school in Whitechapel this morning. You should have seen the pallid little faces brighten! Thence I went to pay for some dinners at a little cookshop for some children. It was in a back street, narrow, full of jostling people; stench indescribable, from fish, meat, and other comestibles, all reeking in a sun that, in Whitechapel, festers instead of purifying. The cookshop was the quintessence of all the smells. Indescribable meat-pies at 1d., loathsome lumps of 'food' and swarms of flies, a very altar of Beelzebub! All about, babies on the prowl for scraps, one, with the face of an angel, gathering up cherrystones as a light and nutritious form of diet. I came westward with every nerve shuddering and jarred, wondering whether anything can be done with some parts of London save swallowing them up in an earthquake and starting their inhabitants afresh, after a plunge into some purifying Lethe, out of which not a memory might emerge! And then I thought of Hampstead Heath, and — pondered. If by any sacrifice one could win the power to save these people, the cost would not be worth counting; but, you see, THEY must be changed — and how can that be wrought? In the condition they now are, they would not profit by any environment in which they might be placed; and yet, in their present surroundings they must continue to putrefy. It breaks my heart, this endless, hopeless misery, and the brutish degradation that is at once its outgrowth and its root. It is like the banyan tree; every branch roots itself and sends out new shoots. What a difference between these feelings and the peaceful scene at Hampstead! and yet we, who are the brothers and sisters of these poor creatures, have only a right to use Hampstead Heaths to gain strength to save Whitechapels." (Signed by a name too respected and too well known to be given to scoffers.)

Enq. That is a sad but beautiful letter, and I think it presents with painful conspicuity the terrible workings of what you have called "Relative and Distributive Karma." But alas! there seems no immediate hope of any relief short of an earthquake, or some such general ingulfment!

Theo. What right have we to think so while one-half of humanity is in a position to effect an immediate relief of the privations which are suffered by their fellows? When every individual has contributed to the general good what he can of money, of labour, and of ennobling thought, then, and only then, will the balance of National Karma be struck, and until then we have no right nor any reasons for saying that there is more life on the earth than Nature can support. It is reserved for the heroic souls, the Saviours of our Race and Nation, to find out the cause of this unequal pressure of retributive Karma, and by a supreme effort to re-adjust the balance of power, and save the people from a moral ingulfment a thousand times more disastrous and more permanently evil than the like physical catastrophe, in which you seem to see the only possible outlet for this accumulated misery.

Enq. Well, then, tell me generally how you describe this law of Karma?

Theo. We describe Karma as that Law of re-adjustment which ever tends to restore disturbed equilibrium in the physical, and broken harmony in the moral world. We say that Karma does not act in this or that particular way always; but that it always does act so as to restore Harmony and preserve the balance of equilibrium, in virtue of which the Universe exists.

Enq. Give me an illustration.

Theo. Later on I will give you a full illustration. Think now of a pond. A stone falls into the water and creates disturbing waves. These waves oscillate backwards and forwards till at last, owing to the operation of what physicists call the law of the dissipation of energy, they are brought to rest, and the water returns to its condition of calm tranquillity. Similarly all action, on every plane, produces disturbance in the balanced harmony of the Universe, and the vibrations so produced will continue to roll backwards and forwards, if its area is limited, till equilibrium is restored. But since each such disturbance starts from some particular point, it is clear that equilibrium and harmony can only be restored by the reconverging to that same point of all the forces which were set in motion from it. And here you have proof that the consequences of a man's deeds, thoughts, etc. must all react upon himself with the same force with which they were set in motion.

Enq. But I see nothing of a moral character about this law. It looks to me like the simple physical law that action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Theo. I am not surprised to hear you say that. Europeans have got so much into the ingrained habit of considering right and wrong, good and evil, as matters of an arbitrary code of law laid down either by men, or imposed upon them by a Personal God. We Theosophists, however, say that "Good" and "Harmony," and "Evil" and "Dis-harmony," are synonymous. Further we maintain that all pain and suffering are results of want of Harmony, and that the one terrible and only cause of the disturbance of Harmony is selfishness in some form or another. Hence Karma gives back to every man the actual consequences of his own actions, without any regard to their moral character; but since he receives his due for all, it is obvious that he will be made to atone for all sufferings which he has caused, just as he will reap in joy and gladness the fruits of all the happiness and harmony he had helped to produce. I can do no better than quote for your benefit certain passages from books and articles written by our Theosophists — those who have a correct idea of Karma.

Enq. I wish you would, as your literature seems to be very sparing on this subject?

Theo. Because it is the most difficult of all our tenets.

Some short time ago there appeared the following objection from a Christian pen: —

"Granting that the teaching in regard to Theosophy is correct, and that 'man must be his own saviour, must overcome self and conquer the evil that is in his dual nature, to obtain the emancipation of his soul,' what is man to do after he has been awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness? How is he to get emancipation, or pardon, or the blotting out of the evil or wickedness he has already done?"

To this Mr. J. H. Conelly replies very pertinently that no one can hope to "make the theosophical engine run on the theological track." As he has it: —

"The possibility of shirking individual responsibility is not among the concepts of Theosophy. In this faith there is no such thing as pardoning, or 'blotting out of evil or wickedness already done,' otherwise than by the adequate punishment therefor of the wrong-doer and the restoration of the harmony in the universe that had been disturbed by his wrongful act. The evil has been his own, and while others must suffer its consequences, atonement can be made by nobody but himself.

"The condition contemplated . . . . in which a man shall have been 'awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness,' is that in which a man shall have realized that his deeds are evil and deserving of punishment. In that realization a sense of personal responsibility is inevitable, and just in proportion to the extent of his awakening or 'converting' must be the sense of that awful responsibility. While it is strong upon him is the time when he is urged to accept the doctrine of vicarious atonement.

"He is told that be must also repent, but nothing is easier than that. It is an amiable weakness of human nature that we are quite prone to regret the evil we have done when our attention is called, and we have either suffered from it ourselves or enjoyed its fruits. Possibly, close analysis of the feeling would show us that that which we regret is rather the necessity that seemed to require the evil as a means of attainment of our selfish ends than the evil itself."

"Attractive as this prospect of casting our burden of sins 'at the foot of the cross' may be to the ordinary mind, it does not commend itself to the Theosophic student. He does not apprehend why the sinner by attaining knowledge of his evil can thereby merit any pardon for or the blotting out of his past wickedness; or why repentance and future right living entitle him to a suspension in his favour of the universal law of relation between cause and effect. The results of his evil deeds continue to exist; the suffering caused to others by his wickedness is not blotted out. The Theosophical student takes the result of wickedness upon the innocent into his problem. He considers not only the guilty person, but his victims.

"Evil is an infraction of the laws of harmony governing the universe, and the penalty thereof must fall upon the violator of that law himself. Christ uttered the warning, 'Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee,' and St. Paul said, 'Work out your own salvation. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' That, by the way, is a fine metaphoric rendering of the sentence of the Puranas far antedating him — that 'every man reaps the consequences of his own acts.'

"This is the principle of the law of Karma which is taught by Theosophy. Sinnett, in his 'Esoteric Buddhism,' rendered Karma as 'the law of ethical causation.' 'The law of retribution,' as Mdme. Blavatsky translates its meaning, is better. It is the power which

"'Just though mysterious, leads us on unerring /Through ways unmarked from guilt to punishment.'

"But it is more. It rewards merit as unerringly and amply as it punishes demerit. It is the outcome of every act, of thought, word and deed, and by it men mould themselves, their lives and happenings. Eastern philosophy rejects the idea of a newly created soul for every baby born. It believes in a limited number of monads, evolving and growing more and more perfect through their assimilation of many successive personalities. Those personalities are the product of Karma and it is by Karma and re-incarnation that the human monad in time returns to its source — absolute deity."

E. D. Walker, in his "Re-incarnation," offers the following explanation: —

"Briefly, the doctrine of Karma is that we have made ourselves what we are by former actions, and are building our future eternity by present actions. There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is no salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about. . . . Because it offers no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a sterling manliness, it is less welcome to weak natures than the easy religious tenets of vicarious atonement, intercession, forgiveness and death-bed conversions. . . . In the domain of eternal justice the offence and the punishment are inseparably connected as the same event, because there is no real distinction between the action and its outcome. . . . It is Karma, or our old acts, that draws us back into earthly life. The spirit's abode changes according to its Karma, and this Karma forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is always changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in physical re-births. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is the goal of mankind."

And then the writer quotes from the Secret Doctrine:

"Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider does his cobweb, and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. . . . An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that, nevertheless, it guards the good and watches over them in this as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer — aye, even to his seventh re-birth — so long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the infinite world of harmony has not been finally re-adjusted. For the only decree of Karma — an eternal and immutable decree — is absolute harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or — break them. Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways — which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the action of blind fatalism; and a third simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them — would surely disappear if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. . . . We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident of our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. . . . . The law of Karma is inextricably interwoven with that of reincarnation. . . . . It is only this doctrine that can explain to us the mysterious problem of good and evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honour paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all his intellect and noble virtues — far more deserving in every way — perishing for want and for lack of sympathy — when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around him — that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men as well as their supposed Creator. . . . . This law, whether conscious or unconscious, predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in eternity truly, for it is eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coequal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is action itself. It is not the wave which drowns the man, but the personal action of the wretch who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plants and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say it is the bough which broke our arm or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the god invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man, nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. Karma is an absolute and eternal law in the world of manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as one Eternal, ever-present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as atheists or materialists, still less as fatalists, for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal world."

Another able Theosophic writer says (Purpose of Theosophy, by Mrs. P. Sinnett): —

"Every individual is making Karma either good or bad in each action and thought of his daily round, and is at the same time working out in this life the Karma brought about by the acts and desires of the last. When we see people afflicted by congenital ailments it may be safely assumed that these ailments are the inevitable results of causes started by themselves in a previous birth. It may be argued that, as these afflictions are hereditary, they can have nothing to do with a past incarnation; but it must be remembered that the Ego, the real man, the individuality, has no spiritual origin in the parentage by which it is re-embodied, but it is drawn by the affinities which its previous mode of life attracted round it into the current that carries it, when the time comes for re-birth, to the home best fitted for the development of those tendencies. . . . . This doctrine of Karma, when properly understood, is well calculated to guide and assist those who realize its truth to a higher and better mode of life, for it must not be forgotten that not only our actions but our thoughts also are most assuredly followed by a crowd of circumstances that will influence for good or for evil our own future, and, what is still more important, the future of many of our fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and commission could in any case be only self-regarding, the fact on the sinner's Karma would be a matter of minor consequence. The effect that every thought and act through life carries with it for good or evil a corresponding influence on other members of the human family renders a strict sense of justice, morality, and unselfishness so necessary to future happiness or progress. A crime once committed, an evil thought sent out from the mind, are past recall — no amount of repentance can wipe out their results in the future. Repentance, if sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors; it cannot save him or others from the effects of those already produced, which will most unerringly overtake him either in this life or in the next re-birth."

Mr. J. H. Conelly proceeds —

"The believers in a religion based upon such doctrine are willing it should be compared with one in which man's destiny for eternity is determined by the accidents of a single, brief earthly existence, during which he is cheered by the promise that 'as the tree falls so shall it lie'; in which his brightest hope, when he wakes up to a knowledge of his wickedness, is the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and in which even that is handicapped, according to the Presbyterian Confession of Faith.

"By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death.

"These angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. . . . As God hath appointed the elect unto glory. . . . . Neither are any other redeemed by Christ effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

"The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin to the praise of his glorious justice."

This is what the able defender says. Nor can we do any better than wind up the subject as he does, by a quotation from a magnificent poem. As he says: —

"The exquisite beauty of Edwin Arnold's exposition of Karma in 'The Light of Asia' tempts to its reproduction here, but it is too long for quotation in full. Here is a portion of it: —

Karma — all that total of a soul
Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,
The 'self' it wove with woof of viewless time
Crossed on the warp invisible of acts.
* * * * *
Before beginning and without an end,
As space eternal and as surety sure,
Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good,
Only its laws endure.
It will not be contemned of anyone;
Who thwarts it loses, and who serves it gains;
The hidden good it pays with peace and bliss,
The hidden ill with pains.
It seeth everywhere and marketh all;
Do right — it recompenseth! Do one wrong —
The equal retribution must be made,
Though Dharma tarry long.
It knows not wrath nor pardon; utter-true,
Its measures mete, its faultless balance weighs;
Times are as naught, to-morrow it will judge
Or after many days.
* * * * *
Such is the law which moves to righteousness,
Which none at last can turn aside or stay;
The heart of it is love, the end of it
Is peace and consummation sweet. Obey."

And now I advise you to compare our Theosophic views upon Karma, the law of Retribution, and say whether they are not both more philosophical and just than this cruel and idiotic dogma which makes of "God" a senseless fiend; the tenet, namely, that the "elect only" will be saved, and the rest doomed to eternal perdition!

Enq. Yes, I see what you mean generally; but I wish you could give some concrete example of the action of Karma?

Theo. That I cannot do. We can only feel sure, as I said before, that our present lives and circumstances are the direct results of our own deeds and thoughts in lives that are past. But we, who are not Seers or Initiates, cannot know anything about the details of the working of the law of Karma.

Enq. Can anyone, even an Adept or Seer, follow out this Karmic process of re-adjustment in detail?

Theo. Certainly: "Those who know"can do so by the exercise of powers which are latent even in all men.

Who Are Those Who Know?

Enq. Does this hold equally of ourselves as of others?

Theo. Equally. As just said, the same limited vision exists for all, save those who have reached in the present incarnation the acme of spiritual vision and clairvoyance. We can only perceive that, if things with us ought to have been different, they would have been different; that we are what we have made ourselves, and have only what we have earned for ourselves.

Enq. I am afraid such a conception would only embitter us.

Theo. I believe it is precisely the reverse. It is disbelief in the just law of retribution that is more likely to awaken every combative feeling in man. A child, as much as a man, resents a punishment, or even a reproof he believes to be unmerited, far more than he does a severer punishment, if he feels that it is merited. Belief in Karma is the highest reason for reconcilement to one's lot in this life, and the very strongest incentive towards effort to better the succeeding re-birth. Both of these, indeed, would be destroyed if we supposed that our lot was the result of anything but strict Law, or that destiny was in any other hands than our own.

Enq. You have just asserted that this system of Re-incarnation under Karmic law commended itself to reason, justice, and the moral sense. But, if so, is it not at some sacrifice of the gentler qualities of sympathy and pity, and thus a hardening of the finer instincts of human nature?

Theo. Only apparently, not really. No man can receive more or less than his deserts without a corresponding injustice or partiality to others; and a law which could be averted through compassion would bring about more misery than it saved, more irritation and curses than thanks. Remember also, that we do not administer the law, if we do create causes for its effects; it administers itself; and again, that the most copious provision for the manifestation of provision for the manifestation of just compassion and mercy is shown in the state of Devachan.

Enq. You speak of Adepts as being an exception to the rule of our general ignorance. Do they really know more than we do of Re-incarnation and after states?

Theo. They do, indeed. By the training of faculties we all possess, but which they alone have developed to perfection, they have entered in spirit these various planes and states we have been discussing. For long ages, one generation of Adepts after another has studied the mysteries of being, of life, death, and re-birth, and all have taught in their turn some of the facts so learned.

Enq. And is the production of Adepts the aim of Theosophy?

Theo. Theosophy considers humanity as an emanation from divinity on its return path thereto. At an advanced point upon the path, Adeptship is reached by those who have devoted several incarnations to its achievement. For, remember well, no man has ever reached Adeptship in the Secret Sciences in one life; but many incarnations are necessary for it after the formation of a conscious purpose and the beginning of the needful training. Many may be the men and women in the very midst of our Society who have begun this uphill work toward illumination several incarnations ago, and who yet, owing to the personal illusions of the present life, are either ignorant of the fact, or on the road to losing every chance in this existence of progressing any farther. They feel an irresistible attraction toward occultism and the Higher Life, and yet are too personal and self-opinionated, too much in love with the deceptive allurements of mundane life and the world's ephemeral pleasures, to give them up; and so lose their chance in their present birth. But, for ordinary men, for the practical duties of daily life, such a far-off result is inappropriate as an aim and quite ineffective as a motive.

Enq. What, then, may be their object or distinct purpose in joining the Theosophical Society?

Theo. Many are interested in our doctrines and feel instinctively that they are truer than those of any dogmatic religion. Others have formed a fixed resolve to attain the highest ideal of man's duty.

The Difference Between Faith and Knowledge; Or, Blind And Reasoned Faith

Enq. You say that they accept and believe in the doctrines of Theosophy. But, as they do not belong to those Adepts you have just mentioned, then they must accept your teachings on blind faith. In what does this differ from that of conventional religions?

Theo. As it differs on almost all the other points, so it differs on this one. What you call "faith," and that which is blind faith, in reality, and with regard to the dogmas of the Christian religions, becomes with us "knowledge," the logical sequence of things we know, about facts in nature. Your Doctrines are based upon interpretation, therefore, upon the second-hand testimony of Seers; ours upon the invariable and unvarying testimony of Seers. The ordinary Christian theology, for instance, holds that man is a creature of God, of three component parts — body, soul, and spirit — all essential to his integrity, and all, either in the gross form of physical earthly existence or in the etherealized form of post-resurrection experience, needed to so constitute him for ever, each man having thus a permanent existence separate from other men, and from the Divine. Theosophy, on the other hand, holds that man, being an emanation from the Unknown, yet ever present and infinite Divine Essence, his body and everything else is impermanent, hence an illusion; Spirit alone in him being the one enduring substance, and even that losing its separated individuality at the moment of its complete re-union with the Universal Spirit.

Enq. If we lose even our individuality, then it becomes simply annihilation.

Theo. I say it does not, since I speak of separate, not of universal individuality. The latter becomes as a part transformed into the whole; the dewdrop is not evaporated, but becomes the sea. Is physical man annihilated, when from a foetus he becomes an old man? What kind of Satanic pride must be ours if we place our infinitesimally small consciousness and individuality higher than the universal and infinite consciousness!

Enq. It follows, then, that there is, de facto, no man, but all is Spirit?

Theo. You are mistaken. It thus follows that the union of Spirit with matter is but temporary; or, to put it more clearly, since Spirit and matter are one, being the two opposite poles of the universal manifested substance — that Spirit loses its right to the name so long as the smallest particle and atom of its manifesting substance still clings to any form, the result of differentiation. To believe otherwise is blind faith.

Enq. Thus it is on knowledge, not on faith, that you assert that the permanent principle, the Spirit, simply makes a transit through matter?

Theo. I would put it otherwise and say — we assert that the appearance of the permanent and one principle, Spirit, as matter is transient, and, therefore, no better than an illusion.

Enq. Very well; and this, given out on knowledge not faith?

Theo. Just so. But as I see very well what you are driving at, I may just as well tell you that we hold faith, such as you advocate, to be a mental disease, and real faith, i.e., the pistis of the Greeks, as "belief based on knowledge," whether supplied by the evidence of physical or spiritual senses.

Enq. What do you mean?

Theo. I mean, if it is the difference between the two that you want to know, then I can tell you that between faith on authority and faith on one's spiritual intuition, there is a very great difference.

Enq. What is it?

Theo. One is human credulity and superstition, the other human belief and intuition. As Professor Alexander Wilder says in his "Introduction to the Eleusinian Mysteries," "It is ignorance which leads to profanation. Men ridicule what they do not properly understand. . . . The undercurrent of this world is set towards one goal; and inside of human credulity . . is a power almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending the supremest truths of all existence." Those who limit that "credulity" to human authoritative dogmas alone, will never fathom that power nor even perceive it in their natures. It is stuck fast to the external plane and is unable to bring forth into play the essence that rules it; for to do this they have to claim their right of private judgment, and this they never dare to do.

Enq. And is it that "intuition" which forces you to reject God as a personal Father, Ruler and Governor of the Universe?

Theo. Precisely. We believe in an ever unknowable Principle, because blind aberration alone can make one maintain that the Universe, thinking man, and all the marvels contained even in the world of matter, could have grown without some intelligent powers to bring about the extraordinarily wise arrangement of all its parts. Nature may err, and often does, in its details and the external manifestations of its materials, never in its inner causes and results. Ancient pagans held on this question far more philosophical views than modern philosophers, whether Agnostics, Materialists or Christians; and no pagan writer has ever yet advanced the proposition that cruelty and mercy are not finite feelings, and can therefore be made the attributes of an infinite god. Their gods, therefore, were all finite. The Siamese author of the Wheel of the Law, expresses the same idea about your personal god as we do; he says (p. 25) —

"A Buddhist might believe in the existence of a god, sublime above all human qualities and attributes — a perfect god, above love, and hatred, and jealousy, calmly resting in a quietude that nothing could disturb, and of such a god he would speak no disparagement, not from a desire to please him or fear to offend him, but from natural veneration; but he cannot understand a god with the attributes and qualities of men, a god who loves and hates, and shows anger; a Deity who, whether described as by Christian Missionaries or by Mahometans or Brahmins,* or Jews, falls below his standard of even an ordinary good man."

*Sectarian Brahmins are here meant. The Parabrahm of the Vedantins is the Deity we accept and believe in.

Enq. Faith for faith, is not the faith of the Christian who believes, in his human helplessness and humility, that there is a merciful Father in Heaven who will protect him from temptation, help him in life, and forgive him his transgressions, better than the cold and proud, almost fatalistic faith of the Buddhists, Vedantins, and Theosophists?

Theo. Persist in calling our belief "faith" if you will. But once we are again on this ever-recurring question, I ask in my turn: faith for faith, is not the one based on strict logic and reason better than the one which is based simply on human authority or — hero-worship? Our "faith" has all the logical force of the arithmetical truism that 2 and 2 will produce 4. Your faith is like the logic of some emotional women, of whom Tourgenyeff said that for them 2 and 2 were generally 5, and a tallow candle into the bargain. Yours is a faith, moreover, which clashes not only with every conceivable view of justice and logic, but which, if analysed, leads man to his moral perdition, checks the progress of mankind, and positively making of might, right — transforms every second man into a Cain to his brother Abel.

Enq. What do you allude to?

HAS GOD THE RIGHT TO FORGIVE?

Theo. To the Doctrine of Atonement; I allude to that dangerous dogma in which you believe, and which teaches us that no matter how enormous our crimes against the laws of God and of man, we have but to believe in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of mankind, and his blood will wash out every stain. It is twenty years that I preach against it, and I may now draw your attention to a paragraph from Isis Unveiled, written in 1875. This is what Christianity teaches, and what we combat: —

"God's mercy is boundless and unfathomable. It is impossible to conceive of a human sin so damnable that the price paid in advance for the redemption of the sinner would not wipe it out if a thousandfold worse. And furthermore, it is never too late to repent. Though the offender wait until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of his mortal life, before his blanched lips utter the confession of faith, he may go to Paradise; the dying thief did it, and so may all others as vile. These are the assumptions of the Church, and of the Clergy; assumptions banged at the heads of your countrymen by England's favourite preachers, right in the 'light of the XIXth century,'" this most paradoxical age of all. Now to what does it lead?

Enq. Does it not make the Christian happier than the Buddhist or Brahmin?

Theo. No; not the educated man, at any rate, since the majority of these have long since virtually lost all belief in this cruel dogma. But it leads those who still believe in it more easily to the threshold of every conceivable crime, than any other I know of. Let me quote to you from Isis once more (vide Vol. II. pp. 542 and 543) —

"If we step outside the little circle of creed and consider the universe as a whole balanced by the exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound logic, how the faintest glimmering sense of justice, revolts against this Vicarious Atonement! If the criminal sinned only against himself, and wronged no one but himself; if by sincere repentance he could cause the obliteration of past events, not only from the memory of man, but also from that imperishable record, which no deity — not even the Supremest of the Supreme — can cause to disappear, then this dogma might not be incomprehensible. But to maintain that one may wrong his fellow-man, kill, disturb the equilibrium of society and the natural order of things, and then — through cowardice, hope, or compulsion, it matters not — be forgiven by believing that the spilling of one blood washes out the other blood spilt — this is preposterous! Can the results of a crime be obliterated even though the crime itself should be pardoned? The effects of a cause are never limited to the boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be confined to the offender and his victim. Every good as well as evil action has its effects, as palpably as the stone flung into calm water. The simile is trite, but it is the best ever conceived, so let us use it. The eddying circles are greater and swifter as the disturbing object is greater or smaller, but the smallest pebble, nay, the tiniest speck, makes its ripples. And this disturbance is not alone visible and on the surface. Below, unseen, in every direction — outward and downward — drop pushes drop until the sides and bottom are touched by the force. More, the air above the water is agitated, and this disturbance passes, as the physicists tell us, from stratum to stratum out into space forever and ever; an impulse has been given to matter, and that is never lost, can never be recalled! . . .

"So with crime, and so with its opposite. The action may be instantaneous, the effects are eternal. When, after the stone is once flung into the pond, we can recall it to the hand, roll back the ripples, obliterate the force expended, restore the etheric waves to their previous state of non-being, and wipe out every trace of the act of throwing the missile, so that Time's record shall not show that it ever happened, then, then we may patiently hear Christians argue for the efficacy of this Atonement,"

and — cease to believe in Karmic Law. As it now stands, we call upon the whole world to decide, which of our two doctrines is the most appreciative of deific justice, and which is more reasonable, even on simple human evidence and logic.

Enq. Yet millions believe in the Christian dogma and are happy.

Theo. Pure sentimentalism overpowering their thinking faculties, which no true philanthropist or Altruist will ever accept. It is not even a dream of selfishness, but a nightmare of the human intellect. Look where it leads to, and tell me the name of that pagan country where crimes are more easily committed or more numerous than in Christian lands. Look at the long and ghastly annual records of crimes committed in European countries; and behold Protestant and Biblical America. There, conversions effected in prisons are more numerous than those made by public revivals and preaching. See how the ledger-balance of Christian justice (!) stands: Red-handed murderers, urged on by the demons of lust, revenge, cupidity, fanaticism, or mere brutal thirst for blood, who kill their victims, in most cases, without giving them time to repent or call on Jesus. These, perhaps, died sinful, and, of course — consistently with theological logic — met the reward of their greater or lesser offences. But the murderer, overtaken by human justice, is imprisoned, wept over by sentimentalists, prayed with and at, pronounces the charmed words of conversion, and goes to the scaffold a redeemed child of Jesus! Except for the murder, he would not have been prayed with, redeemed, pardoned. Clearly this man did well to murder, for thus he gained eternal happiness! And how about the victim, and his, or her family, relatives, dependents, social relations; has justice no recompense for them? Must they suffer in this world and the next, while he who wronged them sits beside the "holy thief" of Calvary, and is for ever blessed? On this question the clergy keep a prudent silence. (Isis Unveiled.) And now you know why Theosophists — whose fundamental belief and hope is justice for all, in Heaven as on earth, and in Karma — reject this dogma.

Enq. The ultimate destiny of man, then, is not a Heaven presided over by God, but the gradual transformation of matter into its primordial element, Spirit?

Theo. It is to that final goal to which all tends in nature.

Enq. Do not some of you regard this association or "fall of spirit into matter" as evil, and re-birth as a sorrow?

Theo. Some do, and therefore strive to shorten their period of probation on earth. It is not an unmixed evil, however, since it ensures the experience upon which we mount to knowledge and wisdom. I mean that experience which teaches that the needs of our spiritual nature can never be met by other than spiritual happiness. As long as we are in the body, we are subjected to pain, suffering and all the disappointing incidents occurring during life. Therefore, and to palliate this, we finally acquire knowledge which alone can afford us relief and hope of a better future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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