The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Spiritual science aims to show what can be gained in widening one's spiritual horizons. It can be said that for the purpose of gradually entering into the whole outlook inherent in spiritual research, anyone immersing himself in Herman Grimm?s spirit has the finest precepts.”—Rudolf Steiner, GA 62

This is a lecture, given by Rudolf Steiner, entitled Die Weltanschauung eines Kulturforschers der Gegenwart, Herman Grimm, und die Geistesforschung and contained in the volume Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung (Results of Spiritual Research) GA 62. The series in which this lecture was given at the Architektenhaus in Berlin, may be said to underline its overall importance for Rudolf Steiner: Held January 16th 1913 subsequent to a lecture January 30th on Raphael. Also known as, Herman Grimm, Contemporary Culture and Spiritual Developments, and Anthroposophy.

This single lecture is the 8th of 14 lectures in the lecture series entitled, Results of Spiritual Investigation, published in German as, Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung. Translated by Peter Stebbing

Translated by Peter Stebbing

It could easily appear as though what is set forth here as spiritual science stood in isolation to what is otherwise proclaimed and of a tone-setting nature in the cultural life of the present. However, it can only appear so to one who conceives of this spiritual science in a somewhat narrow-hearted sense, seeing in it nothing more than a sum of teachings and theories. On the other hand, whoever recognizes it as a spiritual stream open to new sources will become aware that parallels can be drawn to modern cultural life in various ways. It will be seen that this manner of viewing life called spiritual science can be applied to other, in some degree related directions. A direction of this sort is the subject of today's considerations—as represented by a prominent personality of modern cultural life, the art historian and researcher Herman Grimm.

Herman Grimm [the son of Wilhelm Grimm of the Brothers Grimm] was born in 1828 and died in 1901. He appears indeed as a quite characteristic figure of modern life, and yet he is, at the same time, so distinctive and unique as to stand apart. Today's considerations can connect especially well onto this personality. To anyone having occupied himself with Herman Grimm, he appears as a kind of mediator between all that relates to Goethe, and to our own spiritual life.

By reason of his marriage to the daughter of a personality, who stood close to the circle of Goethe, namely the sister of the romantic poet Clemons von] Brentano,[ Bettina Brentano [1785-1859], Herman Grimm was connected in a quite special sense with everything associated with the name of Goethe. Herman Grimm was related to her in that she was his mother-in-law, the same Bettina Brentano who had brought out Goethe's remarkable exchange of letters with a child. Bettina Brentano's unique memorial shows us Goethe enthroned like an Olympian, a musical instrument in his hands, while she presents herself as a child grasping at the strings. From the Frankfurt circle of La Roche, in her relation to Goethe she was able (like few others) to enter into Goethe's spirit. Even if some things as presented in the letters are inexact, being colourfully mixed together in various ways—a combination of poetry and truth—it still has to be said: Everything in this remarkable book, Goethes Brefwechsel mit einem Kinde [Goethe's Exchange of Letters with a Child], grew in a heartfelt manner out of sensing Goethe's whole outlook. In a wonderful way, it grants us an echo of his wisdom-imbued worldview. Bettina Brentano was married to the poet Achim von Arnim [l781-1831], who had contributed to bringing out the fine collection of folk poems called Des Knabens Wunderhorn [1806] [The Boy's Magic Horn]. By virtue of the connection with this circle—as mentioned, Gisela Grimm, Herman Grimm's wife, was one of the daughters of Bettina von Arnim—Herman Grimm grew up from youth onwards, as it were, amid personalities who stood in close proximity to Goethe. In all that he took up in his education, Herman Grimm absorbed something of an immediate, elemental spiritual breath of Goethe. Thus, he felt himself as belonging to all those who had stood personally close to Goethe, even though he was still a child the time of Goethe's death [in 1832J, rather than one who had “studied” Goethe and Goetheanism. Herman Grimm counted as having taken into himself, in a direct and personal way, something of Goethe's essential being, his magical power, his natural humanity.

With inner participation, Herman Grimm experienced the development of German cultural life during the decades of the mid-nineteenth century. In doing so, he established, so to say, his own “kingdom” within this German cultural life. He can be called a spirit who, in an individual manner, starts out from whatever stimulated him, that furthered the development of his own powers. In this way, out of the whole range of cultural life, a realm subdivided itself for Herman Grimm that suited his aims, a realm in which he felt at home. Within this domain in which Herman Grimm felt himself at home, he understood himself to be, lo to say, the spiritual “governor” with respect to Goethe. Goethe's spirit appeared to him as though it lived on. And in seeking out what derived from Goethe and what was compatible with him in cultural life, entering into this, it was always the essence of Goethe that he sought. This then became a yardstick for him in evaluating everything in cultural life.

These were decades of struggle in German cultural life, decades in which everything to do with Goethe receded, following his death. So much else of immediate everyday concern stood in the forefront, rather than what proceeded from Goethe. During that period, numerous other things asserted themselves in the cultural life of Germany, while little was heard of Goethe. On account of his connection with Goethe, Herman Grimm regarded himself as one whose task it was, quietly yet actively to cultivate and carry over Goethe's ethos to a future time that he certainly hoped would come, a time in which Goethe's star would shine out once more in the European spiritual firmament.

In that he regarded himself as, so to say, the “governor” of Goethe's spiritual domain, Herman Grimm stood somewhat apart in his relation to cultural matters. It seemed appropriate, if not self-evident to see him as having the air of a “lord.” Even in his stature, his physiognomy, his gestures, in his conduct, there was something about him suggestive of an aristocrat. And, it can be said: For anyone not accustomed to looking up to someone as to a lordly personality, Herman Grimm's whole demeanour as though compelled acknowledgement of the aforementioned status. I still fondly recall being together with Herman Grimm in Weimar, which he often liked to visit. On one occasion, he invited me as his only guest to a midday meal. We spoke about various matters that interested him. We also talked—and I was pleased that he wanted to have this conversation with me—about his comprehensive life-plans. And when a certain time had passed after the meal, he said, in his inimitable, humorous and quite natural manner, such that one accepted it from him as something innate, “Now, my dear Doctor, I wish graciously to dismiss you!” As though a matter of course, it actually made a self-evident impression on me. And it accorded with Herman Grimm's whole manner of conducting himself, so that, one granted him a certain air of lordliness.

Herman Grimm's whole lifework bears something of the same attribute. One cannot take up one of his major or minor writings, with their harmonious and so succinctly constructed sentences without feeling: all this affects one as though the author's personality stood behind it, regarding one with soulful participation. This contributes to the wonderful quality in Herman Grimm's writings. In every respect they are the product of his soul-imbued personality and have their immediate effect as such. In this way, his style takes on a certain justified, noble pathos. However, this noble pathos is mitigated everywhere by the individual, human element that breaks through. One accepts his style despite its elegance. Everywhere, one senses his origins in having sincerely absorbed Goethe's spirit. Yet this is not all; it becomes apparent that with him the Goethean element has undergone something of the development of German Romanticism. We sense in Herman Grimm's style a liberation from all that can broadly be termed “commonplace” or “customary.” We have the impression of a singular personality secluded within himself.

Herman Grimm's orientation could possibly have led to a certain one-sidedness, had something else not played a part, binding him closely to tradition; Herman Grimm was, after all, the, son of Wilhelm Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm. Known for inaugurating modern linguistic research, these two collected the German fairy tales that have in the meantime profoundly permeated German life. They listened to the sagas and fairy tales told them by simple folk, that were almost forgotten and remembered by only a few remaining souls. Brought to life again by the Brothers Grimm, they now live on.

Despite a refined style in everything he produced, Herman Grimm also had close ties to popular tradition, combining this with what might otherwise have been a one-sided direction. We still have to stress something further by which he appears harmonious and complete. In taking up the works of Herman Grimm, we encounter something of his adaptability—a capacity to connect with the various spiritual phenomena in which he immersed himself in the course of his life. A certain isolation is required for someone to submerge themselves fully in the phenomena and facts of past centuries. This adaptability, this quality of “softness” with regard to Herman Grimm acquires its “skeleton,” however, its necessary “hardness,” by reason of something else that intervened in his upbringing. Both his father and his uncle belonged to the “Göttingen Seven,” who in the year 1837 submitted their proclamation protesting the abolition of their country's constitution. They were consequently expelled from the University of Göttingen. Thus, already as a child, Herman Grimm experienced a significant event and its aftermath. For there were consequences both for his father and his uncle, in that they not only lost their positions, bur their daily bread as well, at the time. Herman Grimm often referred to how he had experienced historical change in this way, even already as a nine-year old boy, and not merely via book-learning.

At a time when little was said of Goethe in Germany, attention having been diverted to other things, Herman Grimm viewed himself as a representative of Goethe's ethos. But he did experience a resurgence of interest in Goethe and was himself able to contribute to it. At the beginning of the seventies of the nineteenth century, he was able to hold his famous Goethe lectures [“Goethe-Vorlesungen” 1874-75] at the University of Berlin, also published in book form. Anyone getting hold of it as a young person, and able to find the right relation to it, will undoubtedly speak of it in later years as being of special significance. And, as set forth in this book, Herman Grimm clearly shows himself as someone who knew the various ramifications of Goethe's soul life.

We gain a clear sense of how Herman Grimm viewed a personality such as Goethe. We find nothing of a small-minded biographical compulsion—to flush out all manner of more or less indifferent traits. Rather do we find an immersion in everything that was important for Goethe's development—the endeavour to pursue what Goethe experienced in life, what lived in his soul, and how this re-constituted itself, taking on form to become a creation, of Goethe's phantasy. How, he asks, in forgetting everything of a particular life experience, did this re-arise for Goethe to become the product of creative phantasy—a new experience?

Thus, in Herman Grimm's interpretation, Goethe raises his life-experiences a stage higher, to a sphere of pure spiritual contemplation. We see Goethe ascend to spiritual experiences. Herman Grimm demonstrates this with regard to each of Goethe's works. And we gladly follow him in pursuing this course, since with Herman Grimm nothing intrudes that can otherwise so easily enter into such a portrayal—that a single soul-force, e.g., reason or phantasy, becomes paramount, as it were, and one no longer feels the connection to immediate life. Herman Grimm goes no farther than he can go as an individual in contemplating Goethe's work. In the end, we are led by Herman Grimm to the point where the work takes its start from Goethe's life experience. One feels oneself transported everywhere into unmitigated spiritual life. Goethe becomes a sum of spiritual impulses. This breath of the spiritual extends throughout Herman Grimm's Goethe book.

What Herman Grimm ascribed to Goethe in this way has its roots deep in Herman Grimm's spiritual configuration. Long before commencing these considerations that led to his lectures on Goethe, a grand, a colossal idea had stood before him—the idea of viewing occidental cultural life as a whole in the same way he had done, individually, with regard to Goethe. The idea stood before his mind's eye of following three millennia of western cultural life so as to reveal everywhere how human sensibility transforms everyday events in the physical world to what the human soul experiences upon ascending to the realm of “creative phantasy,” as Herman Grimm called it. Thus, he becomes a unique kind of historian. For Herman Grimm, history was, so to say, something altogether different from what it is for other modern historians.

History is, after all, customarily studied in that documents, materials, are first collected, and from these the attempt is made to present a picture of humanity's development. Although materials, external facts, were of enormous importance for Herman Grimm, they were nonetheless not at all the main thing. He often entertained the thought: Could it not be that for some epoch or other precisely the most significant documents, the decisive ones, have disappeared without a trace—lost, so that one actually passes by the truth most of all in focussing too conscientiously and exactly on the documents? Hence, he was convinced that, in abiding most faithfully by external documents, one is least of all capable of providing a true picture of human development. Only a falsified picture could arise in keeping strictly to external documents alone.

However, something else has arisen in the cultural life of humanity. What took place outwardly, what happened has, thanks to leading individualities, undergone a spiritual rebirth. This is evidenced by personalities who have transformed it artistically, who have utilized it for cultural purposes. Thus, in looking back for instance to the time of ancient Greece, Herman Grimm said to himself: Some documents exist concerning this Greek age, but these are insufficient to enable one to understand the Greek world. Yet what the Greeks experienced has found its rebirth in the works of Greek art, has been re-enlivened by significant Greek personalities. Immersing oneself in them, letting the Greek spirit affect one, a truer picture of the Greek world is attained than in merely assembling external facts. In this way, the facts themselves disappeared, so to say, for Herman Grimm. One is inclined to say, they melted away from his world-picture. What remained in his world-picture was a continuous stream of what he called the creations of “folk-phantasy.”

In contemplating Julius Caesar, for example, he not only took account of the historical documents, he considered what Shakespeare had made of Caesar as of equal significance, comparable to what is contained in the existing documents. Through characteristic human beings he looked back at the age in question. For Herman Grimm, the course of humanity's development became something always handed on from one personality to another, seeing it as a spiritual process encompassed by what he termed creative phantasy. Proceeding from this point of view, he sought to gain a picture of the creative folk-phantasy at work in western culture—a sense of the actual course of events in the development of humanity, so as to be able to say: The epochs of western culture follow one upon the other, supersede each other—from the earliest epochs up to the present, i.e., from the oldest times to which he wished to return, up to his own period, the age of Goethe. They therefore represent an ongoing stream, the influence of folk phantasy within western cultures.

Starting out from this urge, he turned his attention early on to that grandiose phenomenon of western cultural life, Homer's “Iliad.” This occupied him for a period of time during the 1890s, leading to his truly exemplary book, Homer. One gladly takes up this volume again and again in wanting, from a modern viewpoint, to immerse oneself in the beginnings of the Greek world. Adopting his general standpoint, it shows us Herman' Grimm from another side. His gaze is directed to the world of the gods as depicted in Homer's “Iliad”—to the battling Greek and Trojan heroes, and the question arises for him: How do matters actually stand with regard to this interplay of the world of the gods with the normal human world of warring Greek and Trojan heroes? This becomes a question for him. It is indeed striking, what a tremendous difference there is in the Homeric portrayal, between the humans walking around and the nature of those beings described as immortal gods. And Herman Grimm attempts to present the gods in Homer's sense as portraying, so to say, an “older” class of beings wandering on the earth. Even if Herman Grimm, in his more realistic way, sees these beings as “human beings,” he does look back into a culture that in Homer's time had long lost its significance, a culture that had been superseded by another, to which the Greek and Trojan heroes belong. Thus, Herman Grimm has an older and a younger class of humanity play into one another in Homer's “Iliad;” and what has remained over of real effects of a class of beings that had lived previously, enters for Herman Grimm (in Homer's sense) into what takes place between Greece and Troy.

Herman Grimm saw the further progress of humanity in this way—as a continual supplanting of older cultural cycles by newer ones and an interplay of older cycles with newer ones. Each new cultural cycle has its task, that of introducing something new into the general development of humanity. The old remains extant for a while and still interacts with the new.

It can be said that what Herman Grimm investigated, to the extent possible in the last third of the nineteenth century, has now to be set forth once more from the point of view of spiritual science. He did not look further back than the Greek age. For this reason, he was unable to arrive at what recent spiritual research describes in looking to the lofty, purely spiritual beings of primeval antiquity, exalted above the human being. He did, however, frequently touch upon results of recent spiritual research—as nearly as anyone can without conducting such research themselves.

In going back to earlier stages in the development of humanity, we attempt, in spiritual research, to show that we do not arrive at the animal species in the sense of the Darwinian theory that is interpreted materialistically nowadays. Rather, we attempt to show that we come to purely spiritual ancestors of the human being. Prior to the cycle of humanity in which human souls live in physical bodies, there is another cycle of humanity in which human beings did not yet incorporate themselves in physical bodies. Herman Grimm leaves the question undecided, so to say, as to what was actually involved with the “gods,” before human beings stepped onto the earth. However, he does recognize the ordered sequence of such cycles of humanity. And this results in an important point of contact with what spiritual science presents. That he takes account of such regular periodic stages taking place ~~ brings him especially close to us.

He attempts to extend his spiritual observations over three millennia. The first millennium for him is the Greek millennium. With Herman Grimm, one is inclined to say, there is something like an undertone in his manner of characterizing the Greeks, as though he were to say: In looking to the Greeks, they do not appear constituted like human beings of today, particularly in the oldest periods. Even someone like Alcibiades [ca. 450-404 B.C.] appears to us like a kind of fairy-tale prince, it is as though one beheld what is superhuman. Still, out of this Greek world that, as already mentioned, Herman Grimm presents as being altogether unlike the later human world, there towers ell that arose in the subsequent Greek world end in what follows, becoming the most important constituent of our cultural life. And finally, at the end of the first thousand years contemplated by Herman Grimm, the most significant impulse in humanity's development stands before his soul: the Christ impulse.

Herman Grimm is sparing in what he has to say about the figure of Christ, just as he is restrained in various other matters. But the occasional observations he makes show that he would as little go along with those who would “dissolve” Christ, as it were, to the point of a mere thought impulse, as he would go along with those who want to see Christ Jesus only in human terms. He emphasizes that two kinds of impulses actually proceed from the figure of Christ—one of colossal strength, that continues to work on throughout the further development of humanity—and the other impulse which consists in immense gentleness. Herman Grimm sees the entire second millennium of western cultural development taking shape in such a way that the Greek world is as though absorbed by the Christ impulse and the resulting mixture of Christianity and Greekness is incorporated into the Roman world, overcoming it. Out of this something quite unique arises. That is his second millennium, the first Christian millennium. The Roman element is not the main thing for him, but rather the Christian impulses. Everything of a political or external nature disappears for Herman Grimm in this millennium. He looks everywhere at how the manifold Christ impulse makes itself felt. His conception of Christ is neither narrow. nor small, but broad. When a book on the life of Jesus, La Vie de Jesus [1863], by Ernest Renan was published, Herman Grimm referred to it in the periodical he edited at the time, “Künstler und Kunstwerke” [Artists and Works of Art]; he attempted to show how pictorial representations of the Christ figure had undergone changes over the centuries both in the visual arts and in literature. He sought to demonstrate how the Christ impulse undergoes changes. He pointed out that people had always conceived of the Christ impulse according to their own outlook. In Ernest Renan he saw an instance of someone in the nineteenth century who conceived of Christ once again in a narrow sense only.

In Herman Grimm's view, Christianity needed about a thousand years to send its impulses into the rivulets and streams of western spiritual life. Then came the third millennium, the second Christian one, in which we still find ourselves today. It is the millennium at the dawn of which spirits such as Dante and Giotto arose, as also artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and so on, followed by the works of Shakespeare and Goethe. These cycles in the development of humanity, an ongoing stream_, he spoke of as an expression of the being of creative phantasy. Again and again Herman Grimm sought to present in lectures give to his students, this rhythmically subdivided, ongoing stream of humanity's development. Herman Grimm aimed to show how single creations had their place within the unbroken flow.

Thus, for him, Michelangelo, along with Raphael, Savonarola, Shakespeare and others, such as Goethe, were in a manner of speaking the spiritual constituents that become explicable on seeing them against the background of the ongoing stream of creative phantasy. For Herman Grimm this was especially apparent at the source, in the ninth or the tenth century before our era, with Homer. Thus, Herman Grimm addresses himself in an immediate way to the human soul, in drawing our attention to a specific work of art—be it Raphael's “'Marriage of Mary and Joseph,” a painting, of the Madonna, or one of the creations of Leonardo da Vinci, or. later, of Goethe. He grants us the feeling of standing as though directly within the unique qualities of the particular work. In considering with him the arrangement of colours, the figures and their gestures, while standing inwardly before the work of art, there emerges for us something like a tableau of the entire progress of humanity—now called forth by a single entity in that onward-flowing, all-encompassing stream of creative phantasy—over three millennia.

Thus, with Herman Grimm, one is first conducted into the intimate aspects of the work of art in question and is then led up to the summit from which the total stream can be surveyed. However, that is not something he considered in a theoretical manner. It seemed entirely natural for Herman Grimm to look at the totality of the onward flowing spiritual stream of humanity's development in this way. As he explained it to me, as mentioned at a midday meal, with his whole soul. he actually lived, as a matter of course, within this spiritual stream, and he could not look at a single phenomenon in any other way than as though it were excerpted from this mighty stream of humanity's development.

The whole of western cultural development, seen as folk phantasy, stood before his soul, though not as a general abstract idea, but filled with real content. He saw himself as inwardly connected with this luminous content extending over millennia, such that everything he wrote appears to one as individual segments of an enormous work. Even in only reading a' book review by Herman Grimm, one has the impression as though it were cut out from a colossal work setting forth the whole development of humanity. One feels oneself positively placed before such a colossal work, having opened it, and as though one were reading a few pages in it. It is the same with an article or an essay by Herman Grimm. And one comprehends how Herman Grimm could say of himself, in the evening of his life, in writing the preface to his collection of Fragments, that the idea had floated before him of a portrayal of the ongoing stream of folk phantasy, and that therein the whole of western culture had appeared to him, A particular subject he had pursued appeared as if it had been taken out of a finished work. However, he placed no more value on what had been printed than on what he had only written down, and on what he had written down, no more value than on what lived in his thoughts.

In referring to this, one would like to add a further impression, without putting it into an abstract formula—having been fond of Herman Grimm, remaining so, and in valuing his work and the kind of person he was. Herman Grimm was never able to reach the point of actually carrying out what stood before his mind's eye as something so beautiful, so colossal, so magnificent that even his works on Homer, on Raphael, on Michelangelo, on Goethe, appear to us as fragments of this comprehensive, unwritten work. We read the lines of the introduction to the Fragments mentioned above with a certain feeling of wistfulness. He states there that, though it would most likely not come about, it would perhaps be feasible to rework into a book what he had to say to his students year after year—and newly revised every year—concerning the progression of European cultural life in the last form these lectures took. One reads these lines today the more wistfully, as it did indeed not come to such a rewriting. We had to see Herman Grimm pass away, knowing what lived in his soul intended for present-day culture—having this sink with him into the grave.

We have characterized the sweeping cultural horizons underlying Herman Grimm's written works. Spiritual science intends to show what can be gained in widening one's spiritual horizons. It can be said that for the purpose of gradually entering into the whole outlook inherent in spiritual research, anyone immersing himself in Herman Grimm's spirit has the finest precepts. Apart from the breadth of his horizons, we see how he approached the phenomena, how his thoughts and feelings led him to everything he wrote in his comprehensive works on Homer, Raphael, Michelangelo and Goethe. And, bearing in mind what is set forth in his other writings, one sees that Herman Grimm distinguishes himself in significant ways from other spirits, in possessing attributes belonging to the kind of soul-deepening we have spoken of in describing the path the soul has to take in order to enter the spiritual worlds.

We have stressed that for the spiritual path, the intensity of soul-forces has to become greater. Deeper soul-forces are to be called forth that otherwise slumber. Inner strength, inner courage and boldness are required to a greater extent than in ordinary life; concepts are to be grasped more sharply. The soul needs to identify itself more fully with its own being, with the forces of thinking, feeling and willing. Initial signs of this are evident everywhere with Herman Grimm, by which he was, for example, in a position to describe works of art in such an intimate and personal way, as in the case of Raphael and Michelangelo. This is a precursor, however, to further illuminating the spiritual world. The basis of Herman Grimm's historical research does not lie in what is nowadays called “objectivity,” but in his allying himself with the cultural phenomena he portrays, as accords with the spiritual world. In this way, wholly forgetting itself and yet in a rare sense conscious of itself, the soul immerses itself in the corresponding cultural manifestation.

This becomes particularly evident when he directs his attention to a single cultural phenomenon, such as Raphael, elevating this to the overall stream of human spiritual life. His impressions then become bold, powerful ideas—and what others do not venture to say with the same shade of feeling, or with the same subtlety of ideas, Herman Grimm does venture, becoming in this way a representative of the spirit. And he then stands before us with such boldness that we are sometimes reminded of the Gospel writers. It is just that they wrote more in keeping with mysticism, while Herman Grimm wrote in the sense of a modern spiritual discourse. Just as the Gospels reach upward to attain the horizon of mankind as a whole, so Herman Grimm reaches upward with his Raphael book to the horizon of mankind as a whole.

It is miraculous when, in his audacious way—seemingly tearing his soul out of himself and striding as though alongside Raphael—as in an overall stream of evolution—he erupts in words that can truly tell us more than any mere presentation of world history: “Raphael is a citizen of world-history; He is like one of the four rivers that according to the belief of the ancient world flowed out of Paradise.”

In letting such a sentence duly affect one, Herman Grimm's perception of Raphael takes on an altogether different character, compared to what other authors have to say. Hence, for Herman Grimm, the various personalities of history merge into the overall stream of spiritual life. It could also be said, he brings the highest spiritual spheres down to the personal element. And in speaking the following heartfelt words, Herman Grimm further expresses his relation to leading cultural figures:

“If, by some miracle, Michelangelo were called from the dead, to live among us again, and if I were to meet him, I would humbly stand aside to let him pass; if Raphael came by, I would follow him, to see whether or not I might have the opportunity of hearing a few words from his lips. With Leonardo and Michelangelo one can confine oneself to reporting what they once were in their day; with Raphael one has to start from what he is for us today. Concerning the two others, a slight veil has passed over them, but not over Raphael. He belongs among those whose growth is as yet far from being at an end. we may imagine that Raphael will present ever new riddles to future-generations of humanity.” [Fragments, Vol. II, p.170]

This counts as a characteristic mood, rather than as something normally objective in the sense of what is normally demanded nowadays. But if does describe matters in such a way that we feel ourselves transposed, in an immediate way to what had lived in Herman Grimm's soul in writing- such sentences. It becomes understandable that such a spirit had to struggle in coming to terms with such a world-historical figure as Raphael. Oddly, as he himself relates, it was quite different for him, in describing the life of Michelangelo. The portrayal of the life of Michelangelo by Herman Grimm is a marvellous document, though in some respects perhaps, it counts today as having been surpassed. Seen against the background of the life of that time, the figure of Michelangelo stands out significantly from other figures—as also from the unique description of the city of Florence. Herman Grimm places a tableau before us in contrasting two spiritual entities, Athens and Florence. With that, the weaving together of three millennia as characterized by Herman Grimm, appears as a mighty background upon which Dante and Giotto appear, along with other painters of that time—followed by figures such as Savonarola, and finally Michelangelo himself, evident.

It becomes evident that Herman Grimm responded differently to Raphael and his surroundings than to Goethe, while presenting everything with no less familiarity. In the case of Herman Grimm's Goethe portrayal, we sense everywhere that he had grown up as a spiritual descendant of Goethe. With his Michelangelo portrayal, we feel how he enters into everything personally, wandering the streets, visiting every palace in Florence. ... other matters, as it were. Besides personally acquainting himself with other matters, he succeeds in standing as it were, before Michelangelo, and in depicting his actual manner of working. All this is as though cast from the same mould.

This differs from what he presents concerning Raphael. There we sense a wrestling with the material, with the spiritual image of Raphael. It is as though Herman Grimm were never able to achieve satisfaction. He describes having taken up the material again and again, while nothing appeared adequate to him of what he had already published. That was true even of his last works—of what he finally attempted as a portrayal of Raphael's personality. This remained a fragment, appearing in the collection of essays entitled Raphael as a World Power, from which the sentences derive that were just read out.

Why did Herman Grimm struggle with the material, precisely in the case of Raphael? It is because he could only present something to his own satisfaction in uniting himself completely with the material. In Raphael, however, he saw a spirit characterized in the words quoted: “Raphael is a citizen of world-history. He is like one of the four rivers that, according to the belief of the ancient world, flowed out of paradise.” And thus, with every statement applied to him, Raphael grew to giant size. Herman Grimm could never be satisfied, since he could not capture this “world-power” in a book. If the comprehensive breadth and grace of his spirit is evident in the portrayals of Homer, Michelangelo and Goethe with his Raphael discourse we see the profound uprightness, the profound honesty of Herman Grimm's personality.

Whoever takes up his book on Homer will possibly find it not scholarly enough. But Herman Grimm states on the very first page, that this book is not meant to be a contribution to Homer research. As already set forth; here, Herman Grimm could conduct himself in this and similar matters much like a spiritual “lord.” Thus, it appears quite natural that, in collecting his ideas on Goethe for publication, he boldly started out from the view that every other book he had come across concerning Goethe fell short. What seems like brazenness to some, can be taken for granted in the context of his literary and artistic abilities.

That is how he relates to everything in cultural life. Hence for those who adhere to the standpoint of erudite scholars, Herman Grimm's Homer book may seem intolerable. All the many questions that have been raised concerning Homer—whether or not he actually lived, whether the “Iliad” was put together from so and so many details, and so forth—all that did not concern him. He took it as it was. In this way, however, it became clear to him how wonderfully it is composed, how what comes later always refers to what preceded it. Everything that shows this inherent composition appears to us inwardly coherent. But apart from that, what appears most salutary for a spiritual researcher, is his immersion in the soul-life of the Homeric heroes. Everywhere, we see Herman Grimm's soul-imbued style extend to the soul-life of Homer's heroes. Everywhere we see the Achilles-soul comprehended, the Agamemnon-soul, the Odysseus-soul, and so on. As a description of souls, this book is overpowering in its effect, in spite of the familiarity of the stylistic presentation! We are led not only to the heights of historical contemplation, but also deep into the souls of the single Homeric figures, some scholars will inevitably say, Herman Grimm has taken the “Iliad” at face value, with disregard for the whole of Homer research and all preliminary study, accepting it verse for verse! Indeed, he does so—quite “amateurishly”—and the dry conclusion could then be: There someone has written a book without any preliminary study.

Did Herman Grimm in fact write this book without any preliminary study? Anyone concerning himself with the works of Herman Grimm will find the preliminary studies, only they look different from the preliminary studies of the usual experts. The preliminary studies of Herman Grimm lay in soul studies, in immersing himself in the secrets of the human soul. And one can convince oneself that no one could have shed such light on the Homeric heroes without those preliminary studies. Herman Grimm looks for what held sway in Homer's Phantasy. But what he says reveals him to be the finest knower of human souls. We may expect remarkable things of him in considering the way viewed Homer's heroes—from Achilles to Agamemnon to Odysseus. How did he find the words to write, in his Homer book and other works, what can seem to the researcher so uncommonly spiritual? He was able to do so on account of quite definite preliminary studies. And these are to be found among the works of Herman Grimm's first period.

Above all, we have the wonderful collection of novellas [1862] that is perhaps less read today than other modern products of its kind. However, these should be read by those who take an interest in spiritual things. As a collection of novellas, it is an intensive attempt to get to know human souls, to fathom human secrets and the soul's activity beyond the physical plane. The first of these novellas, “The Singer,” belongs to Herman Grimm's earliest phase as an author. In this work it is shown how a man acquires a deep, passionate yearning for a woman of a broad spiritual nature. However, these two personalities are never able to come together. The woman sends this ardent man away from her social circle, while everything lives on in the man's soul in the way of impulses that drew him to her. On the other hand, what proceeds from his soul saps at his bodily strength. Set forth as corresponds to spiritual research, we see him gradually destabilized in his soul. He is taken in by a friend to live on his estate, becoming, however, entangled again in the woman's “net.” The friend recognizes that it is high time to fetch this person his friend adheres to so completely. She does come—but too late. Whereas she is in front of the house, the individual concerned shoots himself.

And now comes something, taken up unreservedly in spiritual research, which Herman Grimm so often touches upon in artistic expression, but allows to devolve into indefiniteness. Briefly and succinctly he describes how, in the singer's imagination the deceased lives on. The scene is unforgettable in which, feeling her entire guilt in the death of this man, she sees him approaching from the realm of the dead, night after night. This now fills the content of her soul. It is not described as being a mere figment of her imagination, but in the sense of someone who knows there are secrets that reach beyond the grave. It is a wonderful description, that tells how the friend plants himself in front of the woman when she says the deceased comes to her—continuing right up to her final letter to the friend, in which she expresses that she herself now feels close to death. For her, the deceased, to whom she was so closely bound, had drawn her towards him from the realm of the dead. Probably no modern author has found the right tone, in touching on the spiritual world with such sincerity.

In spiritual research we present how, in going through the portal of death, what otherwise always remains united with the human being—also in sleep—the so-called etheric body, raises itself along with the higher soul-members, out of the physical body, passing over into the spiritual world. In the field of spiritual research, we draw a picture of how the corpse-remains behind and how the human being with his ether body loosens himself, step by step, one member after the other, from the physical body. The etheric body is then for a time the enclosure for the higher soul-members of the human being. That is an idea with which those who approach closer to spiritual research can become more and more conversant. In what follows we shall be able to consider in what an admirable way the artistic soul of Herman Grimm touches upon these facts of the spiritual world. This will lead us again to the question as to why, for deeper reasons, Herman Grimm did not develop his cultural discourse into a comprehensive work.

Apart from his novella, Herman Grimm wrote a further work, a novel, Unüberwindliche Mächte [1867], [Insurmountable Powers], in which, as with his work in general, his refined style leads us to a contemplation of the world and of life. Particularly remarkable is what might be called the clash of two cultures in miniature. The one world adheres to title, status and rank. Deriving from an old lineage, an impoverished count lives in the afterglow of his hierarchical status. Wonderfully contrasted in this novel is the way in which the world of old prejudices and rankings encounters the New World. The quite different views and notions of America play into this. The individual identifying himself with hierarchical prejudices, whom Herman Grimm calls Arthur, encounters Americans. He meets Emmy, the daughter of Mrs. Forster, who has grown up with American values. We see this count passionately enraptured by Emmy.

It would be impossible even to outline the rich content of this novel adequately. We encounter the whole contrast of Europe and America. In addition, there is the contrast of the old Prussian milieu and the newly constituted Prussian milieu arising as the outcome of wars. It is a tremendous cultural “painting” in which the characters are featured, and from which they emerge. Only this much can be indicated: that, as a result of the confluence of these streams, Arthur, the count, dies a tragic death right before he was to marry Emmy. A deluded relative considers himself the rightful heir to the count's lineage, seeing the count as a bastard. Stung with envy and jealousy, he opposes the count, and on the eve of his marriage, the count is shot down by this individual.

Someone wanting to contemplate this novel merely rationalistically might consider it as concerned with the unbridgeable prejudice outstanding, However, the expression “insurmountable powers” can perhaps hardly seem more justified than when Herman Grimm, unintentionally indicates the idea of karma, the idea of the causal connection of destinies in human life—as though knotted together one after another. We see him depict forces at work in destiny that can only come into play in working over from earlier embodiments—from previous earth-lives. He does not describe this in speaking theoretically of “forces” or of “karma,” but in simply letting the facts speak for themselves, giving expression to these powers that, then appear in a certain way corresponding to the ideas of spiritual research. We see a karmic destiny unfold; we see insurmountable karmic powers come to expression. And we see something further:

Emmy remains behind. The final glance that fell into Arthur's eyes as he lay there, his heart shot through, was when she bent over him and their eyes met in a certain expression. An utterance of Herman Grimm remains unforgettable, in saying, the spirit gave way at the moment his eyes assumed the peculiarity of appearing as no more than physical instruments. But now we encounter once more Herman Grimm's penetration of worlds that lie beyond death—what one would like to call his chaste penetration of worlds out of which souls work on, in remaining real once they have gone through the portal of death.

In a brief concluding chapter, Herman Grimm shows us Emmy gradually becoming infirm. It is entirely characteristic of his close connection to matters of soul and spirit, that he describes Emmy's approaching death. She is brought to Montreux. Montreux and its surroundings are uniquely described. However, Herman Grimm does not describe Emmy's passing like authors who have no relation to spiritual matters, but rather as someone taking account of how the secrets of death, of the realm beyond, speak to the soul. I would render something incomplete if I did not add in conclusion Herman Grimm's own words on the death of Emmy:

“This was Emmy's dream.

“Between midnight and morning, she believed she woke up.

“Her initial glance at the window, through which a pale light streamed in, was free and clear and she knew where she was. She also heard her mother, who slept next to her, breathing, However, a moment later, with a sense of pressure she had never felt before, overwhelming anxiety overcame her. It was no longer the thoughts that had tormented her during the last few days, but as though a giant hand were holding all the world's mountains over her by a thin thread, and that at any moment the fingers holding them could loosen, and the whole mass would fall down on her, to remain lying on her eternally. Her eyes wandered hither and thither looking for a glimmer of light, but there was none; the light of the window extinguished, her mother's breathing no longer audible, and stifling loneliness all around, as though she would never come alive again. She wanted to call out, but could not; she wanted to touch herself, but not a limb obeyed her. All was completely silent, completely dark; no thoughts could be grasped in this frightful, monotonous anxiety: even memory was taken from het—and then, at last a thought returned: Arthur!

“And wondrously now, it was as if this one thought had transformed itself into a point of light that became visible to the eyes. And to the extent the thought grew to become boundless longing, this light grew, spreading out, and suddenly, as though it sprang apart and unfolded itself, it took on form—Arthur stood before her! She saw him, she recognized him at last. It was surely he himself. He smiled and was close beside her. She did not see whether he was naked, nor whether he was clothed: but it was him, she knew him too well; it was he himself, no mere phantom that had taken on his form.”

Thus, Herman Grimm has the one who has long since gone through the portal of death approach her, now a seeress; at the moment of her death she approaches the deceased, addressing his soul: “She did not see whether he was naked, nor whether he was clothed: but it was him, she knew him too well; it was he himself, no mere phantom that had taken on his form.”

“He stretched out his hand to her and said, ‘Cornel’ Never had his voice sounded as sweet and enticing as now. With all the strength she was capable of, she tried to raise her arms towards him, but she was unable to do so. He came still closer and stretched out his hand closer to her, ‘Come!’ he said again.

“For Emmy it was as though the power with which she attempted to bring at least a word over her lips, would have been capable of moving mountains, but she was not able to say even this one word.

“Arthur looked at her, and she at him. With only the possibility of moving a finger, she would have touched him. And now, most terrible of all: he appeared to shrink back again! ‘Come!’ he said for the third time. Sensing he had spoken for the last time, that the terrible darkness would break in again upon his heavenly gaze, filled now with a fear that tore at. Her as frost splits trees, she made a final attempt to raise her arms to him. It was impossible to overcome the weight and the cold that held her captive—but then, as a bud bursts open, from which a blossom grows before our eyes, there grew out of her arms, other shining arms, out of her shoulders, gleaming new shoulders. And lifting these arms toward Arthur's arms, his hands grasping her hands, and floating slowly backwards, drawing her after him, the whole magnificent figure with him, rose out of Emmy's.”

The emergence of the etheric body out of the physical body cannot be described more wonderfully, in having been undertaken by a pure artist-soul. That was a spirit, that was a soul that lived in Herman Grimm, of which we may say that it came close to what we seek so eagerly in spiritual research. Herman Grimm provides evidence that, in approaching the -twentieth century, the modern human being sought paths to spiritual life.

So we turn gladly to Herman Grimm, wanting only to continue further on the same path. We see him elevate the creations of Raphael, the creations of Michelangelo, the experiences of Goethe, the Greek-soul of Homer, to the stream that he sees flowing onward as “creative phantasy” through millennia. We then know how close Herman Grimm was, in his entire feeling and perception, to what lives and weaves as the soul-spiritual behind all physical reality. For when Herman Grimm refers to his “creative phantasy” we are not dealing with total abstraction. In so far as it is still perhaps a matter of residual abstraction, to that extent it can seem necessary to break through the thin wall separating Herman Grimm from the living spirit, effective not only as creative phantasy, but living as immediate spirit_s effective behind the entire sense world. It could appear a form of unwarranted restraint, to say no.- more than Herman Grimm in speaking of the continual onward working of the phantasy of humanity. After all, as an artist, he touched so intimately on the still living soul that has gone through the portal of death. Hence, it will not be difficult for us, where Herman Grimm speaks of creative phantasy, to see the living spirit that, as spiritual researchers, we seek behind the sense world.

Perhaps it will not seem unjustified if it is even asserted that-, for a spirit that struggled so honestly and uprightly for truth—wanting to approach this creative phantasy ever and again—it was, after all, too much of an abstraction for him. It urged him to grasp the living spiritual element, and for that reason the great work he intended could not come about—since if it had been written, it would have had to become a work that portrayed the spiritual world not merely as creative phantasy, but as a world of creative beings and individualities.

Spiritual research has not been placed into the modern age arbitrarily. It is demanded by seeking souls of our time—seeking souls to whom, as we have seen, Herman Grimm.so-clearly and. characteristically belongs. In this way we can become aware that with spiritual research we do not stand as alien and isolated in modern cultural life. We have been able to look to Herman Grimm as to a related spirit. Even if he does not share the same standpoint completely, we do nonetheless stand—or can at least stand, immeasurably near to him. It is better to contemplate such a figure as a whole, rather than scrutinizing every detail—to look at the harmony of soul with which Herman Grimm can affect us, its mildness and then again keenness and strength of soul, with which he can likewise affect us. We may treat this or that question differently from Herman Grimm, but I know that it is not altogether out of keeping with his style, if I summarize what I actually wanted to say in the following words; One could arrive at the thought—let us call it for that matter a delusory thought, one that could be entertained as a beautiful illusion: If higher spirits, other-worldly spirits wanted to acquaint themselves prefer with what happens on the earth by means of reading, they would prefer most of all to read such writings as those in which Herman Grimm depicts the earthly destinies of human beings.

This feeling can reverberate as though from almost every line of Herman Grimm's writings, lifting one upwards to a sphere beyond the earth. One then feels so akin to this personality that, if one were to characterize what has been said today concerning Herman Grimm, a beautiful saying could come to mind that he himself employed in eulogizing his friend Treitschke [Heinrich von Treitschke, German historian, 1834-56] whom he valued so much.

“With what existential joy did this human being stand in life. What courage he showed in battle. What a gift lie had for language. How new his latest book. How little could those take exception to his ‘elbows’ in the general exchange of ideas. They too will join in declaring: ‘Yes, he was one of ours!’”

These words are at the same time the last words that Herman Grimm wrote and had printed, as we know from the publisher of his works, Reinhold Steig. And I should like also, in conclusion, to summarize this evening's considerations with the words: With what existential joy did Herman Grimm stand in life; how mild—and yet how individual! How little can even those distance themselves from him, if they but understand themselves aright, who differ from him in their ideas and in other ways! And, proceeding from whatever field of investigation, how closely allied to him must those feel who seek paths to the spirit! What kinship to him must they feel, when his mild figure appears before them—prompting them to break out in the words: Yes, he was one of ours!

Pitfalls await those on the path of spiritual knowledge. Dr. Steiner's poignant depiction of self-love can be especially helpful. This love rises like a force of nature in one who follows a spiritual path. He also explores the encounter with the double, the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, the role of fear, and the polar tendencies toward phenomenology and mysticism.

Lecture 12 of 14 from the volume: Results of Spiritual Investigation The volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner containing the original text of the this lecture, among eight others, is entitled: Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung, (No. 62 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961).

Just as it is of great significance in every realm of human endeavor and investigation to know not only the path of truth but also the sources of error, so it is especially the case in the realm dealt with by our lectures here, the realm of spiritual science, of spiritual investigation. In this realm one has to do not only with sources of error that can be eliminated to a certain extent through judgment and reasoning but with sources of error that accompany every step of the spiritual investigation of truth. One has to do with errors that must be not only refuted but overcome, conquered. Only by knowing them in such a way that one keeps, as it were, a spiritual eye on these experiences in their character as error will it be possible to guard oneself against them. It is not possible in relation to this realm to speak of individual truths or errors, but it is necessary to be clear through which activity of the soul, through which confusion of the soul, man can fall into untruth on the path of spiritual investigation.

It is easy to grasp that one wishing to penetrate to the super-sensible world first needs a healthy organ of perception, just as healthy sense organs are needed for outer sense observation. The second thing one needs, in addition to the organ of perception, is a corresponding development of clarity of consciousness, which can clearly oversee and judge the observations. Even in ordinary sense observation of life it is necessary that we have not only healthy senses but also a healthy consciousness, that is, a consciousness not befogged or confused, not paralyzed in a certain way. Both these qualities of the soul life in a higher stage come to be of even greater significance in the realm of spiritual investigation. A comparison from ordinary sense observation will help us to understand this. Suppose someone has an abnormally developed eye, for example. He will not be in a position to observe objects in as accurate and unprejudiced a way as they should be seen. From hundreds of possible examples let us consider just this one. A very significant natural scientist of our day, who is not in the least inclined to submit willingly to any delusion, had a certain eye condition, and he described in his biographical sketch how this eye condition misled him, particularly at dusk, causing him to see things unclearly and, through this unclear seeing, to arrive at false judgments. He described, for example, how he often walked through darkness and, due to his eye condition, would see a figure that he took to be real but that was nothing other than something called forth by his abnormal eye. He then related how he once went around the corner in a strange city and, because he believed the city to be unsafe, his eye induced him to see someone approaching and wishing to assault him; he even pulled out a weapon to defend himself. He therefore was not in a condition, despite complete knowledge of his organ impairment, to judge the situation correctly, to recognize that what his eye called forth was not there at all. Errors can occur in this way in all our sense organs. I bring this up only as a comparison.

In the recent lectures it was described how the human being, through a certain inner cultivation, evolution, of his soul, can develop into a real spiritual investigator, how he brings into use real organs of spirit through which he can look into the super-sensible world. These spiritual organs must be developed in the right way to make it possible to behold—in an analogy with sense perception—not caricature and untruth but the truth, the reality, of higher spiritual worlds. As we have seen, this development of the higher spiritual organs, which can be brought about by a rightly applied concentration, contemplation, and meditation, depends upon the starting point in ordinary, everyday life. Every human being who wishes to evolve upward to a view of the spiritual world must, and this is quite natural and proper, take his starting point from ordinary soul development, from what is right and normal for everyday life and also for ordinary science. Only from this starting point, by taking into the soul those mental processes (Vorstellungsarten) that we have presented as meditations and as other exercises, can the soul ascend again to an observation of the spiritual world.

The problem now is that at the starting point, that is, before the beginning of a spiritual training, the future spiritual investigator must be in possession of a sound power of judgment, a capacity for judgment proceeding from true conditions. Every starting point that does not result from a sound power of judgment, that surrenders itself to the object, leads to unsound organs of spiritual observation, which can be compared to abnormally developed sense organs. Here we are again at the point that we have often mentioned in previous lectures: the significance of what one can designate as the soul life of the spiritual investigator before he begins his development as a spiritual investigator, his training for spiritual investigation. An unsound power of judgment, lacking ability to observe objects in their reality, leads man to see facts and beings of the spiritual world as distorted or, as we shall see today, in many false ways. This is, as it were, the first important point in all development toward spiritual investigation. Spiritual scientific training makes it necessary to take as one's starting point a sound power of judgment, an interest in the true relationships of existence, even before the path to the super-sensible worlds is embarked upon. Everything that readily surrenders itself to illusion in the soul, that readily judges in an arbitrary way, that represents in the soul a certain unsound logic, leads also to the development of unsound spiritual organs.

The other starting point that is of essential significance is the moral mood of soul. The moral ability, the moral force, is as important as sound logic and intelligence, for if unsound logic, if unsound intelligence, lead to faulty spiritual organs, so will a cowardly (schwachmuetig) or immoral mood at the beginning of the spiritual training lead one ascending into the spiritual world to a certain fogginess, a “stupor”, we could call it. One thus faces the higher world in a state of what one must designate as a kind of paralysis, even a loss of consciousness (Ohnmacht). It must be noted, however, that in the stage of soul development referred to here, that which is called losing consciousness, a stupor, cannot be compared with the loss of consciousness, the paralysis, of ordinary, everyday consciousness. In ordinary consciousness, losing consciousness occurs in relation to the areas of everyday life. Losing consciousness in the spiritual world means a stupor, a fogging; it means the saturation of consciousness with all that can stem from the ordinary sense world or from the ordinary experience of the day. The spiritual investigator who is in error cannot be befogged or unconscious to the same degree as in ordinary consciousness, but he can be unconscious in relation to the spiritual world by being filled in the spiritual field of consciousness with that which has justification only through its properties and way of appearing in ordinary sense and intellectual consciousness.

By taking such elements along into the spiritual world, the spiritual investigator dims his higher consciousness. The matter can be presented in the following way. Dimming of consciousness, impairment of the ordinary behavior of soul in everyday life, is like a penetration of sleep or of the dreams into the clear, everyday consciousness. A stupor, a fogging of the higher, super-sensible consciousness, however, is like a penetration of ordinary, everyday consciousness—the consciousness that we carry around with us in the ordinary world—into that consciousness in which it no longer belongs, into the consciousness that should oversee and judge the facts of the higher, super-sensible worlds purely and clearly. Any kind of immoral or weak moral mood, any kind of moral untruthfulness, leads to such a fogging of super-sensible consciousness. Among the essential and most significant aspects of preparing for a spiritual scientific training, therefore, is a corresponding moral development, and, if you go through my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, you will find special practices for the soul through which this appropriate moral mood can be established. Of particular damage in this striving is everything that overcomes man in ordinary life in the way of vanity, ambition, the ordinary sense of self, and a particular sympathy for this or that experience. Inner tranquility, impartiality, a loving penetration of things and worlds, an attentive interest in everything life offers, but especially a certain moral courage, a standing up for what one recognizes as true, are proper starting points for a spiritual scientific training.

From what has been said in preceding lectures, it should be clear that all spiritual training consists of an awakening of certain spiritual forces that exist in the soul but that slumber in ordinary life and must be developed. The spiritual organs and the super-sensible consciousness can be developed only when forces lying peacefully in the depths of the soul, forces that are weak or not at all developed in ordinary life, are really brought into consciousness.

The following can be seen from what has been said. Two things appear when man, through appropriate meditation, through concentrating his whole life of soul on individual mental images called into consciousness by his free will, tries to draw forth these forces resting in the depths of his soul. First, a quality that is always present in the soul but that in ordinary life can be kept relatively in check will be intensified, along with the other slumbering qualities in the depths of the soul; spiritual development cannot take place in any other way than by the whole soul life becoming in a certain respect inwardly more active, more infused with energy. This quality that is intensified at the same time as the others that one is trying directly to intensify one can call human self-love, sense of self. One could say that one begins to know this human self-love, this sense of self, only when one goes through a spiritual scientific training; only then does one begin to know how deep within the human soul this self-love slumbers. As has been pointed out already, he who engages in the exercises described in past lectures, thus intensifying his soul forces, notices at a certain moment in his development that another world enters his soul life. He must be able to notice, to have the knowledge to recognize, that the first form (Gestalt) in which the new, super-sensible world appears is nothing other than a projection, a shadow image, of his own inner soul life. These forces that he has developed in his soul life appear to him first in a mirror image. This is the reason that the materialistic thinker easily mistakes what appears in the soul life of the spiritual investigator for what can appear in the unhealthy soul life as illusions, visions, hallucinations, and the like. That objections from this side rest on ignorance of the facts has often been pointed out; this distinction, however, must be alluded to again and again. The unhealthy soul life, which beholds its own essence as in a mirror image, takes its own reflections for a real world and is not in a position to eliminate these reflections through inner choice. By comparison, in a true spiritual training it must be maintained that the spiritual investigator recognizes the first phenomena that appear as reflections of his own being; not only does he recognize them as such, but he is able to eliminate them, to extinguish them from his field of consciousness.

Just as the spiritual investigator is able through his exercises to intensify his soul forces so that a new world is conjured before him, so he must be able to extinguish this whole world in its first form; he must not only recognize it as a reflection of his own being but be able to extinguish it again. If he could not extinguish it, he would be in a situation comparable to something that occurs in sense observation and that would be unbearable, impossible in an actual development of the human soul. Imagine in ordinary sense observation that a person directed his eyes to an object and became so attracted to it that he could not avert his gaze. The person would not be able to look around freely but would be tied to the object. This would be an unbearable situation in relation to the outer world. With a spiritual development, it would mean exactly the same in relation to the super-sensible world if a person were not in the position to turn from his spiritual observation and extinguish what presents itself as image to his spiritual observation. He must pass the test expressed in the words, “You are able to extinguish your image,” overcoming himself in this extinguishing; if the image returns, so that he can know his reality in a corresponding way, then only does he face reality and not his own imaginings (Einbildung). The spiritual investigator therefore must be able not only to create his own spiritual phenomena and to approach them but also to extinguish them again.

What does this mean, however? It means nothing less than the need for an immensely strong force to overcome the sense of self, self-love. Why does the abnormal soul life, which arrives at visions, hallucinations, and crazy notions, see these creations as realities and not as emanations from its own being? Because the human being feels himself so connected, so bound, to what he himself brings forth that he would believe himself destroyed if he could not look at what he himself brings forth as a reality. If a human being leaves the ordinary world with an abnormal soul life, his self-love becomes so intensified that it works like a force of nature. Within the ordinary soul life we can distinguish very clearly between so-called fantasy and what is reality, for within the ordinary soul life we have a certain power over our mental images. Any person is aware of this power whose soul has been capable of eliminating certain mental images when it recognizes their error. We are in a different situation in relation to the outer world when we are confronted with forces of nature; when lightning flashes, when thunder rolls, we have to let the phenomena take their course; we cannot tell the lightning not to flash or the thunder not to roll.

With the same inner force, however, the sense of self appears in us when we leave the ordinary soul life; as little as we can forbid lightning to flash so little can we forbid self-love from appearing, developed into a force of nature, if it is only a reflection of one's own being, that which the soul presents as an image of its own being, perceived as a real outer world. From this one can see, therefore, that the self-education of the spiritual investigator must consist chiefly of overcoming piece by piece self-love, the sense of self. Only if this is accomplished at every stage of spiritual development through a strict self-observation will one come to be able at last to erase a spiritual world when it appears as described. This means to be in the position of allowing that which one has striven for with all one's might to fall into oblivion. Something must be developed through spiritual training (one can find this presented more precisely in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds) that actually does not exist at all in man's free will in ordinary life. If man in ordinary life undertakes to do something, he wants to do it if he neglects to do something, he doesn't want to do it. One must say that in ordinary life man is in the position of applying his will impulses. To extinguish, in the way I described, the spiritual world that appears, the will must not only have the described faculties but must be able, after the spiritual world appears, slowly to weaken itself bit by bit, to the point of utter will-lessness, even to the point of extinguishing itself. Such a cultivation of the will is accomplished only when the exercises for the soul, described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, are followed systematically. When we awaken the slumbering forces in our soul, self-love, the sense of self, are intensified. This intensification leads us under certain circumstances to consider as an outer reality that which we actually are ourselves, that which lies only within us.

Another thing that is necessary when the soul undergoes appropriate exercises for a spiritual training is for man, at a certain level of this development, actually to forsake everything in his consciousness, everything that in his life up to now gave him in outer, everyday life and in ordinary science the content of truth, security in truth, everything that gave him the possibility of considering something as reality. As indicated already in previous lectures, all supports that we have for our judgments in ordinary life, all basic reference points given us by the sense world, which teaches us how we must think about reality, must be forsaken. After all, we want through the spiritual training to enter a higher world. The spiritual investigator at an appropriate stage of his development now sees, “You can no longer have a support in the world that you want to enter; you can no longer have the support of outer sense perception, of the intellectual judgment you have acquired, which otherwise guided you correctly through life”; when he has seen this, then comes the all-important, serious moment in the life of the spiritual investigator when he feels as if the ground is gone from under his feet, as if the support that he has had in ordinary life is gone, as if all security that has carried him up to now is gone and that he approaches an abyss into which with every further step he will surely fall. This must in a certain way become an experience in the spiritual training. That this experience not be accompanied by every possible danger is the primary concern of a true spiritual training today.

An attempt has been made to explain this more fully in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. If one undergoes the exercises offered there, one comes step by step to a point at which one feels what has just been described; one feels oneself as if over an abyss. One has already become so tranquil in one's soul, however, that one beholds the situation with a newly acquired, special faculty of judgment; therefore the fear, terror, and horror that otherwise needs must overtake the human soul in a dangerous way—not an ordinary, everyday fear—do not appear. One learns to know the basis of the fear, terror, and horror, but one has already progressed so as to achieve a mood in which one can endure it without fear.

Here we are again at a point at which it becomes necessary for the soul to recognize the truth and not fall into error, because the support that one has in ordinary life has disappeared, and the soul feels itself as if placed over an abyss. This must occur in order that, out of the emptiness, that which is fully spiritual in the world can approach the soul.

What in ordinary life is called anxiety, fear, will be intensified through such a training, expanded, just as self-love and the sense of self are intensified and expanded, growing into a kind of force of nature. Something must be said here that perhaps sounds paradoxical. In ordinary life if we have not struggled through to a certain courage, if we are cowards, we are frightened by this or that event if we have courage, however, we can endure it. In the region of the soul life we have described, fear, terror, and horror will approach us, but we must be in the position, as it were, not to be afraid of the fear, not to be horrified by the horror, not to become anxious with the anxiety that confronts us. This is the paradox, but it corresponds exactly with an actual soul experience that appears in this realm.

Everything that the human being experiences on entering the spiritual world is designated ordinarily as the experience with the Guardian of the Threshold. I tried to describe something concrete about this experience in my Mystery Drama, The Guardian of the Threshold. Here it only need be mentioned that at a certain stage of spiritual development, man learns to know his inner being as it can love itself with the force of an event of nature, as it can be frightened and horrified on entering the spiritual world. This experience of our own self, of the intensified self of that inner being that otherwise never would come before our soul, is the soul-shaking event called the Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold. Only by having this meeting will one acquire the faculty to differentiate truth from error in the spiritual world.

Why this experience is called the Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold is easily comprehensible. It is clear that the spiritual world that man enters is always around us and that man is unaware of it in ordinary life only because he does not have the appropriate organs to perceive it. The spiritual world surrounds us always and is always behind that which the senses perceive. Before man can enter this world, however, he must strengthen his ego, his I. With the strengthening of the ego, however, the aforementioned qualities also appear. He therefore must learn above all else to know himself, so that when he is able to confront a spiritual outer world in the same way as he confronts an objective being he can distinguish himself from what is truth. If he does not learn to delimit himself in this way, he will always confuse that which is only within him, that which is only his subjective experience, with the spiritual world picture; he can never arrive at a real grasp of spiritual reality.

To what extent fear plays a certain role on entering the spiritual world can be observed particularly in the people who deny the existence of such a world. Among such people are also many who have different reasons for denying this spiritual world, but a great portion of those people who are theoretical materialists or materialistically tinged monists have a definite reason for denying this spiritual world, a reason that is clearly visible for one who knows the soul. We must now emphasize that the soul life of the human being is, as it were, twofold. In the soul not only does there exist what man ordinarily knows, but in the depths of the soul life things are happening that cast their shadows—or their lights—into ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness, however, does not reach down to this level. We can find in the hidden depths of soul hatred and love, joy and fear and excitement, without our carrying these effects into conscious soul life. It is therefore entirely correct to say that a phenomenon of hatred directed from one person to another, taking place within consciousness, actually can be rooted, in the depths of soul, in love. There can be a sympathy, a deep sympathy, of one person for another in the depths of the soul, but since this person at the same time has reasons—reasons about which he perhaps knows nothing—he is confused about this love, about the sympathy, deceiving himself with hatred and antipathy. This is something that holds sway in the depths of the soul, so that these depths look quite different from what we call our everyday consciousness. There can be conditions of fear, of anxiety, in the depths of the soul of which one has no conscious idea. Man can have that fear in the depths of his soul, that anxiety in face of the spiritual world—because he must cross the abyss that has been described before entering—and yet be aware of nothing consciously. Actually, all human beings who have not yet entered the spiritual world, but who have acquired an understanding of entering, have to a degree this fear, this terror in face of the spiritual world. Whatever one may think concerning this fear and anxiety that are within the depths of the soul, they are there, though they appear stronger with one person, weaker with another. Because the soul might be injured, man is protected by the wisdom-filled nature of his being from being able to look further into the spiritual world, from being able to have the experience of meeting the Guardian of the Threshold until he is ready for it. Before that he is protected. Therefore one speaks of the experience of the Guardian of the Threshold.

We can note that a materialistically or monistically minded person, although knowing nothing of this experience, does have this fear in face of the spiritual world in the depths of his soul. There lives in such a person a certain antipathy to confronting the abyss that must be crossed; and to help him get past this fear, this anxiety in the soul in face of the spiritual world, the monist or materialist thinks out his theories and denies the spiritual world; this denial is nothing other than a self-induced anesthesia in face of his fear. This is the real explanation for materialism. As unsympathetic as it may sound, for one who knows the soul it is evident that in a meeting of materialistic monists, or those who deny soul and spirit, there prevails only the fear in the face of the spiritual world. One could say mockingly that fear-mongering is the basis of materialism, and although it is mocking it is nevertheless true. In materialistic literature, in the materialistic world conception, the spiritual investigator recognizes everywhere between the lines fear and anxiety in face of the spiritual world. What in ordinary life appears as materialism, however, as the soul condition present when a person is a materialist or a materialistically tinged monist, can also be present when a person arrives through definite measures at a certain spiritual vision. One can go through certain exercises in the soul and develop thereby from a more-or-less unhealthy soul condition to a more-or-less spiritual comprehension, yet one need not come by this means to a real understanding of the nature of the spiritual world. In a certain way one can carry up into the spiritual something of this fear about which one knows nothing, which has already been characterized and which underlies the materialistically minded person in the ordinary world.

If one does not grasp this connection, one can carry up into the spiritual world something that is terribly widespread in ordinary life: the love of ease of thinking, the love of ease of feeling. Fear is closely akin to love of ease, to clinging to habit. Why is man afraid of changing his situation? Because he loves his ease and comfort. This love of ease is closely related to fear. We have already described the basis for hatred; in the same way one can also say that lassitude, love of ease, are closely related to fear. One can, however, carry this love of ease up into the spiritual world. No one ought to object that human beings show no evidence of fear or love of ease, for this is again characteristic; it is characteristic that the ordinary mood of soul knows nothing of these things rooted in the subconscious. If man carries fear into the spiritual world, already having developed to the point of acknowledging the spiritual world, then an error arises in a spiritual region, an error that is extraordinarily important to consider the leaning toward phenomenalism.

People who become subject to this leaning become, rather than spiritual investigators, “specterseers” (to express it crassly), those who see ghosts (Gespensterschauer); they become possessed by a leaning toward phenomenalism. This means that they want to see the spiritual world in the same way as the sense world is to be seen; they do not want to perceive spiritual facts, spiritual beings, but something similar to the beings that the sensory eye can behold. In short, instead of spirits they want to behold specters, ghosts. The error of spiritualism (this is not to say that all spiritualism is unjustified) consists of this leaning toward phenomenalism. Just as the ordinary, everyday materialist wants to see only matter everywhere and not the spirit behind matter, so does he who brings to the spiritual world the same soul condition that actually exists in materialism want to see everywhere only ghostlike, condensed spirits.

This is one dangerous extreme of error that can emerge. One must say that this tendency to carry the ordinary field of consciousness up into the super-sensible field of consciousness exists in the widest circles, even among those who fully recognize a “spiritual world” and want “proof” of a spiritual world. The error here, however, lies in considering a proof valid only if it takes place in the realm of phenomenalism; it lies in considering that everything should be like condensed ghosts. Here something arises that was called in the beginning of our study a stupor, losing consciousness in relation to the spiritual world. While losing consciousness in ordinary life is the penetration of a sleeping or dreaming condition into consciousness, losing consciousness regarding the spiritual world means wanting to give worth only to that which appears in the same way as things in the ordinary world, so that one is unconscious in relation to the spiritual world; it is demanded that proof be supplied that can be taken in the way appropriate only in the ordinary world. Just as one brings sleep into the ordinary world if one falls unconscious, so one falls unconscious in relation to the beings and processes of the spiritual world if one takes into the super-sensible world that which is only an extract of sense reality (das Sinnliche). The true spiritual investigator also knows those realms of the spiritual world that condense into the ghostlike, but he knows that everything arriving at such a condensation is merely the dying, the withering in the spiritual world. When, for example, with the help of a medium, something is brought to life as the thoughts of a deceased person, we are confronted only with what remains behind, as it were, of the deceased. We are not dealing with that which goes through the portal of death, which passes through the spiritual world and appears again in a new earthly life. We are concerned in such a case not with what is present in the individuality of the dead person but with the sheath that is cast off, the wooden part of the tree, or the shell of a shellfish, or the skin of the snake that is cast off. In the same way, such sheaths, such useless remnants, are continuously being cast off from the being of the spiritual world and then, by way of a medium, they can be made perceptible—although as visible unreality. The spiritual investigator knows, to be sure, that he is not confronting an unreality. He does not surrender himself to the error, however, that in encountering the described phenomenon he is confronted with something fertile, with something sprouting and budding; rather he knows it as something dying, withering. At the same time it must be emphasized that in the sense world, when one confronts error, one is dealing with something that must be ignored, that must be eliminated as soon as it is recognized as error, whereas in the spiritual world one cannot cope with error in the same way. There, an error corresponds to the dying, the withering, and the error consists of mistaking the dying and withering in the spiritual world for something fruitful or full of significance. Even in the life of the ordinary human being, error is something one casts off; in the spiritual world error arises when the dead, the dying, is taken for something fruitful, sprouting; one mistakes the dead remnants that have been cast off for immortality.

How deeply the best individuals of our time have been entangled in this kind of phenomenalism, considering only such proof as valid, we can see in an individual who wrote so many excellent things about the world and now has written a book about these phenomena, about these different phenomena of spiritual investigation. I am referring to Maurice Maeterlinck and his book, About Death. We read there that he acknowledges a spiritual world but as proof acknowledges only what appears in phenomenalism. He does not notice that he tries to find in phenomenalism that which can never be found in phenomenalism. Then he criticizes the “phenomena” very acutely, very effectively. He does notice, however, that all this actually has no particular meaning and that the human soul after death does not exhibit a very intense vitality, that it behaves rather awkwardly, as though groping in the dark. Since he wants to admit only this kind of proof, he generally does not acknowledge spiritual investigation but remains stuck.

We see how the possibility of error opens itself to someone who would gladly recognize the spiritual world but is unable to do so, because he does not demand spiritual investigation but rather “specter investigation” and does not make use of what reality can give. His newest book is extraordinarily interesting from this point of view.

In the leaning toward phenomenalism we thus have the one extreme among the possibilities for error in spiritual investigation. The other extreme among the possibilities for error is ecstasy, and between phenomenalism and ecstasy, in knowing both, lies the truth, or at least truth can be reached if one knows both. The path of error, however, lies as much on the side of phenomenalism as on the side of ecstasy. We have seen what soul condition leads into the wish to acknowledge only phenomenalism. It is fear, horror, which man does not admit, which he tries to conceal. Because he is afraid to abandon all sense reality and to make the leap over the abyss, he accepts sense reality, demands the specters, and arrives thereby only at the dying, at that which destroys itself: This is one source of error. The other force of the soul, intensified through the exercises often described here is self-love, sense of self; self-love has as its polarity—one would like to say—the “getting out of oneself.” This “enjoying oneself in oneself” (pardon the expression; it is a radical choice but points exactly to what we are concerned with here) is only one side; the other side consists of “losing oneself in the world,” the surrender and dissolving and self-enjoyment in the other and the corresponding intensification of this self-seeking coming-out-of-one's self is ecstasy in its extreme. It is the cause of a condition in which man in a certain respect can say to himself that he has gotten free of himself. He has become free of himself, however, only by feeling the comfort of his own self in the being outside himself. If the one who knows the soul looks at the evolution of mysticism in the world, he finds that a large part of mysticism consists of the phenomena just characterized. As great, as powerful in soul experiences, as deep and significant as mysticism can be, the possibilities of error in ecstasy are actually rooted in a false cultivation of the mystical faculty of the human being. When man strives always to enter more and more into himself, when he strives through this for what is called the deepening of his soul life, strives, as he says, to find “God in himself” this God that man finds in his inner being is usually nothing other than his own I or ego made into God. With many mystics we find, when they speak of the “God within,” nothing other than the God imprinted with their own egos. Mystical immersion in God is at times nothing but immersing oneself into one's own dear ego, especially into the parts of the ego into which one does not penetrate with full consciousness, so that one surrenders one's self, loses one's self, comes out of one's self, and yet remains only within one's self. Much that confronts us as mysticism shows that with false mystics love of God is often only disguised self-love.

The real spiritual investigator must guard himself on the one hand against carrying the outer sense world into the higher world; he must guard on the other hand against the opposite extreme, against false mysticism, the coming-out-of-oneself. He must never confuse “love for the spiritual being of the world” with self-love. In the moment that he confuses these, the following occurs, as the true spiritual investigator, who has developed himself correctly, can verify. Just as one who is compelled by phenomenalism beholds only the remnants, the dying of the spiritual world, so he who surrenders himself to the other extreme sees only individual parts of the spiritual world, not spiritual facts and beings. In the spiritual world he does not do what one who contemplates the flowers in a meadow does; rather, he does what the one does who takes what grows in the field, chops it up and eats it. This comparison is peculiar but absolutely to the point. Through ecstasy the spiritual facts are not grasped in their wholeness, their totality, but only in that which pleases and benefits one's own soul, that which the soul can consume spiritually. It is actually a consumption of spiritual substance that is cultivated in the human being through ecstasy. Just as little as one learns to know things of this sense world by eating them, so little does one learn to know the forces and beings of the spiritual world through giving oneself to ecstasy in order to warm one's own self with what feels good. One thereby comes to a definite knowledge only of one's own self in relation to the spiritual world. One lives only in a heightened sense of self, a heightened self-love, and because one takes in from the spiritual world only that which can be consumed spiritually, which can be eaten spiritually, one deprives oneself of that which cannot be handled in this way, of that which stands apart from the nourishment gained through ecstasy. What one deprives oneself of, however, is by far the greatest part of the spiritual world, and the mystic who clings to ecstasy is deprived more and more. We find with mystics who ascend to the spiritual world through ecstasy that it is exactly as if they were always indulging themselves through repeating feelings and sensations. Many presentations of such mystics appear not as objective presentations of the conditions of the spiritual world but as though the one who gives the presentation were indulging in what he presents. Many mystics are actually nothing but spiritual gourmets, and the rest of the spiritual world, which does not taste good to them, does not even exist for them.

We see again how concepts change when we ascend from the ordinary world into the higher world. If in the ordinary world we occupy ourselves only with our own concepts, we become poorer and poorer, our logic becomes ever poorer. Finally we find that we can no longer find our orientation, and anyone who knows the facts can set us straight. In the ordinary world we correct this meagerness by widening our concepts. In the spiritual world, that which corresponds to ecstasy leads to something else. By taking into us realities, and not something unreal—but taking in only isolated parts, after picking out what suits us—we receive a view of the spiritual world that is only suited to ourselves. We carry ourselves into the spiritual world just as in the other extreme, in phenomenalism, we carry the sense world into the spiritual world. It can always be shown in the case of one who arrives at a false picture of the world through ecstasy that he began from an unsound force of judgment, from an incomplete factual logic.

We thus see how the spiritual investigator always must avoid the two extremes that bring him to every possible source of error: phenomenalism on the one hand and ecstasy on the other. In order to avoid the sources of error, nothing will be more helpful than for the spiritual investigator to cultivate one particular mood of soul, through which he is in a position, when he places himself in the spiritual world, to exist in the spiritual world, to be able to observe calmly in that world. One cannot always remain in the spiritual world, however, so long as one is in the physical body; one must also live with the physical world; therefore this mood of soul that the spiritual investigator must cultivate allows him in the physical world to strive as much as possible to grasp the facts of life with common sense, without sentimentality and untruthfulness. It is necessary for the spiritual investigator, to a much higher degree than is ordinarily the case, to have a healthy sense for facts, a genuine feeling for truthfulness. All fanaticism, all inaccuracy, which make it so easy to skirt what is really there, are harmful for the spiritual investigator. One can see already in ordinary life, and it becomes clear immediately in the realm of spiritual training, that lie who lets himself indulge only the least bit in inaccuracy will notice that it is only a tiny step from inaccuracy to lies and untruthfulness. The spiritual investigator, therefore, must strive to feel himself obliged to hold firmly to the truth, to mix nothing with the unconditional truth that exists in ordinary life, for in the spiritual world such a mixing leads from error to error. In those circles wishing to have anything to do with spiritual investigation, the justified opinion should be spread that an outer, distinguishing characteristic of the true spiritual investigator must be his truthfulness; the moment the spiritual investigator demonstrates that he feels little obligation to test what he says, speaking rather of things he cannot know about the physical world, he becomes flawed as a spiritual investigator and no longer can merit a full trust. This is connected with the conditions for spiritual investigation itself.

It must be brought to our attention again and again that, when the realms of spiritual investigation and spiritual science are spoken of today, it is unjustified to claim that only the spiritual investigator can see into the spiritual world and that one who is not yet a spiritual investigator is unable to know and understand and grasp it. You can learn from the descriptions in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and from my presentation in An Outline of Occult Science that in our era to a certain degree every person, if only he makes the necessary effort, can become a spiritual investigator, no matter what his position in life is otherwise. Nevertheless, it is also possible for a person to understand the descriptions of the spiritual world without being a spiritual investigator. It is necessary to be a spiritual investigator not in order to understand the communications from the spiritual world but in order to discover them, to investigate what is present in the spiritual world. One must be a painter in order to paint a picture, but one need not be a painter to understand a picture; it is the same with understanding communications from the spiritual world with the sound human intellect. It is in order to investigate the spiritual world that the human being is endowed with the higher organs of observation. If what is investigated, however, is brought into the concepts of the ordinary world, as is often attempted here, the sound human intellect can, if only it is sufficiently unprejudiced and does not create obstructions for itself, grasp what is brought to light through spiritual investigation.

One could say that with spiritual investigation it is the same as it is with what grows under the earth and is found only when one digs into the earth like a miner. Whatever one finds there can originate only as it exists within the earth, developing in those layers of the earth that are covered by layers above it. What is in the depths of the earth cannot develop on the surface of the earth, which is illuminated by the sun during the day. If we then make an opening in the earth, however, and let the sunlight shine in, illuminating what is underneath, everything can appear in the light of the sun. It is the same with what can be gained through spiritual scientific investigation: it can be brought to light only if the soul has transformed itself into an organ of perception for the spiritual world. If it is brought into the concepts and mental images of ordinary life, however, then the human intellect, if only it is sufficiently sound, can understand and illuminate everything as if with spiritual sunlight. All of spiritual science, therefore, can be grasped by the sound human intellect. Just as a painting is not made merely for the painter himself, so the communications about the spiritual world are not only for the spiritual scientific investigator. Nevertheless, paintings are able to originate only through the painter, and the spiritual world can be explored only by the spiritual investigator.

He who believes that what comes from the communications of the spiritual investigator cannot be grasped by means of the ordinary intellect does not perceive at all correctly the nature and essence of the human capacity for thinking. In the human capacity for thinking reside faculties that stand in direct connection with the nature of the higher world. Because man is accustomed to approach only the ordinary sense objects with his concepts, he believes that the ordinary faculty of judgment vanishes in him if super-sensible facts are presented to him. He who develops his capacity for thinking, however, can cultivate this capacity in such a way that it can grasp what is brought to light through spiritual investigation. One must not have some notion beforehand, however, of how one can grasp such matters. This should result from the study itself. If one has a definite notion of how one should grasp these things, one surrenders oneself again to a serious error in relation to spiritual investigation. This is the second aspect that is especially noticeable in Maurice Maeterlinck's new book. He is an individual who wishes to direct his gaze to the spiritual world, who has made some fine observations about various things, and who has also tried to present the mysteries of the spiritual world dramatically; it is especially telling that this individual, in the moment in which he should approach the real science of the spirit, proves himself so inadequate. He demands a certain kind of understanding—not the kind given by the things themselves but the kind he imagines (ertraeumt), which he believes must appear to provide verification. In this way the greatest peculiarity arises: Maeterlinck takes to be merely a belief that which anthroposophy or spiritual science has to say when it speaks today about “repeated earthly lives”—when it speaks with a certain outer justification (not with a merely inner conviction, which would be akin to a certain primitive belief of humanity). He calls it a belief, because he cannot perceive that what we are concerned with here does not have to do with belief but with knowledge. He thus finds that the existence of that which develops further in man, moving from life to life, cannot be proved, because he has a definite idea of what constitutes proof. Maeterlinck can be compared in this realm to certain other people. Until recently, there existed a kind of belief, a certain mathematical-geometrical belief that is summarized in the words, the “squaring of the circle”; that is, one would seek by means of a mathematical-analytical, constructive thinking for that square which equaled the area or the circumference of the circle. This task of transforming the circle into a square was an ideal, as it were, toward which one always strove: the transforming of the circle into a square. Now, no one doubted that there could be a square exactly as large as a circle. In reality, of course, it is entirely possible for such a thing to exist, but it is impossible to show with mathematical constructions or with analytical methods just what the diameter of a circle would have to be to equal a particular square. This means that mathematical thinking does not suffice to prove something that is real, that is physical. There have been countless people who have worked on the solution of squaring the circle, until recent mathematicians proved that it is impossible to solve the problem in this way. Today anyone still trying to solve the problem of squaring the circle is considered not to know mathematics in this realm. Maeterlinck is equivalent to those people trying to square the circle in regard to what he is trying to prove. One can understand the spiritual world, can grasp that what is brought to light through spiritual investigation is real; one cannot prove the existence of this spiritual world, however, if one demands out of prejudice a particular kind of proof; one can prove it in this way as little as one can prove the squaring of a circle mathematically.

One would have to reply to Maeterlinck, therefore, that he tries to square the circle in the spiritual realm, or he would have to be shown how the concepts by which he would like to prove the existence of the spiritual world disappear when man passes through the portal of death. How is one supposed to prove the existence of the spiritual world with concepts such as those taken from the sense world? This, however, is what Maeterlinck is trying to do, and it is extraordinarily interesting that when he gives in to his healthy feeling, he has no choice but to acknowledge repeated lives on earth. It is very interesting how he expresses himself about a knowledge that he calls a belief, and I would like to read to you his own words: ‘Never was there a belief more beautiful, more just, more pure, more morally fruitful, more comforting, and in a certain sense more probable than this. With its teaching of gradual redemption and purification of all bodily and spiritual inequities, of all social injustice, all terrible’ injustices of destiny, it alone gives meaning to life. The goodness of a belief, however, is no proof of its truthfulness. Although six hundred million human beings devote themselves to this religion, although it is closest to the origins that are shrouded in darkness, although it is the only one without hatred, it should have done what the others have not done: bring us indisputable evidence. What it has given us up to now is only the first shadow of the beginning of a proof.” In other words, Maeterlinck is trying in this realm to square the circle.

We see especially clearly in this example how someone who can think that the benefit of spiritual science lies only in an extreme, in phenomenalism (all his writings show this), is totally unable to keep in view the significance and the real nature of spiritual scientific investigation. From such an example as Maeterlinck, we can learn a lot, namely that truth, which must be introduced into the world evolution of humanity, is really, when it first appears, in the position once characterized by Schopenhauer with the words, “In all centuries poor truth had to blush over being paradoxical.” To Maeterlinck, truth appears not just paradoxical but unbelievable, yet it is not the fault of truth. Truth cannot take on the form of the universally reigning error. Thus she looks sighing to her patron god, Time, which promises her victory and glory, but whose vast wings beat so slowly that she dies in the meantime. So it goes with the course of the spiritual evolution of humanity. It is most interesting and instructive that the best individuals today, those human beings who long to have their soul life connected with a spiritual world, are not capable of grasping the core of the actual science of the spirit. Instead, where it involves distinguishing the true path from the two possibilities for error, they stumble, because they do not dare leap over the abyss; they wish either to make use of their dependence on the ordinary world, in phenomenalism, or, if they do not do this, they seek an intensification of the sense of self in ecstasy. We cannot concern ourselves only with recognizing the character of the separate possibilities for error; we must concern ourselves with that which humanity must avoid if one is to recognize and close up the source of spiritual scientific error. From the way in which today's study has been undertaken, one conclusion can be drawn: spiritual investigation must know the sources of error. The temptation is always present in the soul to err in the direction of phenomenalism, and therefore to stand as though spiritually unconscious in relation to the spiritual world, or to err in the direction of ecstasy, which means wanting to enter the spiritual world with inadequate organs of spirit and thus receiving only isolated pieces and not related facts.

The path goes between the two extremes. One must know the possibilities for error. Because they can appear with every step in spiritual life one must not only know them but overcome them. The revelations of spiritual investigation are not only results of investigation but also victories over error, victory by means of a way of looking that has been gained previously, victory over the sense of self and more. He who penetrates more deeply into what we have tried to describe only sketchily today will become aware that—even if everywhere where we embark on the investigation of spiritual life the possibilities for error can lurk frighteningly—we nevertheless must conquer error again and again. He will become aware that spiritual investigation not only satisfies an indomitable yearning for that which man needs for certainty in his life but that its goal must appear, to one who regards this movement with comprehension, as attainable to a sound human sense. To conclude what today's lecture was to offer on the level of feeling, I would like to say that in spite of all obstacles, in spite of all things that can stand in a hostile way on the path of spiritual investigation, those who penetrate with a sound sense into the results of spiritual scientific. investigation feel and sense that these results penetrate—through difficult hindrances of soul, through bewildering darknesses of spirit—to a solemn clarity, to a luminous truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the 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.

My dear friends,

In our studies here during the last few weeks we have considered from most varied points of view the great social demand of our age. We have tried to see this requirement of the age against a spiritual-scientific background. In this way alone is it possible for us to gain a true and clear direction, realizing all that lies hidden beneath the outward demand. I shall return to this subject again tomorrow. Today I will insert a kind of interlude, continuing to some extent what we touched upon the other day, and showing how the Spiritual Science which is here represented will relate itself to the inner state of consciousness of our own time and of the near future.

At the end of the last lecture I gave you a few of the main points in this connection. I said: Anyone who has the will to apply that healthy human intelligence which has in fact evolved up till our time, in testing what is brought forward in anthroposophical Spiritual Science, will find this Spiritual Science really able to reckon with the scientific conscience, and with the whole way of thinking of the present age. And this appears so especially when we consider the social questions.

Whenever we deal with one subject or another in this Spiritual Science, we are therefore always in a position to point out that everything that is here brought forward can be subsequently tested, by anyone who wishes to do so, with the thinking—and notably with the scientific thinking—of the present time. We may even go so far as to say that a large number of the attacks to which this Spiritual Science is exposed are due to the very fact that it lends itself so evidently to subsequent corroboration by the scientific conscience of the present and of the near future. This is a fact unpleasant and uncomfortable to many people. Opposition arises just because these things are in agreement with all the scientific requirements of our age. For there is a certain antipathy in many heads, and notably in many hearts, against a spiritual knowledge of this kind. To many people it is inconvenient that something of this kind should arise, capable in all its branches of being subsequently tested and confirmed by the scientific standard of our time. But at the same time, this Spiritual Science reckons with an inner spiritual fact in human evolution at the present time, to wit, that beginning in our time, and more and more distinctly towards the future, new revelations are breaking through the veil of world-phenomena and world events. For a long time mankind has lived in ideas according purely to the senses. Whatever mankind possessed, over and above these ideas, consisted in the last resort of ancient revelations handed down from a time when they had still been endowed with an atavistic clairvoyance—when Wisdom-treasures entered into mankind by quite another path than they will enter in the future. From the Wisdom-treasures corresponding to the ages of the past, one thing and another was preserved; and this was the only wisdom which mankind possessed, and it is so to this day for many people. Indeed, it is so for the Natural Scientists of the present time. If we look more closely we shall find that it is so. But the time is long past when there was any direct and elemental Revelation of such Wisdom-treasures. A certain dimness and darkness entered the earthly evolution of mankind. Direct spiritual revelations ceased. Now, however, a time is beginning when new Revelations are breaking through into the spiritual horizon of mankind—through the veil of outward events. Hence there must be a renewal of many things in our time; in this connection especially we may point to the most important earthly event of all, the Mystery of Golgotha. True it is that the Mystery of Golgotha first gave earthly evolution its real meaning. In soul and spirit, the Earth planet would not be what it is if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place upon it. But, my dear friends, it is one thing to speak of the Mystery of Golgotha as a real event that took place, and it is another to speak of the doctrines, the so-called Christian doctrines, that have held sway about it through the centuries. Anyone who fails to see this difference will scarcely find his way into the fundamental requirements of our time.

You may take a thing of ordinary life for comparison. An event that takes place before your eyes is one thing; and what is narrated by two or three people who witnessed it is quite another. That is a familiar fact. So it is, though in a higher, spiritual sense, in this case. Nothing else has become known to man about it through the course of the centuries. But all that has been said about this spiritual event (for such is the Mystery of Golgotha, even though it took place on the physical plane) has still been said from the standpoint of an ancient Wisdom. Even the Gospels, as you may know from my Christianity as Mystical Fact, are written from the standpoint of an ancient Wisdom. That is to say: Men had certain conceptions, derived from ancient Mysteries. More generally speaking, they had certain ideas inherited from very ancient times. In the language of these ideas they clothed what had taken place on Golgotha. Now these ideas belonged to the atavistic period of humanity. To be understood at all, the Mystery of Golgotha had to be clothed in such language. But we today are living in a time when that spiritual way of looking out on the world, which was quite right in ancient times, has become antiquated. New revelations of a spiritual kind are breaking in upon us, albeit men are not yet willing to admit them. The new revelations will gradually become equal in value to the old atavistic conceptions. Hence if we would do justice to the requirements of the age we must be able to speak of the Mystery of Golgotha as a spiritual fact, in the language of the new conceptions. The Christian conceptions too will have to reckon with what is now entering into the evolution of mankind. For Christianity would otherwise remain a collection of ancient, traditional ideas. All that is living in the human being today as the living demands of the age, would pine and die away and find no nourishment if it had to content itself with the old traditional ideas. This is the fundamental requirement to which anthroposophical Spiritual Science wishes to do justice; the new revelations of the Spirit must be made intelligible, and the greatest event on Earth—the Mystery of Golgotha—must be stated in terms of these new revelations.

Now it may be asked—and the question is exceedingly important:—Who are the Beings of the Spiritual World who stand behind the revelations that are breaking newly into human history through the veil of outward phenomena? You know, my dear friends, the succession of the Hierarchies as I have described them in my writings. You know, therefore, how the so-called “Spirits of Personality” stand within the Hierarchies, within the order of the Spiritual Beings. The Spirits of Personality are one stage lower in the hierarchical order than those other Spirits among whom Jahve, for example, is included—namely, the so-called Spirits of Form.

The fact is this:—To the revelations which have come to humanity through the Spirits of Form hitherto, the revelations of the Spirits of Personality are now about to be added, albeit this is taking place as yet only in a preparatory way, not with the mighty power with which the Spirits of Form revealed themselves. If we would seek for a word to describe what the Spirits of Form really are, we can hold to the good old word “Creators.” The Biblical word “Creator” very nearly circumscribes all that we must associate with the Spirits of Form when we bear in mind their influence on man from ancient Lemurian times until today, and on into the future. (For their actions will by no means cease; they will only have to perform them as it were upon another plane.)

Bearing in mind all that we know from Spiritual Science in this direction, we can call the Spirits of Form creative Spirits. To them above all, man as he is, as earthly man, owes his existence. Now hitherto the Spirits of Personality were not creative Spirits. They were Spirits who ordered various matters, working from the spiritual realms. You may read about their activities in my Occult Science. But the time is now beginning when they will have to play their part creatively, in human evolution to begin with. Subsequently, they will also have to play a creative part in the other kingdoms. Evolution does indeed take place among the Hierarchies. The Spirits of Personality are rising to a creative activity. Indeed this points us to a very important secret in the evolution of mankind. Anyone who seeks to comprehend the evolution of mankind, not in the customary, superficial Nature-study of today, but with inner spiritual, scientific impulses of seership, knows that since the beginning of the fifth Post-Atlantean age (of which we have spoken recently from so many points of view) something has begun to die out in man. And with this death—this gradual maiming of something in our human nature—all our progress even in soul and spirit is fundamentally connected.

We, my dear friends, are no longer living human beings, if I may put it bluntly, in the same sense as were the human beings of centuries or thousands of years ago. They had a stronger inner vitality, a stronger force proceeding simply from their bodily nature. In ordinary life man is only aware of death when it appears in its most radical form, in the cessation of earthly life. But as you know from your studies of Spiritual Science, something is continually dying in us, and if this were not so we should have no consciousness. Consciousness is connected with the death of something in our nature. Now this death-process is stronger within us than it was in the first centuries A.D. or in the pre-Christian centuries. That in man which proceeded from the Spirits of Form as the creative Spirits, is beginning to die, if I may put it so, with some intensity a new creative principle must now be instilled into human nature—a creative principle which must now take its start from the Spiritual. The fact is that from our age onwards, creative forces are coming towards us out of the Spirit provided we ourselves do not resist their entry. These are creative forces Spiritual Science seeks to understand. In thought and spiritual vision it seeks to take hold of that which is penetrating towards us from worlds, whose spiritual impulses did not hitherto flow into human evolution. In thought and vision it seeks to take hold of what is entering as a new spiritual essence into the evolution of the age. Such is the Spiritual Science which is oriented in the truly modern sense. It does not come forward like a “programme”—scientific, learned or of whatever kind. No! It comes forward at this moment because the heavens are sending new revelations down to men, and these have to be understood.

Anyone who fails to understand in this sense the task of anthroposophical Spiritual Science would have nothing at all to say if it did not have to herald and proclaim new things—things only now breaking in upon us, revealing themselves from the heavens to mankind.

What then is it that is revealing itself through the veil of phenomena? It is the expression of a new creative principle, brought into the world by the Spirits of Personality. In this connection we must recognize it as the essential characteristic of our age (which began in the fifteenth century A.D.) to develop impulses of personality. The personality, if I may use this trite expression, wants to stand on its own feet, does so more and more as we go forward into the third millennium, when other impulses for the fulfillment of personality will enter in.

Consider carefully, my dear friends, what I have just told you. There, coming towards humanity, is the new revelation from the Spirits of Light, the Spirits of Personality. But over against this, especially since the beginning of the fifth Post-Atlantean age, there stand certain Spirits of Darkness. For as soon as we look behind the veil of the phenomena we see at once how certain ranks of spiritual Beings are confronted by other ones, opposing ones. On the one hand we turn our gaze to the Spirits of Personality revealing themselves as I described them just now; on the other hand we see over against them certain Spirits of Darkness, making themselves manifest, Spirits whose interest it is not to allow that which is to come—the new revelation of the Spirits of Personality—to become effective in mankind. These new Spirits of Darkness find an opportunity to realize their intentions in a certain phenomenon of modern life which I mentioned a few weeks ago, a phenomenon which is unfortunately far too little heeded by present-day mankind.

If in our time we ask, how many men are there on Earth?—the answer generally is: Approximately fifteen hundred millions. The logical consequence would be that only so much work is done by these fifteen hundred millions. But that is not the case. On the contrary, since the beginning of the fifth Post-Atlantean age a new possibility has arisen; for today, beside the fifteen hundred millions of men on Earth of which we generally speak, there are five hundred millions more, reckoned in terms of labor-power.

Through the machines it is so. And if all the machine labor of today were done by men, there would have to be five hundred million men to do it.

You see therefore that human labor on Earth has found, so to speak, a substitute. Something is here that works like human beings and yet does not consist of human beings in flesh and blood. This fact is extremely important for the evolution of mankind, and it is connected with other facts in the evolution of the present time. The five hundred million men who are really not there as men of flesh and blood—all the work that is done by the machines just as though men were doing it—all this machine work gives opportunity for the Spirits of Darkness to realize themselves within our human evolution. And these very Spirits of Darkness are the opponents of the Spirits of Personality who bring with them the new revelations of the heavens breaking in upon us with a new clairvoyance, while on the other hand, arising out of the sub-earthly realms, we have the embodiment provided for the adversaries. For these very adversaries are demonic Spirits, Spirits of Darkness, who can now actualize themselves—albeit not through human beings of flesh and blood; they live and move among us none the less, inasmuch as human forces are being replaced by mechanisms, by machines.

This too lies at the basis of all disharmony in the social life of our time. Not only so, my dear friends, it lies also at the basis of certain errors, certain aberrations of human thinking in our time, which in their turn provide once more the starting-point for social aberrations. For in the course of the last few centuries, human thinking has in a certain respect adapted itself to the mechanistic order. It is permeated, impregnated by conceptions adapted purely to a mechanistic order. In many spheres of natural science—but not only there, in many spheres of actual life, of the social and socialistic life of today—no other ideas are applied than those that are of use to understand the working of machines, but they are really useless for all that goes beyond machines and mechanism. And yet, my dear friends, in the world of manifestation everything has a twofold aspect, and you must not therefore conclude that the mechanistic ideas have slunk into human evolution as an evil thing that ought to be avoided. No, that would be altogether wrong. Dangerous as these ideas are because they give certain Spirits of Darkness the opportunity to arise against the Spirits of Personality who are revealing themselves today; dangerous, above all, as is the mechanistic order from which these ideas are derived, yet on the other hand the very thinking which takes its start from mechanistic ideas is beneficial. For this, my dear friends, is the task of modern time:—Our powers of soul must be equipped with the ideas that live in modern scientific thought and altogether in modern thought. This is the necessary task of modern time. We must permeate ourselves with these ideas and then place them in the service of the new revelation of the heavens. In other words, the mechanical ideas have taught mankind to think in these mechanical conceptions. The ideas of former times always had vaguer outlines. Anyone who traces spiritual history through the course of time will know that it is so. Even when we study keen thinkers like Plato, we find that their concepts have vague, undefined outlines. Man has only been able to educate himself to think in sharp outlines of thought by falling into the one-sided habit of conceiving the world mechanically. These one-sided, mechanical ideas are exceedingly poor in world-content; for at bottom they contain no more than what is dead. Yet they are a remarkable means of education, and this, indeed, we can observe in our time. The truth is that nowadays, only those can think in really sharp outlines who have made certain ideas of Natural Science their own. All other people think more or less vaguely.

Thus mankind has passed through a certain education in sharply outlined thinking. But from this point onward it is necessary to turn to the new revelation of the Spirit, and to conceive the spiritual worlds with the same clarity with which we have grown accustomed to conceive the world of Natural Science. This is what the modern intellectual conscience requires, nor will mankind be able to dispense with this. Without this, mankind will never be able to solve the all-important questions that will arise in the present and in the near future. Clear and sharp thinking trained in the modern, scientific ideas and then applied to the spiritual world as it reveals itself anew; such is the configuration, fundamentally speaking, of anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Such is the character which anthroposophical Spiritual Science wants to have, therefore it reckons with the most necessary requirements of our time. Moreover, for this very reason, it is able to descend from spiritual heights, to grasp what is necessary to the everyday life of man. My dear friends, we must again and again repeat that Spiritual Science wishes to bring new help to human work and human tasks of outer life.

Of the old traditions, things that have come down to us from former times, you may take, for instance, the various religious faiths. True, they still suffice for a number of people in our time; they suffice in fact for those who desire a certain “edification.” Out of the heart of the old religious confessions such people are told about the Divine Kingdoms of Heaven; they are told about what lies hidden behind the veil of sense-phenomena, and they descend thus far:—they preach to men telling them that they should be good, that they should love one another, and so forth. The religious faiths come down into the everyday life just far enough to voice certain moral requirements.

On the other side, men try to gain a vision of the demands of everyday life, which constitutes as it were the other pole of life. They try to gain knowledge of Nature. Well, as you know, it is only in the rarest cases that the parsons or preachers in their Sunday afternoon addresses proclaim Botany or Zoology to mankind from the realms of higher revelation. What they proclaim about the Heavenly Kingdoms does not reach down to Earth. But not only in matters of Science; for other things, too, the immediate demands which surround us every hour, every minute—information is sought in what I called just now “the other pole of life;” hence, there has arisen at this pole a kind of natural scientific thinking concerning the social demands of our time. Think, my dear friends, how the thoughts that men conceive about the needs of everyday life, and the things the parsons proclaim out of the Kingdom of Heaven—think how these two stand outwardly side by side. They are two different worlds; they have no point of contact. Men want to work (or so we may assume), want to have thoughts about their work; and then, when their work is done, they want to hear what there is to be said about Death and Immortality and things Divine. But these are two distinct and separated realms. They do not realize the need to unite them. They want to think about money, capital, credit, labor-power, etc., from one side, and about etherical [ethereal?] ideals from the other side. They do not summon the force of thought to speak out of the sources of what is said about the Spirit, about the life of everyday affairs where God, or the gods, are revealed after all no less than in the other realms. This is the great evil of the present time; this, above all, we must clearly see if we would understand why the present catastrophic time has broken in upon mankind. We need once more a Science which, while speaking of the highest things of the Divine, is able to enter simultaneously into the needs of everyday. For otherwise the needs of everyday will remain in that chaotic order in which you see the Lenins and the Trotskys in our time; while the doctrines which proclaim the secrets of Heaven remain unfruitful for external life, however much they may warm the selfish inner feeling of the heart.

In the future this must not be so. In the future men must not have Sunday afternoon addresses in which they try to get beyond the everyday, seeking mere “edification” or warmth and comfort for their selfish religious needs, and then go out again into the everyday which they regard in a God-empty way, conceiving it not spiritually but with inadequate and superficial thought. The demands which our time is making of us lie indeed within the spiritual realm; and order will not come into our time till men admit that these things which I have now characterized must be taken into account.

A host of other important impulses of our time must be seen in this connection. We are standing in the very midst—not at the end, but I say with full consciousness, in the very midst—of a time of conflict, a time when chaotic events are taking place in human evolution, events from which as I have often said, men ought to learn. Alas! There are so many who have learnt nothing yet from the events of the last four and a half years, whose thinking is still the very same in form as it was four and a half years ago. Events are taking place, my dear friends, which reveal outward humanity—or the life of outward humanity—in conflict and in warfare. True, there was conflict in other epochs of time as well, but the conflict in our epoch has its own peculiar character of which we become aware when we look not merely on the surface but in the depths. For there we see that many things are taking place in the outer world which should really be going on in the inner life of men. You will readily believe that the receiving of the new revelations from the heavens must go hand in hand with a deepened inwardness of human nature. This deepened inwardness will bring with it certain inner conflicts into the souls of men. But the prospect of inner conflicts for the human soul must not give us pessimistic feelings. For it is only out of their conflicts of the soul that men will grow strong toward the future. The man of today who is not yet prepared for this desires his parsons, the representatives of his religious faith, somehow to cloud his vision of what is nonetheless already there subconsciously in his own soul. Let them but warm his soul, let them comfort him, telling him beautiful things of what the Divine Beneficence intends for man—without man's doing anything with real activity himself! My dear friends, in the near future the gods will intend for man that alone for which man himself will lend a hand. Man must pass through inner conflicts of the soul, conflicts that will strengthen him. We have not to look towards a future more comfortable than the past or the present. Specious ideals—which in reality are nothing but modern narcotics—are not the truth. They are more Wilsonism. To speak of ushering in an altogether new age by twice seven points (I know not if the number be mystically intended; if so it is mystical in a bad sense)—that, my dear friends, is a strange form of modern superstition.

For the future, my dear friends, things will by no means be more comfortable in the outer life. For the remainder of earthly evolution mankind will yet have to shoulder far greater discomforts than they dream of yet. Nevertheless, they will shoulder them, for they will be strengthened by inner conflicts of soul—every individual man in his own soul. Looking through the veil of outward phenomena, we behold not a world in which the gods sleep a sleep of legendary peace, each in his bed, or lead a peaceful, happy life such as men have dreamed of—which is indeed none other than a form of laziness!

No! It is not so. When we pierce the veil of phenomena we behold a life of Divine Spiritual, Hierarchical labor; the thing that strikes us first is the great battle which is taking place behind the scene of the physical world of sense—the battle between Wisdom and Love. And man is placed in the midst of this battle. For a long time he has been unconscious of it, in future he must take part more and more consciously in this conflict which is taking place in the world between Wisdom and Love. For Man himself shall be the outcome when Wisdom and Love beat like an eternal pendulum, now towards the side of Wisdom and now towards the side of Love. Only through the rhythmic swinging of the pendulum, not through a sleepy peace, will the future shape itself aright.

In ancient, atavistic times, and hitherto, this battle between Wisdom and Love was being waged in the subconscious depths of the human soul. Down in the depths, my dear friends, where the unconscious instincts are pulsating, there stands the Spirit of Wisdom against the Spirit of Love, and the Spirit of Love against the Spirit of Wisdom. But from our time onward—from the time of evolution of the Spiritual Soul of Consciousness—all this is rising into the conscious life. Man must fight this battle out within himself. Stronger and stronger become the forces which play in human nature on the foundation of this inner conflict of the soul. Today, however, men are still resisting this inner evolution. They divine its coming but they are afraid of it; they have not the courage for this inner conflict. All that is written in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment is meant to lead men to fight this inner battle out victoriously. But people find it inconvenient; they shrink in fear; they have not the courage to go through the inner fight. And this, my dear friends, is a characteristic phenomenon of our time. Men will not go through this inner fight; they flee from it; they do not want it yet. And because they will not have it inwardly, it is projected outward. In one of the Mystery Plays I hinted at this fact. This passage, as you know, was written long before the outbreak of the present world-catastrophe of war, but the latter still bears witness to its truth. In it I showed how all the outer conflicts of today are conflicts which have been thrust out of the inner life of man. Conflicts in other ages had a different character, for all these things are changing and undergoing metamorphosis. Now this is what must come: men must receive into their inner life the battles which they now believe themselves obliged to fight externally. A battlefield in the inner life of human souls will be the remedy, the healing for what appears today among men so ruinously. Not till this inner battlefield enters the souls of men can the dread catastrophe which has come among them today be brought to rest. For the outward conflict is simply that which men project outside themselves, because they are unwilling to bring it into their own inner life. All other aspects are a mere semblance; this is the reality.

Here, my dear friends, once more we have a circumstance with which anthroposophical Spiritual Science reckons. It reckons with it inasmuch as it does not merely absorb some antiquated, ancient doctrines, but seeks to bring among men what is making itself felt in the spirit of the present time and of the future—the new revelations from the Heavens. This distinction we must see, otherwise we shall continue to confuse the Spiritual Science here intended with other things to which it by no means belongs. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science cannot be proclaimed in the same way as many things today which in reality belong to the past. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science must speak to the full, clear consciousness of mankind. But in the very moment when we say this we wound the vanity of many people. Do not the people of today believe that they possess extraordinarily clear and enlightened thoughts? Yet in reality they need only look and see what they are doing, especially in spiritual matters, and they would find that their “clear and enlightened thought” is not much to be proud of. The social problem—if you will, the war-problem—of the present time can be solved in no other way than by clear thoughts trained in the way of modern thinking, and then directed to the Spiritual World that reveals itself anew, the world that is coming to us from the good Spirits of Personality. Because this Spiritual Science is so new in this respect, therefore it has for its opponents all those who will not summon up the activity to penetrate into this inner activity of soul; good-will is essentially required.

You see, the very nerve of this Spiritual Science is different from that of earlier spiritual revelations. As I have often said, people in our time who desire knowledge of the secrets of existence will often turn to some antiquated volume containing the teachings of old, atavistic clairvoyance. How blissful many a person is today if he comes across some old book which—unrelated to the modern, scientific consciousness—claims to give information about those things which are essentially unknown to the people of today, but which were known in olden times to those who spoke, for example, of Salt, Mercury and Sulphur. Needless to say, my dear friends, sublime and venerable truths are contained in these antiquated books; but there is evolution in the world, and what was good for former epochs is not good for our own. Former epochs were able to take possession in their own way of what is clothed in such words as “Salt,” “Mercury,” and “Sulphur.” The present time must seek for something new. Spiritual Beings are bringing a new gift towards it, for the healing of mankind. Therefore this new thing must not be left unheeded. And it must be of quite a different kind from the old. There is a fundamental difference between the New and the Old. The Old brought forth a magnificent understanding of the Wisdom of the Universe—an understanding of all that is outside Man. Even the ancient Wisdom-treasure that came down to such spirits as Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme was an understanding of the Universe—deep and penetrating. This understanding of the Universe was then applied in order to understand Man too. Man himself was conceived in terms of the Universe. That is the fundamental character of the ancient Wisdom. How the Spiritual revealed itself in external Nature—how Spiritual Beings in their varied stages revealed themselves through the different elements—all this was seen and understood by the atavistic clairvoyance in a way that is no longer possible to man today. And this was then applied to Man. In great and all-embracing Nature they recognized first of all the life of Planets and Stars, and then the elemental life that lives through the elements through “Salt,” “Mercury,” and “Sulphur.” Thereafter they could ask themselves: How does all this appear in Man? Beginning from the Universe they came to Man.

This is no longer the way for man to find his further evolution in the present and in the near future. Even Jacob Boehme could still speak of Salt, Mercury and Sulphur. We must speak differently; we must take the opposite path, the path of the future. We take our start from Man; we understand first Man, then go on from this understanding of Man to an understanding of the Universe. This is the path I took, for a certain domain of knowledge, in my Occult Science. This is the path which must be taken altogether in the future. We speak not of “Salt;” we speak of that which lives as the retrogressive element of evolution in the human organism—in the nerves and senses system. We understand the nerves and senses system as a descending, retrogressive development. The man of ancient times looked out into external Nature and beheld all that is brought about in the element of “Salt.” Thus he beheld in the world outside what we behold when we contemplate the life of nerves and senses from the standpoint of our Spiritual Science. To understand the outer Universe, the man of olden times beheld in it the world of “Mercury.” We look into the human organism and we find the Rhythm. For all the rhythmic life, as we have often said, is that in man which outwardly is “Mercury.” We look to Man, we look for an understanding of Man, and from this starting point, an understanding of the Universe.

Such is the mighty revelation according to which we have to live in our conception of all spiritual things. In the ancient revelation which proceeded from an understanding of the Universe to an understanding of Man—all the old religions and traditions had their source. They are preserved to this day in antiquated systems, but they can no longer be fruitful for mankind, save by way of historic study, when they enable us to feel this ancient Wisdom with true reverence. In the last resort even the religious faiths of today have the same source. But we are at the beginning of the New, i.e., of the understanding of Man which must expand into an understanding of the world.

Such must be the new path, my dear friends, and it is connected with many things. Take one example:—the way in which we have attempted this building of the Goetheanum. You know how sharply I have said on one occasion or another: It is a calumny to speak of this building as representing symbolically this or that truth. Though indeed in many cases it is not badly meant, nevertheless it is an objective calumny, and after all, those who do not understand our building ought not to speak of it. Look for a symbol in this building—you will not find a single one. Nowhere will you find one. The attempt has been made to create—directly out of the spiritual world—not anything symbolic, but the spiritual Reality itself, insofar as it has hitherto been able to reveal itself. Symbolism is the language in which mankind was spoken to in former times. It lies inherent in the very progress of human evolution, that the old vision through symbols, which worked upon the instincts, should be raised into the full consciousness, where the Reality—the spiritual Reality—is seen.

But this vision of the Reality of the Spirit requires a certain spiritual activity. The contemplation of symbols enabled men to fall asleep, as it were. Thus, as I told you recently, there are freemasons nowadays who say they are very glad that their symbols are not explained to them, for everyone can then think what he likes—a liberty which most of them interpret by thinking nothing at all, and letting the symbols work on them unconsciously. All this has remained over from olden times, and must be transformed into the new way. Symbolism, as you know, plays no essential part in what is here called Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. For in this science we must speak a new language, in a certain sense. Even if, from time to time, we have referred to one symbol or another, these symbols were only borrowed, as it were, to exemplify this or that, or to bring out the agreement between the truths newly discovered which are to serve the new humanity, and those that still survive in an antiquated form from times long past.

Now it lies inherent as it were (what I say will lead us back again tomorrow to our studies of the social life)—it lies inherent in human nature that men invariably rebel at first against what appears as a new thing. And those who consider themselves, so to speak, the guardians and protectors of the old are the greatest resisters. Hence the new, anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science finds its predestined center of opposition among these who look upon themselves as guardians of the old traditions. But this cannot prevent it from going forward on its way which is the necessary and natural way for modern humanity.

There are a certain number of you, my dear friends, who know that in our circles too we have by no means hesitated to set forth the life of symbolism and ritual that has remained from olden times. But we have always done so in a very different spirit. Generally the greatest value is attached, in an antiquated spirit, to the symbolism and ritual itself. To maintain the continuity of human evolution, it is still necessary to establish a connection, as it were, with symbolism and ritual. But in our circles symbolism and ritual have never been presented in any other way than as something that should lead us to the spiritual reality itself and to its immediate incorporation into the living values of our time. Hence it is just in anthroposophical Spiritual Science that we find the explanation of many, nay, in fact, of all the principles of ritual and symbolism, from the past.

We can show by them how mankind received by other paths a Wisdom which in our time is antiquated and out of date. This Wisdom brought man, in a certain sense, into an unfree condition. Today we must set out on new paths of Wisdom. These new paths are inconvenient to many people, and most of all to those who are only anxious to preserve the old and lull mankind to sleep in the old Wisdom-treasures. It is useless to say to a man of forty: “You can become intelligent; you can regain the faculty to learn, but to this end you must return to the age of twenty!” True, if he could return to the age of twenty, he would be capable of learning. But it is impossible. Humanity cannot be screwed back to a former stage. We cannot recommend them to do what was only right and normal for former epochs of the Earth. Yet this is the very thing which many adherents of religious communities and of certain other societies are desirous of spreading in our time. Thus the Old is set up in opposition to that which is really seeking to come among mankind and which alone can lead to its salvation. Therein lies much of what is leading to the catastrophic events of our time.

It is immensely important, my dear friends, to bear this in mind. To be able to be, in the deepest sense of the word, a man who unites himself with that which the new revelations of the Heavens are wanting from the Earth—this is the thing that matters. And if the outer exoteric problems of mankind are not to suffer shipwreck, we simply must have a Spiritual Science in our time, equipped with concepts strong and penetrating enough to bring to consciousness even in the everyday life what is moving the souls of men all the Earth over—albeit in the differentiated ways which I have described.

In future it will no longer do to live on the one hand in the everyday life, conceiving it as a life profane and poor in spiritual content, thereafter to withdraw into the Church or Masonic Temple, letting the two worlds be altogether separate, so that the Church or Masonic Temple has no idea how the outer social life should be ordered, while on the other hand the social life goes on its way without the help of what is striving in the inner life of men, and is kept in the subconsciousness of man by ritual and symbols. In future it will be necessary to speak to the consciousness of men. This fact alone is more important than all our sympathies and antipathies with the old or with the new. For that which must be done must be done out of real insight—it must not proceed from our sympathies and antipathies

You see, my dear friends, the central nerve in the comprehension of the spiritual world today is this: All that comes to us from ancient times must be “inwarded.” The outward must become inward. For it is thereby raised into full human consciousness as something no less holy than it was in former times. This tendency must take place in the modern evolution of mankind. This tendency alone, my dear friends, is the true Christianity of the twentieth century. Against it—against the intentions that are here indicated—all who would merely preserve the Old quite naturally stand opposed. A large proportion of mankind is attached with certain habits of thought and feeling to the Old. They find it more comfortable, for it does not demand a conscious understanding. People find Spiritual Science inconvenient. For they are called upon to understand it, and it can only be understood by making use of healthy, wide-awake, human intelligence, but people would rather not understand. In many respects nowadays there is a striving not for understanding but for non-understanding. Hence it will go on for a long time:—Spiritual Science, such as is here intended, will meet with opposition after opposition. Many of these oppositions are quite well meant, but even they can frequently reverse into the very opposite of a good meaning. And above all, as I have often told you, my dear friends, this Spiritual Science, which wants to tell humanity of highest spiritual things while speaking openly and freely in modern terms of thought, time and again there will arise in opposition those who adhere to the old tendencies—those who incline to the old creeds and Churches, or to ancient Masonic or similar societies of whatsoever kind. These are the natural opponents. as it were. We can understand this opposition, for in this sphere, too, clear understanding is the only right and true aim of Spiritual Science. Here too, there must be no dark and cloudy non-understanding. Indeed modern anthroposophical Spiritual Science need not appeal at all as forming a Society in the old sense of the word, nor need it occasion any surprise that it does not. It has no need to adopt the methods that were taken and are still being taken by the old secret Societies. These old methods are the very ones of which modern humanity is wanting to rid itself. In outer exoteric spheres there is much talk today of getting rid of secret diplomacy—and rightly so, as I believe, altogether rightly. Anyone who has studied history in these domains knows that this very secret diplomacy is none other than the last remains of the methods and ideas of the old secret Societies. Many another thing will have to be transcended. It is strange, my dear friends, what misunderstandings one can experience in this sphere. As you are well aware, I have written an Occult Science. A man whom I have often mentioned to you sent me a manuscript about this Occult Science which began somewhat as follows:—“There can be no such thing as an ‘Occult Science,’ for a Science must necessarily be public. It is a misuse of terms to speak of ‘Occult Science.’ ”—That, of course, is perfect nonsense. For when we speak of “Natural Science” we do not mean a science that is natural but a science of Nature, which has to be achieved of course by mental work. So it is when we speak of Occult Science, we do not mean a science that is perpetually hidden. There is such a thing as a published “Occult Science,” namely, a science of those things which may be called intimate or occult. It is simply an absurd way of picking up words. Nor need we imagine that with the mere publication everything is given. Many a thing which has been exoterically spoken will remain esoteric for a long time yet. Indeed, my dear friends, there are many exoteric books which you can buy anywhere today which are very esoteric for many people (for the sake of politeness I will not say “for most!”). Many a little volume which you can buy for a few pence in a popular edition will represent for a large number of people something extremely esoteric. That therefore is not the point, the thing that matters is the kind of inner union which the human soul has, or is ready to enter into, with these things.

That, my dear friends, is only in parenthesis. The point I really wish to make is that the old and antiquated motif of secrecy must be replaced by something altogether different. The life of Spiritual Science in mankind will indeed be different from what has frequently been cultivated by secret societies and leagues of one kind of another. These “secret” societies can of course be seen through, to the very bottom of their souls; they are by no means secret nowadays for anyone who cares to go into such matters. Nevertheless they maintain the principle of secrecy in a wrongful way. They uphold it in their customs, manner, and conduct. And that is more important than many another aspect. You, all of you, are aware that there are secret societies of one kind or another—Societies arising out of religious faiths, Societies, too, of other kinds—which instruct their members to shape the intercourse of man to man in a special way, and by mysterious methods to carry this or that element into the life of men. Well, my dear friends, it is quite natural that in course of time the most varied shades and colorings of such secret Societies have arisen. Frequently they are at war with one another to the knife, and without doubt they now and then contain features which can justly be attacked. Be that as it may! The thing that lives in a society of human beings who adhere to anthroposophical Spiritual Science does not require to be defended by any such means as are sometimes needed to defend what is connected with secret Societies and with their secret usages. There is absolutely no need to defend by any special art or artifice that which emerges in the anthroposophical Spiritual Movement. I can tell you the very simplest method of defending it. No one need do any more for its defense than to tell the truth and to refrain from lying. Whoever tells the truth about anthroposophical Spiritual Science (and after all, it is the duty of every man to speak the truth)—he is defending it. That I know; this statement can be made. Other defense is necessary for anthroposophical Spiritual Science. For it is the obvious duty of every human being to repudiate what is untrue.

Herein I have drawn your attention to a most important point, for it concerns the very principle of anthroposophical Spiritual Science. This Spiritual Science does not proceed by any tortuous paths. It speaks to man in the same spirit in which Science speaks during our time. Only within the scientific customs of our time it tells what—if I may use the word—the heavens are now and henceforth revealing to mankind. This must be clearly seen, my dear friends, for it implies that Spiritual Science as such, and not the life of the Society, is placed in the foreground. It places the objective truths in the foreground, making the life of the Society only the vehicle to hear them.

A week ago I said that it is necessary to distinguish clearly between anthroposophical Spiritual Science and other things. We must be fully conscious of the distinction, otherwise we shall fall short of a most important element in the present evolution of mankind, and this we must not do, if we honestly wish to devote ourselves to the most needful impulses—these impulses which can bring healing into the catastrophes of the present and of the near future.

One would fain give oneself up to this hope, my dear friends, that a new way of judgment might be found among us—a new power of discrimination for what is now obliged to enter as a quite new thing into the evolution of mankind. We must not confound the antiquated things with that which is endeavoring, out of the fundamental demands of earthly evolution, to bring forth in the present and in the near future what must be brought forward, so that all that which has arisen under the influence of the old things may be replaced by the new.

Take only this one thing: the old Christianity has had nearly 2000 years to evolve. In the first centuries A.D. it was different from what it is today, as everybody knows who studies it. And what Christianity shall now become—that again must be different. Study the last four and a half years: you may take them as an example which shows how the past relics—not of Christianity itself but of a certain Christian conception—have stood the test, or rather, have failed to stand the test in this catastrophic time. So long as we remain in abstract generalizations we can say what we like. That is the characteristic of abstract world-conceptions. They can clothe anything they like in their abstract formulae. It is a very different matter when we come to concepts and ideas such as I explained to you recently; the fundamental Social idea of the future, the three-fold idea—this idea is adapted, as I showed last Sunday, to the reality itself. It is capable of manifold configuration, it expands over the realities of life, for it is adapted to them. With an abstract idea you can no doubt comprise all things; but in relation to a real idea, my dear friends, you can speak as I myself have done to many people to whom I have explained the threefold conception, albeit not as one who is convinced of his own dogmatic system and says: “This is what you must accept, or else everything will go wrong.” Where real ideas are concerned, there can be no such thing as that. I spoke to them quite differently; I said: “You need not believe in these ideas as dogmas at all. Set to work anywhere in the world of reality, and you will see; whenever you introduce these ideas into the world of reality, it will be mastered with their help. Perhaps, when you have done—or even when you have only worked on a small portion of the reality with these ideas—the outcome will be quite different.” I should not be at all surprised if in the execution of these ideas insofar as they refer to the realities, not the one stone were left upon another of the indications originally given. If we do not proceed dogmatically, then we do not hold fast to our programmes like so many people do when they elaborate statutes and programmes for Societies. We only point out what is already seeking to take shape in the reality itself. This, then, is applicable in the reality. Set to work, and it may well be that ideas will emerge quite different from those which were at first set forth. This is the very characteristic of ideas which are true to reality; they change with life itself and life is changing continually. It is not a question of having fine ideas, but ideas according to the reality. These ideas we cannot and should not express in abstract terms; we should try to express them so that they are living and enter livingly into the reality of life. Naturally, then, they are most liable to be attacked by those who love abstractions. This too, my dear friends, is new in anthroposophical Spiritual Science. In Anthroposophy we do not only think new things, but we think in a new way. That is why so many people cannot approach it, they cannot get into this “thinking in a new way.” Yet this is the thing that matters; in this new thinking, we may say, the thought dives down into the reality and we live with the reality. You can prove anything you like with abstractions; with an abstraction, be it even of a God, you can declare as a good and loyal monarchist subject: “The King is appointed by the grace of God.” The present moment has its own teaching, for now he is in turn deposed by the grace of God! With your abstractions you can include the black and the white under the same abstraction. With your abstractions you can say that God is leading to battle the armies of the one side and of the other.

In the striving for reality which lies at the very foundation of anthroposophical Spiritual Science, the point is to replace such abstract life and abstract talk—ruinous as it is for life itself—by true thinking, which accords with the reality, and by a way of speaking which lovingly dives down into the reality of life, and speaks out of the reality itself. We need a thinking which not only thinks different things, but differently than heretofore. Such thinking strives towards the ideal of “not I, but Christ in me,” after the words of St. Paul. For Christ himself sought for the harmony between the outer-human and the inner-human. This must become an ideal in all our human striving.

Above all, I must ask for your forgiveness if I am unable to give the lecture I am supposed to give in one of the local languages. The fact that this lecture is being held corresponds to the wish of the friends of our Theosophical Society, for whom I was invited here, to hold a series of lectures for a fortnight, and who thought that there was a possibility of also inserting the two announced public lectures within this time. Of course, this means that I will have to apologize in advance if some of the names and terms, which are borrowed from the national epic of the Finns, are not pronounced quite correctly by me, as I am not familiar with the language. However, only next Friday's lecture will be able to introduce us to spiritual science itself. Tonight's lecture will rather concern a kind of neighboring area that can be illuminated from a spiritual scientific point of view. However, the talk will be about an area that, in the very deepest sense of the word, is one of the most interesting for human historical reflection and human historical thought.

Folk epics! We need only think of some of the better-known folk epics, the epics of Homer, which have become Greek folk epics, the Central European Nibelungen saga and, finally, Kalewala, and it will immediately become clear to us that these folk epics lead us deeper into human souls and human than through any historical research, so that important ancient times are brought to life and presented to our souls as if they were present, but in such a way that they touch us in the here and now like the fates and lives of people living around us. How uncertain and hazy are the historical times of the ancient Greek people, as told to us by the Homeric epics. And how do we look into the souls of those people when we let the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey take effect on us, people who have actually been completely removed from the usual view of history? No wonder that the study of folk epics holds something of a mystery for those who study them scientifically or literarily. We need only point out one fact about the ancient Greek epics that a spirited observer of the Iliad repeatedly expressed in a very beautiful book about Homer's Iliad that was only published a few years ago. I am referring to Herman Grimm, the nephew of the great Germanic myth, saga, and language researcher Jakob Grimm. By letting the figures and facts of the Iliad take effect on him, Herman Grimm felt compelled to say again and again: Oh, this Homer – we do not need to go into the question of the personality of Homer today – seems, when he describes something that is borrowed from a craft or an art, as if he were a specialist in this craft or art. When he describes a battle, a fight, he seems to be completely familiar with all the strategic and military principles that come into play in warfare. — Herman Grimm is right to point out that a strict judge in such matters was an admirer of Homer's factual depiction of battles, namely Napoleon, a man who was undoubtedly entitled to pass judgment on whether or not the military is directly and vividly presented to our minds in the spirit of Homer. From a general human point of view, we know how vividly Homer presents the figures to our minds, as if we had them directly before our physical eyes.

What about a national epic like this, how does it prove itself over time? For truly, anyone who observes the circumstances impartially will not get the impression that artificial arrangements of humanity, such as an artificial pedagogical discipline, have repeatedly held the interest of the centuries in the Iliad and Odyssey down to our days. This interest is a matter of course, it is a general human interest. But in a certain sense these folk epics give us a task, and if we want to study them, they immediately present us with a very specific, one might say interesting, task. They want to be taken very seriously in all their details. We immediately feel that something about the content of such folk epics will remain incomprehensible to us if we want to read them in the same way that we read a modern work of art, a modern novel or the like. We feel right from the first lines of the Iliad that Homer is speaking precisely. What is he describing? He tells us at the beginning. We know from other accounts, which are not contained in the Iliad, about events that follow on from the facts of the Iliad. Homer wants to describe only what he says succinctly in the first line: the wrath of Achilles. And if we now go through the entire Iliad and look at it impartially, we have to say: there is nothing in it that cannot be characterized as fact, that follows from the wrath of Achilles. - And further, a peculiar fact right at the beginning of the Iliad. Homer does not begin with the facts, nor with some personal opinion, but with something that modern times might be tempted to take as a mere phrase: “Sing to me, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles!” And the deeper we penetrate into this national epic, the clearer it becomes to us that we cannot understand the meaning and spirit and significance of it if we do not take this saying seriously at the outset. But then we must ask ourselves: what does it actually mean?

And now the way it is presented, the whole way the events are brought before our soul! For many, not only expert and scientific observers, but also for artistically comprehensive minds like Herman Grimm, it was a question these words: “Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles.” A question that went to their very hearts. In this Iliad, just as in the Song of the Nibelungs or in Kalewala, the deeds of spiritual-divine beings—in Homer's poems, first of all, the deeds and intentions and passions of the Olympian gods—intertwine with the deeds and intentions and passions of men who, like Achilles, are in a sense far removed from the ordinary human, and again with the passions and intentions and deeds of men who are already close to the ordinary human, like Odysseus or Agamemnon? When this Achilles appears before our soul, he seems lonely to us compared to the people with whom he lives. We very soon feel in the course of the Iliad that in Achilles we have a personality before us who cannot really talk about her innermost affairs with all the other heroes. Homer also shows us how Achilles has to sort out his actual heart affairs with divine spiritual beings that do not belong to the human realm, how he stands alone in relation to the human realm throughout the entire Iliad, and yet is close to supersensible, supermundane powers. And yet it is strange that when we gather all our human feeling into the way of thinking and feeling that we have acquired in the cultural process and direct our gaze to this Achilles, he then appears to us in such a way that we often have to say: How selfish, how personal! — A being in whose soul divine-spiritual impulses play, he acts entirely out of the immediate personal. For a long time, a war that was so important for the Greeks, such as the Trojan War of the legends, only progresses, and the special episodes that the thliad describes, are won by Achilles making up for himself what he has to make up for personally with Agamemnon. And we always see that supernatural powers are at play. We see Zeus, Apollo, Athena handing out impulses, so to speak, putting people in their places. It was always strange before the task came to me to approach these things from the standpoint of spiritual science, like a very spiritual man with whom I was lucky enough to often discuss these things personally, to find his way around these things like Herman Grimm. He expressed this not only in his writings but also often in personal conversations, and there much more precisely. He said: If we only consider the historical forces and impulses at work in the development of humanity, then we cannot get to grips with what lives and creates in the great folk epics. Therefore, for Herman Grimm, the brilliant observer of the Iliad and folk poetry in general, something that goes beyond the ordinary powers of human consciousness, beyond understanding, reason, sensory perception, beyond ordinary feeling, becomes a real power, a power that is creative just like the other historical impulses. Herman Grimm spoke of a real creative imagination that runs through the development of humanity, spoke of an imagination as one speaks of an essence, of a reality, of something that prevailed for people and that could tell them more in the beginning of the times we can observe, in the development of the individual peoples, than what the ordinary soul forces tell people. Herman Grimm's words always appealed to the creative imagination, which for him thus took on the role of a co-creator in the process of human becoming.

But now, when we look at this battleground of the Iliad, this representation of the wrath of Achilles, with all the interplay of divine, spiritual powers, we cannot get by with such view as Herman Grimm took it, and in his book on the Iliad we find many a word of resignation that shows us how the usual point of view, which one can take today, whether literary or scientifically, cannot deal with these things. Where does Herman Grimm come to in relation to the Iliad and the Nibelungen saga? He comes to the assumption that the historical dynasties and ruling houses were preceded by others. In fact, one might say, Herman Grimm literally thinks in such terms. He considers, for example, that Zeus and his entire entourage represent a kind of ruling house that preceded the ruling house of Agamemnon. He thinks, so to speak, of human history in a certain uniformity, thinks of the gods or heroes depicted in the Iliad or the Nibelungen saga as ancient humans, whom later humans dared to depict only by clothing their deeds and characters in the guise of superhuman myth. There are many things that cannot be understood if one takes such a premise as a basis, especially the particular way in which the gods intervene in Homer. I ask you, my dear attendees, to consider just one thing: how do Thetis, the mother of Achilles, Athena, and other divine figures intervene in the events of Troy? They intervene by taking on the form of mortal men, inspiring them, as it were, and leading them to their deeds. They do not appear themselves, but permeate living men. Living men figure not only as their representatives, but as the shells that are permeated by invisible powers that cannot appear on the battlefield in their own form, in their own essence. It would be strange to assume that ancient people of the ordinary kind should be depicted in such a way that they would have to take the representative people from the mortal race as their shell. This is just one of the indications that can prove to us all that we cannot get by with the old folk epics in this way.

But we are just as little at home with the figures of the Song of the Nibelungs, that Siegfried from Xanten on the Lower Rhine, who is transferred to the court of the Burgundians at Worms, woos Kriemhilde, Gunther's sister, and then, because of his special qualities, can only woo Brunhilde. And how strangely such figures as Brunhilde from Isenland, like Siegfried, are described to us. Siegfried is described as having overcome the so-called Nibelung race, as having acquired, conquered the Nibelung treasure. Through what he has acquired through his victory over the Nibelungs, he acquires very special qualities, which are expressed in the epic by saying that he can make himself invisible, that he is invulnerable in a certain way, and that he also has powers that the ordinary Gunther does not have, because the latter cannot acquire Brunhilde, who does not allow herself to be defeated by an ordinary mortal. Siegfried defeats Brunhilde with the special powers that come from being the owner of the Nibelungen hoard, and because he can conceal the powers he displays, he is able to present Brunhilde to Gunther, his brother-in-law. And there we find that Kriemhilde and Brunhilde, who we then see at the Burgundian court at the same time, are two very different characters, characters who are obviously influenced by things that cannot be explained by the ordinary human soul. This leads to quarrels between them, and also to Brunhilde being able to tempt Hagen, a loyal servant, to kill Siegfried. This again points to a trait that appears so peculiarly in Central European legend. Siegfried has higher, superhuman powers. He has these superhuman powers because he possesses the hoard of the Nibelungs. Ultimately, these do not make him an unconditionally victorious figure, but a figure who stands before us tragically. The powers that Siegfried has through the Nibelungen hoard are also a curse for the human being. Things become even stranger when we add the related Nordic saga of Sigurd, the dragon slayer, but this has an enlightening effect. There we are immediately confronted with Sigurd, who is none other than Siegfried, as the slayer of the dragon, who thereby acquires the Nibelungen hoard from an ancient race of dwarves. And we are introduced to Brunhilde as a figure of superhuman nature, as a Valkyrie figure.

We see, then, that there are two ways of presenting these things in Europe. One way, which directly links everything to the divine-supernatural, which still shows us how something in Brunhilde is meant that directly belongs to the supernatural world, and the other way, which legend has humanized. But we can still recognize how the divine can be found resounding everywhere in this way too.

And now let us turn our gaze from these legends, from these folk epics, to that region about which I can truly only speak as someone who can see things from the outside, only as they can be recognized if one does not speak the language in question. I ask you to bear in mind that I can only speak about everything that a Western European encounters in Kalewala as one who sees the spiritual content and the great, powerful figures and who, of course, must inevitably miss the subtleties of the epic, which only come out when one really masters the language in which it is written. But even when viewed in this way, how peculiarly the triad in the three presents itself to us, indeed, one is actually at a loss to use a name, one cannot say gods, one cannot say heroes, so let us say in the three entities: Wäinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen. These figures speak a strange language, when we compare their characters with each other, a language from which we clearly recognize that the things we are to be told go beyond what can be achieved with the ordinary human powers of the soul. After all, if we look at them only superficially, these three figures grow into the monstrous. And yet again, which is the peculiar thing, in that they grow into the monstrous, every single trait is vividly before our eyes, so that nowhere do we somehow have the feeling that the monstrous is a grotesque, a paradox; everywhere we have the feeling that what is to be said must, of course, appear in superhuman greatness, in superhuman significance. And then: what mystery in the content. Something that inspires our soul to think of the most human of things, but which in turn goes beyond what ordinary soul forces can grasp. Ilmarinen, who is often called the blacksmith, the most artistic blacksmith of all, forges the Sampo on pins for Wäinämöinen in a realm inhabited, so to speak, by humanity's older brothers or at least by more primitive people than the Finns, for some foreign realm. And we see this strange thing happening, that far from the scene of the facts under discussion, many things take place, that time passes, and we see how, after a certain time, Wäinämöinen and Ilmarinen are again caused to retrieve what was left to them in a foreign land, the Sampo. Anyone who allows themselves to be drawn into the peculiar spiritual language that emerges from this forging of the Sampo, from this keeping away and regaining of the same, has the immediate impression – as I said, I ask you to bear in mind that I speak, so to speak, as a stranger and can therefore only speak of the impression of a stranger – that the most essential, the most meaningful in this grandiose poem is the forging, the keeping away and the later regaining of the Sampo.

What strikes me as particularly strange about Kalewala is the ending. I have heard that there are people who believe that this ending may be a later addition. For me, this ending of Mariata and her son, this introduction of a very strange Christianity – I say explicitly a very strange Christianity – is part of the whole. It acquires Kalevala, through the presence of this conclusion, a very special nuance, a coloring that can, so to speak, make the matter even more understandable to us. I may say that, for my feeling, such a delicate, wonderfully impersonal presentation of Christianity is nowhere to be found at all than at the end of Kalevala. The Christian principle is detached from all locality. The journey from Mariata to Herod, who in Kalevala appears as Rotus, is so impersonal that it hardly reminds us of any locality or personality in Palestine. Indeed, one is not even remotely reminded of the historical Christ Jesus. At the end of Kalewala, we find a delicate hint of the penetration of the noblest cultural pearl of humanity into Finnish culture as the most intimate affair of the heart of humanity. And linked to this is the tragic train, which in turn can have such an infinitely deep effect on our soul that when Christianity moves in and the son of Mariata is baptized, Wäinämöinen takes leave of his people in order to go to an unspecified location, leaving behind only the content and power of what he knew how to tell through his art of singing about the ancient events that include the history of this people. This withdrawal of Wäinämöinen towards the son of Mariata seems to me so significant that one would like to see in it the living interplay of all that prevailed at the core of the Finnish people, of the Finnish national soul, from ancient times until the moment when Christianity found its way into Finland. The way in which this ancient power relates to Christianity is such that one can feel everything that takes place in the soul with a wonderful intimacy. I say this as someone who is aware of the objectivity of what I am about to say, which I do not say to please anyone or to flatter anyone. In this national epic, we Western Europeans have one of the most wonderful examples of how the members of a nation stand before us in the flesh, with their whole soul, so that through Kalevala we get to know the Finnish soul in a way that allows us to become completely familiar with it.

Why have I said all this? I have said it to characterize how something speaks in the folk epics that cannot be explained by ordinary human soul powers, even when one speaks of imagination as a real power. And even if to some what is said sounds only like a hypothesis, then perhaps what spiritual science has to say about the nature of these folk epics may be adduced in this consideration of folk epics. Certainly, I am aware that what I have to say today still touches on something to which very few people can give their consent in our present time. Many may perhaps regard it as a reverie, a fantasy; but some will at least accept it alongside other hypotheses put forward about the development of humanity. For those who penetrate spiritual science in the way that I will dare to describe in the next lecture, it will not be a hypothesis, but a real research result that can be put alongside other scientific research results. The things that have to be discussed sound strange because the very science that today believes it stands firmly on the ground of the factual, the true, the only thing that can be attained, limits itself only to what the outer senses perceive, what the mind, bound to the senses and the brain, can explore of things. And that is why today it is often considered unscientific to speak of a research method that reaches to other powers of the soul, which make it possible to see into the supersensible and the way the supersensible plays into the sensory. By means of this method of research, by means of spiritual science, one is not merely led to the abstract imagination to which Herman Grimm was led in regard to the folk epic, but one is led to something that goes far beyond imagination, that represents a quite different state of soul or consciousness than that which man can have at the present moment in his development. And so, through spiritual science, we are led back to human prehistory in a completely different way than through ordinary science.

Today, ordinary science is accustomed to looking back on the development of humanity in such a way that what we call human beings today have gradually developed from lower, animal-like creatures. Spiritual science does not confront this modern research with a combative attitude, but fully recognizes the greatness and power of the achievements of this natural science of the 19th century, the significance of the idea of a transformation of the animal forms from the most imperfect to the perfect, and an attachment of the outer human form to the most perfect animal form. But it cannot stop at such a view of the becoming of man, of the becoming of organisms in general, which would present itself if one could survey with an external sensory view that which has taken place in the organic world up to man in the course of earthly events. Today, in spiritual science, the human being stands alongside the animal world. We see the variously shaped animal forms in the world around us. We see the human race spread out over the earth as a unified entity in a certain way. In spiritual science, we also have an unbiased view of how everything in the outer form speaks for the relationship between man and the other organisms, but in spiritual science, when we trace the development of humanity backwards, we cannot go back so far that we can directly place the stream of humanity into the animal series of development in some distant past. For we find, when we go back from the present into the past, that we cannot, anywhere, directly attach the present human form, the present human being, to any animal form that we know from the present.

If we go back in the development of humanity, we first find, one might say, the soul forces, the powers of mind and feeling and will, that we also have in the present, developing in ever more primitive forms in humans. Then we go back to the mists of time, of which old documents tell us only very little. Even where we can go back as far as the Egyptians or the peoples of the Near East, we are led everywhere back to an ancient humanity, which, although more primitive in some respects, also has more magnificent the same powers of mind, and will forces, which have only recently reached their present development, but which we recognize as the most important human impulses, as the most important historical impulses, as far as we can trace back humanity by considering this present soul. Nowhere do we find the possibility of placing even the most ancient race of men in a special relationship to the present animal forms. This, which spiritual science must assert for itself, is recognized today even by thinking natural scientists. But if we go further back and consider how the human soul changes when we compare how a person thinks, say, scientifically or otherwise, how he applies his intellect and how his powers of feeling work, when we trace this back — oh, we can trace it quite accurately — to a certain time when it first shone forth in humanity. We might say that it first appeared in the sixth or seventh century before Christ. The whole configuration of present-day feeling and thinking does not go back farther than the times of which we are told as the times of the first Greek natural philosophy.

If we go further back and have an unprejudiced eye, we find, without yet touching on spiritual science, that not only does all present-day scientific thought cease in the past, but that the human soul is in a completely different state altogether, in a much more impersonal state, but also in such a state that we have to address its powers much more as instinctively. Not in the sense that we are saying that people in this period acted on instincts like those of animals today, but the guidance of reason and intellect, as it exists today, was not there. Instead, however, there was a certain instinctive, direct certainty in people. They acted on the basis of direct, elementary impulses; they did not control them through the intellect tied to the brain. There we find, however, that in the human soul those powers still prevail unmixed, which we today have separately as powers of reason, and those powers, which we today carefully separate from the powers of reason and lead to science, the powers of imagination. Imagination, understanding and reason, they all work together in those ancient times. The further back we go, the more we find that we can no longer speak of what prevailed in the soul of human beings, what worked there as imagination and understanding, as we call a soul power today, when we call it imagination. Today we know very well that when we speak of imagination, we are speaking of a soul force whose expressions we cannot really apply, to which we cannot ascribe reality. The modern human being is careful in this matter, he is careful not to mix together what imagination gives him with what the logic of reason tells him. If we look at what the human mind expresses in those prehistoric times before imagination and reason appear separately, then we feel an original, elementary, instinctive power prevailing in the souls. We can find characteristics of today's imagination in it, but what – if we use the term – imagination gave the human soul back then had something to do with a reality. Imagination was not yet imagination, it was still – I must not be afraid to use the expression directly – clairvoyant power, was still a special soul faculty, was the gift of the soul through which man saw things, saw facts that are hidden from him today in his developmental epoch, when understanding and reason are to be particularly developed. Those powers that were not imagination but clairvoyant power penetrated deeper down into hidden forces and hidden forms of existence that lie behind the sensual world. This is what an unbiased consideration must lead us to: that when we look back at the development of humanity, we have to say to ourselves: Truly, we must take the word evolution, development, seriously.

That humanity in the present, in the last centuries and millennia, has come to its present high level of rational and intellectual powers, so to speak, is a result of development. These soul powers have developed out of others. And while our present soul powers are limited to what presents itself in the external sense world, an original humanity, which of course had to do without science in the modern sense, without the use of reason in the modern sense, an original human soul power at the basis of all individual peoples looked into the foundations of existence, into a realm that, as a supersensible one, lies behind the sensual. Once upon a time, all peoples possessed clairvoyant powers as part of the human soul. It was out of these clairvoyant powers that the present human powers of understanding and reason were formed, as well as the present way of thinking and feeling. These soul powers, which we may refer to as clairvoyant powers, were such that the human being felt at the same time: I am not the one who is thinking and feeling within me. Man felt as if he had been given over, with all his physicality and also with his soul being, to higher, supersensible powers that were working and living in him. Thus man felt like a vessel through which supersensible forces themselves spoke. If one considers this, one also understands the meaning of the further development of humanity. Human beings would have remained dependent beings, who could only have felt themselves to be vessels, as shells of powers and entities, if they had not progressed to the actual use of intellect and reason. Through the use of intellect and reason, man has become more independent, but at the same time, for a while of development, he has also been cut off from the spiritual world in certain respects, cut off from the supersensible foundations of existence. In the future, this will change again. The further we go back, the deeper the human soul sees into the foundations of existence through clairvoyant powers, and sees how those forces that worked on the human being himself in prehistoric times emerged from these foundations of existence until a point in time when all conditions on earth were quite different from today, when they were such that the forms of living beings were much more mobile, much more subject to a kind of metamorphosis than today. Thus we have to go back far from what is called the present human cultural period, we have to observe human forms and animal forms side by side. And much further back than is usually believed today is the separation of the animal form from the human form. The animal forms then solidified, became more immobile at a time when the human form was still quite soft and pliable and could be shaped and molded by what was experienced inwardly by the soul. In this way, we come back to a time in human development that is beyond our present consciousness, but for which another consciousness was present in the soul, one that was connected to the clairvoyant powers that have just been characterized. Such a consciousness, which could look back into the past and saw the development of humanity in its origin from the past already in complete separation from all animal life, also saw how human forces ruled, but still in a living connection with the supersensible forces that played into it. It saw what in the times when, for example, the Homeric epics were written was only present as an old echo, and what was present to a much greater extent in even earlier times. If we go back to the time before Homer, we find that people had a clairvoyant consciousness that, as it were, remembered human events from prehistoric times and was able to tell the story of the origin of man from memory. By Homer's time, the situation was such that people felt that the old clairvoyant consciousness was dwindling, but they still felt that it was there. That was a time when man did not speak of himself as an independent, egoistic being, but when gods and supersensible spiritual forces spoke through him. So we must take it seriously when Homer does not speak of himself, but when he says: Sing to me, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles! Sing in me, higher being, being that speaks through me, that takes possession of me as I sing and say. This first line of Homer is a reality. We are not referred to ancient dynasties that are similar in the ordinary sense to our present humanity, but we are pointed to the fact by Homer himself that there were other people in primeval times, people in whom the supersensible lived. And Achilles is definitely still a personality from the transitional period from the old clairvoyance to the modern way of looking at things, which we already find in Agamemnon, which we find in Nestor and Odysseus, but which is then further developed into a higher way of looking at things. Only in this way do we understand Achilles when we know that Homer wanted to depict him as a member of the ancient human race who lived in a time that lies between the time when people still directly reached the ancient gods and the present time of humanity, which begins with Agamemnon.

Likewise, we are referred to a human prehistory in the Central European Nibelungen saga. The whole presentation of this epic shows us this. We are already dealing with people of our present time in a certain respect, but with such people of our present time who have preserved something from the time of ancient clairvoyance. All the qualities that Siegfried is said to have, that he can make himself invisible, that he has powers through which he overcomes Brunhilde, which an ordinary mortal cannot overcome, all this shows us, along with the other things that are told about him, that we have in him a man who, as in an inner human memory, has carried the achievements of the ancient powers of the soul, which were linked to clairvoyance and connection with nature, over into the present human condition. At what transition does Siegfried stand? This is shown by Brunhilde's relationship to Kriemhilde, Siegfried's wife. It cannot be explained in detail here what the two figures mean. But we can make sense of all these legends if we see in the figures that are presented to us pictorial representations of inner clairvoyant or remembered clairvoyant conditions. Thus we may see in Siegfried's relation to Kriemhilde his relation to the powers of his own soul as they rule in him. His soul is, as it were, a transitional soul, and this is because Siegfried, with the treasure of the Nibelungs, that is, with the clairvoyant secrets of ancient times, brings something into the new time that at the same time makes him unsuitable for his present time. The men of the old time could live with this Nibelung hoard, that is to say with the old clairvoyant powers. The earth has changed its conditions. Thus Siegfried, who still carries an echo of the old time in his soul, no longer fits into the present, and so he becomes a tragic figure. How can the present relate to what is still alive for Siegfried? For him, something of the old clairvoyant powers is still alive, because when he is overcome, Kriemhilde remains. She is brought the hoard of the Nibelungs, she can use it. We learn that later on, the hoard of the Nibelungs will be taken from her by Hagen. We can see that in a way, Brunhilde is also able to work with the old clairvoyant powers. In this way, she is opposed to those people who fit into the then-present: Gunther and his brothers, Gunther above all, for whom Brunhilde has no time. Why is that? Well, we know from the saga that Brunhilde is a kind of Valkyrie figure: in other words, something in the human soul, and specifically that with which, in ancient times, man was still able to unite through clairvoyant powers, but which has withdrawn from man, has become unconscious, and with which man, as he currently lives in the age of reason, can only unite after death. Hence the union with the Valkyrie at the moment of death. The Valkyrie is the personification of the living soul forces that are in the present human being, those soul forces that the old clairvoyant consciousness was able to perceive, but which the present human being only experiences when he passes through the gate of death. Only then is he united with this soul, which is represented in Brunhilde. Because Kriemhilde still knows something of the old clairvoyant times and the powers that the soul receives through ancient clairvoyance, she becomes a figure whose anger is described, as in the Iliad the anger of Achilles. This is sufficiently indicated to us that the people who were still endowed with clairvoyant powers in ancient times did not control with reason, did not let reason prevail, but acted directly from their most elementary, most intense impulses. Hence the personal, the directly egoistic, in both Kriemhilde and Achilles.

The whole matter becomes particularly interesting when we consider the folk epics, if we add Kalewala to the folk epics listed. We will be able to show, today, because of the limited time, that spiritual science in our present time can only point to the old clairvoyant states of humanity because it is possible today, again — albeit in a more advanced way, permeated by reason, not dream-like — to evoke clairvoyant states through spiritual training. Modern man is gradually growing into an age in which hidden powers will arise from the depths of the human soul, pointing to the supersensible. These powers will be guided by reason, not uncontrolled by it. They will point to the supersensible realm, so that we will become familiar again with the realms of which the old folk epics speak to us from the dim consciousness of ancient times. Therefore, we can say: One learns to recognize that it is possible to gain a revelation of the world, not only through the external senses, but through something supersensible that underlies the external physical human body.

There are methods – which will be discussed in the next lecture – by which man can make the spiritual supersensible inner being, which is so often denied today, independent of the sensual outer body, so that man does not live in an unconscious state as in sleep, when he becomes independent of his body, but perceives the spiritual around him. In this way, modern clairvoyance shows man the possibility of living cognitively in a higher, supersensible body, which, like a vessel, fills the ordinary sense body. Spiritual science calls it the etheric body. This etheric body rests within our physical body. When we detach it inwardly from the physical body, we can enter into the state of perception through which we become aware of supersensible facts. We become aware of two kinds of supersensible facts. Firstly, we become aware of it at the beginning of this clairvoyant state, when we begin to know that we no longer see through our physical body, we no longer hear through our physical body, and we no longer think through the brain that is bound to the physical body. At first, we know nothing of the external world. — I am telling you facts that can only be explained in more detail in the next lecture. — But the first step of clairvoyance leads us all the more to an insight into our own etheric body. We see a supersensible physicality of human nature that underlies it and that we can only address as something that works and creates like a kind of inner architect, inner foreman, that permeates our physical body in a living way. And then we become aware of the following.

We become aware that what we perceive in ourselves, what we perceive as the actual living part of our etheric body, is, on the one hand, limited and modified by our physical body, so that it is, as it were, clothed on the physical side. In that the etheric body lines the eyes and ears and the physical brain, we belong, as it were, to the earthly element. Through this we perceive how our etheric body becomes a specific, individual, egoistic human being, integrated into the sheath of our physical body. On the other hand, however, we perceive how our etheric body leads us precisely into those regions where we stand impersonally before a higher, supersensible reality, something that is not us, but that is present in us with full presence, something that works through us as spiritual, supersensible power and strength. In spiritual scientific observation, the inner life of the soul then breaks down into three parts, which are enclosed in three outer bodily sheaths, filling them. We initially live with our soul in such a way that we experience in it what our eyes see, our ears hear, our senses can grasp in general, and what our mind can comprehend. We live with our soul in our physical body. Insofar as our soul lives in the physical body, we call it the consciousness soul in spiritual science, because it is only through the complete integration into the physical body in the course of becoming human that it has become possible for the human being to become aware of himself. Then the modern clairvoyant, in particular, also gets to know the life of the soul in what we have called the etheric body. The soul lives in the etheric body in such a way that it has its powers, but the soul's powers work in such a way that we cannot say that they are our personal powers. They are general human powers, powers through which we are much closer to the hidden facts of nature as a whole. Insofar as the soul perceives these forces in an outer shell, namely in the etheric body, we speak of the mind or emotional soul as a second soul element. So that just as we find the consciousness soul enclosed in the shell of the physical body, we have the mind or emotional soul enclosed in the etheric body. And then we have an even more delicate body through which we can reach up into the supersensible world. Everything that we experience inwardly as our very own secrets, at the same time as that which is hidden from consciousness today and which in the time of ancient clairvoyance was felt as the formative forces in the human process of development, which was felt as if one could look back into the events of the dim and distant past, we ascribe all this to the sentient soul, ascribe it to it in such a way that it is enclosed in the finest human body, in what we — please, do not be put out by the expression, take it as a terminus technicus — call the astral body. It is the part of the human being that connects to the external earthly that inspires the human being, which he cannot perceive through the external senses, nor can perceive when he looks into the etheric body through his own inner being, but what he perceives when he becomes independent of himself, of the etheric body, and is connected with the forces of his origin.

Thus we have the sentient soul in the astral body, the mind or emotional soul in the etheric body, and the consciousness soul in the physical body. In the days of ancient clairvoyance, people were more or less instinctively aware of these things, for they looked within themselves and saw this threefold soul. Not that they analyzed the soul intellectually, but because they had a clairvoyant consciousness, the threefold human soul stood before them: the sentient soul in the astral, the mind or emotional soul in the etheric, and the consciousness soul in the physical body. Looking back, they saw how the outer man, the physical form, developed out of what is now before us as the threefold soul-forces. They sensed that this threefold division is born out of supersensible creative powers. They sensed that the sentient soul is born out of supersensible creative powers, which gave man the astral body, that body which he not only has like his etheric and physical bodies between birth and death, but which he takes with him when he passes through the gate of death, and which he already had before he came into existence through birth. Thus the old clairvoyants saw the sentient soul connected with the astral body and that which, so to speak, has an inspiring effect on man from the spiritual worlds and creates his astral body, as the one creative power that forms man out of the world as a whole. And as a second creative power, they saw what we have today as a result of the mind or emotional soul, and what creates the etheric body in such a way that this etheric body transforms all external substances, all external matter, so that they can permeate the physical human form in the human, not the animal, sense. The creative spirit for the etheric body, which manifests itself in our mind soul, was seen by the ancient seers as a superhuman cosmic power, working into physical matter as in magnetism, and into man. They looked up into the spiritual worlds and saw a divine spiritual power that shapes and forges the etheric body of the human being so that this etheric body becomes the master craftsman, the architect, who reshapes outer matter, confuses it, pulverizes it, grinds it, so that what otherwise exists as matter is structured in the human being and the human being acquires human abilities. The ancient clairvoyants saw how this creative power artfully transforms all matter so that it could become human matter. Then again they looked at the third, at the consciousness soul, which actually makes the egoistic human being, which is the transformation of the physical body, and they attributed those powers that prevail in this physical body solely and exclusively to the line of inheritance, to what comes from father and mother, from grandfather and great-grandfather, in short, what is the result of human powers of love, of human powers of reproduction. In this they saw the third creative power. The power of love works from generation to generation.

The ancient seers saw three powers, a creative being that our sentient soul ultimately evokes by forming the astral body in man, which powers can be inspired because it is the body that a person had before becoming a physical being through conception, the body that a person will have when he has passed through the gate of death. This formation of forces, or, as we might better say, this heavenly formation in man, lasts while the etheric and physical bodies pass away. At the same time, for the old seers this was what their direct experience revealed to them as being capable of bringing all culture into human life. That is why they saw in the Bringer of the astral body that power which brings in the divine, which itself consists only of the permanent, through which the eternal sings and sounds into the world. And the old seers, from whom — I say it unashamedly — the figures of Kalewala have sprung, have presented the living plastic embodiment of that power of creation that penetrates to us in the result of the sentient soul, that inspires the divine into the human, in Wäinämöinen. Wäinämöinen is the creator of that human limb that outlasts birth and death and that brings the heavenly into the earthly. And we see the second figure in Kalewala: Ilmarinen. When we go back to the ancient clairvoyant consciousness, we find that Ilmarinen creates everything that is an image in its living formation from the forces of the earth and from what does not belong to the sensual earth but to the deeper forces of the earth, starting from the etheric body. In Ilmarinen, we see the bringer of that which transforms all matter, that which surrounds it. We see in him the smith of the human form. And we see in the Sampo the human etheric body, forged by Ilmarinen out of the supersensible world, so that the sensual matter can be pulverized and then passed on from generation to generation, so that the human consciousness soul continues to work in the physical human body through the forces that the third divine supersensible being gives from generation to generation through the forces of love. We see this third divine supersensible power in Lemminkäinen. Thus we see deep secrets of the origin of mankind in the forging of the Sampo, we see deep secrets from the ancient clairvoyant consciousness at the bottom of Kalewala and thus we look back into human prehistory, of which we may say: Not at that time was the age when one could have dissected natural phenomena with reason. Everything was primitive, but in the primitive lived the intuition of what lies behind the sensual. Now it was the case that when these bodies of man were forged, when in particular the ethereal body of man, the Sampo, was forged, that it first had to be processed for a while, that man did not immediately have the powers that were thereby prepared for him by the supersensible powers. Once the etheric body has been forged, it must first become familiarized inwardly, as when we prepare a machine that must first be finished, so to speak, must first mature fully in order to be used. In the process of becoming human, there must always be intermediate periods between the creation of the corresponding limbs and the use of them. Thus man had forged his etheric body in distant primeval times. Then came an episode when this etheric body was sent down into human nature. Only later did it shine forth as the soul of the intellect. Man learned to use his powers as external natural forces, he brought forth from his own nature the hidden Sampo. We see this mystery of becoming human in a wonderful way in the forging of the Sampo, in the hiddenness, in the ineffectiveness of the Sampo, in the episode that lies between the forging and the recovery of the same. We see the Sampo first immersed in human nature, then brought out to the external forces of culture, which first appear as primitive forces, as described in the second part of Kalewala.

Thus everything takes on a deep meaning in this great national epic when we see in it descriptions of clairvoyantly acquired ancient processes of becoming human, of the coming into being of human nature from its various elements. I can assure you that I did not get to know Kalevala until long afterward. Once I had clearly visualized these facts about the development of human nature, it was a wonderful and surprising fact for me to rediscover in this epic what I was able to present more or less theoretically in my Theosophy, which was written at a time when I did not yet know a single line of Kalevala. And so we see how the secrets of humanity are revealed in what Wäinämöinen gives, he who is the creator of extrasensory inspiration: the story of the forging of the etheric body. But there is another secret hidden there. I understand, mind you, nothing of Finnish, I can only speak from the spiritual science. I would be able to express the word Sampo only and solely only by the fact that I would try to form a word that could arise in the following way: In the animals we see the etheric body so effective that it becomes the master builder for the most diverse forms, from the most imperfect to the most perfect. In the human etheric body, something has been forged that combines all these animal forms as if in a unity, with the only exception that the etheric body, that is, the Sampo, is forged over the earth according to climatic and other conditions, so that this etheric body has the special characteristics of the people, the special peculiarities of the people in its powers, that it shapes one people in this way and another differently. The Sampo is that for each people which constitutes the particular shape of the etheric body, which brings precisely this particular people into being, so that the members of this people have the same appearance in relation to what shines through their living and their physical being. Insofar as the same appearance is crafted out of the etheric in the human form, the forces of the etheric body lie in the Sampo. In the Sampo we thus have the symbol of the cohesion of the Finnish people, that which, in the depths of humanity, makes the Finnish nation have lived itself out in precisely this particular form.

But this is the case with every folk epic. Folk epics can only arise where culture is still enclosed in the forces of the Sampo, in the forces of the etheric body. As long as culture depends on the forces of the Sampo, the people bear the stamp of this Sampo. This etheric body therefore carries the character of the popular, the folk-like, in all of culture. When could a break in this popular, in this folk-like, occur in the course of the cultural process? It could happen when something entered the human cultural process that is not for one person, for one tribe, for one people, but for all of humanity. Something that is taken from such depths of human nature, from such subtleties and intimacies, and incorporated into the cultural process that it applies to all people without distinction of nationality, race and so on. But that was given when those powers spoke to people, not speaking to one people but to all humanity, those powers that are only so impersonal even in the sense of the folk, so finely and delicately hinted at in the end of Kalewala, in that the Christ is born of Mariata. When He is baptized, Wäinämöinen leaves the land, something has occurred that brings the special folk character together with the general human character. And here, at this point, where one of the most significant, concise, and magnificent folk epics flows into the description, into the completely impersonal – allow me the paradoxical expression – unpalestinianized description of the Christ impulse, Kalevala becomes particularly significant. It leads us particularly into what can be felt where the benefits and the happiness of the Sampo are felt as continuing to have an effect through all human development and at the same time in interaction with the Christian idea, with the Christian impulse. This is the infinitely delicate thing at the end of Kalewala. It is also what explains so clearly that what lies before this conclusion in Kalewala belongs to the pre-Christian era. But just as everything universally human will only continue to exist by preserving the individual, so the individual folk cultures, which derive their essence from the ancient clairvoyant states of the peoples, will continue to live in the universally human. And so everything that Kalewala indicates as Christian at the end will always combine and retain its special consequence through the never-ending effect that is hinted at in the inspirations of Wäinämöinen. For Wäinämöinen means something that belongs to that human part that is above birth and death, that walks with man through all human becoming. Thus, such epics as Kalevala present something to us that is immortal, that can be imbued with the Christian idea, but that will assert itself as something individual, that will always prove that the general human essence, just as white sunlight is divided into many colors, will live on in the many folk cultures. And because this general humanity in the essence of folk epics permeates the individual, which in turn shines into and speaks to every human being, that is why the individualities of the peoples live so much in the essence of their folk epics. That is why the people of old, who in their clairvoyance saw the essence of their own nationality as it is described in all folk epics, stand so vividly before our eyes. But we can get to know it in a very wonderful way when humanity is embraced in its intimacies by circumstances such as those in which the Finnish nation lives, where these, lying at the depths of the soul, are presented in such a way that they can be directly compared with what the most modern spiritual science can reveal to us about human secrets.

Thus, my dear audience, such folk epics are at the same time a living protest against all materialism, against all attempts to derive man from purely external material forces, material conditions, material entities. Such folk epics, especially Kalewala, tell us that man has his origin and primal state in the spiritual and soul. Therefore, a renewal, a re-fertilization of old folk epics can also provide immeasurably great services in the most vital sense of spiritual, of intellectual culture. For just as spiritual science today seeks to renew human consciousness in the sense that humanity is rooted not in matter but in spirit, so a close examination of an epic like Kalewala shows us that the best that man has, and the best that man is, comes from the spiritual and soul. In this sense, it was interesting to me that one of the runes, the kanteles, immediately, I would say, protests against an interpretation of what appears in Kalevala in a materialistic sense. That instrument, that harp-like instrument with which the old singers sang from the old days, is depicted as if it were made of materials from the physical world. But the old rune protested against this, protested in a spiritual-scientific sense, one might say, against the fact that the string instrument for Wäinämöinen was made of natural products that the senses can see. In truth, the old rune says, the instrument on which man plays the wise melodies that come to him directly from the spiritual world comes from the spiritual soul. In this sense, the old rune is to be interpreted entirely in the spiritual-scientific sense, a living protest against the interpretation of what man is capable of in the materialistic sense, an indication that what man possesses , what his nature is and what is only symbolically expressed in such an instrument as that attributed to Wäinämöinen, that such an instrument originates from the spirit and that the whole nature of man originates from the spirit. It can be regarded as a motto for the spirit of spiritual science, the old Finnish folk rune, which is translated into German as follows, and in which I can summarize the basic tone, the basic nuance of what the lecture wanted to explain about the nature of folk epics:

Those who believe that
And are in error,
Those who believe that Wäinämöinen
Made the kantele,
Our beautiful stringed instrument,
From the jaws of the pike,
And that he spun strings
From the tail of the hiisi horse.
It was made out of necessity,
Then sorrow bound its parts,
Bitter tears of longing span
And the sufferings their strings.

Thus all being is not born out of material, but out of spiritual-soul, so this old folk rune, so again spiritual science, which wants to place itself in the living cultural process of our time.

We live in grievous, destiny-burdened days. Only few souls wait with full confidence what these destiny-burdened days will bring to us earth people. Above all, the significance of that what expresses itself by the events of these days, does not speak with full strength in the souls. Some human souls attempt to experience the impulses more and more that spiritual science demands to be implanted into the cultural development. They should know being connected with their deepest feeling with that which, on one side, takes place around us so tremendously and, on the other side, so painfully.

Something takes place that is matchless not only according to the way but also according to the degree within the conscious history of human development, that is deeply intervening and drastic in the whole life of the earth's development. One needs to imagine only what it means—and this is the case today with every human being of the European and also of many parts of the other earth population—to be in the centre of the course of such significant events. We have to feel that this is just a time which is not only suitable but also demands that the soul frees itself from merely living within the own self, and should attempt to experience the common fate of humankind. The human being can learn a lot in our present if he knows how to combine in the right way with the stream of the events. He frees himself from a lot of pettiness and egoism if he is able to do this. Such great events take place that almost anybody caring for himself ignores the destinies of the other human beings.

In particular the population of Central Europe—which immense questions has it to put to itself about matters that it can learn basically only now! The human being of Central Europe can perceive how he is misunderstood, actually, how he is hated. And these misunderstandings, this hatred did not only erupt since the outbreak of the war, they have become perceptible since the outbreak of the war. Hence, the outbreak of the war and the course of the war can be even as it were that what draws attention of the Central European souls to that how they must feel isolated in a certain way more or less compared with the feeling of those people who stand on all sides around this Central European population really not with understanding emotions. If anybody could arouse deeper interests in the big events of life in the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science—this would be so desirable, especially now—events that lead the soul from the ken of its ego to the large horizon of humankind! Then one were able to deepen the look, the whole attitude of the souls who recognise the encompassing forces, because they have taken up spiritual science in themselves, and release them from the interest in the narrow forces that deal only with the individual human being! If one hears the world talking today, in particular the world which is around us Central Europeans, if one reads which peculiar things there are written about the impulses which should have led to this war, then one has the feeling that humankind has lost the obligation to judge from larger viewpoints in our materialistic time, has lost so much that you may have the impression, as if people had generally learnt nothing, but for them history only began on the 25th July, 1914.¹

It is as if people know nothing about that what has taken place in the interplay of forces of the earth population and what has led from this interplay of forces to the grievous involvements which caught fire from the flame of war, finally, and flared up. One talks hardly of the fact that one calls the encirclement by the previous English king who united the European powers round Central Europe, so that from this union of human forces around us, finally, nothing else could originate than that what has happened. One does not want to go further back as some years, at most decades and make conceptions how this has come what is now so destiny-burdened and painful around us.

But the matters lie still much deeper. If one speaks of encirclement, one must say: what has taken place in the encirclement of the Central European powers in the last time, that is the last stage, the last step of an encirclement of Central Europe, which began long, long ago, in the year 860 A. D. At that time, when those human beings drove from the north of Europe who stood as Normans before Paris, a part of the strength, which should work in Europe, drove in the west of Europe into the Romance current which had flooded the west of Europe from the south. We have a current of human forces which pours forth from Rome via Italy and Sicily over Spain and through present-day France. The Norman population, which drives down from the north and stands before Paris in 860, was flooded and wrapped up by that which had come as a Romance current of olden times. That what is powerful in this current is due to the fact that the Norman population was wrapped up in it. What has originated, however, as something strange to the Central European culture in the West, is due to the Romance current. This Romance current did not stop in present-day France, but it proved to be powerful enough because of its dogmatically rationalistic kind, its tendency to the materialistic way of thinking to flood not only France but also the Anglo-Saxon countries. This happened when the Normans conquered Britain and brought with them that what they had taken up from the Romance current. Also the Romance element is in the British element which thereby faces the Central European being, actually, without understanding. The Norman element penetrated by the Romance element continued its train via the Greek coasts down to Constantinople. So that we see a current of Norman-Romance culture driving down from the European north to the west, encircling Central Europe like in a snake-form, stretching its tentacles as it were to Constantinople.

We see the other train going down from the north to the east and penetrating the Slavic element. The first Norman trains were called “Ros” by the Finnish population which was widely propagated at that time in present-day Russia. “Ros” is the origin of this name. We see these northern people getting in the Slavic element, getting to Kiev and Constantinople at the same time. The circle is closed! On one side, the Norman forces drive down from the north to the west, becoming Romance, on the other side, to the east, becoming Slavic, and they meet from the east and from the west in Constantinople. In Central Europe that is enclosed like in a cultural basin what remained of the original Teutonic element, fertilised by the old Celtic element, which is working then in the most different nuances in the population, as German, as Dutch, as Scandinavian populations. Thus we recognise how old this encirclement is.

Now in this Central Europe an intimate culture prepares itself, a culture which was never able to run like the culture had to run in the West or the culture in the East, but which had to run quite differently. If we compare the cultural development in Central Europe with that of the West, so we must say, in the West a culture developed—and this can be seen from the smallest and from the biggest feature of this culture—whose basic character is to be pursued from the British islands over France, Spain, to Sicily, to Italy and to Constantinople. There certain dogmatism developed as a characteristic of the culture, rationalism, a longing for dressing everything one gets in knowledge in plain rationalistic formulae. There developed a desire to see things as reason and sensuousness must see them. There developed the desire to simplify everything. Let us take a case which is obvious to us as supporters of spiritual science namely the arrangement of our human soul in three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, and consciousness-soul. The human soul can be understood in reality only if one knows that it consists of these three members. Just as little as the light can be understood without recognising the colour nuances in their origin from the light, and without knowing that it is made up of the different colour nuances which we see in the rainbow, on one side the red yellow rays, on the other side the blue, green, violet ones, and if one cannot study the light as a physicist. Just as little somebody can study the human soul what is infinitely more important. For everybody should be a human being and everybody should know the soul. He, who does not feel in his soul that this soul lives in three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, consciousness-soul, throws everything in the soul in a mess. We see the modern university psychologists getting everything of the soul in a mess, as well as somebody gets the colour nuances of the light simply in a mess. And they imagine themselves particularly learnt in their immense arrogance, in their scientific arrogance throwing everything together in the soul-life, while one can only really recognise the soul if one is able to know this threefolding of the soul actually.

The sentient soul also is at first that what realises, as it were, the desires, the more feeling impulses, more that in the current earth existence what we can call the more sensuous aspect of the human being. Nevertheless, this sentient soul contains the eternal driving forces of the human nature in its deeper parts at the same time. These forces go through birth and death. The intellectual soul or mind-soul contains half the temporal and half the eternal. The consciousness-soul, as it is now, directs the human being preferably to the temporal. Hence, it is clear that the nation, who develops its folk-soul by means of the consciousness-soul, the British people, after a very nice remark of Goethe, has nothing of that what is meditative reflection, but it is directed to the practical, to the external competition. Perhaps, it is not bad at all to remember such matters, because those who have taken part in the German cultural life were not blind for them, but they expressed themselves always very clearly about that. Thus Goethe said to Eckermann²—it is long ago, but you can see that great Germans have seen the matters always in the true light—when once the conversation turned to the philosophers Hegel, Fichte, Kant and some others: yes, yes, while the Germans struggle to solve the deepest philosophical problems, the English are directed mainly to the practical aspects and only to them. They lack any sense of reflection. And even if they—so said Goethe—make declamations about morality mainly consisting of the liberation of slaves, one has to ask: which is “the real object?”—At another occasion, Goethe wrote³ that a remark of Walter Scott expresses more than many books. For even Walter Scott admitted once that it was more important than the liberation of nations, even if the English had taken part in the battles against Napoleon, “to see a British object before themselves.” A German philologist succeeded—and what does the diligence of German philologists not manage—in finding the passage in nine thick volumes of Napoleon's biography by Walter Scott to which Goethe has alluded at that time. Indeed, there you find, admitted by Walter Scott, that the Britons took part in the battles against Napoleon, however, they desired to attain a British advantage. He himself expresses it “to secure the British object.”—It is a remark of the Englishman himself, one only had to search for it. These matters are interesting to extend your ken somewhat today.

You have to know, I said, that the human soul consists of these three members, properly speaking that the human self works by these three soul nuances like the light by the different colour nuances, mainly in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. Then one will find out that the human being, while he has these three soul nuances, can and must assign each of these soul nuances to a great ideal in the course of human progress. Each of these ideals corresponds to a soul nuance not to the whole soul. Only if people can be induced by spiritual science to assign the corresponding ideals to the single soul members, will the real ideal of human welfare and of the harmonious living together of human beings on earth come into being.

Because the human being has to aim at another ideal for his sentient soul, for that which he realises as it were in the physical plane, at another soul ideal for that what he realises in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, and again another ideal in his consciousness-soul. He improves a soul member through one of these ideals; the other soul members are improved through the others. If one develops the soul member in particular through brotherliness of the human beings on earth, one has to develop the other one through freedom, the third through equality. Each of these three ideals refers to a soul member. In the west of Europe everything got muddled, and it was simplified by the rationalists, by that rationalism, which wants to have everything in plain formulae, in plain dogmas, which wants to have everything clearly to mind. The whole human soul was taken by this dogmatism simply as one, and one spoke of liberty, fraternity, equality. We see that there is a fundamental attitude of rationalising civilisation in the West. We could verify that in details. For example, just highly educated French can mock that I used five-footed iambi in my mystery dramas⁴ but no rhymes. The French mind cannot understand that the internal driving force of the language does not need the rhyme at this level. The French mind strives for systematisation, for that what forms an external framework, and it says: one cannot make verses without rhyme.

However, this also applies to the exterior life, to everything. In the West, one wants to arrange, to systematise, and to nicely tin everything. Think only what a dreadful matter it was, when in the beginning of our spiritual-scientific striving many of our friends were still influenced by the English theosophical direction. In every branch you could find all possible systems written down on maps, boards et cetera, on top, nicely arranged: atma, buddhi, manas, then all possible matters in detail which one systematises and tins that way. Imagine how one has bent under the yoke of this dogmatism and how difficult it was to set the methods of internal development to their place, which we must have in Central Europe, that one thing ensues from the other, that concepts advance in the internal experience. One does not need systematising, these mnemonic aids which wrap up everything in certain formulae. Which hard work was it to show that one matter merges into another, that you have to arrange matters sequentially and lively. I could expand this account to all branches of life; however, we would have to stay together for days.

We find that in the West as one part of the current which encircled Central Europe. If we go to the East, then we must say: there we deal with a longing which just presents the opposite, with the longing to let disappear everything still in a fog of lacks of clarity in a primitive, elementary mysticism, in something that does not stand to express itself directly in clear ideas and clear words. We really have two snakes—the symbol is absolutely appropriate,—one of them extends from the north to southeast, the other from the north to southwest, and both meet in Constantinople. In the centre that is enclosed what we can call the intimate Central European spiritual current, where the head can never be separated from the heart, thinking from feeling, if it appears in its original quality.

One does not completely notice that in our spiritual science even today, because one has to strive, even if not for a conceptual system, but for concepts of development. One does not yet notice that everything that is aimed at is not only a beholding with the head. However, the heart and the whole soul is combined with everything, always the heart is flowed through, while the head, for example, describes the transitions from Saturn to the Sun, from the Sun to the Moon, from the Moon to the earth et cetera. Everywhere the heart takes part in the portrayal; and one can be touched there in the deepest that one ascends with all heart-feeling to the top heights and dives in the deepest depths and can ascend again. One does not notice this even today that that what is described only apparently in concepts one has to put one's heart and soul in it at the same time if it should correspond to the Central European cultural life. This intimate element of the Central European culture is capable of the spiritual not without ideal, not to think the ideal any more without the spiritual. Recognising the spirit and combining it intimately with the soul characterises the Central European being most intensely. Hence, this Central European being can use that what descends to the deepest depths of the sensory view and the sensory sensation to become the symbol for the loftiest. It is deeply typical that Goethe, after he had let go through his mind the life of the typical human being, the life of Faust, closed his poem with the words:

Alles Vergängliche
All that is transitory

Ist nur ein Gleichnis
Is only a symbol;

and the last words are:

Das Ewig-Weibliche
The eternal feminine draws

Zieht uns hinan
Us up to higher levels.

A cosmic mystery is expressed through a sensory picture, and just in this sensory picture the intimate character of the Central European culture expresses itself. We find this wonderfully intimate character, for example, so nicely expressed and at the same time rising spiritually to the loftiest just with Novalis. If you look for translations of this last sentence: “Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan,” in particular the French translations, then you will see what has become of this sentence. Some French did explain it not so nicely, but they do not count if it concerns the understanding of Faust.

The Central European being aims at the intimacy of spiritual life most eminently, and this is that what is enclosed by the Midgard Snake in the East and the West. So far we have to go to combine completely in our feeling with that what happens, actually. Then we gain objectivity just from this Central European being to stand in front of the present great events with the really supranational human impulses, and not to judge out of the same impulses which are applied by the East and the West. Then we understand why the Central European population is misunderstood that way, is hated by those who surround them. Of course, we have to look at the mission of Central Europe for the whole humankind with all humility. We are not allowed to be arrogant, but we must also protect the free look for what is to be done in Central Europe.

The Central European population has always gone through the rejuvenating force of its folk-soul. It arrived at the summit in the ideals of Lessing, Schelling, Hegel, and Grimm. However, everything that already lived there lived more in a striving for idealism. Now this must gain more life, more concrete life. The profound ideas of German idealism have to get contents from spirituality, by which they are raised only from mere ideas to living beings of the spiritual world. Then we can familiarise ourselves in this spiritual world. The significance of the Central European task has now to inspire German hearts, and also the consciousness of what is to be defended in all directions, to the sides where the Midgard Snake firmly closes the circle. It is our task in particular because we are on the ground of spiritual science to look at the present events in such a higher sense. We cannot take the most internal impulse of our spiritual science seriously enough if we do not familiarise ourselves with such an impersonal view of the spiritual-scientific striving if we do not feel how this spiritual-scientific striving is connected in every individual human being with the whole Central European striving as it must be united with the whole substantiality of this Central European striving. We have to realise that something of what we have in mind exists only in the germ, however, that the Central European culture has the vocation to let unfold the germs to blossoms and fruits.

I give you an example. When the human being tries to further himself by means of meditation and concentration, by the intimate work on the development of his soul, then all soul forces take on another form than they have in the everyday life. Then the soul forces become as it were something different. If the human being works really busily on his development, by concentration of thought and other exercises as I described them in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, the human being begins to understand vividly, I would like to say to grasp vividly that he does no longer think at the moment, when he approaches the real spiritual world, as he has to think in the everyday life. In the everyday life, you think that the thoughts start living in you. If you face the sensory world, you know: that is me, and I have the thoughts. You connect one thought with the other and you thereby make a judgment, you combine the thoughts and let them separate. In my writing which is entitled The Threshold of the Spiritual World, I have compared somebody developing thoughts to one putting his head into a world of living beings.

The thoughts start internally prickling and creeping, they become, if I may say so, living beings, and we are no longer those who connect one thought to the other. One thought goes to the other, and frees itself from the other, the life of thoughts starts coming to life. Only when the thoughts start as it were becoming shells and containers which contract in a small room and extend then again largely, bag-like, then the beings of the higher hierarchies are able to slip into our thoughts, then only! So our own way of life, the whole thinking changes when we settle in the spiritual world. Then you start perceiving that on the other planets other beings live not human beings like on the earth. These other beings of the other planets, they penetrate as it were our living thinking, and we do no longer think about the beings of the other worlds and world spheres, but they live in us, they live combined with our selves. Thinking has become a different soul-force; it has developed from the point on which it stood to another soul-force, to that force which surpasses us and becomes identical with that world, the spiritual world.

Here we have an example of that what humankind has to conceive if it should develop the condition in which it now lives to a higher one for the earth future. This must really become common knowledge that such thinking is possible, and that only by such a thinking the human being can get to know the spiritual world. Not every human being has to become a spiritual researcher, just as little as everybody needs to become a chemist who wants to understand the achievements of chemistry. However, even if there can be few spiritual researchers, everybody can see the truth of that using unbiased thinking and understand what the spiritual researcher says. But it must become clear that there are unnoticed soul forces in the human being during life which when the human being goes through the gate of death become the same forces as an initiate has. When the human being goes through the gate of death, thinking becomes another soul-force: it intervenes in the being. It is as if antennas were perpetually put out, and the human being experiences the higher worlds which are in these antennas.

There was a witty man setting the tone in the 19th century, who contributed to the foundation of the materialistic world view: Ludwig Feuerbach.⁵ He wrote a book Thoughts on Death and Immortality, and it is interesting to read the following in a passage of this book. Feuerbach says there for instance: the summit human being is able to reach is his thoughts. He cannot develop higher soul forces than thinking. If he could develop higher soul forces than thinking, some effects and actions of the inhabitants of the star worlds would be able to penetrate his head instead of thoughts.—This seems so absurd to Ludwig Feuerbach that he regards everybody as mentally ill who speaks of such a thing at all. Imagine how interesting this is that a person—who just becomes a materialist because he rejects higher soul forces—gets on that the soul-force is that which represents the higher development of thinking. He even describes it, but he has such a dreadful fear of this development that just because it would have to be that way, as he suspects, he declares this soul-force a matter of impossibility, a fantasy.

The spiritual development in the 19th century comes so near to that what must be aimed at, but it is so far away at the same time because it is pushed, as it were, from the inside to that what should be aimed at, but cannot penetrate the depths, because it must regard it as absurd, because it is afraid of it really, fears it quite terrifically. As soon as it only touches what should come there, it is afraid. The Central European cultural life has to come back to itself, then we will attain that this Central European cultural life just develops and overcomes this fear. That has become too strong what wants to suppress this Central European spiritual light.

Some examples may also be mentioned. Hegel, the German philosopher, raised his voice in vain against the overestimation of Newton. If you today hear any physicist speaking—you can read up that what I say in many popular works,—then you will hear: Newton set the tone in the doctrine of gravitation, a doctrine through which the universe has only become explicable.—Hegel said: what has Newton done then, actually?—He dressed that in mathematical formulae what Kepler, the German astronomer, had expressed. Because nothing is included in Newton's works what Kepler did not already say. Kepler worked out of that view with which the whole soul works not only the head. However, Newton brought the whole in a system and thereby all kinds of mistakes came into being, for example, the doctrine of a remote effect of the sun which is not useful for the judgment of planetary motion. With Newton it is real that way, as if the sun had physical arms, and stretches these arms and attracts the planets.—However, the German philosopher warned in vain that the Central European culture would be flooded by the British culture in this field.

Another example: Goethe founded a theory of colours which originated completely from the Central European thinking and which you only understand if you recognise the connections of the physical with the spiritual a little bit. The world did not accept the Goethean theory of colours, but the Newtonian theory of colours.—Goethe founded a teaching of evolution. The world did not understand it, but it only accepted what Darwinism gave as a theory of evolution, as a theory of development in a popular-materialistic way. You may say: the Central European human being who is encircled by the Midgard Snake has to call in mind his forces. It concerns not to bend under that what rationalism and empiricism brought in.

You see the gigantic task; you see the significance of the ideal. One does not notice that at all because it still passes, I would like to say, in the current of phenomena if one asserts the Central European being. I do not know how many people noticed the following. When for reasons which were also mentioned yesterday in the public lecture⁶ our spiritual-scientific movement had to free itself from the specifically British direction of the Theosophical Society and when long ago as it were that happened beforehand in the spiritual realm what takes place now during the war—and preceded for good reasons,—I have discussed and explained the whole matter in those days on symptoms. There are brainless people who want to judge about what our spiritual-scientific movement is and have often said: well, also this Central European spiritual-scientific movement has gone out from that which it has got from the British theosophical movement.

I say the following not because of personal reasons, but because it characterises the situation, the whole nerve of the matter in a symptom, I would like to remind you of the fact that I held talks in Berlin which were printed then in my writing Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Spiritual Life, before I had any external interrelation with the British theosophical movement. In this writing nobody will find anything of western influence, but there everything is developed purely out of the Central European cultural life, from the spiritual, mystic movement of Master Eckhart up to Angelus Silesius. When I came to London the first time, I met one of the pundits of the theosophical society in those days, Mr. Mead.⁷ He had read the book which was immediately translated in many chapters into the English, and said that the whole theosophy would be contained in this book.—So far as people admitted that they could go along with us, so far we could unite with the whole object, of course; but nothing else was done.

What matters is that we reflect on our tasks of the Central European spiritual culture and that we never deviate from them. The one or the other sent the medals, certificates and the like back to the English. That is, nevertheless, less important. The important thing will be first to send back Newtonianism, the English coloured Darwinism, that means to release the Central European cultural life from it. Something is to be learnt from the way how—free of other influence—the Central European cultural life has made itself noticeable just as spiritual science. But you have to call to mind the essential part once and to stand firmly on this ground. It is very peculiar how mysteriously matters work.

Imagine the following case: Ernst Haeckel has taken care basically through his whole life to direct the German world view to the British thinking. The British thinking, the British empiricism flows into Ernst Haeckel's writings completely. He now rails against England the most. These are processes which take place in the subconscious of the soul of the Central European; these are also matters which are tightly connected in such a soul with karma. Consider please what it means that Haeckel places himself before the world and says, he himself has accomplished the first great action of the great researcher Huxley, while he stamped the sentence of the similarity of the human bone and the animal bone; that he, Haeckel, then has pointed to the big change in the view of the origin of the human being, and that he accepted nothing in the evolution theory but what came from the West.—Then one sees that he is urged now to rail against that what has constituted his whole intellectual life. It is the most tragic event of the present for such a soul which can be only thought. It is spiritual dynamite, because it bursts, actually, all supporting pillars on which such a soul stands.

Thus you can, actually, look into the depths of the present dreadful events. Only if you really consider the matters that way, are you able to consider them beyond a narrow horizon under which they are often considered today. You will be able to learn a lot—and this will be the nicest, at the same time the most humiliating and the loftiest teaching. For this teaching the prevailing active world spirit determined the Central European human being who is now embraced by the Midgard Snake, enclosed like in a fortress, surrounded by enemies everywhere. If the events become a symbol of the deepest world weaving and world being, then only we release ourselves from a selfish view of the present grievous, destiny-burdened events. Then we feel only that we must make ourselves worthy of that what, for instance, Fichte also spoke about in a time in which Germany experienced destiny-burdened days in his Addresses to the German Nation. There he wanted to speak, as he expresses it himself, “for Germans par excellence, of Germans par excellence,” and he spoke like one had to speak of the German par excellence to the German par excellence in those days. But like in those days Fichte spoke of the German mission, of the German range of tasks, we have today to experience the seriousness as the sunrise of the Central European consciousness within the containment by hating enemies. Indeed, a word which is found at the end of Fichte's addresses may be transformed: the spiritual world view must flow into the souls for the sake of humankind's welfare. The world spirit is looking at those who live in Central Europe that they become a mouthpiece for that what he has to say and bring to humankind in continuous revelation.

Without arrogance, without national egoism one can look at that which the sons of Germany and Central Europe have to defend with body, blood and soul generally. However, one has also to realise that. Then only from the immense sacrifices, which must be brought from the sufferings, must that result what serves the welfare of humankind. We stand at a significant threshold. One may characterise this threshold in the human development that one says: in future the abyss must be bridged between the physical and the spiritual worlds, between the physically living and the spiritually living human beings, between the earthly and that what lies beyond the earthly death. A time must come to us as it were when not only the souls are alive to us which walk about in physical bodies, but when we feel being integrated to that bigger world to which also the souls belong living between death and new birth disembodied in our world. The view of the human being has to turn beyond that which sensory-physical eyes are only able to see. Indeed, we are standing at the threshold of this new experience, of this new consciousness. What I said to you of the widening of the consciousness, of the ascending development of the consciousness, this must become a familiar view. The Central European culture prepares itself to make this a familiar view; it really prepares itself for that.

I have shown you how the best heads of the 19th century are afraid even today to get into their consciousness what the soul has in its depths; only its earthly soul forces cannot yet turn the attention to it. That thinking exists, into which the supersensible forces and supersensible beings extend, and this thinking also opens straight away after the human being has gone through the gate of death. The materialists are afraid of admitting that the human consciousness can be extended that really the barrier between the physical and the spiritual experience can fall, between that what lies on this side of death and beyond death. Because they are afraid, they reject it as something fantastic, dream-like, nay as mentally ill. However, one will recognise that the human being when he has gone through the gate of death develops only the forces which he also has now already between birth and death. Only they work in such depths that he does not behold them. They cause processes in him which are done, indeed, in him, but escape his attention in the everyday life. With the forces of thinking, feeling and willing, about which the human being knows, he cannot master the physical-earthly life. If the human being could only think, feel and will, as well as now he is able to do it, he would be never able to develop his body, for example, plastically that the brain matched its dispositions. Formative forces had to intervene there. However, they already belong to that what the soul does no longer perceive in the physical experience what belongs to a more encompassing consciousness than to the segment of consciousness which we have in the everyday life.

When the human being goes through the gate of death, he has not a lack of consciousness, but then he lives at first in a consciousness which is much richer and fuller of contents than the consciousness here in the physical life. Because from a more encompassing consciousness the body cuts out a piece and shows everything that can be shown only in a mirror. However, what is in the body and the human being bears through the gate of death that has an encompassing consciousness in itself. When the human being has gone through the gate of death, he is in this encompassing consciousness. He then does not have not enough, but on the contrary too much, too rich a consciousness. About that I have spoken in my Vienna cycle⁸ at Easter 1914. The human being has a richer consciousness after death. When the often described retrospect, caused by the etheric body, is over, he enters into a kind of sleeping state for a while. However, this is not a real sleeping state, but a state which is caused by the fact that the human being is in a richer consciousness than here on earth. As our eyes are blinded by overabundant light, the human being is blinded by the superabundance of consciousness, and he only must learn to orientate himself. The apparent sleep only consists in the fact that the human being orientates himself in this superabundance of consciousness that he then is able to lessen the superabundance of consciousness to that level he can already endure according to the results of his life. This is the essential part. We do not have not enough, but too much a consciousness, and we are awake when we have lessened our sense of direction to the level we can endure. It is reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the endurable level what takes place after death. You must get such matters clear in your mind by the details of the Vienna cycle.⁹

I want to illustrate that today only with the help of two obvious examples. I could state many such examples, because many of our friends have gone through the gate of death recently and also before. But as a result of characteristic circumstances, just by the fact that it concerns the last deaths, these considerations are more obvious. I would like to take the starting point from such examples to speak to you of that which makes our hearts bleed because it has happened in our own middle out of the circle of our spiritual-scientific movement.

Recently we have lost a dear friend (Sibyl Colazza) from the physical plane, and it was my task to speak words for the deceased at the cremation. There it turned out to me automatically by the impulses of the spiritual world, in such a case speaking clearly enough, as a necessity to characterise the qualities of this friendly soul. We stood—it was in Zurich—before the cremation of a dear member of our spiritual-scientific movement. Because her death occurred on a Wednesday evening and the cremation took place in the early Monday morning, it is comprehensible that the retrospect of the etheric body had already stopped. Actually, without having wanted it, I was induced by the spiritual world to begin and close the obituary with words which should characterise the internal being of this soul. This internal being of the friend deceased in the middle of life was real that I had to delve in this being and to create it spiritually by identification with this being. That means to let the thinking dive in the soul of the dead and that what wove in the soul of the dead let flow into the own thoughts. Then I got the possibility to say as it were in view of this soul how the soul was in life and how it is still now after death. It has turned out by itself to dress that in the following words. I had to say the subsequent words at the beginning and at the end of the cremation:

You walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes—
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being—
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words—
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.

The being of this soul appeared to me that way during the days before the cremation, when I identified myself with it, after the retrospect of the etheric body was over. The soul was not yet able to orientate itself in the superabundance of consciousness. It was sleeping as it were when the body was about to be cremated. The above-mentioned words were spoken in the beginning and at the end of the cremation. Then it happened that the flame—that what looks like the flame, but it is not—grasped the body, and while the body was grasped from that what looks like the flame what is, however, only the ascending warmth and heat, the soul became awake for a moment. Now I could notice that the soul looked back at the whole scene which had taken place among the human beings who were at the cremation. And the soul looked particularly back at that what had been spoken, then again it sank back into the superabundance of consciousness, you may say: in the unconsciousness. A moment later, one could perceive when such a looking back was there again. Then such moments last longer and longer, until finally the soul can orientate itself entirely in the superabundance of consciousness.

But one can recognise something significant from that. I could notice that the words spoken at the cremation lighted up the retrospect, because the words have come from the soul itself which had something awakening in them. From that you can learn that it is most important after death to overlook your own experience. You have to begin as it were with self-knowledge after death. Here in the life on earth you can miss self-knowledge, you can miss it so thoroughly that is true what a not average person, also a not average man of letters, but a famous professor of philosophy, Dr. Ernst Mach¹⁰—not Ferdinand Maack, I would not mention him—admits in his Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, a very famous work: as a young man I crossed a street and saw a person suddenly in a mirror who met me. I thought: what an unpleasant, disgusting face. I was surprised when I discovered that I had seen my own face in the profile.—He had seen his own face which he knew so little that he could make this judgment. The same professor tells how it has happened to him later when he was already a famous professor of philosophy that he got in a bus after a long trip, surely exhausted, there a man also got in from the other side—there was a big mirror opposite,—and he confesses his thoughts quite sincerely, while he says that he thought: what a disagreeable and down-and-out schoolmaster gets in there?—Again he recognised himself, and he adds: so I recognised the type better than the individual.—This is a nice example of how little the human being already knows himself by his external figure in life if he is not a flirtatious lady who often looks in the mirror.—But much less the human being knows the qualities of his soul. He passes those even more. He can become a famous philosopher of the present without self-knowledge. But the human being needs this self-knowledge when he has passed through the gate of death.

The human being must look back just at the point of his development from which he has gone through death, and he must recognise himself there. As little the human being, who stands in the physical life and looks back with the usual forces of life is able to see his own birth, as little this stands before the usual soul-forces—there is no one which can look back with the usual soul-forces at the physical birth,—in the same way it is necessary that the moment of death is permanently there at which one looks back. Death stands always before the soul's eyes as the last significant event. This death, seen from the other side, seen from beyond, is something different than that from the physical side. It is the most beautiful experience which can be seen from the other side, from the side of the life between death and new birth. Death appears as the glorious picture of the everlasting victory of the spiritual over the physical. Because death appears as such a picture, it wakes up the highest forces of the human nature permanently when this human nature lives in the spirituality between death and new birth. That is why the soul looking back or striving for looking back must look at itself at first. Just in these cases which we have gone through recently it was clear in which way the impulse originated to characterise this soul. The so-called living human being works together with the so-called dead that way. More and more such a relation will come from the so-called living to the so-called dead.

We experienced another case in the last time, that of our dear friend Fritz Mitscher. Even if Fritz Mitscher is less known to the local friends, nevertheless, he worked by his talks among many other anthroposophists, by that what he performed wonderfully from friend to friend by the way he familiarised himself with the anthroposophical life. His character has just to be regarded as exemplary, because he whose soul forces were directed to go through a learnt education was keen to take up and collect everything in himself according to his disposition of scholarship, to embrace it intimately in his soul-life, to insert it then in his spiritual-scientific world view. We need this kind of work, in particular, while we want to carry the spiritual-scientific ideals into future in a beneficial way. We need human beings, who try to penetrate the education of our time with understanding to immerse it in the stream of spiritual education; who offer that as it were as a sacrifice. Also there—and I speak only of matters that resulted from karma with necessity—karma caused that I had to speak at the cremation. Out of internal necessity it turned out that I had to characterise the being of our dear friend again in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech. I had to characterise this being:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life' s true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

In the following night the soul which was not yet able to orientate itself returned of own accord something like an answer what is connected with the verses, which were directed to its being at the cremation. Such words like those are spoken that the own soul writes them down really without being able to add a lot. The words are written down while the soul oriented itself to the other soul, out of the other soul. It was unclear to me at all that two stanzas are built in a quite particular way, until I heard the words from the friend's soul who had gone through the gate of death:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

I could only know now, why these stanzas are built that way; I spoke them exactly the same:

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

However, any “you” came back as “I,” any “your” came back as “my;” thus they returned transformed, expressed by the soul about its own being.

This is an example in which way the correspondence takes place, in which way the mutual relation already exists between the world here and the world there in the time after death. It is connected with the meaning of our spiritual-scientific movement that this consciousness penetrates the human souls. Spiritual science will give humankind the consciousness that the world of those who live between death and a new birth also becomes a world in which we know ourselves connected with them. Thus the world extends from the narrow area of reality in which the human being lives provisionally. However, this is connected intimately with that what should be in Central Europe. Somebody who has well listened finds just in the words directed to Fritz Mitscher's soul what is deeply connected with this meaning of our spiritual-scientific movement, because the words are spoken from a deep internal necessity:

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

Sometimes one may doubt, even if not in reality but concerning the interim period, whether the souls, which are embodied in the flesh here on earth, do really enough for the welfare of humans and earth what must necessarily be made concerning the spiritual comprehension of the world. However, somebody who is engaged completely in the spiritual-scientific movement may also not despair. For he knows that the forces of those who ascended into the spiritual worlds are effective in the current, in which we stand in this incarnation. In their previous lives those souls felt stronger here because they had taken up spiritual science in themselves. It is as if one communicates with a friend's soul who has gone through the gate of death if one says to him what one owes to the friend's force for the spiritual movement, if one is able to communicate as it were with the soul to remain united with its forces. We have it always among us, so that it always works on among us. We take up not only ideas, concepts and mental pictures in our spiritual science, that does not only concern, but we create a spiritual movement here on earth to which we really bring in the spiritual forces.

It suggests itself to us just at this moment, out of the sensations which perhaps inspire our local friends to turn the thoughts to the soul of somebody who has always dedicated his forces to this branch. We want to feel united also with him and his forces, after he has gone through the gate of death; therefore, we get up from our seats. The Leipzig friends know of which friendly soul I am speaking, and they have certainly turned their thoughts to this soul with moved hearts.

It was my responsibility to bring these ideas home to you today, while we were allowed to be together. These words were inspired through the consciousness that the grievous and destiny-burdened days in which we live must be replaced again with such which will pass in peace on earth in which the forces of peace will work. But a lot will be transformed, nay, must absolutely be transformed by that what happens now in the earthly life of humankind. We who bear witness to spiritual science must particularly keep in mind how much it depends on the fact that must take place on the ground—for which so much blood flows for which so often now souls go through the gate of death on which so many fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters are mourning—what can be done by those whose souls can be illumined through the forward-looking thoughts of spiritual science.

Those thoughts which come from the consciousness of the living relationship of the human soul with the spiritual world have to ascend from the earth into the spiritual heights. Souls now enter these spiritual worlds, and there will be spiritual forces which are produced just by our destiny-burdened days. Imagine how many people go through the gate of death in the prime of their lives in this time. Imagine that the etheric bodies of these human beings who go between their twentieth and thirtieth years, between their thirtieth and fortieth years through the gate of death are etheric bodies which could have supplied the bodies still for decades here in the physical life. These etheric bodies are separated from the physical bodies; however, they keep the forces still in themselves to work here for the physical world. These forces keep on existing in the spiritual worlds, separated from the unused etheric bodies of the souls which went through the gate of death. The bright spirituality of the unspent etheric bodies of the heroic fighters turns to the spiritual welfare and progress of humankind. However, that what flows down there has to meet the thoughts coming from the souls which—aware of spirit—they can have by spiritual science. Hence, we are allowed to summarise the thoughts of which we made ourselves aware today in some words showing the interrelation of the consciousness based on spiritual-scientific ideas with the present events. They express how for the next peacetime the room has to be filled with thoughts which have ascended from souls to the spiritual worlds, from souls which experienced spiritual science. Then that can flourish and yield fruit in the right sense what is gained with so big sacrifices, with blood and death in our time, if souls are found, aware of spirit, which turn their senses to the realm of spirits. That is why we are allowed to say taking into account the grievous and destiny-burdened days today:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Serbia refuses the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary
• 2. conversation with Eckermann, 1st September 1829
• 3. letter to Zelter, 20th February 1828
• 4. cf. the lecture On the Mystery Dramas “The Portal of Initiation” and “The Soul's Probation” 19th December 1911, Steiner's Collected Works volume 127
• 5. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872): the censorship confiscated his writing Thoughts on Death and Immortality (Nuremberg, 1830)
• 6. The Bearing Force of the German Spirit. Lecture of the same title in Berlin, 25th February 1915, in Steiner's Collected Works volume 185
• 7. George M. S. Mead: last private secretary of H. P. Blavatsky. He left the Theosophical Society later.
• 8. Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth, eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153
• 9. Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth, eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153
• 10. Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Austrian physicist and philosopher

In the lectures given here during the course on history¹ several things were mentioned which, particularly at the present time, it is especially important to consider. With regard to the historical course of humanity's development, the much-debated question mentioned to begin with was whether the outstanding and leading individual personalities are the principal driving forces in this development or whether the most important things are brought about by the masses. In many circles this has always been a point of contention and the conclusions have been drawn, more from sympathy and antipathy than from real knowledge. This is one fact which, in a certain sense, I should like to mention as being very important.

Another fact which, from a look at history, I should like to mention for its importance is the following. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt² appeared with a definite declaration, stipulating that history should be treated in such a way that one would not only consider the individual facts which can be outwardly observed in the physical world but, out of an encompassing, synthesizing force, would see what is at work in the unfolding of history—which can only be found by someone who knows how to get a total view of the facts in what in a sense is a poetic way, but in fact produces a true picture. Attention was also drawn to how in the course of the nineteenth century it was precisely the opposite historical mode of thought and approach which was then particularly developed, and that it was not the ideas in history that were pursued but only a sense that was developed for the external world of facts. Attention was also drawn to the fact that, with regard to this last question, one can only come to clarity through spiritual science, because spiritual science alone can uncover the real driving forces of the historical evolution of humanity.

A spiritual science of this kind was not yet accessible to Humboldt. He spoke of ideas, but ideas indeed have no driving force [of their own]. Ideas as such are abstractions, as I mentioned here yesterday³ And anyone who might wish to find ideas as the driving forces of history would never be able to prove that ideas really do anything because they are nothing of real substantiality, and only something of substantiality can do something. Spiritual science points to real spiritual forces that are behind the sensible-physical facts, and it is in real spiritual forces such as these that the propelling forces of history lie, even though these spiritual forces will have to be expressed for human beings through ideas.

But we come to clarity concerning these things only when, from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, we look more deeply into the historical development of humanity and we will do so today in such a way that, through our considerations, certain facts come to us which, precisely for a discerning judgement of the situation of modern humanity, will prove to be of importance.

I have often mentioned⁴ that spiritual science, if it looks at history, would actually have to pursue a symptomatology; a symptomatology constituted from the fact that one is aware that behind what takes it course as the stream of physical-sensible facts lie the driving spiritual forces. But everywhere in historical development there are times when what has real being and essence (das eigentlich Wesenhafte) comes as a symptom to the surface and can be judged discerningly from the phenomena only if one has the possibility to penetrate more deeply from one's awareness of these phenomena into the depths of historical development.

I would like to clarify this by a simple diagram. Let us suppose that this is a flow of historical facts (see diagram). The driving forces lie, for ordinary observation, below the flow of these facts. And if the eye of the soul observes the flow in this way, then the real activity of the driving forces would lie beneath it (red). But there are significant points in this flow of facts. And these significant points are distinguished by the fact that what is otherwise hidden comes here to the surface. Thus we can say: Here, in a particular phenomenon, which must only be properly evaluated, it was possible to become aware of something which otherwise is at work everywhere, but which does not show itself in such a significant manifestation.

Let us assume that this (see diagram) took place in some year of world history, let us say around 800 A.D. What was significant for Europe, let us say for Western Europe, was of course at work before this and worked on afterwards, but it did not manifest itself in such a significant way in the time before and after as it did here. If one points to a way of looking at history like this, a way which looks to significant moments, such a method would be in complete accord with Goetheanism. For Goethe wished in general that all perception of the world should be directed to significant points and then, from what could be seen from such points, the remaining content of world events be recognized. Goethe says of this⁵ that, within the abundance of facts, the important thing is to find a significant point from which the neighbouring areas can be viewed and from which much can be deciphered.

So let us take this year 800 A.D. We can point here to a fact in the history of Western European humanity which, from the point of view of the usual approach to history, might seem insignificant—which one would perhaps not find worthy of attention for what is usually called history—but which, nevertheless, for a deeper view of humanity's development, is indeed significant. Around this year there was a kind of learned theological argument between the man who was a sort of court philosopher of the Frankish realm, Alcuin,⁶ and a Greek also living at that time in the kingdom of the Franks. The Greek, who was naturally at home in the particular soul-constitution of the Greek peoples which he had inherited, had wanted to reach a discerning judgement of the principles of Christianity and had come to the concept of redemption. He put the question: To whom, in the redemption through Christ Jesus, was the ransom actually paid? He, the Greek thinker, came to the solution that the ransom had been paid to Death. Thus, in a certain sense, it was a sort of redemption theory that this Greek developed from his thoroughly Greek mode of thinking, which was now just becoming acquainted with Christianity. The ransom was paid to Death by the cosmic powers.

Alcuin, who stood at that time in that theological stream which then became the determining one for the development of the Roman Catholic Church of the West, debated in the following way about what the Greek had argued. He said: Ransom can only be paid to a being who really exists. But death has no reality, death is only the outer limit of reality, death itself is not real and, therefore, the ransom money could not have been paid to Death.

Now criticism of Alcuin's way of thinking is not what matters here. For to someone who, to a certain extent, can see through the interrelations of the facts, the view that death is not something real resembles the view which says: Cold is not something real, it is just a decrease in warmth, it is only a lesser warmth. Because the cold isn't real I won't wear a winter coat in winter because I'm not going to protect myself against something that isn't real. But we will leave that aside. We want rather to take the argument between Alcuin and the Greek purely positively and will ask what was really happening there. For it is indeed quite noticeable that it is not the concept of redemption itself that is discussed. It is not discussed in such a way that in a certain sense both personalities, the Greek and the Roman Catholic theologian, accept the same point of view, but in such a way that the Roman Catholic theologian shifts the standpoint entirely before he takes it up at all. He does not go on speaking in the way he had just done, but moves the whole problem into a completely different direction. He asks: Is death something real or not?—and objects that, indeed, death is not real.

This directs us at the outset to the fact that two views are clashing here which arise out of completely different constitutions of soul. And, indeed, this is the case. The Greek continued, as it were, the direction which, in the Greek culture, had basically faded away between Plato and Aristotle. In Plato there was still something alive of the ancient wisdom of humanity; that wisdom which takes us across to the ancient Orient where, indeed, in ancient times a primal wisdom had lived but which had then fallen more and more into decadence. In Plato, if we are able to understand him properly, we find the last offshoots, if I can so call them, of this primal oriental wisdom. And then, like a rapidly developing metamorphosis, Aristotelianism sets in which, fundamentally, presents a completely different constitution of soul from the Platonic one. Aristotelianism represents a completely different element in the development of humanity from Platonism. And, if we follow Aristotelianism further, it, too, takes on different forms, different metamorphoses, but all of which have a recognizable similarity. Thus we see how Platonism lives on like an ancient heritage in this Greek who has to contend against Alcuin, and how in Alcuin, on the other hand, Aristotelianism is already present. And we are directed, by looking at these two individuals, to that fluctuation which took place on European soil between two—one cannot really say world-views—but two human constitutions of soul, one of which has its origin in ancient times in the Orient, and another, which we do not find in the Orient but which, entering in later, arose in the central regions of civilization and was first grasped by Aristotle. In Aristotle, however, this only sounds a first quiet note, for much of Greek culture was still alive in him. It develops then with particular vehemence in the Roman culture within which it had been prepared long before Aristotle, and, indeed, before Plato. So that we see how, since the eighth century BC on the Italian peninsula a particular culture, or the first hints of it, was being prepared alongside that which lived on the Greek peninsula as a sort of last offshoot of the oriental constitution of soul. And when we go into the differences between these two modes of human thought we find important historical impulses. For what is expressed in these ways of thinking went over later into the feeling life of human beings; into the configuration of human actions and so on.

Now we can ask ourselves: So what was living in that which developed in ancient times as a world-view in the Orient, and which then, like a latecomer, found its [last] offshoots in Platonism—and, indeed, still in Neoplatonism? It was a highly spiritual culture which arose from an inner perception living pre-eminently in pictures, in imaginations; but pictures not permeated by full consciousness, not yet permeated by the full I-consciousness of human beings. In the spiritual life of the ancient Orient, of which the Veda and Vedanta are the last echoes, stupendous pictures opened up of what lives in the human being as the spiritual. But it existed in a—I beg you not to misunderstand the word and not to confuse it with usual dreaming—it existed in a dreamlike, dim way, so that this soul-life was not permeated (durchwellt) and irradiated (durchstrahlt) by what lives in the human being when he becomes clearly conscious of his 'I' and his own being. The oriental was well aware that his being existed before birth, that it returns through death to the spiritual world in which it existed before birth or conception. The oriental gazed on that which passed through births and deaths. But he did not see as such that inner feeling which lives in the `I am'. It was as if it were dull and hazy, as though poured out in a broad perception of the soul (Gesamtseelenanschauung) which did not concentrate to such a point as that of the I-experience. Into what, then, did the oriental actually gaze when he possessed his instinctive perception?

One can still feel how this oriental soul-constitution was completely different from that of later humanity when, for an understanding of this and perhaps prepared through spiritual science, one sinks meditatively into those remarkable writings which are ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite.⁷ I will not go into the question of the authorship now, I have already spoken about it on a number of occasions. 'Nothingness' (das Nichts) is still spoken of there as a reality, and the existence of the external world, in the way one views it in ordinary consciousness, is simply contrasted against this [nothingness] as a different reality. This talk of nothingness then continues. In Scotus Erigena,⁸ who lived at the court of Charles the Bald, one still finds echoes of it, and we find the last echo then in the fifteenth century in Nicolas of Cusa⁹ But what was meant by the nothingness one finds in Dionysius the Areopagite and of that which the oriental spoke of as something self-evident to him? This fades then completely. What was this nothingness for the oriental? It was something real for him. He turned his gaze to the world of the senses around him, and said: This sense-world is spread out in space, flows in time, and in ordinary life world, is spread out in space, one says that what is extended in space and flows in time is something.

But what the oriental saw—that which was a reality for him, which passes through births and deaths—was not contained in the space in which the minerals are to be found, in which the plants unfold, the animals move and the human being as a physical being moves and acts. And it was also not contained in that time in which our thoughts, feelings and will-impulses occur. The oriental was fully aware that one must go beyond this space in which physical things are extended and move, and beyond this time in which our soul-forces of ordinary life are active. One must enter a completely different world; that world which, for the external existence of time and space, is a nothing but which, nevertheless, is something real. The oriental sensed something in contrast to the phenomena of the world which the European still senses at most in the realm of real numbers.

When a European has fifty francs he has something. If he spends twenty-five francs of this he still has twenty-five francs; if he then spends fifteen francs he still has ten; if he spends this he has nothing. If now he continues to spend he has five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five francs in debts. He still has nothing; but, indeed, he has something very real when, instead of simply an empty wallet, he has twenty-five or fifty francs in debts. In the real world it also signifies something very real if one has debts. There is a great difference in one's whole situation in life between having nothing and having fifty francs' worth of debts. These debts of fifty francs are forces just as influential on one's situation in life as, on the other side and in an opposite sense, are fifty francs of credit. In this area the European will probably admit to the reality of debts for, in the real world, there always has to be something there when one has debts. The debts that one has oneself may still seem a very negative amount, but for the person to whom they are owed they are a very positive amount!

So, when it is not just a matter of the individual but of the world, the opposite side of zero from the credit side is truly something very real. The oriental felt—not because he somehow speculated about it but because his perception necessitated it he felt: Here, on the one side, I experience that which cannot be observed in space or in time; something which, for the things and events of space and time, is nothing but which, nevertheless, is a reality—but a different reality.

It was only through misunderstanding that there then arose what occidental civilization gave itself up to under the leadership of Rome—the creation of the world out of nothing with `nothing' seen as absolute `zero'. In the Orient, where these things were originally conceived, the world does not arise out of nothing but out of the reality I have just indicated. And an echo of what vibrates through all the oriental way of thinking right down to Plato—the impulse of eternity of an ancient world-view—lived in the Greek who, at the court of Charlemagne, had to debate with Alcuin. And in this theologian Alcuin there lived a rejection of the spiritual life for which, in the Orient, this `nothing' was the outer form. And thus, when the Greek spoke of death, whose causes lie in the spiritual world, as something real, Alcuin could only answer: But death is nothing and therefore cannot receive ransom.

You see, the whole polarity between the ancient oriental way of thinking, reaching to Plato, and what followed later is expressed in this [one] significant moment when Alcuin debated at the court of Charlemagne with the Greek. For, what was it that had meanwhile entered in to European civilization since Plato, particularly through the spread of Romanism? There had entered that way of thinking which one has to comprehend through the fact that it is directed primarily to what the human being experiences between birth and death. And the constitution of soul which occupies itself primarily with the human being's experiences between birth and death is the logical, legal one—the logical-dialectical-legal one. The Orient had nothing of a logical, dialectical nature and, least of all, a legal one. The Occident brought logical, legal thinking so strongly into the oriental way of thinking that we ourselves find religious feeling permeated with a legalistic element. In the Sistine Chapel in Rome, painted by the master-hand of Michelangelo, we see looming towards us, Christ as judge giving judgment on the good and the evil.

A legal, dialectical element has entered into the thoughts concerning the course of the world. This was completely alien to the oriental way of thinking. There was nothing there like guilt and atonement or redemptinn. For [in this oriental way of thinking] was precisely that view of the metamorphosis through which the eternal element [in the human being] transforms itself through births and deaths. There was that which lives in the concept of karma. Later, however, everything was fixed into a way of looking at things which is actually only valid for, and can only encompass, life between birth and death. But this life between birth and death was just what had evaded the oriental. He looked far more to the core of man's being. He had little understanding for what took place between birth and death. And now, within this occidental culture, the way of thinking which comprehends primarily what takes place within the span between birth and death increased [and did so] through those forces possessed by the human being by virtue of having clothed his soul-and-spirit nature with a physical and etheric body. In this constitution, in the inner experience of the soul-and-spirit element and in the nature of this experience, which arises through the fact that one is submerged with one's soul-and-spirit nature in a physical body, comes the inner comprehension of the 'I'. This is why it happens in the Occident that the human being feels an inner urge to lay hold of his 'I' as something divine. We see this urge, to comprehend the 'I' as something divine, arise in the medieval mystics; in Eckhart, in Tauler and in others. The comprehension of the 'I' crystallizes out with full force in the Middle (or Central) culture. Thus we can distinguish between the Eastern culture—the time in which the 'I' is first experienced, but dimly—and the Middle (or Central) culture—primarily that in which the 'I' is experienced. And we see how this 'I' is experienced in the most manifold metamorphoses. First of all in that dim, dawning way in which it arises in Eckhart, Tauler and other mystics, and then more and more distinctly during the development of all that can originate out of this I-culture.

We then see how, within the I-culture of the Centre, another aspect arises. At the end of the eighteenth century something comes to the fore in Kant¹⁰ which, fundamentally, cannot be explained out of the onward flow of this I-culture. For what is it that arises through Kant? Kant looks at our perception, our apprehension (Erkennen), of nature and cannot come to terms with it. Knowledge of nature, for him, breaks down into subjective views ( Subjektivitäten); he does not penetrate as far as the 'I' despite the fact that he continually speaks of it and even, in some categories, in his perceptions of time and space, would like to encompass all nature through the 'I'. Yet he does not push through to a true experience of the 'I'. He also constructs a practical philosophy with the categorical imperative which is supposed to manifest itself out of unfathomable regions of the human soul. Here again the 'I' does not appear.

In Kant's philosophy it is strange. The full weight of dialectics, of logical-dialectical-legal thinking is there, in which everything is tending towards the 'I', but he cannot reach the point of really understanding the 'I' philosophically. There must be something preventing him here. Then comes Fichte, a pupil of Kant's, who with full force wishes his whole philosophy to well up out of the 'I' and who, through its simplicity, presents as the highest tenet of his philosophy the sentence: `I am'. And everything that is truly scientific must follow from this `I am'. One should be able, as it were, to deduce, to read from this 'I am' an entire picture of the world. Kant cannot reach the 'I am'. Fichte immediately afterwards, while still a pupil of Kant's, hurls the `I am' at him. And everyone is amazed—this is a pupil of Kant's speaking like this! And Fichte says:¹¹ As far as he can understand it, Kant, if he could really think to the end, would have to think the same as me. It is so inexplicable to Fichte that Kant thinks differently from him, that he says: If Kant would only take things to their full conclusion, he would have to think [as I do]; he too, would have to come to the 'I am'. And Fichte expresses this even more clearly by saying: I would rather take the whole of Kant's critique for a random game of ideas haphazardly thrown together than to consider it the work of a human mind, if my philosophy did not logically follow from Kant's. Kant, of course, rejects this. He wants nothing to do with the conclusions drawn by Fichte.

We now see how there follows on from Fichte what then flowered as German idealistic philosophy in Schelling and Hegel, and which provoked all the battles of which I spoke, in part, in my lectures on the limits to a knowledge of nature.¹² But we find something curious. We see how Hegel lives in a crystal-clear [mental] framework of the logical-dialectical-legal element and draws from it a world-view—but a world-view that is interested only in what occurs between birth and death. You can go through the whole of Hegel's philosophy and you will find nothing that goes beyond birth and death. It confines everything in world history, religion, art and science solely to experiences occurring between birth and death.

What then is the strange thing that happened here? Now, what came out in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel—this strongest development of the Central culture in which the 'I' came to full consciousness, to an inner experience—was still only a reaction, a last reaction to something else. For one can understand Kant only when one bears the following properly in mind. (I am coming now to yet another significant point to which a great deal can be traced). You see, Kant was still—this is clearly evident from his earlier writings—a pupil of the rationalism of the eighteenth century, which lived with genius in Leibnitz and pedantically in Wolff. One can see that for this rationalism the important thing was not to come truly to a spiritual reality. Kant therefore rejected it—this `thing in itself' as he called it—but the important thing for him was to prove. Sure proof! Kant's writings are remarkable also in this respect. He wrote his Critique of Pure Reason in which he is actually asking: `How must the world be so that things can be proved in it?' Not 'What are the realities in it?' But he actually asks: 'How must I imagine the world so that logically, dialectically, I can give proofs in it?' This is the only point he is concerned with and thus he tries in his Prologomena to give every future metaphysics which has a claim to being truly scientific, a metaphysics for what in his way of thinking can be proven: `Away with everything else! The devil take the reality of the world—just let me have the art of proving! What's it to me what reality is; if I can't prove it I shan't trouble myself over it!'

Those individuals did not, of course, think in this way who wrote books like, for example, Christian Wolff's¹³ Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt (Reasoned Thoughts an God, the World, and the Soul of Man, and All Things Generally). What mattered for them was to have a clean, self-contained system of proof, in the way that they see proof. Kant lived in this sphere, but there was still something there which, although an excrescence squeezed out of the world-view of the Centre, nevertheless fitted into it. But Kant had something else which makes it inexplicable how he could become Fichte's teacher. And yet he gives Fichte a stimulus, and Fichte comes back at him with the strong emphasis of the 'I am'; comes back, indeed, not with proofs—one would not look for these in Fichte—but with a fully developed inner life of soul. In Fichte there emerges, with all the force of the inner life of soul, that which, in the Wolffians and Leibnitzites, can seem insipid. Fichte constructs his philosophy, in a wealth of pure concepts, out of the 'I am'; but in him they are filled with life. So, too, are they in Schelling and in Hegel. So what then had happened with Kant who was the bridge? Now, one comes to the significant point when one traces how Kant developed. Something else became of this pupil of Wolff by virtue of the fact that the English philosopher, David Hume,¹⁴ awoke him, as Kant himself says, out of his dull dogmatic slumber. What is it that entered Kant here, which Fichte could no longer understand? There entered into Kant here—it fitted badly in his case because he was too involved with the culture of Central Europe—that which is now the culture of the West. This came to meet him in the person of David Hume and it was here that the culture of the West entered Kant. And in what does the peculiarity [of this culture] lie? In the oriental culture we find that the 'I' still lives below, dimly, in a dream-like state in the soul-experiences which express themselves, spread out, in imaginative pictures. In the Western culture we find that, in a certain sense, the 'I' is smothered (erdrückt) by the purely external phenomena (Tatsachen). The 'I' is indeed present, and is present not dimly, but bores itself into the phenomena. And here, for example, people develop a strange psychology. They do not talk here about the soul-life in the way Fichte did, who wanted to work out everything from the one point of the 'I', but they talk about thoughts which come together by association. People talk about feelings, mental pictures and sensations, and say these associate—and also will-impulses associate. One talks about the inner soul-life in terms of thoughts which associate.

Fichte speaks of the 'I'; this radiates out thoughts. In the West the 'I' is completely omitted because it is absorbed—soaked up by the thoughts and feelings which one treats as though they were independent of it, associating and separating again. And one follows the life of the soul as though mental pictures linked up and separated. Read Spencer,¹⁵ read John Stuart Mill¹⁶ read the American philosophers. When they come to talk of psychology there is this curious view that does not exclude the 'I' as in the Orient, because it is developed dimly there, but which makes full demand of the 'I'; letting it, however, sink down into the thinking, feeling and willing life of the soul. One could say: In the oriental the 'I' is still above thinking, feeling and willing; it has not yet descended to the level of thinking, feeling and willing. In the human being of the Western culture the 'I' is already below this sphere. It is below the surface of thinking, feeling and willing so that it is no longer noticed, and thinking, feeling and willing are then spoken of as independent forces.

This is what came to Kant in the form of the philosophy of David Hume. Then the Central region of the earth's culture still set itself against this with all force in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. After them the culture of the West overwhelms everything that is there, with Darwinism and Spencerism.

One will only be able to come to an understanding of what is living in humanity's development if one investigates these deeper forces. One then finds that something developed in a natural way in the Orient which actually was purely a spiritual life. In the Central areas something developed which was dialectical-legal, which actually brought forth the idea of the State, because it is to this that it can be applied. It is such thinkers as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel who, with enormous sympathy, construct a unified image (Gebilde) of the State. But then a culture emerges in the West which proceeds from a constitution of soul in which the 'I' is absorbed, takes its course below the level of thinking, feeling and willing; and where, in the mental and feeling life, people speak of associations. If only one would apply this thinking to the economic life! That is its proper place. People went completely amiss when they started applying [this thinking] to something other than the economic life. There it is great, is of genius. And had Spencer, John Stuart Mill and David Hume applied to the institutions of the economic life what they wasted on philosophy it would have been magnificent. If the human beings living in Central Europe had limited to the State what is given them as their natural endowment, and if they had not, at the same time, also wanted thereby to include the spiritual life and the economic life, something magnificent could have come out of it. For, with what Hegel was able to think, with what Fichte was able to think, one would have been able—had one remained within the legal-political configuration which, in the threefold organism, we wish to separate out as the structure of the State¹⁷—to attain something truly great. But, because there hovered before these minds the idea that they had to create a structure for the State which included the economic life and the spiritual life, there arose only caricatures in the place of a true form for the State. And the spiritual life was anyway only a heritage of the ancient Orient. It was just that people did not know that they were still living from this heritage of the ancient East. The useful statements, for example, of Christian theology—indeed, the useful statements still within our materialistic sciences—are either the heritage of the ancient East, or a changeling of dialectical-legal thinking, or are already adopted, as was done by Spencer and Mill, from the Western culture which is particularly suited for the economic life.

Thus the spiritual thinking of the ancient Orient had been distributed over the earth, but in an instinctive way that is no longer of any use today. Because today it is decadent, it is dialectical-political thinking which was rendered obsolete by the world catastrophe [World War I]. For there was no one less suited to thinking economically than the pupils of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. When they began to create a State which, above all, was to become great through its economy, they had of necessity (selbstverständlich) to fail, for this was not what, by nature, was, endowed to them. In accordance with the historical development of humanity, spiritual thinking, political thinking and economic thinking were apportioned to the East, the Centre, and the West respectively. But we have arrived at a point of humanity's development when understanding, a common understanding, must spread equally over all humanity. How can this come about?

This can only happen out of the initiation-culture, out of the new spiritual science, which does not develop one-sidedly, but considers everything that appears in all areas as a three-foldness that has evolved of its own accord. This science must really consider the threefold aspect also in social life; in this case (as a three-foldness) encompassing the whole earth. Spiritual science, however, cannot be extended through natural abilities; it can only be spread by people accepting those who see into these things, who can really experience the spiritual sphere, the political sphere and the economic sphere as three separate areas. The unity of human beings all over the earth is due to the fact that they combine in themselves what was divided between three spheres. They themselves organize it in the social organism in such a way that it can exist in harmony before their eyes. This, however, can only follow from spiritual-scientific training. And we stand here at a point where we must say: In ancient times we see individual personalities, we see them expressing in their words what was the spirit of the time. But when we examine it closely—in the oriental culture, for example—we find that, fundamentally, there lives instinctively in the masses a constitution of soul which in a remarkable; quite natural way was in accord with what these individuals spoke.

This correspondence, however, became less and less. In our times we see the development of the opposite extreme. We see instincts arising in the masses which are the opposite of what is beneficial for humanity. We see things arising that absolutely call for the qualities that may arise in individuals who are able to penetrate the depths of spiritual science. No good will come from instincts, but only from the understanding (that Dr. Unger also spoke of here)¹⁸ which, as is often stressed, every human being can bring towards the spiritual investigator if he really opens himself to healthy human reason. Thus there will come a culture in which the single individual, with his ever-deeper penetration into the depths of the spiritual world, will be of particular importance, and in which die one who penetrates in this way will be valued, just as someone who works in some craft is valued. One does not go to the tailor to have boots made or to the shoemaker to be shaved, so why should people go to someone else for what one needs as a world-view other than to the person who is initiated into it? And it is, indeed, just this that, particularly today and in the most intense sense, is necessary for the good of human beings even though there is a reaction against it, which shows how humanity still resists what is beneficial for it. This is the terrible battle—the grave situation—in which we find ourselves.

At no other time has there been a greater need to listen carefully to what individuals know concerning one thing or another. Nor has there been a greater need for people with knowledge of specific subject areas to be active in social life—not from a belief in authority but out of common sense and out of agreement based on common sense. But, to begin with, the instincts oppose this and people believe that some sort of good can be achieved from levelling everything. This is the serious battle in which we stand. Sympathy and antipathy are of no help here, nor is living in slogans. Only a clear observation of the facts can help. For today great questions are being decided—the questions as to whether the individual or the masses have significance. In other times this was not important because the masses and the individual were in accord with one another; individuals were, in a certain sense, simply speaking for the masses. We are approaching more and more that time when the individual must find completely within himself the source of what he has to find and which he has then to put into the social life; and [what we are now seeing] is only the last resistance against this validity of the individual and an ever larger and larger number of individuals. One can see plainly how that which spiritual science shows is also proved everywhere in these significant points. We talk of associations which are necessary in the economic life, and use a particular thinking for this. This has developed in the culture of the West from letting thoughts associate. If one could take what John Stuart Mill does with logic, if one could remove those thoughts from that sphere and apply them to the economic life, they would fit there. The associations which would then come in there would be exactly those which do not fit into psychology. Even in what appears in the area of human development, spiritual science follows reality.

Thus spiritual science, if fully aware of the seriousness of the present world situation, knows what a great battle is taking place between the threefold social impulse that can come from spiritual science and that which throws itself against this threefoldness as the wave of Bolshevism, which would lead to great harm (Unheil) amongst humanity. And there is no third element other than these two. The battle has to take place between these two. People must see this! Everything else is already decadent. Whoever looks with an open mind at the conditions in which we are placed, must conclude that it is essential today to gather all our forces together so that this whole terrible Ahrimanic affair can be repulsed.

This building stands here,¹⁹ incomplete though it is for the time being. Today we cannot get from the Central countries that which for the most part, and in addition to what has come to us from the neutral states, has brought this building to this stage. We must have contributions from the countries of the former Entente. Understanding must be developed here for what is to become a unified culture containing spirit, politics and economics. For people must get away from a one:sided tendency and must follow those who also understand something of politics and economics, who do not work only in dialectics, but, also being engaged with economic impulses, have insight into the spiritual, and do not want to create states in which the State itself can run the economy. The Western peoples will have to realize that something else must evolve in addition to the special gift they will have in the future with regard to forming economic associations. The skill in forming associations has so far been applied at the wrong end, i.e. in the field of Psychology. What must evolve is understanding of the political-state element, which has other sources than the economic life, and also of the spiritual element. But at present the Central countries lie powerless, so people in the Western regions—one could not expect this of the Orient—will have to see what the Purpose of this building is! It is necessary for us to consider What must be done so that real provision is made for a new culture that should be presented everywhere in the university education of the future—here we have to show the way. In the foundation of the Waldorf Schools the culture has proved to be capable of bringing light into primary education. But for this we need the understanding support of the widest circles.

Above all we need the means. For everything which, in a higher or lower sense, is called a school, we need the frame of mind I have already tried to awaken at the opening of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart.²⁰ I said in my opening speech there: `This is one Waldorf school. It is well and good that we have it, but for itself it is nothing; it is only something if, in the next quarter of a year, we build ten such Waldorf schools and then others'. The world did not understand this, it had no money for such a thing. For it rests on the standpoint: Oh, the ideals are too lofty, too pure for us to bring dirty money to them; better to keep it in our pockets; that's the proper place for dirty money. The ideals, oh, they're too pure, one can't contaminate them with money! Of course, with purity of this kind the embodiment of ideals cannot be attained, if dirty money is not brought to them. And thus we have to consider that, up to now, we have stopped at one Waldorf school which cannot progress properly because in the autumn we found ourselves in great money difficulties. These have been obviated for the time being, but at Easter we shall be faced with them again. And then, after a comparatively short time, we will ask: Should we give up? And we shall have to give up if, before then, an understanding is not forthcoming which dips vigorously into its pockets.

It is thus a matter of awakening understanding in this respect. I don't believe that much understanding would arise if we were to say that we wanted something for the building in Dornach, or some such thing—as has been shown already. But—and one still finds understanding for this today—if one wants to create sanatoria or the like, one gets money, and as much as one wants! This is not exactly what we want—we don't want to build a host of sanatoria—we agree fully with creating them as far as they are necessary; but here it is a matter, above all, of nurturing that spiritual culture whose necessity will indeed prove itself through what this course²¹ I has attempted to accomplish. This is what I tried to suggest, to give a stimulus to what I expressed here a few days ago, in the words 'World Fellowship of Schools' (Weltschulverein).²²

Our German friends have departed but it is not a question of depending on them for this 'World Fellowship'. It depends on those who, as friends, have come here, for the most part from all possible regions of the non-German world—and who are still sitting here now—that they understand these words 'World Fellowship of Schools' because it is vital that we found school upon school in all areas of the world out of the pedagogical spirit which rules in the Waldorf School. We have to be able to extend this school until we are able to move into higher education of the kind we are hoping for here. For this, however, we have to be in a position to complete this building and everything that belongs to it, and be constantly able to support that which is necessary in order to work here; to be productive, to work on the further extension of all the separate sciences in the spirit of spiritual science.

People ask one how much money one needs for all this. One cannot say how much, because there never is an uppermost limit. And, of course, we will not be able to found a World Fellowship of Schools simply by creating a committee of twelve or fifteen or thirty people who work out nice statutes as to how a World Fellowship of Schools of this kind should work. That is all pointless. I attach no value to programmes or to statutes but only to the work of active people who work with understanding. It will be possible to establish this World Fellowship—well, we shall not be able to go to London for some time—in the Hague or some such place, if a basis can be created, and by other means if the friends who are about to go to Norway or Sweden or Holland, or any other country—England, France, America and so on—awaken in every human being whom they can reach the well-founded conviction that there has to be a World Fellowship of Schools. It ought to go through the world like wildfire that a World Fellowship must arise to provide the material means for the spiritual culture that is intended here.

If one is able in other matters, as a single individual, to convince possibly hundreds and hundreds of people, why should one not be able in a short time—for the decline is happening so quickly that we only have a short time—to have an effect on many people as a single individual, so that if one came to the Hague a few weeks later one would see how widespread was the thought that: 'The creation of a World Fellowship of Schools is necessary, it is just that there are no means for it.' What we are trying to do from Dornach is an historical necessity. One will only be able to talk of the inauguration of this World Fellowship of Schools when the idea of it already exists. It is simply utopian to set up committees and found a World Fellowship—this is pointless! But to work from person to person, and to spread quickly the realization, the well-founded realization, that it is so necessary—this is what must precede the founding. Spiritual science lives in realities. This is why it does not get involved with proposals of schemes for a founding but points to what has to happen in reality—and human beings are indeed realities—so that such a thing has some prospects.

So what is important here is that we finally learn from spiritual science how to stand in real life. I would never get involved with a simply utopian founding of the World Fellowship of Schools, but would always be of the opinion that this World Fellowship can only come about when a sufficiently large number of people are convinced of its necessity. It must be created so that what is necessary for humanity—it has already proved to be so from our course here—can happen. This World Fellowship of Schools must be created.

Please see what is meant by this Fellowship in all international life, in the right sense! I would like, in this request, to round off today what, in a very different way in our course, has spoken to humanity through those who were here and of whom we have the hope and the wish that they carry it out into the world. The World Fellowship of Schools can be the answer of the world to what was put before it like a question; a question taken from the real forces of human evolution, that is, human history. So let what can happen for the World Fellowship of Schools, in accordance with the conviction you have been able to gain here, happen! In this there rings out what I wanted to say today.

• 1 . These were the lectures given by Dr Karl Heyer on 14, 15 and 16 October 1920, during the first course of the School of Anthroposophy at the Goetheanum with the theme: 'The Science of History and History from the Viewpoint of Anthroposophy' ('Anthroposophische Betrachtungen Ober die Geschichtswissenschaft und aus der Geschichte'). These are printed in Kultur und Erziehung (the third volume of the Courses of the School of Anthroposophy), Stuttgart, 1921.
• 2 . See Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835): Über die Aufgabe des Geschiclztsschreibens (The Task of the Historian) in Volume IV of Humboldt's Works published by Leitzman, Berlin 1905 (see pages 35-56). Some relevant passages taken from these are as follows:
  
  "The business of the historian, in the last but simplest analysis, is to portray the striving of an idea to attain existence in reality. For it is not always that it succeeds in this at the first attempt; and it is not so rare that the idea degenerates because it is unable to master in a pure way the matter counteracting it."
  
  "The truth of everything that happens lies in the addition of the above-mentioned invisible part of every fact, and thus the history writer must add this to the events. Seen from this angle he is self-acting and even creative—not, indeed, by producing what does not already exist, but by forming out of his own inner strength that which, as it is in reality, he could not perceive through mere receptivity. In different ways, but just like the poet, he must in himself transform the scattered fragments into a whole."
  
  "It may seem dubious to allow the realm of the history writer and that of the poet to meet, even at only one point. But the activity of both is undeniably related. For if the historian, like the poet, can achieve truth in his presentation of past events only by completing and linking the incomplete and disjointed elements of direct observation, then he does so, like the poet, only through imagination. Because, however, he places imagination subordinate to experience and the fathoming of reality, there is a difference here which cancels out all danger. Imagination does not work, at this lower position, as pure imagination, and is therefore more properly called an intuitive faculty and a talent for finding links."
  
  "Of necessity, therefore, the historian too, must strive; not, like the poet, to give his material over to the dominion of the form of necessity but to hold steadily in consciousness the ideas which are its laws, because, permeated only by, these, he can then find their trace in the pure research of the real in its reality."
  
  "The historian encompasses all the threads of earthly activity and all varieties of supersensible ideas; the sum-total of existence, more or less, is the object of his work and he must therefore also follow all avenues of the mind and spirit. Speculation, experience and poetry, however, are not separate, opposed and mutually-limiting activities of the mind, but different planes of its radiance."
  
  "Apart from the fact that history, like every scientific activity, serves many subsidiary purposes, work on history is no less a free art, complete in itself, than philosophy and poetry."
  
  "Just as philosophy strives for the first foundation of things, and art for the ideal of beauty, so history strives for a picture of human destiny in faithful truth, living abundance and pure clarity that are perceived by the warm inner-being [of the historian] in such a way that his personal views, feelings and demands are lost and dissolved away. It is the final purpose of the history-writer to awaken and nourish this mood, which, however, he only attains when he pursues for his fellow human beings the simple presentation of past events with conscientious faithfulness."
• 3 . See the final words of Rudolf Steiner, on 16 October 1920, after the close of the first course of the Anthroposophical School, in Die Kunst der Rezitation and Deklamation (First Edition) Dornach, 1928, page 118.
• 4 . See i>Geschictliche Symptomatologie (GA 185), nine lectures given in Dornach in 1918, only two of which are translated in From Symptom to Reality in Modern History.
• 5 . See Bedeutende Fordnis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort in Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited and with a commentary by Rudolf Steiner in Kürschner's Deutsche National-Literatur, Volume II, page 34 (GA lb). Goethe says here:
  
  "I do not rest until I find a significant point from which a great deal can be deduced or, rather, which of its own will brings forth a great deal and presents this to me, and which I then, with attention and receptivity, work on further faithfully and carefully. If, in my experience, I find some phenomenon which I cannot deduce, I simply let it lie as a problem; and I have found, in my long life, this way of doing things to be very beneficial. For when I was not able for a long time to unravel the origin or connection of some phenomenon but had to put it to one side, I found that, years later, it all suddenly became clear in the most beautiful way."
• 6 . Alcuin (also Alhuin or Alchwin, i.e. 'Friend of the Temple') was rector of the monastery school at York around 735 to 804. In 782 he followed the summons of Charlemagne and took on the headship of the court school. He encouraged the sciences in the monasteries and raised to the central seat of the sciences the monastery school of St Martin at Tours, which he founded and whose Abbot he became in 796.
  
  The debate with the Greek is described in Karl Werner's book Alcuin and sein Jahrhundert (Alcuin and His Century) Vienna 1881, Chapter 11. page 166, as follows:
  
  Thus Charlemagne once wanted to know from Alcuin what should be made of the view of a Greek scholar, who presumably was a member of a Byzantine legation at Charlemagne's court, who had expressed the opinion to the emperor that Christ had paid the expiation for our sins to death. Alcuin found this manner of expression and the idea behind it to be inadmissible, for Christ was not—death's debtor and could not become so—the price of our redemption was paid by Christ to our divine Father, to whom, in dying, He commended His soul. Death [so Alcuin argued] is in no way a reality of being and substance but, to his way of thinking, was something purely negative, the mere absence or 'Carence' (Church Latin: the interval before benefits become available) of life; it is nothing existing in itself, and thus cannot receive anything, no payment can be paid to it. On the contrary, in the person of Christ, death itself, which God did not create, became the ransom for our debt and won life for us thereby, which He Himself gives us in His saviour power.'
• 7 . Rudolf Steiner drew attention at different times to the fact that the content of the writings of 533 A.D., attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, do indeed stem from the person of this name mentioned in The Acts of the Apostles 17, 34. See the lectures on 17 and 25 March 1907 in Christianity Began as a Religion and Festivals of the Seasons respectively.
• 8 . Johannes Scotus Erigena (c. 810–877) translator of the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite into Latin (see note 7).
• 9 . Nicolaus of Cusa (or Kures) (1401–1464), cardinal.
• 10. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): Critique of Pure Reason, 1781; Prolegemena, 1783.
• 11. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) Erste und zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre und Verstwh einer neuen Darstellung der Wiyenschaftslehre (First and Second Introduction into the Doctrine of Knowledge and an Attempt at a New Presentation of the doctrine of Knowledge).
• 12. Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis (Limits to a Knowledge of Nature (GA 322)—eight lectures given during the first course (Hochschulkurs) of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, 27 September to 3 October 1920 (GA 322).
• 13. Baron Christian von Wolff, philosopher and mathematician, Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, 1719.
• 14. David Hume (1711–1776), philosopher.
• 15. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), philosopher.
• 16. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), philosopher.
• 17. Towards Social Renewal, 1919, (GA 23).
• 18. In the third week of the first course (of the School of Spiritual Science), Dr Carl Unger (1822–1929) gave lectures under the title of 'Rudolf Steiner's Works'. These six lectures, edited by Unger, can be found in Volume I of Carl Unger's Writings, Stuttgart, 1964.
• 19. The first Goetheanum building, begun in 1913, was already put into use in 1920, although still under construction supervised by Rudolf Steiner and with the interior not yet finished. On New Year's Eve 1922–3 it was destroyed by fire.
• 20. The Free Waldorf School was founded in Stuttgart in the spring of 1919 by Dr Emil Molt for the children, to begin with, of the employees of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. The school was under the supervision of Rudolf Steiner who appointed the teachers and gave the preparatory seminar courses.
• 21. The first anthroposophical course of the Free School for Spiritual Science took place at the Goetheanum from 26 September to 16 October 1920. See also notes 1,3,12, and 18.
• 22. i.e., a form of international support body for Waldorf Schools. Rudolf Steiner suggested the founding of a World Fellowship of Schools during an assembly of teachers on 16 October 1920. There is no available transcript of this talk.