The Rudolf Steiner Archive

German philosophy before Schopenhauer

[ 1 ] The years 1781 and 1807 mark an era of fierce battles within the development of German science. In 1781, Kant woke his contemporaries from their philosophical slumber with his "Critique of Pure Reason" and presented them with riddles which the cognitive power of the nation's best minds endeavored to solve over the next quarter of a century. A philosophical excitement of the highest order can be observed among those involved in these intellectual battles. In rapid succession, one school of thought replaced another. The shallow intellectual clarity that had prevailed in the books of philosophical literature before Kant was replaced by scientific warmth, which gradually grew into the captivating eloquence of Fichte and the poetic verve with which Schelling was able to express scientific ideas. An examination of this intellectual movement reveals an incomparable intellectual wealth, but also a restless, hasty rush forward. Some ideas entered the public domain prematurely. The thinkers did not have the patience to allow their ideas to mature. This restless development ended with the publication of Georg Wilh. Friedr. Hegel's first major work, the "Phenomenology of Spirit", in 1807. Hegel did the last work on this book in Jena in the days when the terrible turmoil of war in 1806 broke over the city. The events of the following years were not conducive to philosophical battles. Hegel's book did not immediately make such a strong impression, challenging the minds to cooperate, as Fichte and Schelling did when they first appeared. But even their influence gradually waned. For both of them, the period of their activity at the University of Jenens was the most brilliant of their lives. Fichte taught at this university from 1794 to 1799, Schelling from 1798 to 1803. The former moved from Jena to Berlin because the accusation of atheism brought against him by envious and unreasonable people had brought him into conflict with the Weimar government. In the winter of 1804/s he gave his lectures on the "Fundamentals of the Present Age" in Berlin, in which he effectively advocated idealistic thinking, and in the winter of 1807/8 his famous "Speeches to the German Nation", which exerted a powerful influence on the strengthening of national sentiment. As a champion of national and liberal ideas, in the service of which he placed his thinking and his eloquence, he achieved a more powerful effect during this period than through the philosophical lectures he gave at the University of Berlin from its establishment in 1810 until his death in 1814. Schelling, who did not make the transition from philosophical to political activity, was soon completely forgotten after his time in Jenens. He moved to Würzburg in 1803 and then to Munich in 1806, where he worked on expanding his ideas, which few people were still interested in. At the end of the first decade of our century, there was no longer any sign of the lively philosophical debate that Kant's revolutionary act had provoked: Fichte and Schelling's time was over, Hegel's era had not yet dawned. Hegel led a quiet existence from 1806 to 1808 as editor of a Bamberg newspaper and then until 1816 as principal of the Nuremberg grammar school. His enormous influence on German intellectual life only began with his appointment to Berlin in 1818.

[ 2 ] This characterizes the circumstances that Arthur Schopenhauer found himself in when, after an eventful youth, he began his philosophical apprenticeship in 1810. He heard echoes of Fichte's, Schelling's and above all Kant's views from the pulpits and from the works of contemporary philosophers. The way in which Schopenhauer turned the views of his great predecessors, especially Kant and Fichte, into elements of his own system of ideas can be understood by examining the period of his life that preceded his preoccupation with philosophy.

Schopenhauer's youthful life

[ 3 ] Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig on February 22, 1788. His father, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, lived in this city as a wealthy merchant. He was a man of thorough professional training, great worldly experience, rare strength of character and a sense of independence that nothing could overcome. His mother Johanna Henriette, née Trosiener, was a fun-loving, artistic woman who was extremely open to intellectual pleasures and had a strong penchant for socializing, which she could easily satisfy with her intelligence and intellectual alertness. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer was 41 and Johanna 22 years old when Arthur, their first child, was born from their marriage in 1785. He was followed in 1797 by the second and last, Adele. The philosopher's parents had not been driven to marry by rapturous passion. But the relationship, based on mutual respect, must have been a very happy one. Johanna speaks about it with the words: "I could be proud to belong to this man, and I was. I feigned ardent love for him just as little as he laid claim to it."

[ 4 ] In 1793, the previously free city of Danzig was incorporated into the Prussian state. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer did not like the idea of becoming a Prussian subject. He therefore emigrated to Hamburg with his wife and child. In the years that followed, the small family traveled frequently. The reason for this was Johanna's longing for a change in living conditions, for ever new impressions, and her husband's intention to give his son the widest possible knowledge of the world based on his own experience. Arthur's father had decided that he should become a capable merchant and a man of the world. All educational measures were undertaken with this in mind. The boy received his first lessons at a private institute in Hamburg. At the age of ten, he embarked on a long journey with his father to France, where he spent the next two years of his life. After Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer had shown his son Paris, he took him to Havre to leave him with a business friend, Grégoire de Blésimaire. The latter had the young Schopenhauer educated together with his own son. The result of this education was that Arthur returned, to his father's great delight, as a perfect young Frenchman who had acquired a great deal of appropriate knowledge and had forgotten his mother tongue to such an extent that he could only make himself understood with difficulty in it. But the twelve-year-old boy also brought back the most pleasant memories from France. In his 31st year, he said of this stay: "I spent by far the happiest part of my childhood in that friendly town on the Seine estuary and the sea coast." After returning to his parents' home, Arthur Schopenhauer attended a private educational establishment run by Dr. Runge and attended by the sons of wealthy Hamburgers. At this school, pupils were taught what was needed to turn them into capable and socially educated businessmen. Latin was taught for one hour a week, just for the sake of appearances. Arthur Schopenhauer enjoyed these lessons for almost four years. What he was taught here in the sciences was presented to him in a form appropriate to the practical goals of the future merchant. But it was enough to awaken in him a powerful inclination towards a scholarly career. His father did not like this at all. In his opinion, he found himself in the embarrassing position of having to choose between two things: the present wishes of his beloved son and his future happiness. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer thought that the academic profession could only bring a man poverty and worry, not happiness and contentment. Forcing his son into a profession was contrary to the nature of his father, who considered freedom to be one of man's greatest possessions. However, he considered a ruse to be appropriate and expedient to dissuade the young man from his inclination. Arthur had to decide quickly: either to go on a long pleasure trip through a large part of Europe, which his parents wanted to undertake, and on his return to devote himself definitively to the mercantile profession, or to stay behind in Hamburg to begin his Latin studies immediately and prepare himself for the learned profession. The wonderful expectations that the thought of the journey aroused in the young Schopenhauer caused him to repress his love of science and choose the profession that appealed to his father. This was a decision that his father foresaw, as he was well aware of his son's desire to see the world. Arthur Schopenhauer left Hamburg with his parents in the spring of 1803. The next destination was Holland, then the journey continued to England. After a stay of six weeks in London, Arthur was left behind in Wimbledon for three months to learn the English language thoroughly with Mr. Lancaster. During this time, his parents traveled to England and Scotland. The stay in England engendered in Schopenhauer the hatred of English bigotry that remained with the philosopher throughout his life, but it also laid the foundation for the thorough mastery of the English language that later made him appear as such in conversation with Englishmen. Life in Lancaster's boarding house did not suit Schopenhauer very well. In letters to his parents, he complained of boredom and the stiff, ceremonial nature of the English. He was overcome by a general mood which, it seems, could only be dispelled by a preoccupation with fine literature, especially the works of Schiller. We can see from his mother's letters that she was worried that her son's fondness for poetic reading might blunt him to the seriousness of life. "Believe me," she wrote to him on July 19, 1803, "Schiller himself would never be what he is if he had only read poets in his youth." From England, the Schopenhauer family traveled to France via Holland and Belgium. They visited Havre again and spent some time in Paris. In January 1804, the journey continued to the south of France. Schopenhauer got to know Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nimes, Marseille, Toulon, the Hyeric Islands and Lyon. From Lyon, the travelers turned to Switzerland, then to Swabia, Bavaria, Vienna, Dresden and Berlin. The impressions that Schopenhauer received during the course of the journey were profound. In Paris, he saw Napoleon shortly before he forced his way to the imperial crown (May 18, 1804). In Lyon, his mind was stirred by the sight of several places that recalled the atrocities of the Revolution. And everywhere it was especially the scenes of human misery that he viewed with deep sympathy for the unfortunate and oppressed. For example, he was seized with an unnameable sense of pain when he saw the terrible fate of six thousand galley slaves in the Bagno of Toulon. He thought he was looking into an abyss of human misfortune. But he was also filled with joy when he saw the magnificent works of nature during his journey, a feeling that increased in Switzerland at the sight of Mont Blanc or the Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen to the point of rapture at the sublimity of nature's workings. Later, in Book 3 of Volume II of his main work, he compared genius to the mighty Alpine mountain, because the frequently noted gloomy mood of highly gifted spirits reminded him of the summit, which is usually shrouded in a veil of clouds, and the peculiar cheerfulness that occasionally emerges from the general gloomy mood of genius reminds him of the magical glow of light that becomes visible when the veil of clouds breaks early in the morning and the summit becomes clear. The Krkonoše Mountains in Bohemia, which were visited on the way from Vienna to Dresden, also made a significant impression on Schopenhauer. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer started his journey home from Berlin, while Arthur traveled with his mother to his native city of Danzig, where he was confirmed. In the early days of 1805, the now seventeen-year-old young man arrived back in Hamburg. He now had to keep his father's word and dedicate himself to the commercial profession without refusal. He was apprenticed to Senator Jenisch in Hamburg. Once awakened, his love of the sciences could not be stifled. The merchant's apprentice felt unhappy. After the long journey, on which new images had been presented to the onlooker's eye every day, he could not bear the monotony of his professional work; after the relaxed lifestyle of the past years, the necessary regularity in his 'activities seemed like servitude to him. Without any inner involvement in the duties of his profession, he only did the bare minimum. On the other hand, he used every free moment to read or to indulge in his own thoughts and reveries. He even resorted to cunning pretenses towards his teacher when he wanted to have a few free hours to attend the lectures on craniology given by Doctor Gall, who was in Hamburg at the time.

[ 5 ] This was Arthur Schopenhauer's situation in April 1805, when his father's life ended suddenly when he fell from a loft. Whether the man, who was suffering from memory loss in his final weeks, sought 'death' himself or found it by chance is still unclear today. The son's gloomy mood was heightened by this event to such an extent that it was little short of true melancholy. The mother moved to Weimar with her daughter in 1806, after the business had been liquidated. She thirsted for the intellectual stimuli of this city of art. Arthur's striving for liberation from torturous circumstances now met with no external resistance. He was his own master. His mother exercised no coercion. Nevertheless, there were reasons that prevented him from throwing off the hated shackles immediately after his father's death. He loved his father dearly. It was contrary to his feelings to take a step that the deceased would never have approved of. Also, the overwhelming pain of the sudden loss had so paralyzed his energy that he could not make a quick decision. To all this was added the fact that he believed himself too old to be able to undertake the preliminary studies necessary for the scholarly profession. His ever-increasing aversion to the commercial profession and the belief that he was wasting his life's energies in vain filled his letters to his mother in Weimar with miserable complaints, so that she considered it her duty to ask her friend, the famous art writer Fernow, for advice on what to do in the interests of her son's future happiness. Fernow wrote to her friend with his opinion. He considered the age of eighteen to be no obstacle to devoting oneself to the sciences; indeed, he claimed that it was at this happy age that "memory and judgment unite in the maturing power of the mind, so that what is undertaken with firm resolution can be carried out more easily and quickly, and knowledge can be acquired sooner than in an earlier or later period of life". Schopenhauer, to whom his mother sent Fernow's letter, was so shocked by its contents that he burst into tears after reading it. Fernow's lines brought about what was otherwise not in his nature: to make a decision quickly. The time from the spring of 1807 to the fall of 1809 was enough for Schopenhauer to acquire the knowledge he needed to attend university. He lived in Gotha until the beginning of 1808, where Döring taught him Latin and Jacobs German. He spent the rest of his time in Weimar, where Fernow introduced him to Italian literature. In addition to the old languages, in which the philologist Passow and the grammar school director Lenz were his teachers, he studied mathematics and history. On October 9, he entered the University of Göttingen to study medicine. A year later, he swapped medicine for philosophy.

The student years. Relationship with Kant and Fichte

[ 6 ] As a personality whose character traits were already sharply defined, who had already formed firm opinions on many things on the basis of substantial experiences and a rich knowledge of the world, Schopenhauer entered the study of philosophy. At the beginning of his time at university, he once said to Wieland: "Life is a miserable thing; I have resolved to do mine by thinking about it." Life made him a philosopher. It also determined the philosophical tasks he devoted himself to solving. In this he differs from his predecessors: Kant, Fichte and Schelling, as well as from his antipode Hegel. These were philosophers for whom their tasks arose from the consideration of other people's views. Kant's thinking was given a decisive impetus by delving into Hume's writings, Fichte's and Schelling's work was given direction by Kant's critiques, Hegel's thoughts also developed from those of his predecessors. The ideas of these thinkers are therefore links in a continuous series of developments. Even if each of the philosophers mentioned sought in the foreign systems of thought that inspired him those germs whose further development corresponded precisely to his individuality, it is still possible to trace the series of developments described purely logically, without taking into account the personal bearers of the ideas. It is as if one thought had brought forth another without any human being having been active in the process. For Schopenhauer, on the other hand, a large number of individual doubts and puzzles arose from his experiences, from the direct observation of human conditions and natural events, to which his travels gave him the opportunity, before he knew what others thought about the life of the spirit and the workings of nature. The questions posed to him by his experiences had a thoroughly individual and often coincidental character. This is why he occupies an isolated position in German philosophy. He took the elements for solving his tasks from everywhere: from contemporaries and from philosophers of the past. The question as to why these elements have become elements of a body of thought can only be answered by examining Schopenhauer's individual personality. Fichte's, Schelling's, Hegel's philosophical systems arouse the feeling that they had to follow Kant's because they were logically demanded by it; of Schopenhauer's, on the other hand, it is quite easy to imagine that we would have missed it entirely in the history of philosophy if the creator's life had taken a different turn by some accident before his productive period. The peculiar charm of Schopenhauer's world of ideas is due to this character. Because it has its sources in individual life, it corresponds to the philosophical needs of many people who, without seeking special expertise, nevertheless want to hear an opinion on the most important questions of life.

[ 7 ] Some of Schopenhauer's philosophical statements are merely views wrapped in a scientific garment, which life before his philosophical studies had produced in him. His starting point is not a principle from which all philosophical science can be derived, but rather individual basic views on various aspects of world events emerge from the whole of his personality, which only later coalesce into a unity. Schopenhauer therefore compares his world of thought to a crystal whose parts shoot together from all sides to form a whole.

[ 8 ] One of these basic views developed in Schopenhauer as a result of the influence that his Göttingen teacher Gottlob Ernst Schulze had on him. The latter described Kant and Plato to the young philosopher as the thinkers he should adhere to first and foremost. Schulze himself had appeared as an opponent of Kant in his 1792 publication "Aenesidemus". Schopenhauer had the good fortune to have Kant pointed out to him by a man who also had the ability to draw attention to the philosopher's contradictions.

[ 9 ] Kant endeavored to seek out the conditions under which the human striving for knowledge can arrive at truths of unconditional and necessary certainty. The Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy, of which Kant was a follower until his in-depth study of Hume's writings, believed that such truths could be spun out of pure reason through purely conceptual thinking. It contrasted these pure rational truths with the knowledge of experience gained through observation of the outer life of nature and the inner life of the soul. According to this view, the latter are not made up of clear, transparent concepts, but of confused and dark ideas. Therefore, this philosophical way of thinking wanted to develop the most valuable insights into the deeper connection of natural events, the nature of the soul and the existence of God from pure concepts of reason. Kant professed these views until he was completely shaken in his convictions by Hume's remarks on the concepts of cause and effect. Hume (1711 to 1776) sought to prove that we can never gain insight into the connection between cause and effect through mere reason. According to Hume, the concept of causation comes from experience. We perceive the emergence of fire and then the heating of the air surrounding it. We have observed the same sequence of these perceptions countless times. We get used to it and assume that we will always observe the same thing as soon as the same conditions are met. But we can never gain an objective certainty about this, for it is impossible to see with the help of mere concepts that something must necessarily follow because something else precedes it. Experience only tells us that up to a certain point in time a certain event has always resulted in a certain other event, but not that the one must result in the other, i.e. that it will not be different in the future. All our knowledge about nature and about the life of our soul is made up of complexes of ideas that have formed in our soul on the basis of observed connections between things and events. Reason can find nothing in itself that gives it the right to connect one idea with another, i.e. to make a cognitive judgment. From the moment Kant recognized the significance of Hume's investigations, his thinking took on a completely new direction. But he arrived at different conclusions from Hume himself as a result of Hume's considerations. He agreed with Hume that we cannot gain any information about a connection lying in things from mere reason. What laws things have in themselves, our reason cannot decide; only the things themselves can teach us. He also agreed with Hume that there is no unconditional and necessary certainty in the information that experience gives us about the connection between things. But on this, Kant maintained, we have perfect certainty that things must stand in the relation of cause and effect and in other similar relations. Kant did not lose his belief in absolutely necessary knowledge about reality as a result of Hume's statements. The question arose for him: How can we know something absolutely certain about the connection between things and events in reality, even though reason cannot decide how things relate to each other by their very nature and experience does not provide any absolutely certain information? Kant's answer to this question was: The necessary connection in which we see the things and phenomena we perceive does not lie in these things themselves, but in our organization. It is not because one event necessarily follows from another that we notice such a connection, but because our mind is so organized that it must connect things according to the concepts of cause and effect. Thus it does not depend on the things at all, but on us, in what relations they appear to us. Kant allows only sensations to be given by an external power. Their arrangement in space and time and their connection through concepts such as cause and effect, unity and multiplicity, possibility and reality, is, in his view, only accomplished by our mental organism. Our sensuality is such that it can only look at sensations in space and time, our intellect such that it can only think of them in certain conceptual relationships. Kant is therefore of the opinion that our sensuality and our intellect prescribe the laws of their connection to things and events. Whatever is to become the object of our experience must obey these laws. An examination of our organization reveals the conditions under which all objects of experience must necessarily appear. From this view arose for Kant the necessity of attributing to experience a character dependent on the human faculty of cognition. We do not know things as they are in themselves, but as our organization makes them appear to us. Our experience therefore contains only appearances, not things in themselves. Kant was led to this conviction by the train of ideas that Hume stimulated in him.

[ 10 ] Schopenhauer describes the change brought about in his mind by these thoughts as a spiritual rebirth. They fill him with all the greater satisfaction as he finds them in full agreement with the views of the other philosopher to whom Schulze had pointed him, those of Plato. The latter says: "As long as we relate to the world merely perceptively, we are like people who sit in a dark cave so tightly bound that they cannot turn their heads, and see nothing but by the light of a fire burning behind them, on the wall opposite them, the shadowy images of real things passing between them and the fire, and indeed of each other, and each of themselves only the shadows. Just as these shadows relate to the real things, so our objects of perception, according to Plato's conviction, relate to the Ideas, which are the objects of perception. The objects of perception arise and pass away, the ideas are eternal. Schopenhauer found the same view in Kant as in Plato: that the visible world has no true being. Schopenhauer soon regarded this as an incontrovertible, indeed as the first and most universal truth. For him it took the following form: I gain knowledge of things insofar as I see them, hear them, feel them, etc., in a word: insofar as I imagine them. An object becomes my object of knowledge means: it becomes my imagination. Heaven, earth, etc., are therefore my conceptions, for the thing in itself that corresponds to them has become my object only because it has assumed the character of conception. Schopenhauer took from the thought worlds of Kant and Plato the germ of those parts of his philosophical system in which he treats the world as imagination.

[ 11 ] Schopenhauer considered the distinction between appearance and "thing-in-itself" to be Kant's greatest merit; however, he found Kant's remarks on the "thing-in-itself" itself to be completely misguided. This error also gave rise to Schulze's fight against Kant. According to Kant, things in themselves are the external causes of the sensations that occur in our sensory organs. But how do we arrive at the assumption of such causes, asks Schulze and with him Schopenhauer. Cause and effect are connected merely because our organization demands it, and yet are these concepts to be applied to a realm that is beyond our organism? Can the laws of our organism also be decisive beyond it? These considerations led Schopenhauer to seek a different path to the "thing-in-itself" than the one taken by Kant.

[ 12 ] Such a path is outlined in J. G. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. It took its most mature form in the lectures that Fichte gave at the University of Berlin between 1810 and 1814. Schopenhauer went to Berlin in the fall of 1811 to continue his studies. "He listened very attentively to Fichte lecturing on his philosophy," he later said in the description of his curriculum vitae, which he submitted to the Faculty of Philosophy in Berlin when he wanted to become a private lecturer. We learn the content of Fichte's lectures from his "Sämtliche Werke Vol. 2 und aus seinem Nachlaß Vol. i". The doctrine of science is based on the concept of knowledge, not that of being. For man can only learn something about being through his knowledge. Knowledge is not something 'dead, finished, but a living becoming. The objects of knowledge arise through its activity. It is characteristic of everyday consciousness that it notices the objects of knowledge, but not their emergence. Insight into this emergence comes to those who reflect on their own activity. Such a person sees how he himself creates the entire world existing in space and time. According to Fichte, this creation is a fact that one notices as soon as one pays attention to it. However, one must have an organ that is capable of overhearing knowledge as it is produced, just as one must have an eye in order to see colors. To him who has this organ, the perceptible world appears as a creature of knowledge, arising and passing away with knowledge. Its objects are not permanent beings, but passing images. Everyone can only observe the production of these images in themselves. Through self-perception, each person recognizes in the things given to his knowledge a world of images created by himself. This is only a subjective appearance whose meaning does not extend beyond the individual human being. The question arises: Are these images the only thing that exists? Are we ourselves nothing but this activity that creates the appearance? The question can be answered by reflecting on man's moral ideals. Of these it is clear without further ado that they are to be realized. And it is also absolutely certain that they must be realized not only by this or that human individual, but by all men. This necessity is inherent in the content of these ideals. They are a unity that embraces all individuals. Every human being perceives them as ought. They can only be realized through the will. But if the expressions of the will of the individuals are to harmonize into a unified world order, they must be founded in a single universal will. What wills in any individual is in essence the same as what wills in all others. What the will accomplishes must appear in the corporeal world; it is the scene of its activity. This is only possible if its laws are such that it can absorb the activity of the will into itself. There must be an original correspondence between the driving forces of the corporeal world and the will. The doctrine of science thus leads to a unified world principle, which manifests itself in the physical world as force and in the moral order as will. As soon as man finds the will within himself, he gains the conviction that there is a world independent of his individual. The will is not the knowledge of the individual, but the form of being. The world is knowledge and will. In the realization of moral ideals, the will has a content, and insofar as human life participates in this realization, it acquires an absolute value that it would not have if it existed merely in the images of knowledge. Fichte sees the will as the "thing in itself" independent of knowledge. All we recognize of the world of being is that it is will.

[ 13 ] The view that the will that man encounters in himself is a "thing in itself" is also Schopenhauer's view. He, too, is of the opinion that in our knowledge we have given only the images produced by us, but in our will we have given a being independent of us. The will must remain when knowledge is extinguished. The active will shows itself through the actions of my body. When the organism does something, it is the will that drives it to do it. Now I also learn about the actions of my body through my knowledge, which creates a picture of it for me. Schopenhauer says, according to the expression into which he has put Kant's basic view (cf. p. 245): I imagine these actions. This imagination of mine corresponds to a being independent of me, which is will. What we know of the activity in our own bodies, Schopenhauer also seeks to prove of that of the rest of nature: that it is, according to its being, will. This view of the will is the second of the links that make up Schopenhauer's philosophy.

[ 14 ] In the absence of historical evidence, it is impossible to determine how much of Schopenhauer's doctrine of will was influenced by Fichte. Schopenhauer himself denied any influence on the part of his Berlin teacher. He disliked the way Fichte taught and wrote. Given the striking agreement between the views of the two philosophers and the fact that Schopenhauer listened "attentively" to Fichte's lectures and even once had a lively discussion with him during a consultation, it is difficult to reject the idea of such influence. It was therefore in Göttingen and Berlin that Schopenhauer was first inspired when he based his system of thought on the two principles: "The world is my imagination" and "The world is will."

The influence of Goethe

[ 15 ] In the spring of 1813, Schopenhauer left Berlin due to the unrest of the war and went to Weimar via Dresden. He did not like the conditions in his mother's house, so he initially settled in Rudolstadt. In the summer of 1813, he worked on part of his theory of ideas. All our ideas are objects of our cognizing subject. But nothing existing and independent on its own, nor anything separate and torn off, can become an object for us. The ideas stand in a lawful connection which is given to them by our cognitive faculty and which can be recognized in form from its nature. The ideas must stand in such a relation to each other that we can say: one is grounded in the other. Reason and consequence is the general form of the connection between all ideas. There are four kinds of grounding: the ground of becoming, of cognition, of being and of volition. In becoming, one change is justified by another in time; in cognizing, one judgment by another, or by an experience; in being, the position of one part of time or space by another; in willing, an action by a motive. Schopenhauer gave a detailed account of what he had to say about these propositions in his essay "On the Fourfold Root of the Theorem of the Sufficient Ground", which earned him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Jena on October 2, 1813. In November of that year he returned to Weimar, where he remained until May 1814 and lived in close contact with Goethe. Goethe had read Schopenhauer's first work and was so interested in the author that he personally introduced him to the theory of colors. Schopenhauer found that his philosophical convictions and Goethe's Theory of Colors were in perfect agreement. He decided to justify this in a special treatise, which he began to write after moving to Dresden in May 1814. His thoughts on the nature of sensory perception also developed in the process. Kant was of the opinion that sensations arise from the excitation of the senses by "things in themselves"; these are the simple impressions of color, light, sound, etc. As these come from outside, they are not yet arranged in space and time. For this order is based on an arrangement of the senses. The outer senses arrange the sensations in space, the inner sense in time. This gives rise to perception. According to its nature, the intellect then arranges the perceptions according to the concepts of cause and effect, unity and multiplicity: Cause and effect, unity, multiplicity, etc. In this way a coherent experience is formed from the individual perceptions. Schopenhauer finds the senses quite unsuitable for the production of perception. The senses contain nothing but sensation. The sensations of color, for example, arise through an effect on the retina in the eye. They are processes within the organism. They can therefore only be perceived directly as states of the body and within it. The inner sense initially arranges the sensations in time so that they gradually enter consciousness. They only acquire spatial relationships when they are perceived as effects and an external cause is inferred from them. The arrangement according to cause and effect is a matter for the intellect. It regards sensations as effects and transfers their causes into space. It takes possession of the material of sensation and constructs the views in space from it. These are therefore the work of the intellect and not of the senses*. Since the objects that are seen and felt in space are derived from the senses ¹ Since the colors are first built up from the semantic perceptions, they cannot be derived from them. Therefore, colors, which are sensations, cannot be derived from objects, as Newton does. They are created by the eye and must be explained by the eye's equipment. It must be shown how the retina produces colors. Only the cause of colors, light, which is still entirely uncolored, can be transferred to the outside. Goethe also assumes the uncolored light in his Theory of Colors. Schopenhauer's work "On Sight and Colors" was published in 1816. Goethe had already received the manuscript from the author for review in 1815.

The main work

[ 16 ] Schopenhauer stayed in Dresden until September 1818, a period dedicated to the completion of his main work "The World as Will and Representation". New ideas were added to those developed in Göttingen, Berlin and Weimar and initially recorded in short aphorisms. Frauenstädt published a number of these aphorisms in his book "Aus Schopenhauers Nachlaß". Schopenhauer lived in particularly happy circumstances while he was writing them. His creative energy was stimulated by his contact with men of letters, who held him in high esteem for his abilities. The picture gallery and the collection of antique statues satisfied his aesthetic needs. They stimulated his thinking about art and artistic creation. From March 1817 to March 1818, he summarized the individual ideas of his philosophy into a whole. The remarks on perception, which were already contained in the work on colors, also form the beginning of "The World as Will and Representation". The intellect creates the external world and brings its phenomena into a context according to the law of cause and consequence, which has the four forms indicated. Kant ascribed twelve modes of connection (categories) to the intellect; Schopenhauer can only recognize those of reason and consequence (causality). Through the intellect we have given the vivid world. In addition to the intellect, reason is also active in man. It forms concepts from the views. It seeks out what different views have in common and forms abstract units from them. In this way it brings larger parts of experience under one thought. As a result, man does not merely live in his immediate present view, but can draw conclusions about the future from past and present events. He gains an overview of life and can also organize his actions accordingly. This distinguishes him from the animal. The latter has views, but no concepts of reason. Its actions are determined by the impressions of the immediate present. Man is guided by his reason. But reason cannot generate content on its own. It is only the reflection of the visual world. Therefore, it cannot produce moral ideals that are independent of experience and that shine before action as an unconditionally commanding ought, as Kant and Fichte claim. The rules according to which man organizes his actions are taken from his life experiences. Understanding and reason have their organ in the brain. Without the brain there are no views and no concepts. The whole world of imagination is a phenomenon of the brain. In itself there is only the will. This contains no moral ideals; we know it only as a dark urge, as an eternal striving. It gives rise to the brain and thus to understanding and reason. The brain creates the objective world, which man surveys as experience subject to the law of reason. The ideas are arranged spatially and temporally. They form nature in this order. The will is non-spatial and non-temporal, for space and time are created by the cognizing consciousness. The will is therefore a unity in itself; it is one and the same in all phenomena. As an appearance, the world consists of a multiplicity of things or individuals. As a thing in itself it is a wholeness. The individuals arise when consciousness confronts the object as subject and observes it according to the law of the ground. But there is another way of looking at it. Man can go beyond the mere individual. He can seek in the individual thing that which is independent of space, time and causality. In every individual there is something permanent that is not limited to the individual object. A particular horse is conditioned by the causes from which it emerged. But there is something in the horse that remains, even if the horse is destroyed again. This something that remains is not only contained in this particular horse, but in every horse. It cannot be produced by the causes which only bring about the creation of this one particular horse. That which remains is the idea of the horse. The causes embody this idea only in a single individual. The idea is therefore not subject to space, time and causality. It is therefore closer to the will than the individual. The idea is not directly contained anywhere in nature. Man only sees it when he looks away from the individual nature of things. This happens through the imagination. The material embodiment of ideas is art. The artist does not copy nature, but imprints on matter what his imagination sees. Music is an exception. It does not embody ideas. For even if ideas are not directly contained in nature, the imagination can only extract them from nature by searching for what remains in individuals. These are the models of art. Music, however, has no model in nature. Musical works of art do not depict anything in nature. Man creates them out of himself. But since there is nothing in him, apart from ideas and concepts, that he could represent other than the will, music is the direct image of the will. It speaks so much to the human mind because it is the embodiment of that which constitutes the innermost essence, the true being of man. This view of music is rooted in ideas that we find in Schopenhauer long before he became involved in philosophy. As a Hamburg merchant's apprentice, he wrote to his mother: "How did the heavenly seed find room on our hard soil, on which necessity and shortcomings fight for every little place? We are banished from the primal spirit and are not meant to reach it.... And yet a compassionate angel has implored the heavenly flower for us and it is rooted high in full glory on this soil of misery. - The pulsations of the divine art of music have not ceased to beat through the centuries of barbarism, and a direct echo of the eternal has remained in it, comprehensible to every sense and elevated even above vice and virtue." This idea of youth confronts us in philosophical form in Schopenhauer's main work.

[ 17 ] The same passage in the letter also contains a thought that took on a scientific form in the last section of the book "The World as Will and Representation": that of a general end of the world and of the nothingness of existence. The will is an eternal striving. It is in its nature that it can never be satisfied. For when it reaches a goal, it must immediately continue on to a new one. If it ceased to strive, it would no longer be will. Since human life is by its very nature will, there is no satisfaction in it, but only eternal longing for such satisfaction. Deprivation causes pain. This is therefore necessarily connected with life. All joy and happiness can only be based on illusion. Satisfaction is only possible through illusion, which is destroyed by reflecting on the true nature of the world. The world is void. Only those who fully realize this are wise. The contemplation of eternal ideas and their embodiment in art can for a moment take us beyond the misery of the world, for the aesthetically pleasurable person immerses himself in the eternal ideas and knows nothing of the particular sufferings of his individual. He behaves in a purely recognizing way, not wanting, and therefore not suffering. Suffering, however, returns immediately when he is thrown back into everyday life. The only salvation from misery is not to will at all, to kill the will within oneself. This is done by suppressing all desires, by asceticism. The wise man will extinguish all desires within himself, completely negate his will. He knows no motive that could compel him to will. His striving is directed towards only one thing: redemption from life. This is no longer a motive, but a quest. Every individual will is determined by the general will and is therefore unfree; only the universal will is not determined by anything and is therefore free. Only the negation of the will is an act of freedom, because it cannot be brought about by an individual act of will, but by the one will itself. All individual willing is the willing of a motive, hence the affirmation of the will.

[ 18 ] Suicide does not bring about a negation of the will. The suicide destroys only his particular individual; not the will, but only a manifestation of the will. Asceticism, however, does not merely annihilate the individual, but the will itself within the individual. It must ultimately lead to the complete extinction of all being, to redemption from all suffering. If the will disappears, then every appearance is also destroyed. The world has then entered into eternal rest, into nothingness, in which alone there is no suffering, thus bliss.

[ 19 ] The will is a unity. It is one and the same in all beings. Man is only an individual in appearance, in being only the expression of the general will of the world. One human being is not in truth separate from the other. What the latter suffers, the latter must also regard as his own suffering, he must suffer with it. Compassion is the expression of the fact that no one has a particular suffering, but that everyone feels the general suffering. Compassion is the basis of morality. It destroys egoism, which only seeks to alleviate one's own suffering. Compassion causes people to act in a way that is aimed at eliminating the suffering of others. Morality is not based on the principles of reason, but on compassion, i.e. on a feeling. Schopenhauer rejects all rational morality. Its principles are abstractions that only lead to moral, non-egoistic action through connection with a real driving force: compassion.

[ 20 ] Schopenhauer's doctrine of salvation and compassion emerged from his doctrine of the will under the influence of Indian views: Brahmanism and Buddhism. Schopenhauer studied Indian religious ideas as early as 1813 in Weimar under the guidance of the Orientalist Friedrich Majer. He continued these studies in Dresden. He read the work "Oupnek' hat", which a Persian prince translated from Indian into Persian in 1640 and of which a Latin translation was published by the Frenchman Anquetil Duperron between 1801 and 1802. According to Brahmanism, all individual beings have emerged from a primordial being to which they return in the course of the world process. Through individualization, the evils and the end of the world have arisen, which will be destroyed as soon as the existence of the individual beings has ceased and only the primordial being will still exist. According to Buddhism, all existence is linked to pain. This would not be destroyed even if there were only one single primordial being. Only the destruction of all existence through renunciation and suppression of the passions can lead to salvation, to nirvana, that is, to the destruction of all existence.

[ 21 ] At the end of 1818 (with the date 1819), "The World as Will and Representation" was published by Brockhaus in Leipzig. In the same year, Hegel was appointed to Berlin. Hegel held a completely opposite view to that of Schopenhauer. What for Schopenhauer could only create a reflection of the real, reason, was for Hegel the source of all knowledge. Through reason, man grasps being in its true form, the content of reason is the content of being; the world is the appearance of the rational, and life is therefore infinitely valuable because it is the representation of reason. This doctrine soon became the philosophy of the age and remained so until it had to give way to the rule of the natural sciences around the middle of the century. The latter did not want to justify anything from reason, but everything from experience. The flourishing of Hegelian philosophy prevented any influence of Scho penhauer's philosophy. It remained completely unnoticed. In 1835, Schopenhauer received the following information from Brockhaus in response to an inquiry about the sales of his main work: the work had not been distributed at all. A large part of it had had to be turned into waste paper.

Stay in Berlin

[ 22 ] After completing "The World as Will and Representation", Schopenhauer left Dresden and went to Italy. He saw Florence, Bologna, Rome and Naples. On his return journey, he received news from his sister in Milan that the Hamburg trading house in which his mother and sister had invested their entire fortune, and Schopenhauer himself only part of his fortune, had stopped making payments. This experience made it seem advisable for him to look for a new source of income, as he did not want to depend on his uncertain fortune. He returned to Germany and habilitated at the University of Berlin. He announced the following lecture for the summer semester of 1820: "The whole of philosophy, that is the doctrine of the nature of the world and of the human spirit". He was unable to exert any influence as an academic teacher or as a writer alongside Hegel. For this reason, he did not give any more lectures in the following years, although he continued to announce such lectures in his catalog until 1831. He felt unhappy in Berlin; the location, climate, surroundings, way of life, social conditions: he disliked everything. In addition, he was completely disintegrating due to the property issue with his mother and sister. He himself had lost nothing through his skillful appearance; his mother and sister, on the other hand, had lost 70 percent of their fortune. Embittered by the lack of recognition, loneliness and the rift with his relatives, he left Berlin in May 1822 and spent several years traveling. He went through Switzerland to Italy, spent a winter in Trier, a whole year in Munich and only returned to Berlin in May 1825. In 1831 he moved to Frankfurt am Main. He fled from the cholera that prevailed in Berlin at the time and which he was particularly afraid of because he had a dream on New Year's night from 1830 to 1831 that seemed to point to his imminent death.

The creation of the last writings and the growing Rubm

[ 23 ] With the exception of the period from July 1832 to June 1833, when Schopenhauer sought recovery from an illness in Mannheim, he spent the rest of his life in Frankfurt in complete solitude, filled with deep resentment at his age, which showed so little understanding for his creations. He lived only for his thoughts and his work, aware that he was not working for his contemporaries, but for a future generation. In 1333 he wrote in his manuscript book: "My contemporaries must not believe that I am now working for them: we have nothing to do with each other; we do not know each other; we pass each other by as strangers. - I write for the individuals who are like me, who live and think here and there in the course of time, communicate with each other only through the works they have left behind and are thus each the consolation of the other."

[ 24 ] The publication of "The World as Will and Representation" marked the end of Schopenhauer's production of ideas. What he published later does not contain any new basic ideas, but only expansions of what is already contained in the main work, as well as arguments about his position towards other philosophers and views on particular questions of science and life, from the standpoint of his world view.

[ 25 ] Schopenhauer believed he recognized an ally in the battle for his ideas in the natural sciences. At the universities of Göttingen and Berlin, in addition to his philosophical education, he acquired a thorough education in the natural sciences and later informed himself in detail about all advances in the knowledge of nature. On the basis of these studies, he formed the opinion that natural science was moving in such a direction that it must one day arrive at the results that he himself had found through philosophical thinking. He attempted to provide proof of this in his work "The Will in Nature", published in 1836. All research into nature consists of two parts, the description of the forces of nature and the explanation of the laws of nature. The laws of nature, however, are nothing other than the rules that the imagination gives to phenomena. These laws can be explained because they are nothing but the forms of space, time and causality, which stem from the nature of the cognizing subject.The forces of nature cannot be explained, but only described as they present themselves to observation. If we follow the descriptions that natural scientists give of the forces of nature: gravity, magnetism, heat, electricity, etc., we see that these forces are nothing more than the forms of action of the will at various levels.

[ 26 ] In the same sense as Schopenhauer gave a more detailed exposition of the doctrine of the will in "Will in Nature", so in "The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics" he expanded the views contained in the main work on the freedom of the will and the basis of morality. The book is composed of two prize papers: one on the "Freedom of the Will", which was crowned by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences in 1839, and the other on the "Foundation of Morals", which was carried out at the instigation of the Danish Academy, but was not crowned by it.

[ 27 ] What Schopenhauer still had to say to the world is contained in his last book, "Parerga und Paralipomena", which appeared in 1851. It contained a series of treatises on philosophy, psychology, anthropology, religion and wisdom in a presentation that captivates the reader, because he does not merely read assertions and abstract proofs, but sees through to a personality whose thoughts arise not only from the head, but from the whole person, and who seeks to prove his views not only through logic, but also through feeling and passion. This character of Schopenhauer's last work and the work of some of his followers, whom the philosopher had already won in the forties, made it possible for him to say of himself in the evening of his life: My time has come. Unnoticed for decades, he became a widely read writer in the second half of the century. As early as 1843, F. Dorguth published a pamphlet entitled "The False Root of Ideal Realism", in which he called Schopenhauer "the first real systematic thinker in the entire history of literature". This was followed in 1845 by another by the same author: "Schopenhauer in his truth". Frauenstädt also worked as a writer to spread Schopenhauer's teachings. He had "Letters on Schopenhauer's Philosophy" published in 1854. However, an article by John Oxenford in the "Westminster Review" from April 1853, which Otto Lindner had translated and published in the Vossische Zeitung under the title "Deutsche Philosophie im Auslande", made a particular impression. In it, Schopenhauer is described as a philosophical genius of the first rank; his depth and wealth of ideas are sought to be proven by reprinting individual passages from his works. Lindner himself became an enthusiastic apostle of Schopenhauer's teachings through the "Parerga und Paralipomena", to which he was able to render great service through his position as editor of the Vossische Zeitung. David Asher in particular promoted the understanding of Schopenhauer's ideas on music through essays in German and English journals. And it was these ideas about music that made one of Schopenhauer's most ardent admirers, Richard Wagner, the man who showed the art of music new paths. For him, these ideas were like a new gospel. He saw them as the most profound philosophy of music. The artist, who wanted to express the deepest secrets of existence in musical language, felt a spiritual affinity with the philosopher who declared music to be the image of the will of the world. In December 1854, the sound poet sent the thinker in Frankfurt the text of his "Ring der Nibelungen" with the handwritten dedication: "Out of admiration and gratitude", shortly after Schopenhauer had refused to visit Wagner in Zurich.

[ 28 ] Schopenhauer was able to watch his fame grow for about a decade. On September 21, 1860, he died suddenly as a result of a lung attack.

Bibliography and text treatment

[ 29 ] The last editions of his works published during Schopenhauer's lifetime are: Die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde, 2nd edition 1847; Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 3rd edition 1859; Der Wille in der Natur, 2nd edition 1854; Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, 2nd edition 1860; Parerga und Paralipomena, i. edition 1851; Das Sehn und die Farben, 2nd edition 1854. Schopenhauer produced a Latin translation of the latter work in 1829 for the "Scriptores ophthalmologici minores", which was published in the third volume of this journal in 1830 under the title "'Theoria colorum physiologica". After Schopenhauer's death, Julius Frauenstädt, in accordance with the philosopher's last will and testament, produced new editions of the works, for which he used the manuscript bequest. This consists of manuscript books and hand-copies of the works. The manuscript books are Reisebuch (begun September 1818), Foliant (begun January 1821), Brieftasche (begun May 1822), Quartant (begun November 1824), Adversaria (begun March 1828), Cholerabuch (written while fleeing from cholera, begun September 1831), Cogitata (begun February 1830), Pandektä (begun September 1832), Spicilegia (begun April 1837), Senilia (begun April 1852) and the lectures Schopenhauer gave in Berlin. In these manuscript books, as well as on the pages pasted through the manuscript copies, are Schopenhauer's additions which he intended to include in later editions of his works, as well as remarks on philosophical works, aphorisms, etc.. Frauenstädt published what could not be used for the new editions of the works in 1864 under the title: "Aus Arthur Schopenhauers handschriftlichem Nachlaß. Treatises, Notes, Aphorisms and Fragments". After Frauenstadt's death in 1879, the manuscript books passed into the possession of the Royal Library in Berlin, while the hand-copied copies were passed into private hands. For any complete edition of Schopenhauer's works, Frauenstadt's principle must generally be followed: "I have ... I have proceeded in such a way that I have only included the additions in the text, whether they were written down or quoted from the manuscript books, when, after careful consideration, I found a place for them where they fit in without constraint, not only in terms of content but also in terms of form, i.e. diction; in all other cases, however, where either the strict sequence of thought or the pleasing sentence structure of the text did not permit their inclusion in the same, I have placed them in the most appropriate place either as notes below or as appendices after the text. " However, Frauenstädt sometimes did not apply this principle strictly enough. Therefore, in the present complete edition, all those additions that Frauenstädt included in the text have been removed from the text and relegated to the notes, of which it can be assumed that Schopenhauer, in accordance with the strict demands he placed on style, would never have added them to his works in the first version, but only after a complete reworking. As far as the arrangement of the writings in a complete edition is concerned, several statements by Schopenhauer should be taken into consideration: A letter to Brockhaus dated August 8, 1858, in which, should a complete edition become necessary, he speaks of the following order: i. World as will and imagination. 2. parerga. 3. fourfold root; will in nature; basic problems of ethics; sight and colors. On September 22 of the same year, he was already of a different opinion. He wanted to place the Parerga at the end and let the writings listed earlier under 3. precede it. As you can see, Schopenhauer was vacillating with regard to the order. The present Complete Edition therefore follows the statement he made in the draft of a preface to the Complete Edition about the order in which his works should be read. The following arrangement corresponds to this statement: i. Fourfold root of the proposition of the sufficient ground. 2 World as will and imagination. 3. will in nature. 4. basic problems of ethics. 5. parerga and paralipomena. These writings are followed by the work on "Sight and Colors", which Schopenhauer says in the same passage "goes for itself". Next is the aforementioned Latin translation of this work, followed by what has been published from his estate. The four short descriptions of his life written by Schopenhauer himself form the end of the edition: i. The one attached to his application for the doctorate. 2. the Curriculum vitae, which he sent to Berlin for the purpose of his habilitation. 3. the biography he sent to Eduard Erdmann in April 1851 for use in his History of Philosophy, 4. the one he provided for the Meyersche Konversationslexikon in May of the same year.

[ 30 ] A biography of the philosopher was provided by Gwinner in 1862: "Arthur Schopenhauer aus persönlichem Umgange", which was published in 1878 under the title "Schopenhauers Leben" in a second, revised and much enlarged edition. This biography is an invaluable monument to Schopenhauer's personality due to the wealth of material it contains and its vivid portrayal of Schopenhauer's personality, despite the obvious differences in Gwinner's and Schopenhauer's views. In 1893, Kuno Fischer published an account of Schopenhauer's life, character and teachings as the eighth volume of his "History of Modern Philosophy".

• 1. I have provided a critique of this view in my book "Die Philosophie der Freiheit. Outlines of a modern world view". 1894.

I have already presented some of the answers to the question: Why is spiritual research misunderstood? — in the lecture I gave here a few weeks ago on “Healthy Soul Life and Spiritual Research”. Today I would like to consider other points of view which may provide a more comprehensive answer to the question posed. Naturally, in view of the attitude of the esteemed audience, who are accustomed to finding it in these lectures, it cannot be my intention today to go into individual attacks here and there on what is called spiritual research here. If out of wounded ambition or other motives, here and there perhaps even from the ranks of those who previously believed themselves to be quite good exponents of this spiritual science, then these are matters which, when examined more closely, show just how insignificant such objections actually are in the face of the great tasks that spiritual research has to fulfill. Therefore, the necessity to deal with one or other of them can only arise here and there for external reasons. As I said, it is not my intention. My intention is to show how one can really have difficulties in understanding the spiritual science meant here, how it can be difficult for the soul to bring understanding to spiritual science, from the education of the times, from what one can acquire in terms of habits of thought, of feelings, of feelings of world view from our present time, how it can be difficult for the soul to understand spiritual science. In a sense, I do not want to explain the unjustified objections in their reasons, but rather the objections that arise from the times to a certain extent, one might say, completely justified objections, those objections that are understandable for a soul of the present.

Spiritual science is not only confronted with objections that arise from other currents of thought in the present day; spiritual science, it can be said, still has almost all other currents of thought opposed to it in a certain way, precisely from the point of view that has just been mentioned. When materialistic or mechanistic world-views arise, or, as one would like to express it today in a more educated way, monistic world-views, opponents arise who start from a certain spiritual idealism. The reasons such spiritual idealists have to put forward for their world view against materialism are, as a rule, extraordinarily weighty and significant. These are objections, the significance of which can certainly be shared by the spiritual researcher, who can certainly understand them and grasp them in the same way as someone who proceeds merely from a certain spiritual idealism. The spiritual researcher, however, does not speak about the spiritual world merely in the way, for example, that spiritual idealists of the ilk of Ulrici, Wirth, Immanuel Hermann Fichte — who, however, as we saw yesterday, does go into it more deeply — and others do. He does not speak merely in abstract terms, hinting that there must be a spiritual world behind the sensual world; he cannot leave this spiritual world undefined, cannot grasp it in mere concepts, he must move on to a real description of the spiritual world. He cannot merely content himself with a conceptual allusion to an unknown spiritual world, as the spiritual idealists would have it. Rather, he must provide a concrete description of a spiritual world that is revealed in individual entities that have not physical but purely spiritual existence ; in short, he must present a spiritual world that is as diverse and as full of content as the physical world is, and should actually be much, much fuller of content if it were described in reality. And when he not only speaks of the fact that there is a spiritual world in general that can be proven by concepts, but when he speaks specifically of a spiritual world as something credible, as something that can be perceived just as the sensory world , then he has as his opponents not only the materialists, but also those who only want to speak about the spiritual world in abstract terms from the standpoint of a certain spiritual-conceptual idealism. Finally, he has opponents among those who believe that spiritual science can affect any kind of religious sentiment, who believe that religion is endangered, that their religion is endangered when a science of the spiritual world appears. And there are many other individual currents that could be mentioned, which basically the spiritual scientist has to oppose in the manner indicated, and still understandably so today. So these are important objections, justified to a certain extent from a certain point of view, and I would like to discuss them by name.

And there is the first objection to the aspirations of spiritual science, which is particularly significant in our time, and which comes from the natural scientific world view, the world view that seeks to create a world view based on the progress of modern natural science, which is justifiably seen as the greatest triumph of humanity. And it must be said again and again that it is difficult to realize that the true spiritual researcher, after all, denies absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing at all, of what legitimately follows from the results of modern science for a world view; on the contrary, he stands in the fullest sense of the word on the ground of this newer natural science itself, insofar as it is a legitimate basis for a world view.

Let us look at this newer direction in natural science from a certain point of view. We can only emphasize individual points of view. In this way we are confronted with all those people who justifiably cause difficulties for spiritual science, because they say: Does not modern natural science show us, through the marvel of the human nervous system, and in particular the human brain, how what the human being experiences spiritually is dependent on the structure and functions of this nervous system and this brain? And it is easy to believe that the spiritual researcher wants to deny what the natural scientist has to say from his field of research. Only the amateur spiritual researcher and those who want to be spiritual researchers, but basically can hardly claim the dignity of an amateur, do much harm, because true spiritual research is always confused with its charlatan or amateurish activities. It is difficult to believe that, for example, with regard to the significance of the physical brain and nervous system, the humanist actually has more in common with the natural scientist than the natural scientist himself.

Let us take an example. I deliberately do not choose a more recent example, although with the rapid pace of modern science, many things change quickly and older research is easily overtaken by later research. I deliberately choose not to choose a more recent example, which could also be done; instead, I choose the distinguished brain researcher and psychiatrist Meynert, because I would like to take as my starting point what he had to say about the relationship between the brain and the life of the soul based on his brain research. Meynert is very knowledgeable about the human brain and the human nervous system in both healthy and diseased states. His writings, which set the tone in his field at the end of the nineteenth century, must command the greatest respect from anyone who becomes familiar with them. Not only for the purely positive research, but also for what such a man has to say on the subject. And this must be emphasized: when people who have easily acquired some kind of spiritual-scientific world view, without knowing anything, without ever having looked through a microscope or a telescope or without having done something that would even remotely give them the opportunity to get an idea of this miraculous structure of the human brain, for example, when such people speak of the baseness of materialism, then one can understand, on the other hand, with the conscientiousness of the research and the care of the methods, that one does not want to get involved at all with what is being said from the apparent spiritual-scientific side. When someone like Meynert studies the brain, he first finds that the outer layer of the brain consists of a billion cells in a highly complex way — Meynert estimates that there are about a billion of them —, all working together work into each other, sending their extensions to the most diverse parts of the human body, sending their extensions into the sensory organs, where they become sensory nerves, sending their extensions to the organs of movement, and so on. To such a brain researcher it then becomes apparent how connecting fibers lead from one fiber system to the other, and he then comes to the conclusion that what the human being experiences as a world of ideas, what separates and connects in concepts, in ideas, is separated and connected when the external world makes an impression through his sense organs, is absorbed and processed by the brain, and that it produces what are called soul phenomena from the way it is processed. When even philosophers come and say: Yes, but the phenomena of the soul are something quite different from movements of the brain, from some processes in the brain, — when even philosophers come and speak like that, then it must be said against it that what arises out of the brain as the life of the soul for such a researcher does not arise in a more marvelous way than, let us say, a clock, for example, in which one does not assume that a special soul-being lives inside it and gives the time; or, let us say, a magnet that attracts a body out of its purely physical powers. What there proves to be active as a magnetic field around the physical body – why, if we understand it in terms of greater complications, should that not be born out of the brain, the human soul life? In short, we must on no account belittle what comes from this side. Under no circumstances may we deny its justification without going into the matter in greater detail. One can scoff at the idea that this brain, by unwinding its processes, is supposed to produce the most complicated mental life, but one can equally find in nature an abundance of such processes, where one will not a priori speak of an underlying mental life. Not by starting from preconceived opinions, but by also engaging with what is justified in the minds of those who have difficulty in approaching spiritual research. Only in this way, I would say, can order and harmony be created in the confused minds of worldviews.

Thus there is no reason why that which is understood in the ordinary sense of life as the life of the soul should not be produced by a mere mechanical process, in so far as it takes place in the mechanics of the brain and nervous system. The nervous system and the brain can be so intricately arranged that the unrolling of its processes results in the soul life of man. Therefore, no one who merely has a naturalistic way of looking at things will be able to dispute the legitimacy of a scientific, materialistic world view. And it must be said that precisely because natural science has achieved such perfection and such a justified ideal in its field, it is actually difficult for spiritual science today to confront natural science, for the simple reason that the spiritual scientist must have the ability and capacity to fully recognize the justified things that come from this side. But for that reason it must be emphasized again and again that a mere composition of what is derived from the observation of nature, even if it extends to our own human life, can never, never be used to create a spiritual world view. If we want to get to the life of the soul, then this life of the soul must be experienced in itself, then this life of the soul must not flow from external processes, then one must not say that the brain cannot produce the soul processes of its own accord, but one must experience the soul processes.

In a certain area, everyone can experience the soul independently of the brain processes. This is in the moral area, in the area of the moral life. And here it is clear from the outset that what shines forth to man as moral impulses cannot result from any unwinding of mere brain processes. But I say explicitly: what can arise in man as moral impulses, insofar as the will, insofar as feeling is at work in them, insofar as the moral is experienced. So in this area, where the soul must grasp itself in its immediacy, everyone can come to realize that the soul has a life of its own, independent of the body. However, not everyone has the ability to add to this inner grasping, to this inner strengthening of the soul in the moral life, what Goethe, for example, added in the essay on 'Contemplative Judgment' mentioned yesterday, but also in many other places in his works. Not everyone can say, as Goethe did from the depths of his inner experience: If, in the moral world, we can rise to impulses that work independently of the body, then why should this soul not be able, with regard to other spiritual things, as Goethe says in contrast to Kant, to “bravely endure the adventure of reason” — as Kant called all going beyond sensory perceptions? That means not only to proceed to a spiritual-soul life by inwardly experiencing how moral impulses arise from the depths of the soul, and not from the life of the brain, but also to have other spiritual experiences that testify to the soul's spiritual perception with spiritual organs, just as we perceive the sensual with sensual organs. But for this to happen, the ordinary life in the world, to which one passively devotes oneself, must be supplemented by another, a life of inner activity. And this is what is lost today for many who have become accustomed to having the truth dictated to them from somewhere. They want something that appears from outside, something that can be based on solid ground, rather than inner experience. What is experienced in the soul itself seems to them to be something that is arbitrarily formed within, not firmly supported by anything. What should be true should be firmly based on what is externally established, to whose existence one has contributed nothing oneself.

This is indeed the right way to think in the field of natural science. Into the study of nature one will only bring all kinds of useless stuff if one adds all kinds of fantasy products to what the external senses offer and what one can get from the observed external sense material through the experiment or through the method. On the ground of natural science, this is fully justified. But we will see shortly how little it is justified on the ground of spiritual research. But even if one engages with the justified aspects of the scientific world view, one can see how it becomes weak through this unaccustomed effort of inner self-exploration, how it becomes weak when it is supposed to perform an activity that is indispensable if one wants to make even a little progress in spiritual science. To advance in spiritual science, it is not necessary to do all kinds of nebulous things, to train oneself to have certain clairvoyant experiences in the ordinary sense of the word, through hallucinations, through visions and so on — that is not the first thing, nor is it the last; that has already been discussed in the lecture on 'Healthy Soul Life and Spirit Research'. But what is indispensable if one is to arrive at a deeper understanding — I do not want to say, at becoming a justified follower — of spiritual science, that is a thinking that has been worked through, a really worked through thinking. And the cultivation of thinking suffers to a great extent from the fact that one has become accustomed to observing only the form of appearance. Outwardly, in the sensual world, in external observation or in experiment, one abandons oneself to what external nature expresses, and in this field one represents what experiment says. One does not dare — and yet one is right in this area — to say anything as a summarizing law that is not dictated from outside. But the inner activity of the soul suffers from this. Man gets used to becoming passive; man gets used to trusting only what is, as it were, interpreted and revealed to him from outside. And seeking truth through an inner effort, through an inner activity, that falls completely out of his soul habit. But it is necessary above all when one enters spiritual science that thinking is worked out, that thinking is so worked out that nothing escapes one of certain lightly-donned objections that can be made, that above all, that one foresees what objections can be made; that one makes these objections oneself in order to gain a higher point of view, which, taking the objections into account, would find the truth. I would like to draw your attention to one example, as an example among hundreds and thousands that could almost be suggested by Meynert. The reason I do this is because I was just allowed to mention to you that I consider Meynert to be an excellent researcher, so that it cannot be said that I am somehow belittling people here. When it comes to refutation, I do not choose people whom I hold in low esteem, but precisely people whom I hold in the highest esteem.

In this way, we encounter Meynert, for example, in how he conceives of the formation of the perception of space and time in man. Meynert says: Let us suppose – and this example is particularly relevant to us now – that I listen to a speaker. I will gain the idea that his words are spoken little by little, in time. How does this idea arise, Meynert asks, that one has the notion that words are spoken little by little, in time? Well, you can imagine that Meynert is talking about all of you who understand my words in such a way that they appear to you bit by bit, in time. Then he says: Yes, this time only arises through the brain's perception; that we think of one word after the other, that only arises through the brain's perception. The words come to us, they come to our sense organs, they go from these sense organs in a further effect to the brain. The brain has certain internal organs through which it processes the sensory impressions. And there arises - internally - through certain organs the conception of time. The conception of time is thus created there. And so all perceptions are created from the brain.

That Meynert does not just mean something subordinate can be seen from a certain remark in his lecture “On the Mechanics of the Brain Structure,” where he talks about the relationship between the outside world and the human being. He says that the ordinary, naive person assumes that the outside world is as he creates it in his brain. Meynert says: “The daring hypothesis of realism is that the world that appears to the brain would also exist before or after the existence of brains.” However, the structure of the brain, which is capable of consciousness, which allows the same to be considered responsible for shaping the world, leads to the negation of this hypothesis. That is to say: the brain constructs the world. The world as man imagines it, as he has it before him as his sensory world, is created by processes of the brain, from within. And so man not only creates the images, but he also creates space, time, infinity. For all this, Meynert says, certain mechanisms of the brain exist. From this, man creates, for example, time.

It is a pity that in such lectures, which of course have to be short, one cannot always go into all the individual transitions of these thoughts. That is why some things may appear opaque. But the actual crux of such a way of thinking will be apparent. It must be said that as soon as one is on the way to regarding the brain as the creator of the soul-life as it is found in man in the beginning, then what Meynert says is entirely justified. It lies on this path; one must arrive at it. And one can only avoid such a conclusion if one has a thinking process so well developed that the often very simple counter-arguments immediately come to mind. Just think what the conclusion would be if Meynert's argument were correct: you are all sitting there, listening to what I am saying. Your brain organizes what I say in time. Not only does your auditory nerve convert it into auditory images, but what I say is organized in time. So you all have a kind of dream image of what is being spoken here, including, of course, the person standing in front of you. As for what is behind it, naive realism, says Meynert, assumes that there stands a man like yourselves who speaks all this. But there is no compulsion here; for this man with his words, you create him in your brain; there may be something quite different behind it.

The simple thought that must impose itself, that it also depends on the fact that, for example, I now arrange my ideas in time myself, so that time does not just live in your brain with you, but that time already lives in it, as I place one word after the other – this easily attainable thought does not come at all if you drill in a certain direction. That time has an object, that it lives out there, can be easily seen in the case I have mentioned. But once you are in a certain direction of thought, you do not see left or right, but continue in your direction and arrive at extremely sharp and highly remarkable results. But that is not the point. All the ingenious results that may arise in the course of such a train of thought can be strictly proved, the proofs may strictly interlock. You will never find a mistake in Meynert's thinking if you go on in his stream. But what matters is that thinking is so thoroughly worked through that the counter-arguments can be dealt with, that thinking finds out of itself what throws the whole stream out of its bed. And this, to make thinking so mobile, so active, is precisely what prevents the very justified immersion in the external world, as science must strive for. Therefore, as you can see, this is not a subjective difficulty, but a very objective one, due to the times. This can be experienced in all possible fields.

For more than a hundred years, philosophers have been gnawing away at the old Kantian word with which he wants to unhinge the concept of God. If you merely think of a hundred dollars, they are not a single dollar less than a hundred real dollars. A hundred thought, a hundred possible dollars are exactly the same as a hundred real dollars! On this, that conceptually, mentally, a hundred possible dollars contain everything that a hundred real dollars contain, Kant builds his entire refutation of the so-called ontological proof of God's existence. Now, anyone with agile thought will immediately come up with the most definite objection: for someone with agile thought, with developed thought, a hundred imaginary thalers are, in fact, exactly one hundred thalers less than a hundred real thalers! They are exactly one hundred thalers less. The point is to be made aware of how one has to think, not just that what one thinks can be logically proved. Of course, Kant's fabric of ideas is so firmly supported that only with the utmost acumen can logical errors be detected in it. But what matters is not just to have in mind what arises within certain habitual currents of thought, but to have thought worked out so that one's thinking is truly within the objective world, so that one's thinking is not just within oneself but within the objective world, so that the counter-instances flow to one from the objective world itself. Only a mature thinking can achieve such counter-instances, and only through this does one's thinking acquire a certain affinity with the thinking that objectively pulses and permeates the world.

I said that it is important to grasp the soul in action, so to speak. What is really at issue is that when man wants to grasp the soul, he does not merely draw conclusions based on the fact that it is impossible to develop soul life from the brain and its processes; rather, this soul life must be experienced directly, independently of brain life. Then one can speak of soul life. Today, people look at this inner active experience as if something were being built up inwardly only in the imagination, whereas the true soul researcher knows exactly where imagination ends and where, through the development of one's own soul life, where he does not spin out of fantasy, but where he has connected with the spiritual world and draws from the spiritual world itself that which he then expresses in words or concepts or ideas or images. Only in this way will the soul be able to gain knowledge of itself.

I will now have to develop what appears to be a rather paradoxical view, but a view that must be expressed because it can really shed light on the nature of spiritual research. From what I have said before, you can already see that the spiritual researcher is not at all averse to the idea that the brain produces certain ideas from within itself, so that the soul life that can arise without inner participation can really only be a product of the brain. And a certain habit, which has arisen precisely through the formation of the present, consists in the following: For the reasons indicated, a person becomes averse to seeking anything that he is to consider true through inner activity. He condemns all of this as fantasy or reverie, and then he brings it not only theoretically in his views, but practically to the point that he really excludes what the soul works out in itself, that he excludes it as much as possible in his work towards a world view. When one excludes the life of the soul in this way, the ideal that emerges is the picture of the materialistic world view. What does one actually do when one excludes this inner life? Yes, when one excludes this inner life, it is roughly the same as when one releases one's bodily-physical life from the life of the soul. Just as the watchmaker who has worked on the watch, who has worked his thoughts into it, leaves the watch to itself when it is finished and the watch itself then produces the phenomena that were first placed into it by the watchmaker's thoughts, so the life of the soul can indeed continue, continue in the brain, without the soul being present. And with the present system of education, people are becoming accustomed to this. They not only become accustomed to denying the soul, but actually to eliminating the soul; in short, not to respond to it through inner activity, but to rest on the laurels of what is merely produced by the brain. And the paradox that I want to say is that the purely materialistic world view, as it appears, is in fact a brain product, that it is in fact automatically generated by the self-movement of the brain. The external world is reflected in the brain, which passively sets the brain in motion, and this materialist world view arises. The strange thing is that the materialist is quite right for himself if he has first eliminated the soul life. Because he has taken pure brain-life as his basis, nothing else can appear to him but pure brain-life, which then produces soul-life out of itself, as roughly formulated by the naturalist Carl Vogt: the brain sweats out thoughts, just as the liver sweats out bile. Those thoughts that arise in the field of materialism are indeed sweated out. The image is crude, but they do indeed arise from the brain, just as bile comes out of the liver. This is how errors arise. Errors do not arise simply from saying something wrong, but from saying something right that is valid in a limited field, that is even valid in the only field one wants to have.

The materialistic world view comes not from a logical error, but from the tendency of the mind not to exert itself intellectually, not to deepen its thinking, as has been explained here in the last lectures, not to stir up its inner soul life, but to abandon itself to what the body can do. The materialistic world view does not come from a logical error, but from the tendency of the mind not to be inwardly active at all, but to abandon itself to what the body says. This is the secret of the difficulty in refuting materialism. If someone who does not want to engage his soul life excludes activity from the outset and basically finds it more comfortable to produce only what a brain produces, then it is not surprising that he gets stuck in the realm of materialism. He cannot accept, however, that this brain itself — thank God he has it, because he would not be able to create it with all his materialistic world view! — that this brain itself is created out of the wisdom of the world and that it, because it is created, built up out of the wisdom of the world, is so arranged that it in turn can work like a clock; so that it can be entirely material and produce through itself. This wisdom is a kind of phosphorescence, a phosphorescence that is in the brain itself; it brings out what has already been put into it spiritually. But the materialist does not need to concern himself with this, but simply leaves to what has condensed out of the spiritual, I might say into matter, and which now, as with the work of the clock, produces spiritual products.

You see, the spiritual researcher is so grounded in the justified view of nature that he is compelled to utter something that might seem as paradoxical to some people as what has just been said. But you can see from this that one must already go into the nerve of spiritual science if one wants to judge this spiritual science. And it is also understandable to find, because what can be said again is so well founded, - it is also understandable that so many objections and misunderstandings arise. Spiritual research that is taken seriously is all too easily confused with all that is done in a dilettante manner and which can very easily be mistaken for true, thorough spiritual research. I have often been reproached for the fact that the writings I have written on spiritual science are not popular enough, as they say; that the lectures I give here are not popular enough. Well, I neither write my writings nor give my lectures in order to please anyone, to speak to anyone's heart as they want it to be; but I write my writings and give my lectures as I believe they should be written and given so that spiritual science can be presented to the world in the right way. In older times there was also spiritual science - I have mentioned this often - although spiritual science had to change through the progress of humanity and at that time came from different sources than the spiritual science of today. From the outset, only those who were considered mature were admitted to the places where spiritual science was presented. Today, such an approach would be quite nonsensical. Today we live in public life, and it is taken for granted that what is being investigated is carried into public life, that all secrecy and the like would be foolish. This secrecy cannot be any more than what is otherwise present in public life today: that those who have already studied something are then offered the opportunity to hear something further in more detailed lectures. But that is also done at universities, and in the whole of external life. And when people talk about some kind of secretive behavior, it is just as unjustified and unfounded as when people talk about secretive behavior in university lectures. But so that not everyone who does not want to make an effort to penetrate the subject can penetrate it in so-called popular writings that are so easy on the eye, or rather believe they can penetrate it, the writings are written and the lectures are held in such a way that some effort is necessary and some thought must be applied on the way into the secret science. I am fully aware of how prickly and scientific some of the things I present are for those who do not want such prickly science. But it must be so, if spiritual science is to be properly integrated into the spiritual culture of the present time. It is not surprising that when people here and there, in small or large groups, devote themselves to spiritual science without having any knowledge of the progress of science in our time and with a desire to speak with a certain authority, they are denounced by scientists. Something special, something significant must be seen in the form in which the messages are given. This must be seen in that inner activity, activity of the soul, is necessary in order to see how the soul itself lives as something that uses the body as an instrument, but that is not the same as the physical.

Now, if we look at all this correctly, where do the misunderstandings come from? When the soul develops, when it develops the forces slumbering within it, as has been explained here several times, then the first of these slumbering forces is the power of thought, which must be developed in the way that has just been indicated again. If the soul wants to develop the forces lying dormant in it, it needs a certain inner strength, a certain inner power. It must exert itself inwardly. This is not what people like under the influence of the present time, this inward exertion. Artists are the ones who like it most. But even in the field of art, people have now progressed so far that they would rather just copy nature, having no idea that the soul must first strengthen itself inwardly, must first work inwardly to add something special and new to mere nature. So the power of thinking is the first thing that must be strengthened. Then, as the lectures of the last few weeks have shown, feeling and will must also be energized. And this energizing, that is what it is actually called, that one says: Yes, everything in this spiritual science arises only in an inward way. People shy away from the idea of acquiring strength through something inward, and they do not even consider the considerable difference that must exist between the perception of external nature and the perception of the spiritual world.

Let us take a good, hard look at this difference. What difference arises? With regard to external nature, our organs are already given to us. The eye is given to us. But Goethe has now spoken the beautiful word: “If the eye were not solar, how could we see the light?” As true as it is that you would not hear me if I did not speak, that you must first come to me with your listening in order to understand what is being said, so true is it for Goethe that the eye arose from sunlight itself, light itself, albeit indirectly through all kinds of hereditary and complicated natural processes, the eye has arisen, that the eye not only creates light in the Schopenhauerian sense, but that it itself is created by light. That is to be firmly held. But one could say: thank God for those who want to be materialistic: they no longer need to create their eyes, because these eyes are created out of the spiritual; they already have them, and by perceiving the world, they use these already finished eyes. They direct these eyes towards external impressions, and the external impressions are reflected; with the whole soul they are reflected in the sense organs. Let us assume that a human being could only experience the development of the eye with his present consciousness. Let us assume that. Let us assume that a human being enters nature as a child, with only the predisposition for the eyes. The eyes would have to arise through the influence of sunlight. What would take place in the growth of the human being? The result would be that through the sunbeams, which are not yet visible themselves, the eyes would be brought out of the organization, and by sensing: I have eyes, he senses light in the eye. By knowing the eye as his, as his organization, he senses the eye living in the light. In this way, it is basically the same with sense perception today: the human being experiences himself by experiencing in the light. With his eye in the light, he experiences what has been developed through sense perception, where, as I said, thank God, we already have our eyes.

But this must also be the case with spiritual research. There must really be brought out of the still unformed soul the organic, there must first be brought out spiritual hearing, spiritual seeing. The organic, the spiritual eye, the spiritual ear, as it were, must first be brought out of the inner being, to use these expressions of Goethe's again and again. There one must really feel one's way in the spiritual world by developing one's soul, and then, by feeling one's way in it, one forms the organs, and in the organs one experiences the spiritual world just as one experiences the physical-sensual world in the organs of the physical body. So first of all that which man already has here for sense perception must be created. He must have the power to create the organs first in order to experience himself in the spiritual world through these organs.

What stands in the way of this is what can truly be called nothing more than the inner weakness of the human being that has been produced by today's education. Weakness, that is what holds man back from taking hold of his inner being in the same way that one takes hold of something with one's hands. It is a foolish expression to say, but let us say it, to take hold of one's inner being in such a way that it is really active inwardly, as it would be if one first created hands to touch the table. So he creates his inner being to touch what is spiritual, and with the spiritual he touches spiritual. It is weakness, then, that keeps men from penetrating to real spiritual research. And it is weakness that gives rise to the misunderstandings that stand in the way of spiritual research: inward weakness of soul, an inability to see the possibility of reshaping the inwardly material into inwardly spiritual organs in order to grasp the spiritual world (because we still have traces of Faustism). That is one thing.

And there is a second point, which can be understood if one is willing to do so: Man always has a strange feeling about the unknown; above all, he has a feeling of fear about the unknown. Now, in the beginning, everything that can be experienced in the world of the senses is a complete unknown, which cannot only be explored in the spiritual world, but about which one must also speak when speaking of the spiritual world. One has a fear of the spiritual world, but a fear of a very special kind, namely a fear that does not come to consciousness. And how does the materialistic, the mechanistic, the, as one says today, “educated” — materialistic it is, after all! — monistic world view arise? It arises from the fact that there is fear in the soul of that breakthrough of sensuality, because one is afraid precisely of the fact that if one breaks through to the spiritual through sensuality, one comes into the unknown, into nothingness, as Mephistopheles says to Faust. And Faust says: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.” Fear of what can only be sensed as the nothing, but a masked fear, fear that wears a mask! It is necessary to realize that there are subconscious or unconscious soul processes, soul processes that proliferate down there in the soul life. It is remarkable how people deceive themselves about many things. For example, it is a very common delusion to believe that one does not really want something out of a very thick selfishness, but one wants it out of selfishness. Instead, one invents all sorts of excuses about how selflessly, how lovingly one wants to do this or that. In this way, a mask is placed over the egoism. This occurs particularly often, for example, in societies that come together to cultivate love. Yes, one can even make studies about such masking of egoism quite often. I knew a man who repeatedly stated that what he was doing, he was doing entirely against his actual intention and against what he loves; he was only doing it because he considered it necessary for the good of humanity. I kept saying: Don't fool yourself! You are doing it out of your own selfishness, because you like it, and then it is better to admit the truth. Then you are on the ground of truth when you admit that you like the things you want to do and do not keep any such mask.

Fear is what leads to the rejection of spiritual science today. But this fear is not admitted. They have it in their soul, but they do not let it up into their consciousness and invent reasons, reasons against spiritual science, proofs that man must immediately begin to fantasize when he leaves the solid ground of sensual observation and so on. Yes, they invent very complicated proofs. They set up entire philosophies, which in turn can be logically incontestable. They invent entire philosophical worldviews that actually mean nothing more to those who have insight into such things than that everything they invent – be it transcendental realism, empiricist realism, be it more or less speculative realism, metaphysical realism, and whatever these “isms” are called – arises from fear. These “isms” are invented and worked out from very strict lines of thought. But at bottom they are nothing more than the fear of setting the soul on the path that leads to experiencing in its concreteness what one feels to be the unknown. These are the two main reasons for the misunderstanding of spiritual science: weakness of the soul life, fear of the supposed unknown. And anyone who understands the human soul can analyze today's worldviews in terms of it. On the one hand, they arise from the impossibility of strengthening thinking itself in such a way that the counter-instances immediately reach it, and on the other hand, there is the fear of the unknown. Sometimes, because of the fear of penetrating into the so-called unknown, one even lets the unknown be unknown, and many say: Yes, we admit: behind the world of the senses there is still a spiritual world, but man – we can prove this strictly – cannot penetrate into it. Most people then start, when they want to prove something, with the words, “Kant already said,” because they always assume that the person to whom they say, “Kant already said,” does not understand anything about Kant. So people invent proofs that the human mind cannot penetrate into the world that lies behind sensuality. These are only excuses, however ingenious they may be, excuses for fear. But they do assume that there is something behind sensuality. They call this the unknown and prefer to found an agnosticism in Spencer's sense or in some other sense, rather than find the courage to really lead their soul into the spiritual world. |

Recently, a strange Weltanschhauung has come into being, the so-called Weltanschhauung of the “as if.” It has even been transplanted into Germany. Hans Vaihinger has written a thick book about the Weltanschhauung of the “as if.” In this philosophy of life, one says: Man cannot say that such concepts as the unity of his consciousness really correspond to reality, but man must look at the phenomena of the world as if there were a unified soul, as if there were something at the basis of it all that is conceived as a unified soul. Atoms – the as-if philosophers cannot deny that no one has ever seen an atom and that one must think of the atom in such a way that it cannot be seen, because even light is only supposed to arise through the vibrations of the atom. At least the as-if philosophers do not speak of the fable of the atomic world that still haunts this or that corner. But they say: Well, it just makes it easier to understand the sensory world if we think of the sensory world as if atoms existed.

Those who have an active soul life will notice the difference between moving with their active soul life in a spiritual reality, in the unified soul weaving, or merely asserting a concept in external, intellectual realism, as if the phenomena of human activity were summarized by a soul being. At least if one really stands on the practical ground of world-views, one will not be able to apply the as-if philosophy well. For example, a philosopher who is highly esteemed today is Fritz Mauthner, who is regarded as a great authority because he has finally transcended Kantianism. Whereas Kant still conceived of concepts as something with which reality is summarized, Mauthner sees language merely as that in which the world view is actually concluded. And so he has now happily brought about his “Critique of Language” and written a thick “Philosophical Dictionary” from this point of view, and above all acquired a following that regards him as a great man. Well, I do not want to go into Fritz Mauthner today, I just want to say: one could now try to apply the as-if philosophy to this Fritz Mauthner. One could say: let's leave it open whether the man has spirit, has genius, but let's look at what he is spiritually as if he had spirit. You will see, if you go about it sincerely, that you will not succeed. The 'as if' cannot be applied where the thing does not exist.

In short, it is necessary, to say it once more, to get to the root of spiritual science itself and that one knows precisely in spiritual science what this spiritual science must recognize as justified on the ground on which misunderstandings can arise. For, however much these misunderstandings are misunderstandings on the one hand, it is equally true on the other hand that these misunderstandings are nevertheless justified if the spiritual scientist is not fully able to think along with what the natural scientist is thinking. The spiritual researcher must be able to think along with the natural scientist. Indeed, he must even be able to test the natural scientist at times, especially those who always emphasize standing on the firm ground of natural science. Admittedly, even if one only tests it superficially, as it stands with an apparently purely positivistic world view, which rejects everything spiritual, then the following becomes apparent. As you know, I do not underestimate Ernst Haeckel where the esteem is justified; I fully recognize him. But when he speaks of Weltanschauung, it is precisely in this that his weakness of soul reveals itself, which is not capable of pursuing anything but the one path he has taken. And here we come upon an example that must be emphasized again and again when one is seriously concerned with the present time. We come upon the infinitely widespread superficiality of thinking and the general dishonesty of life. For example, we see how Ernst Haeckel points out that one of the greatest authorities to which he himself refers is Karl Ernst von Baer. And again and again we find Karl Ernst von Baer cited as a man who is supposed to prove the purely materialistic world view that Haeckel derives from his research. How many people go to gain insight into what is actually behind today's scientific endeavor? How many people go and touch something like this? How many people stop to consider that Haeckel writes: Karl Ernst von Baer can be seen as someone who speaks in the way that Haeckel derives from it! So one naturally believes that Baer speaks in the way that Haeckel can derive from it. Well, I will read you a few passages from Karl Ernst von Baer: “The earth is only the seedbed on which the spiritual heritage of man proliferates, and the history of nature is not only the history of progressive victories of the spiritual over matter. That is the fundamental idea of Creation, to the end of which, no, for its accomplishment, it causes individuals and generations to fade away and builds the future on the scaffolding of an immeasurable past.

Haeckel constantly cites this wonderful, spiritual view of the world! We must pursue scientific development. If only this were the case to some extent today with those who want to be called to it, one would not have to struggle so terribly against the superficiality that produces the countless prejudices and errors that then stand in the way of such a pursuit as spiritual science as misunderstandings.

Or let us take a look at an honorable man in the nineteenth-century quest for a worldview: David Friedrich Strauß, an honorable man – they are all honorable, after all! Starting from other views, he ultimately wants to place himself entirely on the ground: The soul is only a product of the material. Man has emerged entirely from what today's materialism wants to call nature. When one speaks of will, there is no real will, but rather brain molecules somehow revolve, and then the will arises as a haze. In this context, David Friedrich Strauss says: “In man, nature has not only wanted upwards in general, it has wanted beyond itself.” That is: nature wills! One has arrived at the point where one can be a materialist without even taking his words seriously. Man is denied the will because man is supposed to be like nature, and then one says: that nature has willed. One can easily pass over such a matter. But anyone who is serious about striving for a worldview will realize that such things are the source of countless aberrations and that these things are instilled into the public consciousness. And from what then arises from this instillation, misunderstandings arise regarding true spiritual science and true spiritual research.

And from the other side come the objections of those who profess this or that religious creed and believe that their religion is endangered by the coming of a spiritual science. I must emphasize again and again: it is the very same people who opposed Copernicus, Galileo and so on, who objected that religion would be endangered if it were to be proposed that the earth moves around the sun. One can only say to these people: how timid you actually are within your religions! How little you have grasped your religion if you are immediately afraid that your religion could be endangered if anything is researched! I always have to mention that theologian, who remained a good theologian and a devout follower of his church, who was a friend of mine, who was then elected rector of the University of Vienna in the 1990s and who, in his speech, which he gave about Galileo, said: “There were once people – we know that within a certain religious community these people existed until 1822, when it was allowed to believe in the Copernican world view! – there were once people who believed that something like the Copernican or Galilean world view could endanger religions. Today we have to be so far, said this theologian, this devout priest and follower of his church until his deathbed, that we find religion in particular to be deepened, strengthened by the fact that we look into the glory of the works of the Divine, that we learn to recognize them more and more. That was Christian talk!

But more and more people will emerge who say: Yes, this spiritual science says this or that about Christ; one should not say that. We imagine the Christ to be like this or like that. One can even come and tell these people: We do indeed accept what you say about the Christ, exactly as you say it. We just see a little more. We do not see this Christ as just a being, as you do, but as a Being, even as a cosmic Being, who gives the earth meaning and significance in the whole universe. But you are not allowed to do that. You are not allowed to go beyond what certain people see as the right thing. Spiritual science provides insights. Through the realization of the truth, one can never want to somehow justify something that is called a religious creation, even though there will always be fools who say of spiritual science that it wants to found a new religion. Spiritual science does not want to found a new religion. Religions are founded in a completely different way. Christianity was founded by its founder through the Christ Jesus living on earth. And just as little as any science will explain the Thirty Years War when it recognizes it, so it will explain just as little anything else that was there in reality. Religions are based on facts, on facts that have happened. Spiritual science can only claim to understand these facts differently, or perhaps not even differently, but only in a higher sense than one can without spiritual science. But it is equally true that, whether from a high or a low point of view, by understanding the Thirty Years' War, one does not somehow establish something in the world that is connected with the Thirty Years' War. It is always the superficiality that sometimes also feels limited in its perceptions and does not want to engage with the things that are actually at stake. If one were to engage with spiritual science, one would recognize that although the materialistic worldview may easily lead people away from religious feeling and religious contemplation, spiritual science establishes precisely that in man which can be a deeper religious experience, but only because it lays bare the deeper roots of the soul and thus leads man in a deeper way to an experience of that which has emerged externally and historically as religion. Spiritual science will not found a new religion. It knows only too well that Christianity once gave meaning to the earth. It will only try to deepen this Christianity more than others who do not stand on the ground of spiritual science can deepen it. From materialism, however, something like this has been achieved, as, for example, David Friedrich Strauß concluded, who calls the belief in resurrection a humbug and then says: The resurrection had to be put forward, because Christ Jesus said many noble things, said many truths. But if you say truths, says David Friedrich Strauß, you do not make a special impression on people; you have to embellish it with a great miracle, the miracle of the resurrection. But then all Christian development would be a result of humbug! That, indeed, is what materialism has brought. Spiritual science will not do that! Spiritual science will try to understand from its very foundations that which lives in the mystery of resurrection, in order to present to mankind, which has now advanced and can no longer understand it in the old way, that which materialism has called a humbug, in the right way. But the aim here is not to engage in religious propaganda, but only to draw attention to the significance of spiritual science and to the misunderstandings that stand in its way and that stem from an assumed religious life.

Today, people have not yet reached the point where materialism would have a bad moral result on a large scale, but it would soon have it if people could not penetrate the spiritual self-active foundations of the soul life through spiritual science. Spiritual science will also mean something for what humanity needs as a moral life, which can give people a rebirth at a higher level of this moral life.

These things can only be characterized in general terms. Time does not permit a detailed description. I have tried to at least characterize some of the misunderstandings that are repeatedly found when spiritual science is judged. I would never want to engage with what arises from the general superficiality of our time, at least not in the sense of refuting anything. Sometimes one could at most engage with it in the sense of providing a little material to make people smile or perhaps even laugh.

As I said, one cannot engage with the kind of superficiality that is spreading today and that is, in a sense, setting the tone because printing ink on white paper still has a great magical effect. But insofar as the objections that are made, even if they say nothing at all, are instilled into the public, one must speak of them. And the misunderstandings that arise from what comes out of such instilling are what one has to struggle with at every turn today if one takes something like spiritual science seriously. Again and again one encounters objections that do not arise from some activity of the soul, but are instilled by the general superficiality that reigns and lives in our time. But anyone who is familiar with spiritual science knows, as I have often explained here, that this spiritual science must and will develop in the same way as everything that, in a sense, must incorporate something new into the spiritual development of humanity. From a certain point of view, such an encounter was granted to the newer natural scientific world view until it became powerful and could work through external power factors and no longer needed to work merely through its own power. Then the time comes when, even without the soul being activated, world views can be built on such factors that have power. Is there a big difference between two things? Those who today base their monistic world-views on many grounds consider themselves wonderfully exalted, sublimely above those who may stand on the ground of a religious-theological world-view and, in the opinion of the former, are quite dogmatically limited, swearing only by authority. For anyone who looks into the way in which misunderstandings arise, it is of no great merit in terms of what the human soul really works for, whether one swears by the church fathers Gregory, Tertullian , Irenaeus or Augustine, and also look upon them as authorities, or whether one looks upon the church fathers Darwin, Haeckel, Helmholtz, insofar as they are really church fathers, and swears by them. What matters first is not whether one swears by one or the other, but what matters is how one stands in the process of acquiring a world view. And in a higher sense, in a much higher sense than mere abstract idealism could, the following will apply to spiritual science: at first it will be met with misunderstanding and error everywhere; but then what at first appeared as fantasy, as reverie, will become a matter of course. This is how it was with Copernicanism and Keplerism, and how it is with everything that is to be incorporated into the spiritual development of mankind. At first it is nonsense, then it becomes a matter of course. This is also the fate of spiritual science.

But this spiritual science has something important to say to humanity, as can be seen from everything I have said in other lectures and will probably also emerge from today's lecture. It has something to say to humanity that points to the living entity that makes a human being a human being in the first place: it does not present itself to him for passive contemplation, does not reveal itself to him from the outside, but he must grasp it himself in a living way, he can only recognize its existence through his own activity. We must overcome the weakness that regards everything as fantasy whose existence cannot be grasped in passive surrender, but only in active inner cooperation with the whole of the world. Only when he realizes that knowledge of it can only become his if it becomes active knowledge will man know what he is and what his destiny is. The spirit already has the strength to struggle through, and it will struggle through against all misunderstandings that are justified in the sense intended today, and all the more so against those that arise from the superficiality of the time. For it is a beautiful saying, which Goethe claims is in harmony, as he himself says, with an ancient sage:

If the eye were not solar,
How could we behold the light?
If the god-own power were not in us,
How could we delight in the divine?

The divine spiritual essence that weaves and lives through the world is that from which we originated, emerged. Our material world is also born of the spiritual. And only because it is already born and man does not need to produce it in his own activity, does man, if he is a materialist, believe in it one-sidedly today. The spiritual must be grasped in living activity. The divine spiritual must first weave itself into the human being, the spiritual sun must first create its organs in the human being. Thus one could modify Goethe's saying by saying: If the inner eye does not become spirit-like, it can never behold the light that is the essence of the human being. If the human soul cannot unite with that from which it has come from eternity to eternity, with the Divine-Spiritual, which is one being with its own being, then she will be unable to grasp the glimpse of light into the spiritual, then the spiritual eye will not be able to arise in her, then she will never be able to delight in the Divine in the spiritual sense, then the world will be empty and barren for human knowledge. For we can only find that in the world for which we create the organs for.

If the outer physical eye were not sun-like, how could we behold the light? If the inner eye does not become spirit-sun-like, we can never behold the spiritual light of the human entity. If man's own inner activity does not become truly spiritual and divine itself, then never can that which makes him a true human being, the spirit of the world, which lives, weaves and works through the world and comes to human consciousness in him, even if he does not come to God-consciousness, never can that come through his soul's pulsations.

On March 23 and 24, I will speak here again, tying in with Nietzsche's tragic world view with Wagner and about some more intimate, more precise truths that can lead the human soul to truly break through the world of the senses and enter into the living spiritual life. I will then speak in more detail about this path of the human soul into the spiritual world than has been possible so far.

I am in a somewhat difficult position for today's lecture, because the subject matter makes it necessary to sketch out results from a very broad field of spiritual science, and some people might wish to hear substantiating, probative details about one or another of the results to be presented today. Such details can be given in the next lectures; today it will be my task to sketch out the field in question. Furthermore, I will have to use expressions and ideas about soul and body whose actual foundation lies in the lectures I have already given here; for I will have to strictly limit myself to the subject, to the explanation of the connection between the human soul and the human body,

It is a subject about which one can say that two intellectual endeavors of modern times are in the greatest possible misunderstanding about it. And if we look into these misunderstandings, we shall find that on the one hand the thinkers and investigators who in modern times have attempted to work in the field of soul-phenomena know little what to do with the great and admirable results of natural science, especially with reference to the knowledge of the human body. They are, so to speak, unable to build the right bridge between what they have to consider to be observations of soul phenomena and physical phenomena. On the other hand, it must be said that the representatives of natural scientific research work are as a rule so unfamiliar with soul observations, so unfamiliar even with what is meant when soul observation is considered, that they are in turn unable to build a bridge from the truly momentous results of modern natural science to soul phenomena. And so we find that when psychologists and natural scientists talk about the human soul and the human body, they speak completely different languages and basically cannot understand each other at all. And it is precisely this fact that today misleads, or one might even say confuses, those who try to gain insight into the great riddles of the soul and their connection with the riddles of the world on the basis of the current thinking.

I would like to start by pointing out where the error actually lies in thinking. A peculiarity has developed - I do not want to criticize this, but only state it as a fact - with regard to the way people today relate to their concepts, to their ideas. In most cases, he does not consider that concepts and ideas, however well founded they may be, are only tools for judging reality as it presents itself to us individually in each particular case. Today, man believes that once he has acquired a concept, this concept can be applied directly in the world. The misunderstandings I have just described stem from this peculiarity of modern thinking, which is transplanted into all scientific endeavor. Today, people do not consider that a concept can be completely correct, but that, although it is correct, it can be applied in a completely wrong way. In order to characterize this methodically in advance, I will discuss it using perhaps grotesque examples that could already occur in life. Someone might have the perfectly justified conviction that sleep, healthy sleep, is a good remedy. This can be a perfectly correct concept, a correct idea. If it is not applied correctly in a particular case, something like this can happen: someone visits someone who is unwell, who is ill in one way or another. He applies his wisdom by saying: I know how healthy sleep feels. When he goes out, someone might say to him: Well, look at that, the old man sleeps all the time. Or it may happen that someone else has the view that for certain illnesses, walking and moving around is extremely healthy. He advises this to someone. He only has to object: “You forget that I am a postman.

I only want to hint at the fundamental principle: that one can have perfectly correct ideas, but that these ideas only become useful when they are applied in the right way in life.

And so, in the various sciences, one can also find concepts that are strictly provable and correct, so that refutations of them would encounter difficulties. But the question must always be raised: Are these concepts also applicable to life? Are they useful tools for understanding life? — The mental illness that I have thus hinted at and explained by grotesque examples is extremely widespread in our thinking today. Hence many people are so unaware of the limits of their concepts that they are obliged to expand their concepts through facts, whether physical or spiritual. And perhaps there is no other field in which the expansion of concepts and ideas is as necessary as in the field we wish to discuss today.

With regard to what has been achieved in this field from a scientific point of view, which is, after all, the most important one at present, one can only say again and again: it is admirable, it is quite magnificent. On the other hand, there is also significant work in the realm of the soul, but it does not provide any insight into the most important soul questions, and above all, it cannot broaden its concepts in such a way that the impact of modern science, which is nevertheless directed against everything spiritual in some way, could be withstood. I would like to refer to two recent literary works that contain the results of research in these fields; works that show us very clearly how an expansion of concepts must be sought through an expansion of research. First of all, there is an extraordinarily interesting Physiological Psychology by Theodor Ziehen. In this psychology, even if the still fluctuating research results are developed through hypotheses, it is shown in a magnificent way how, according to modern scientific observations, the brain and nerve mechanism has to be imagined in order to get an idea of how our ideas are linked together and how the nervous organism works while we form ideas. But it is precisely in this area that it becomes quite clear that the scientific method of observation directed towards the soul leads to concepts that are too narrowly defined and do not penetrate into life. Theodor Ziehen is able to show that for everything that takes place in the process of imagining, counter-images can be found within the nervous mechanism. And if one goes through the field of research on this question, one finds that Haeckel's school in particular has achieved something extraordinary in this area. One need only refer to the excellent work that Haeckel's student Max Verworn did in the Göttingen laboratory on the question of what happens in the human brain, in the human nervous system, when we link one idea with another, or, as they say in psychology, when one idea associates with another. Our thinking is basically based on this linking of ideas. How one has to think of this linking of ideas, how one has to think of the realization of memory ideas, how certain mechanisms are present that store ideas, one might say, so that they can be retrieved from memory later, all this is beautifully presented in a coherent way by Theodor Ziehen. If you take a look at what he has to say about the life of imagination and about what corresponds to it as a human nervous system, you can certainly go along with it. But then Ziehen comes to a strange further conclusion.

We know, of course, that the human soul life is not limited to imagination. Regardless of how one thinks about the relationship between the other soul activities and imagination, one cannot ignore the fact that at least three other soul activities or abilities must be distinguished in addition to imagination. We know that feeling exists alongside imagination, that feeling activity exists in its entire wide range, and that will activity also exists. Theodor Ziehen speaks as though feeling were actually nothing more than a property of perception; he does not speak of actual feeling, but of the emotional tone of sensations or perceptions. The perceptions are there. They are there, not only as we think them, but endowed with certain qualities that give them their emotional tone. So that one can say: For feeling, a researcher of this kind is dependent on saying: What is going on in the nervous system is not enough for feeling. Therefore, he actually leaves out feeling itself and regards it only as an appendage to perception. One could also say: By following the nervous system, he does not arrive at the nerve mechanism of the soul that appears as the emotional life. Therefore, he leaves out the emotional life as such. But he also does not come to anything in the nervous mechanism that makes it necessary to speak of a will. Therefore, Ziehen virtually denies the right to speak of a will in the natural sciences in relation to the knowledge of soul and body. What happens when a person wills something? Let us assume that he walks, that he is in motion. Then, says the scientist, the movement, the walking, arises out of his will. But as a rule, what is actually there? There is nothing there except, at first, the idea of the movement. I present, so to speak, what will be when I move through space; and then nothing happens but that I see or feel myself, that is, that I perceive my movement. The remembered idea of movement is followed by the perception of the movement; there is no willpower to be found anywhere. — The will is thus virtually removed by pulling. We see that in the pursuit of nervous mechanisms, we do not come to feeling or to willing; therefore, we must more or less disregard these areas of the soul, and for the will, we must disregard them entirely. And then one usually says good-naturedly: Well, yes, we leave that to the philosophers, but the natural scientist has no reason to speak of these things, unless one goes as far as Verworn with regard to soul functions, who says: The philosophers have attributed much to the human soul life that from a scientific point of view turns out to be unjustified.

An important modern psychologist, who I have often mentioned here, came to a conclusion similar to Ziehen's, who started out from natural-scientific data, and who is more important than is usually thought of him: Franz Brentano. Only Franz Brentano starts out from the soul. In his Psychology, he tried to explore the life of the soul. It is characteristic that only the first volume of this book was published and nothing more since the 1870s. Those who are familiar with the circumstances know that precisely because Brentano works with limited concepts, in the sense characterized above, he could not get beyond the beginning. But one thing is extremely significant in Brentano: in his attempt to go through the phenomena of the soul and bring them into certain groups, he distinguishes between 'imagining' and 'feeling'. But in going through the soul, I would say, from top to bottom, he does not come to volition. For him, volition is basically only a subspecies of feeling. So even a psychologist does not come to volition. Franz Brentano refers to such things as the fact that even language suggests, when it speaks of phenomena of the soul, that what is usually called “volition” is basically exhausted in feeling within the events of the soul, the facts of the soul. For it is certainly only a feeling that is expressed when I say: I have repugnance for something. And yet, when I say, “I have repugnance for something,” I use the word “will” in such a way that language instinctively expresses how the will actually belongs to the emotional sphere of the soul life. From this single example you can see how impossible it is for this psychologist of the soul to get out of a certain circle. For it is unquestionable that what Franz Brentano gives is careful soul research; but it is also unquestionable that the experience of the will, of the transition of the soul life into external action, and of the arising of the external action from the will, is an experience that cannot be denied away. So the psychologist does not find what unquestionably cannot be denied away.

It cannot be said that all researchers working in the field of the newer natural sciences who are concerned with the life of the soul in its connection with the life of the body are materialists through and through. For example, the materialist draws a pure hypothesis about matter. But he comes to a very remarkable conclusion, namely that, wherever we look, there is nothing around us but soul-life. Even if there is something material out there, this matter must first make an impression on us in its processes; so that when the material facts make an impression on our senses, what we experience in our sensory perception is already a spiritual phenomenon. Now we experience the world only through our senses; so basically everything is a spiritual phenomenon, everything is psychic. This is the view of researchers such as Ziehen. According to this, the whole of human experience would actually be a soul experience, and we would basically have no right to speak of anything other than hypothetically — except for ourselves, except for our soul experiences. We live and weave within the realm of the soul according to such views and cannot get out of it.

Eduard von Hartmann characterized this view in a drastic way at the end of his manual on psychology, and this characteristic, although grotesque, is quite interesting to consider. He says: Let us take the example, in the sense of this panpsychism – we are simply forming such words – of two people sitting at a table and drinking, let us say, coffee with sugar, stemming from better times. One person is a little further away from the sugar bowl than the other, and what happens outwardly, for the naive person, is that one person says to the other, “I request the sugar bowl.” The other person hands the sugar bowl to the requesting person. How, then, Eduard von Hartmann asks, must this process be imagined if panpsychism is correct? It must be imagined that something is happening in the human brain or nervous system that forms itself in consciousness in such a way that the idea arises: I want sugar. But what is actually out there, the person in question has no idea about that. Then another idea joins the first one; but this is also only a mental image, that something that looks like another person – because what is objectively there cannot be said – that something that looks like another person is handing him the sugar bowl. Physiology, says Hartmann, now says that, objectively, the following happens: in my nervous system, when I am the one person, some process is formed which is reflected in consciousness as the illusion “I ask for sugar”. Then this same process, which has nothing to do with the process of consciousness, sets the speech muscles in motion; something objective comes about again on the outside, which one does not know what it is, but which is mirrored again in consciousness, whereby one receives the impression of speaking the words “I am asking for sugar”. Then these movements, evoked in the air, go to another person, who is again assumed hypothetically, and create vibrations in their nervous system. The fact that the sensitive nerves vibrate in this nervous system sets the motor nerves in motion. And while this purely mechanical process is taking place, something like the following is reflected in the consciousness of the other person: “I am giving this person the sugar bowl,” and whatever else is connected with it, whatever can be perceived, the movement and so on.

This is the peculiar interpretation that what is really going on outside of us remains unknown to us, is only hypothetical, but it appears that it is a nervous process that vibrates through the air into the other person, where it jumps from the sensitive to the motor nerves and performs the external action. This is quite independent of what is going on in the two minds, it happens automatically. But as a result, one gradually comes to no longer be able to gain any insight into the connection between what is automatically happening outside and what we are actually experiencing. For what we experience, if one adopts the point of view of the all-pervading soul, has nothing to do with anything that is objectively outside. Strangely enough, the whole world is taken up in the soul, I would even say. And individual thinkers have already raised very weighty objections. If, for example, a merchant expects a telegram with a certain content, only a single word may be missing, and instead of joy, displeasure, sorrow or pain can be triggered in his soul. Can we say that what we experience in our soul only takes place within the soul, or must we not assume, on the basis of the immediate results, that something has actually taken place outside that is also experienced in the soul? And on the other hand, if you take the point of view of this automatism, you could say: Yes, Goethe wrote “Faust”, that is true; but that only proves that the whole of “Faust” lived in his soul in the imagination. But this soul has nothing to do with the mechanism that described this idea. One does not get out of the mechanism of the soul life to what is out there.

This is how the view gradually emerged that is now very widespread, that what is spiritual is, so to speak, only a kind of parallel process to what is outside in the world, that it only adds to what is outside in the world, and that one cannot possibly know what is really going on outside in the world. Basically, one can then come to what I came to, namely that in my book “The Riddle of Man” I call this point of view, which developed in the 19th century and has become more and more valid in certain circles, the point of view of illusionism. Now one will ask oneself the question: Is not this illusionism based on very good foundations? — It almost seems so. It really seems that there is nothing to be said against it, that there may be something out there that affects our eyes, and that only the soul transforms what is outside into light and color, so that one is really only dealing with the soul, that one never goes beyond the limits of the soul, that one is never justified in saying: this or that corresponds to what lives in the soul. Such things only appear to have no significance for the highest soul questions, for example for the question of immortality. They have a deep significance for it, and some hints about this too will be possible today. But I would like to start from this very basis.

The school of thought that I have characterized here does not consider, above all, that with regard to the life of the soul, it only deals with what happens when impressions are made on the human being from the outside through the world of the senses, and the human being comes to form ideas about these impressions through his nervous system. These views do not consider that what happens there is only applicable to man's intercourse with the outer sense world, but for this intercourse, even when one examines the matter in terms of spiritual research, it shows quite special results. It shows that the human senses are constructed in a very special way. But what I have to say here about this structure, in terms of the subtleties of this structure, is such that it is in many ways not yet accessible to the external science that is already in existence today. In the organs that we have for the senses, something is built into the human body that is excluded to a certain extent from the general inner life of this human body. The eye is a good symbolic example of this. It is built into the organism of our skull almost as a completely independent being, connected to the rest of the organism only through certain organs. The whole thing could be described in detail, but that is not necessary for our consideration today. However, a certain independence does exist. And in fact such independence is present in all sense organs. So that, which is never taken into account, something very special happens in sensory perception, in sensory sensation. The sensory world continues through our sense organs into our own organs. What happens out there through light and color, or rather, in light and color, continues through our eye into our organism in such a way that the life of our organism does not initially participate in it. Thus light and color enter our eye in such a way that they do not hinder the life of the organism, I might say, the penetration of what is happening outside. In this way, as in a number of gulfs, the flow of external events penetrates through our senses to a certain extent into our organism. Now, the soul is immediately involved in what enters, in that it itself first gives life to what enters from outside in an inanimate state. This is an extraordinarily important truth that has come to light through spiritual science. Through our sensory perception, we are constantly enlivening that which continues into our body from the flow of external events. The sensation of the senses is a real living permeation, indeed even a living of that which, as dead, continues into our organization. But in this way, in the sensation of the senses, we really have the objective world directly within us, and by processing it with our soul, we experience it. This is the real process, and it is extraordinarily important. For with regard to sense perception, it cannot be said that it is only an impression, that it is only an effect from outside; what happens externally really goes right into our inner being, physically, is absorbed into the soul and imbued with life. In the sense organs we have something in which the soul lives, without our own body basically living in them directly. One day, the ideas that I have developed will also be scientifically examined in more detail, when correct views are formed by comparing the fact that certain animal species have certain organs in their eyes that are no longer found in humans. The human eye is simpler than the eyes of lower animals, even of animals that are very close to it. If one day someone asks: why, for example, certain animals still have the so-called fan in the eye, a special organ made of blood vessels, or why others have the so-called xiphoid process, another organ made of blood vessels, then it will be realized that in the animal organism, as these organs project into the senses, the immediate bodily life still participates in what takes place in the senses as a continuation of the external world. Therefore, the animal's sensory perception is not at all such that one can say that the soul experiences the external world directly. For the soul in its instrument, the body, still permeates the sense organ; the bodily life permeates the sense organ. But precisely because the human senses are so constituted that they are animated by the soul, it is clear to anyone who truly grasps the sense perception in its essence that we have external reality in the sense perception. On the other hand, all Kantianism, Schopenhauerianism, all modern physiology cannot achieve this, because these sciences are not yet suited to allow their concepts to penetrate to a proper conception of sense perception. Only when what takes place in the sense organ is taken up into the deeper nervous system, the brain system, only then does it pass over into that realm where the life of the body penetrates directly and where, therefore, inner happenings take place. So that the human being has the sense realm externally, and within this sense realm, as it were, the zone opposite the external world, where this external world can approach him purely, insofar as it can act on the senses. For nothing else takes place. But then, when the sensation becomes an idea, we are within the deeper-lying nervous system; then a nervous-mechanical process corresponds to each process of imagination. Then, whenever we form an idea that is taken from the sensory view, something always takes place in the human nervous organism.

And here we must now say: there is much to admire in what has been achieved by natural science, especially through Verworn's discoveries, with regard to the processes that take place in the nervous system, in the brain, when this or that is imagined. Spiritual science will only have to be clear about the following: When we confront the external world through our senses, we are confronted with external, real facts. When we imagine, for example, from memory, when we reflect, where we do not connect with the external, but connect with what has been taken in from outside, something in our nervous system comes to life; and that which takes place there in our nervous system, what lives in its structures, its processes, that is really — the more one delves into this fact, the more one comes to a wonderful image of the soul, of the life of imagination itself. Anyone who opens themselves up just a little to what brain anatomy and neuroanatomy can already tell us today will find that the brain's structure and the way it moves are among the most wonderful things that can be revealed in the world. But then spiritual science must be clear about one thing: just as we face the outside world, looking outwards, so we face our own bodily world when we are absorbed in the play of thoughts taken from the outside world. It is just that we are not usually aware of this clearly. But when the spiritual researcher rises to what he calls imaginative images, he recognizes that, while I would say it remains dream-like, it is nevertheless the case that when left to itself, the human being's imagination perceives its inner play in the brain and nervous system in the same way as it otherwise perceives the external world. By strengthening the life of the soul through such meditation as I have described, one can recognize that one is confronted with this inner nervous world no differently than with the outer sensory world; only that in the case of the outer sensory world, the impression is strong, and one comes to the conclusion: the outer world makes an impression; while that which comes from within, from the life of the body, does not impose itself in the same way, although it is a wonderful interplay of material processes, so that one has the impression that the perceptions play by themselves.

What I have said applies to everything I have so far indicated about man's relationship with the external sense world. The soul, permeating the body, observes external reality; the soul, on the other hand, observes the play of its own nervous mechanism. Now, however, a certain view – and this is where the misunderstanding arises – has formed the idea from this fact that this is the relationship between man and the external world. When this view raises the question: how does the external world affect man? then it answers it as it must answer it according to the wonderful results of brain anatomy and brain physiology, then it answers it as we now had to characterize what happens when man either devotes himself to ideas with reference to the external world, or later allows such ideas to play out from memory. This view says that this is man's relationship to the world in general. But it must lead to the conclusion that all life of the soul actually runs parallel to the outer world. For the outer world can certainly be quite indifferent to whether we imagine it or not; it runs as it runs; our imagining is purely added. Even what is a principle of this view applies: everything we experience is of the soul. But in this soul life, the outer world lives in one instance, and the inner world in another. And this is precisely the result: one time it is how the processes are outside, the other time it is how the processes are in the nerve mechanism. Now this view assumes: therefore all other soul experiences must also be related to the outer world in a similar way, including feeling and will. And if such researchers as Theodor Ziehen are honest, they do not find such relationships. Therefore, as discussed above, they partially deny feeling and completely deny the will. They do not find feelings within the nervous mechanism, and they certainly do not find the will. Franz Brentano does not even find the will within the soul. Why is that?

Once the misunderstandings I have described today have been dispelled and spiritual science is consulted for help on these matters, spiritual science will provide clarification. For the fact, which I have only hinted at, is this: What we call the realm of feeling in the life of the soul has, to begin with, however strange it may sound, absolutely nothing to do with nervous life in its origin. I am well aware of how many assertions of present-day science I am contradicting. I am also well aware of all the well-founded objections that can be raised. However, as desirable as it would be to go into all the details, today I can only present results. Ziehen is quite right when he finds neither feeling nor willing in the nervous mechanism, when he finds only thinking, so that he says: feelings are only sounds, that is, qualities, emphases of the life of thinking; for only the life of thinking lives in the nerves. There is no will at all for the natural scientist, because the perception of the movement that follows is directly linked to the thinking of the movement. There is no will in between. There is nothing of human feeling in the nerve mechanism; this consequence is just not drawn, but it is there. So when human feeling expresses itself in the body, what is the connection? What is the relationship between feeling and the body, if the relationship between thinking and the body is as I have just described it in relation to the relationship between sensory perception and the nerve mechanism? Now, spiritual science shows that, just as imagining is connected with perceiving and the inner nervous mechanism (however strange that may still sound today, it will one day be the result of natural science, but it can already be described as a thoroughly established result of spiritual science), feeling is similarly connected with everything that belongs to the breathing of the human body and what is connected with this breathing. In its origin, feeling has nothing to do with the nervous mechanism, but with that which is connected with the breathing organism. But now, at least one objection, which is so obvious, should be raised here: Yes, but the nerves excite everything that is connected with breathing! I will come back to this objection again when it comes to will. The nerves do not excite anything related to breathing, but just as we perceive light and color through our optic nerves, so we perceive the breathing process itself only in a duller way through the nerves that go from the central organism to the respiratory organism. These nerves, which are usually referred to as motor nerves for breathing, are nothing more than sensitive nerves. They are there to perceive breathing itself, just like the brain nerves, only more dullly. The development of feeling, in all that is present from affect up to quiet feeling, is physically connected with everything that takes place in the human being as a breathing process, and with everything that belongs to it, that is its continuation in one direction or another in the human organism. Once we understand that we cannot say: certain currents emanate from some central organ, the brain, and excite the respiratory processes, but rather the reverse is the case. The respiratory processes are there, they are perceived by certain nerves; through this they enter into a relationship with them. But this relationship is not such that the origin of feelings is anchored in the nervous system. And here we come to an area that, despite the admirable natural science of the present, has not yet been worked on at all. The bodily expressions of emotional life will be illuminated in a wonderful way once the finer changes in breathing and especially the finer changes in the effect of the breathing process are studied as one or other feeling arises in us.

The breathing process is quite different from that which takes place in the human nervous mechanism. For the nervous mechanism, one can say, in a certain respect, that it is a faithful reproduction of the human soul life itself. And if I wanted to use an expression – such expressions have not yet been coined in language, so one can only use loan images – for the way in which the human nervous system is wonderfully depicted in the soul life, I would like to say: the soul life paints itself into the nervous life, the nervous life is truly a painting of the soul life. Everything we experience in our soul in relation to external perception is reflected in the nervous system. It is precisely this that must make it understandable that the nervous life, especially of the head, is already at birth a faithful imprint of the soul life that comes from the spiritual world and connects with the bodily life. What may be objected to this connection between the soul, which emerges from the spiritual world, and the brain, with the head as its organ, from the point of view of brain physiology, will one day be put forward as proof of it. Before birth or conception, the soul prepares that wonderful formation of the head out of spiritual foundations, which is present as the formation of the human soul life. The head, for example, only becomes four times heavier in the course of a human life than it is at birth, while the whole organism becomes 22 times heavier in the course of further growth. The head, however, already presents itself at birth as something fully developed, if the expression is allowed: perfect. Even before birth, it is basically an image of the soul experience, because the soul experience works on the head from the spiritual world long before physical facts play out in the known way, which then lead to the existence of the human being in the physical world. For the spiritual researcher, the wonderful structure of the human nervous system, which is a reflection of the human soul life, is at the same time the confirmation that the soul comes from the spiritual, and that the forces lie in the spiritual that make the brain a painting of the soul life.

If I am to use an expression for the connection between emotional life and respiratory life that would characterize it in a similar way to the expression “the nervous system – a picture, a painting of the soul, of the life of the imagination”, then I would call the respiratory system and everything that belongs to it an imprint of the soul-spiritual life, which I would compare to pictographic writing. The nervous system is a real picture, a real painting; the respiratory system is only a pictographic script. The nervous system is constructed in such a way that the soul only has to turn to itself to find out what it now wants to experience within itself from the painting. With the picture writing, you already have to interpret, you have to know something, the soul has to deal with the matter more. It is the same with regard to breathing. The breathing life is less a faithful expression - if I were to characterize it more precisely, I would have to refer to Goethe's theory of metamorphosis; there is not enough time today - it is rather an expression that I would compare to the relationship between the pictorial writing and the meaning of the pictorial writing. The life of the soul is therefore more inward in the life of feeling, less bound to external processes. Therefore, the connection with the coarser physiology also escapes. For the spiritual researcher, however, it is clear that just as the life of breathing is connected with the life of feeling, so too, because this life of breathing is a less precise expression of it, the life of feeling must be freer, more independent in itself.

Thus we understand the body more fully when we consider it as a form giver to the life of feeling, than when we can only regard it as a form giver to the life of imagination. But because the life of feeling is connected with the life of breathing, the spiritual lives more actively and inwardly in the life of feeling than in the mere life of thinking — in that life of thinking which does not rise to imagination but is only a revelation of outer, sense experience. The life of feeling does not become as clear and bright, just as the picture writing does not express its meaning as clearly as a picture expresses it (I must speak more comparatively). But precisely for that reason, what is expressed in the life of feeling is more clearly present in the spiritual than in the ordinary life of thinking. The life of breathing is less a tool than the life of the nerves.

And when we now come to the life of the will, the fact is that when one begins to speak about the fact as a spiritual researcher, one can be decried as a bad materialist. But when he speaks of the relationship between the human soul and the human body, the spiritual researcher must consider the whole soul in relation to the whole body, and not just, as is often the case today, in relation to the nervous system. The soul expresses itself in the whole body, in everything that takes place in the body. If one now wants to consider the life of the will, where must one begin? We must begin with the lowest, most profound volitional impulses, which still appear to be completely bound to the bodily life, absorbed in the bodily life. Where is such a volitional impulse? Well, such a volitional impulse simply manifests itself when, for example, we are hungry, when certain substances in our organism have been used up and need to be replaced. We are entering the sphere in which the processes of nutrition take place. We have descended from the processes in the nervous organism through the processes in the respiratory organism and arrive at the processes in the nutritional organism; and we find the most subordinate volitional impulses bound to the nutritional organism. Spiritual science now shows that when we speak of the relationships of the will to the organism, we must speak of the nutritional organism. A relationship similar to that between the processes of imagining and feeling and the nerve mechanism, and between breathing and the life of feeling, only even looser, exists between the nutrition organism and the life of will in the human soul. Admittedly, more far-reaching things are connected with this. And here we must be completely clear about something that today is basically only asserted by spiritual science. I have been advocating it in narrow circles for many years, which I am now also publicly explaining here as a result of spiritual science. Today's physiology believes that when a sensory impression occurs to us, it propagates to the sensitive nerve and - if it admits a soul, the physiology - is absorbed by the soul. But then, in addition to these sensitive nerves, there are also so-called motor nerves, movement nerves, for today's physiology. Such movement nerves — I know how heretical it is what I am saying now — do not exist for spiritual science. I have really been studying this for many years and I know, of course, that one can come up with all sorts of things that seem so well founded. Take a person suffering from tabes dorsalis or anyone whose spinal cord is squashed, in whom a certain organ makes the lower part of the organism appear dead, and so on. None of these things refute what I am saying. On the contrary, if you look at them in the right way, they actually prove what I am saying. There are no motor nerves. What today's physiology still regards as motor nerves, as nerves of movement, as will nerves, are actually sensitive nerves. If the spinal cord is crushed at one point, then what is happening in the leg, in the foot, is simply not perceived, and then the foot cannot be moved because it is not perceived; not because a motor nerve is cut, but because a sensitive nerve is cut, which simply cannot perceive what is happening in the leg. But I can only hint at this, because I must move on to the important results of this matter.

Those who develop habits with regard to mental and physical experience know that what we call an exercise, for example, playing the piano and the like, is something quite different from what is today called “grinding out the motor nerve pathway”; that is not what it is about. For in all the movements we perform out of our will, the only bodily process that comes into consideration is a metabolic process. In terms of its origin, that which comes out of the will impulse comes out of the metabolism. When I move an arm, it is not the nervous system that comes into consideration at first, but the will itself, which, as you have seen, physiologists deny; and the nerve has nothing to do with it, except that what takes place as a metabolic process as a result of the will impulse is perceived by the motor nerve, which is in reality a sensitive nerve. We are dealing with metabolic processes in our entire organism as the bodily agents of those processes that correspond to the will. Because all systems in the organism are interconnected, these metabolic processes are of course also in the brain and connected with brain processes. The will, however, has its bodily manifestations in metabolic processes; nerve processes as such are only really involved in this sense in that they mediate the perception of will processes. All this will be demonstrated by science in the future. But if we consider the human being, on the one hand, as a nervous being, on the other hand, as a breathing being and everything that goes with it, and, thirdly, as a metabolic being – if I may use the expression – then we have the whole human being. For all the organs of movement, everything that can move in the human body, is itself connected with metabolic processes in its movement. And the will has a direct effect on the metabolic processes. The nerve is only there to perceive them.

It is somewhat awkward when one has to contradict a view that seems so well-founded as that of the two nerves; but at least one is entitled to point out that so far, with regard to either reaction or anatomical structure, no one has found any significant difference between a sensitive and a motor nerve. They are the same in every respect. When we acquire practice in something, we acquire this practice by learning to control the metabolic processes through our will. This is what the child learns after it first fidgets in all directions and does not perform any regulated movement of the will: to control the metabolic processes as they take place in their finer structures. And when we play the piano, for example, or have similar abilities, we learn to move our fingers in a certain way, to control the corresponding finer metabolic processes with our will. But the sensitive nerves, which are otherwise known as motor nerves, become more and more aware of which is the right grip and the right movement, because these nerves are only there to feel what is happening in the metabolism. I would like to ask someone who is really able to observe in a mental and physical way whether, on closer self-examination, they do not feel in this direction, how they do not grind out motor nerve tracts, but how they learn to feel, perceive, and vaguely imagine the finer vibrations of their organism, which they produce through the will. It is really self-awareness that we practice there. We are dealing here with sensitive nerves throughout. Let anyone observe how speech develops out of babbling in a child. It is based entirely on the will learning to intervene in a speech organism. And what the nervous system learns is only the finer perception of what takes place as finer metabolic processes.

Thus, we are dealing with something that expresses itself physically in the metabolism. And the expression of the metabolism is movement, even down to the bones. This could be demonstrated very easily by referring to the actual scientific results of the present day. But this metabolism expresses even less than breathing what takes place in the soul and spirit. If I have compared the nervous organism with a picture and the respiratory organism with a pictographic script, I can compare the metabolic organism with a mere sign writing, as we have it today in contrast to the pictographic writing of the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Chaldeans. These are mere signs, and here the soul must become more inward. But through the soul becoming more inward in the will, the soul, which, I might say, is only loosely connected with the body in the metabolism, enters with the greater part of its being into the region of the spiritual. It lives in the spiritual. And just as the soul connects with the material through the senses, it connects with the spirit through the will. Here too, the special relationship between the soul and spirit can be seen, which spiritual science observes through the means I have mentioned in the last lecture. It emerges that the metabolic organism as it exists today – to characterize it more precisely, I would have to go into Goethe's theory of metamorphosis – is only a preliminary indication of what the complete picture is in the nervous, in the main organism. In its metabolic activity, the soul, as it were, readjusts itself through metabolism, preparing what it then carries through the gateway of death into the spiritual world for the further life in the spiritual realm after death. But naturally it also carries over all that by which it lives with the spiritual. It is indeed most alive inwardly, as I have characterized, precisely where it is only loosely connected with the material, so that for this region the material process acts only as a sign for the spiritual; thus it is precisely in the volition. It is for this reason that the volition must be especially developed if one is to arrive at spiritual vision. This volition must be developed to that which is called actual intuition — not in the trivial sense, but in the sense in which it was recently characterized. Feeling can be developed in such a way that it leads to inspiration; and if it is trained in spiritual research, imagining can lead to imagination. But through this the other enters into soul life objectively, in accordance with its true reality, the spiritual. For just as we must characterize the sense perception in such a way that, after the human sense organs have been created, the external world sends gulfs into us, so that we experience ourselves in them, so we experience the spirit in the will. There the spirit in us sends its essence into it. And no one will ever understand freedom who does not recognize this direct life of the spirit in the will.

On the other hand, you see how Franz Brentano, who only investigates the soul, is right: he does not get to the will because he only investigates the soul; he only gets as far as feeling. The modern psychologist does not concern himself with what the will sends down into the metabolism because he does not want to become a materialist; and the materialist does not concern himself with it because he believes that everything depends on the nervous system. But since the soul is so closely connected to the spirit by its very nature that the spirit can penetrate into the human being in its original form, and the spirit sends its gulfs into the human being, what we place in the world as the highest, as moral will, as spiritual will, is really the direct life of the spirit in the soul. And because we experience the spiritual in the soul directly, the soul, in the forms that I characterized in my Philosophy of Freedom as underlying free will, is really not alone in the spirit, but is, to a high degree, in a higher and, above all, different way, consciously present in the spirit. It is only a misunderstanding of this presence in the spirit if, like the physiologist with regard to the will in Theodor Ziehen, the psychologist also wants nothing to do with the finer impulses of the will, which are nevertheless a truly real experience. They cannot be found in the soul, but the soul experiences the spirit within itself, and by experiencing the spirit in the will, it lives in freedom.

In this way, the relationship between the human soul and the human body is conceived in such a way that the whole soul is in relationship with the whole body, not just the soul with the nervous organism. And with that, I have characterized the beginning of a scientific direction that will become fruitful precisely through the discoveries of natural science, when these are viewed in the right way. It will show that the body, too, when regarded as an expression of the soul in its entirety, is proof of the immortality of the soul, which I characterized from a completely different angle in the last lecture and will characterize further from a different point of view in the next lecture.

A certain scientific-philosophical direction of recent times, because it could not cope with the soul-bodily life for the reasons indicated, has resorted to the so-called unconscious. Its most important representative, besides Schopenhauer, is Eduard von Hartmann. Now, the assumption of the unconscious in our mental life is certainly something entirely justified. But the way Eduard von Hartmann speaks of the unconscious makes it impossible to understand reality with him in a satisfactory way. In the example I mentioned, he makes a curious distinction between the two people sitting opposite each other, one of whom wants the sugar bowl from the other, and how the conscious descends into the unconscious, and what happens in the unconscious comes up again into consciousness. But such a hypothesis does not come close to the insights that spiritual science gains. One can speak of the unconscious, but one must speak of it in two ways: one must speak of the subconscious and of the superconscious. In the sense perception, something that is unconscious in itself becomes conscious by being enlivened in the way characterized today. In this way, the subconscious rises up into consciousness. Likewise, when the nervous organism is observed internally in the interplay of perceptions: the unconscious rises up into consciousness. However, one should not speak of the absolutely unconscious, but rather that the subconscious can arise into consciousness. The subconscious is then also only temporal, only relatively subconscious; the subconscious can become conscious. Likewise, one can speak of the spirit as the superconscious, which enters into the ethical idea or into the spiritual-scientific idea, which enters into the spirit itself, into the realm of the human soul life. There the superconscious enters into consciousness.

You see how many concepts and ideas need to be corrected if we are to do justice to life. And only by correcting these concepts will we gain a clear view of the truth with regard to the human soul. However, I will have to save it for next time to explain the far-reaching significance of such a consideration of the relationship between soul and body. Today, I would just like to conclude by pointing out that the more recent development of education has led us away from the ideas that can provide clarity in this area. On the one hand, it has narrowed the entire relationship of the human being to the outside world to that which applies only in relation to the sensual outside world in its relationship to the human nervous system. But as a result, a body of ideas has emerged in this field that is more or less materialistically colored; and because no one has turned their gaze to other connections between the human spiritual-soul and the physical, this gaze has become narrowed. And this narrowness of perspective has even been transferred to all scientific endeavors in general. That is why it must grieve one's soul to read how, in a relatively good lecture given by Professor Dr. A. Tschirch on November 28, 1908, as a lecture at the University of Bern on “Natural Research and Medicine” when he took over his rectorate - those listeners who are here more often will know that I only criticize those whom I respect in some other respect, and that I only say something detrimental on my own initiative when it is in defense – a strange confession can be found that arises so clearly from the misunderstandings hinted at and from the powerlessness to understand the relationship between soul and body. Then Professor Tschirch says:

He means the inner core of the world. All the antipathy towards possible spiritual scientific research arises from this attitude. That is why he continues: ‘We really have more important things to do.’

Now, anyone who can even utter the sentence, “We really have more urgent matters to attend to,” when faced with the great, burning questions of the soul, would have to be asked about the seriousness of their scientific attitude if it could not be understood from the characterized direction that their thinking has taken; especially when one reads the sentences that follow:

"The ‘interior of nature’, by which Haller probably meant something similar to what Kant later called ‘the thing in itself’, is still so deeply hidden from us at present that thousands of years will pass before we - always assuming that a new ice age does not destroy all our culture - even come close to it.

These personalities are so concerned with the spiritual, which is the “inner being”, that they are able to say: We have no need to concern ourselves with it today, but we can easily wait thousands of years. When science answers the burning questions of the human soul, the time has come for the complement of this science, which is spiritual science. For the attitude that has been characterized has led to the fact that the soul element has been virtually abolished, one might say, to such an extent that the view has arisen that the soul element is at most a concomitant of the bodily element – which the famous Professor Jodl, for example, has held as his conviction almost to our days; but he is only one among many.

But where does this way of thinking lead? Well, it celebrated true orgies when Professor Dr. Jacques Loeb, another man whom I greatly respect for his positive research, gave a lecture on “Life” at the first monist congress in Hamburg on September 10, 1911. There we see how something that is based only on a misunderstanding already gives way to human sentiment, and in this human sentiment towards the study of the soul – forgive the expression – becomes brutality, in that what may only be based on that conviction, which springs from the research, is downright made into a question of power. So Professor Jacques Loeb begins that lecture by saying:

"The question I propose to discuss is whether, given our current state of knowledge, there is any prospect of life, that is, the sum of life phenomena, being fully explained in physical and chemical terms. If, after serious consideration, we can answer this question in the affirmative, then we must also build our social and ethical way of life on a purely scientific basis, and no metaphysician can claim the right to make prescriptions for us about how we should live that contradict the consequences of experimental biology.

Here we have the striving for the conquest of all knowledge by that science of which Goethe's Mephisto says: “She is making an ass for herself and doesn't know how!” This is how it is stated in the older version of Goethe's “Faust” for the words:

Who can hope to recognize and describe a living thing
when they first try to expel the spirit,
Then they have the parts in their hand,
Sadly, only the spiritual bond is missing!
Chemistry calls it encheiresin naturae,
Mocks itself and does not know how.

Today in “Faust” it says: “Mocks itself and does not know how” – young Goethe wrote: “Drills a donkey for itself and does not know how.”

This is the effect of what has been built up on the basis of these misunderstandings: to abolish all knowledge that is not a mere interpretation of physical and chemical processes. But no soul science will be equipped to withstand such an impact if it does not have within itself the possibility of really penetrating into the physical realm. I recognize all that has been achieved by brilliant men like Dilthey, Franz Brentano and others. I fully recognize it. I appreciate all these personalities; but the ideas that have been developed are too dull, too weak to penetrate on their own so that they can take on what the scientific results are. A bridge must be built between the spiritual and the physical. This bridge must be created in the human being by our coming to strong spiritual-scientific concepts that also carry us over into an understanding of physical life. For it is precisely in the understanding of physical life that the great questions, the questions of immortality, of death, of destiny, and so on, are understood. Otherwise, if humanity does not develop an appreciation of this spiritual science, an appreciation of the seriousness of such serious times, then we may find ourselves confronted with views that express themselves in something like the following: You can now get your hands on a book that came over from America and was translated into German, a book by an American scholar, Snyder. In it there is a cute sentence, but it expresses the sentiment of the whole book, which is titled “The World Picture of Modern Natural Science”. And the translator, Hans Kleinpeter, points out that this sentiment must gradually lead to true enlightenment in the present and in the future. Now, I would like to read you a central sentence from this book to conclude:

And yet this is supposed to be something essential, something enlightening! But it is an attitude that is already related to what I have been dealing with today. And it is deeply significant of the modern age that such things can find followers at all, that they are presented as something special.

I also appreciate philology, including those sciences that are underestimated by some today. Where there is real science, in any field, I appreciate it. But if someone were to come and tell me: Goethe wrote Faust; sitting next to him was his scribe Seydel, perhaps writing a letter to his lover; the difference between Faust and Seydel's letter may have been whatever, the ink is the same in both! Both assertions are on the same level, only one is considered a great advance in science, the other is taken for granted as what those revered listeners who laughed at it testified to.

In contrast to this, we must fall back and build on that attitude which is also a scientific one, but which, out of the whole full soul of man and a deep contemplation of the world, has first laid the elements for a science, including that which is present in Goethe's scientific contemplations. The first elements for the further development of spiritual science lie in Goethe; and the true, genuine attitude towards a truthful world view is so beautifully expressed in many of his words. I would like to conclude this reflection by bringing to mind his all-round consideration of the relationship between spirit and external material being, especially with regard to the human body. As Goethe contemplates Schiller's mortal remains and, in this “partial” form, empathizes with the noble soul, with the relationship of the whole spirit and the whole soul to the whole human body, he coins words in his beautiful poem, which he has entitled “On Contemplating Schiller's Skull” — words from which we see the attitude that an all-encompassing contemplation of spirit and nature requires:

What more can man gain in life
than that God-Nature reveal itself to him,
how it allows the solid to flow into the spirit,
how it firmly preserves what the spirit has created!

And we can apply these words to the human soul and body and say:

What greater gain can a person have in life
than to have God-Nature reveal herself,
how she lets the material melt away in the spirit,
and how the spirit experiences itself in the material!

by showing him how the body is an expression and image and sign of the soul, and how it is precisely through this that it is the physical proof and revelation of the immortal soul and the eternal spirit.

From our considerations of yesterday you will have seen how easily the whole course of human evolution can be misunderstood and how it is particularly misunderstood from many sides today to the detriment of present knowledge as well as of the present social striving of mankind. (see Z-7.) Today we will for once call up before our souls some results of Spiritual Science of such a nature that they can throw light, it may be said, from another side on what becomes so enigmatical if looked at from the points of view holding good at present. Now I have told you that man can come to terms with this present time only if he makes up his mind to find his real bearings by starting on the path to the spirit. He must decide to look for a new relation to external nature since the old means to this end no longer suffice, and also find his way to a new relation to his fellow men, the old relation no longer being suitable, so that he sees what impulses are necessary for the modern social structure of mankind. If we wish to be successful in this, we must earnestly keep before our souls the following—that as man is placed in the world today, in earthly existence between birth and death, he sees but the outer manifestation of his own essential being and enters into actual relationship with merely the outer manifestation of his fellowmen. Life takes on a different form for the different epochs of mankind's evolution, and we exert ourselves really to study these things just in their relation to men of the present time. For the present age is a very critical one for men on earth. Up to the fifteenth century, and, since things do not change in a flash, one might say on into the present time, man is still actually more or less dominated by inherited concepts and impulses of the past. This fifth post-Atlantean epoch is indeed in a certain sense rather out of the ordinary where the evolution of men is concerned. For you certainly know that taking earthly evolution as a whole it divides itself into seven great successive epochs, of which the fourth was the Atlantean epoch and the fifth, our present one, the post-Atlantean. The sixth and the seventh should then follow.

In the Atlantean period there was a kind of crisis. For up to that time the whole of the earth's existence was a recapitulation of the earlier existence of Saturn, Sun and Moon. During the Atlantean period there was a kind of crisis but it is true only the beginning of a crisis. There was merely a preparation of things that were actually to be developed in the following evolution of the earth. So that up to Atlantean times man was really only what he had been in his different forms as man on Saturn, Sun and Moon. In Atlantean times, however, he had only intimations of what he was supposed actually to become as man of the earth; then he continues on, and now we are in the fifth post-Atlantean period. In the post-Atlantean period, throughout the old Indian end old Persian development, and so on, ever more definite relations were arising. But the Greco-Latin time, the fourth post-Atlantean period, gives us again even though in another form merely a kind of repetition of what existed on another level of existence in Atlantis. It is only now in the fifth post-Atlantean period, in the time since the fifteenth century, that man stands within his whole evolution in such a way that new impulses arise—impulses which are perceptible in his very being. Previously they were not so noticeable; now they appear in his being noticeably, nevertheless there are still only intimations of their presence. The terrible, catastrophic events of our time, the consequences of which—one can already foresee—will be shattering to mankind, are the expression of how new relations are making their way into mankind's evolution. I have already indicated how from a certain aspect these new relations can be described by pointing to the way in which an on-rolling spiritual wave is clearly perceived, arising from, as it were, a surging up into evolution of the Spirits of Personality.

Now we notice it after the manner of Spiritual Science we keep in mind this particular state of soul in which modern man is found here on earth, it is markedly noticeable today, according to the outlook of Spiritual Science, how man when he perceives or is outwardly active in his willing is really surrounded only by manifestations of the being of nature, and the being of his fellow men. He is not surrounded by the real beings into whom he must, as it were, grow in the course of evolution, into whom he will have grown at a later stage of evolution. As you know, man's position in the world is such that—to describe it broadly—he perceives the surrounding world in the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom and in his own human kingdom. This is what is visible around man. And in the visible human kingdom there is played out what comes from the will and what should find a certain ordering for the social structure.

Now people have reflected a great deal about man's attitude to his environment, though insufficient thought has gone into their reflections. But the result of these reflections has been worked into various theories of knowledge. We get very little, however, from these theories of knowledge. And what in schoolmaster fashion is given in these theories today to the young people, who are then supposed to speak to the world as philosophers, is really perfectly inadequate nonsense. For a true insight into what is really revealed in man's surroundings, a real insight, can only be gained when the matter is observed according to the way of Spiritual Science. You see, on one side man can look upon the mineral kingdom and the plant kingdom; on the other side he can look on the animal kingdom and the kingdom of man himself. Both—mineral kingdom and plant kingdom as well as human kingdom and animal kingdom—unveil themselves to him in such a way that if now in a theoretical sense he is honest, in this unveiling, in this revealing, he notices contradictions. He is unable to make anything of the way in which on the one hand the mineral kingdom and plant kingdom, and on the other hand the animal kingdom and human kingdom reveal themselves to him. And when people believe they can succeed in doing so this comes from a certain dullness. Because they take life too easily they are unwilling to go into all the doubts which arise from observing the kingdoms of Nature. But now, when one presses on to knowledge, when one trains oneself in the direction given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, then to a certain extent a change takes place in our contemplation of the mineral and plant kingdoms, as well as in our view of the connection with the animal and human kingdoms. Unconsciously men already have, to a high degree today, a feeling for this change, even if it does not enter consciousness. It remains indeed in the unconscious—just as I told you that today in the natural course of evolution man passes by the Guardian of the Threshold unconsciously. It is actually a certain fear of the truth which always unconsciously holds men back from really pressing on so that they come to this change. I am speaking in Imaginations, my dear friends, in Imaginations translated into words. In reality these things cannot be appropriately described in any other way. For when man brings to life within him what can be made living, when he applies himself to what is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, looking at the mineral and plant kingdoms with this transformed power of cognition, he will always experience something like fear. But you should not have to shudder nor get gooseflesh at the description of these conditions. People avoid them because they are afraid. From this you ought to understand that of course when picturing these conditions one can indeed get gooseflesh to a certain degree, and on that account people just get frightened. When such knowledge is acquired, on looking at the mineral and plant kingdoms, one always experiences something like the smell of a corpse; there is a corpse-like smell which characterises as if in a vivid feeling what is living in the mineral and plant kingdoms. On the contrary, When with transformed cognition we look at the animal kingdom and the kingdom of man, there is always a sensation that can be described by saying: actually (you will forgive me, I know, for putting this Imagination into words) actually so long as they are in a physical body men remain—even the most advanced of them—where what in reality is hidden within them is concerned, always children, thorough children. The simple truth is that far more lies hidden in a man between birth and death than he can develop outwardly, can bring to manifestation out of himself.

Therefore, because in supersensible knowledge there is always a gradual ascent from semblance to actual reality, you see that when looking at, observing the outer world as it now is, we actually have to do with semblance alone. For the corpse-like smell of which I have spoken and, forgive me, the childishness of men, are veiled. The corpse-like smell finds, if I may say so, too dull a nose in our physical men, the etheric nose not being sufficiently developed. And the childishness of men does not allow us to confess its presence because , as men, we are too conceited to do so. Yet this is how the matter stands. My explaining what I have just been describing one points at the same time to there being far more hidden in in man than can be given practical proof. The question may now be asked: If man does not perceive the reality in minerals nor plants, if he perceives no reality in animals either—not even in his own being as man, where then is his right setting on earth? Strange as it may seem we find him placed among beings who belong neither to the mineral and plant kingdoms, nor to the animal and human kingdoms, but lie between them. He bases his being upon a kind of plant-animal, or animal-plant. were there a being here on earth neither wholly plant nor wholly animal, but having mere plant nature where their inner organisation is concerned, and having the power to go around, to move about at will like the animals—now this is what I meant were there beings who on being examined anatomically would not be found to have muscles and blood within them but whose anatomy would resemble that of the plants, with only their cells and tissue, but if these beings were able to move at will like the animals, or were there wandering round our earth animals that on dying left plantlike corpses, then man in his whole attitude of soul would really belong among these beings. Here in his earthly existence man would really be able to comprehend such beings. But again the remarkable thing is that for their part these beings could not exist on earth, these beings are only to be found in other worlds. They could not flourish in earth existence. Thus, we may say that man really lacks the faculty for knowledge—and this particularly apparent today's—which enables him to penetrate directly into the being of minerals and plants. and also of animals and men. And the beings he would directly perceive in their whole constitution are just these which could not live on the earth. This is the remarkable position of man where his relation to nature around him is concerned.

But here on earth man stands also in a strange relation to himself. Man is on the one hand a being who has conceptions. When, however, he puts this faculty for conceiving, for having ideas, into action, in the conception he loses his own identity. And he actually has his identity, that is not able to make an appearance in the conception, only when something—his will—works up out of the unconscious. If the will were not to work up and we were to have no trace of it in us, could we have andy ideas about it. The whole world would seem to us ghostly. We should have a ghostly world before us, which about describes the world of scientific concepts; this would actually constitute our world. Imagine the world looking as it is described by natural scientists or zoologists; just think of it being nothing more than what is found in books on Botany and Mineralogy. Real Botany and Mineralogy contain far more than what we find in books. But imagine you were taken into a world described in books, where there was nothing more than what is described in books; it would indeed be a world of mere apparitions, a proper world of ghosts. The world not being one of ghosts is amply due to the will having something to say. Now look! Were you able to fly—I don't mean with a machine but were you able to fly yourself, if you had no need of earth under your feet and were you able to move freely without the earth—then you would come near to perceiving the world in this ghostly fashion. Even if you could only follow the world with your eyes when awake it would appear very ghostly, not so much so as when described by the natural scientist, but all the same it would appear very ghostly. You have a feeling of the solidity of world existence only because you stand with your feet on the ground. And this pressure of your feet against the ground gives you the feeling, akin to the will, but watered-down will, that you are not in a ghostly world but in one that is solid. Were you not to have this feeling, should you only see, the world would appear to you a very ghostly place. You do not tell yourself what is going on in the subconscious; in the subconscious something is going on that makes man say (in the subconscious he does say it): Yes, the world looks very like a ghost! Were it really what is presented by my eyes I should never be able to stand firm, I should have to sink down; and as I do not sink, the world is not as presented by my eyes. This conclusion is constantly being arrived at in the unconscious. The entirely ordinary, most everyday relation to the world is as complicated as this. It is always an unconscious conclusion that to a certain extent originates with the will. Thus in mere conception we actually lack—to use an erudite expression, a pedantic expression—we lack the subject, it drops out. That we have a subject and feel ourselves bound up with the world comes from the will.

Again, when we will, when we develop the will, the object is actually lacking. The object does not come into our consciousness at all as something properly solid. If I want simply to lift this little book from the left side over to the right, and actually do it—the real object of the will does not enter consciousness at all. You can see the passage of the book, the conception which takes its ghostly way into the will, but the actual object of the will does not enter consciousness. So that man when he makes conceptions and also when he wills (this again sounds grotesque because an Imagination is being clothed in words) man as a conceiver as well as a willer is—if you will forgive me—a cripple. He conceives in a ghostly way and wills incompletely. What man is in reality, is actually neither quite within his conception nor his will; once again it is in the centre between the conception and the will. But all this goes on in ordinary life without being able to enter consciousness. In the same way as the plant-animal is unable to enter external nature, what man actually is cannot enter his consciousness. For this reason I have often spoken to you of the fact from another point of view by saying: man perceives the real ego like a hole in life's events. You see we have to be clear that holes can also be perceived. Man knows nothing of sleep, he wakes, sleeps; wakes, sleeps; wakes, sleeps. But reviewing the course of his life he is faced by empty space in his consciousness, the hole in consciousness, and he sees just as if there were a white surface before him with black holes where really nothing is to be seen. Thus he looks at the holes that, during sleep, are there in consciousness. But it is also the same with our ego in waking life. Our ego is not in reality brought into consciousness: in the consciousness there is only a hole for this ego, and perceiving this hole is the only thing that makes us aware that we really have an ego.

These things, that appear to the insensitive men of today as sophistry, must gradually become an elementary consciousness in man. For in the future man will not be able to found life on dogmatic conceptions, as has been possible for him in the past owing to the still existing remains and after effects of atavistic clairvoyance. In future we shall have to base life on grounds that are easy to detect. It will have to be part of our everyday conceptions that mineral and plant kingdoms are observed after the manner of Goethe. For Goethe only examined the phenomenon, and did not believe that in the phenomenon there was revealed anything but, at best, the basic phenomena, the archetypal phenomena and that phenomena do not reveal in laws of nature which can be put thoughts. Goethe never looked for laws of nature, for this would have seemed to him very fantastic; he wanted to pursue the phenomena because the external world shows us in the mineral and plant kingdoms nothing but perceptions, appearances. Thus man has to look at the external world to become conscious of himself. In the mineral kingdom, in the plant kingdom I really see only the outer side, and when confronted by the animal and human kingdoms I actually see only something like an embryo of the complete being. That also must be so. For you see, in the mineral and plant kingdoms in reality there exist beings who, when observed by man, reveal only a certain side of themselves because it may be said they cannot reveal themselves in any other way. For in the mineral and plant kingdoms lives something man can only fully recognise if—please understand me, thoroughly he looks back to the world from which he came on entering physical existence through birth. Could you after birth with your thought keep possession of the consciousness that stretches backward before birth, could you, that is, look upon being born as an event in your life like—shall we say—the passing from the fifteenth to the sixteenth year, and were the backward-running thread of consciousness to remain unbroken—the consciousness being quite different before birth, before conception—without more ado you would get a view of mineral and plant kingdoms quite different from the one you get on looking from the standpoint of life between birth and death. For you would then say to yourself the followings I have come from the spiritual world through birth. I have entered this physical realm. Why should I have done this? Why should I not have remained in the spiritual realm? Why have I been enticed down to earth at all? For one may speak here of enticement. Then, if you were able to remember, you might says I have been enticed to earth for the reason that suddenly in the course of my development between death and a new birth, it seemed—I came into a sphere where it seemed—as if certain beings had flown away, as if they really should be there, were missing—and were not there. To put it bluntly, in the time just before birth in the spiritual world one is dogged by the feeling that one misses certain beings which actually belong there and are not there. Everything goes to show that these beings are lacking. And if one comes down through birth, these beings are there in the minerals and in the plants, but as though banished, as if these beings were banished from the world just left, as if they could not really flourish, would half die and thus create the corpse-like smell, would become half dead in the world one has entered. Before birth we long to know certain exiles. We only know there are banished beings, but where are they? Then we go into the physical world and perceive them, but they might be said to be embalmed, mummified. For in the world we have entered it is only possible for them to be embalmed, mummified, dried up. It is perfectly right, on being confronted by the mineral world and the world of the plants, that we should have the feeling we are looking at beings exiled from the spiritual world, from the regions in which we were before having to enter physical life.

And when we look at animals and men end see their childishness, then, if we can develop the power to see more deeply into being, we remember that these animals and men, as they actually are here in the world in which we live between birth and death are never finished, never actually bring to completion the whole of their life which is conditioned by their inner being. Anyone looking at animals in the right way, anyone who can look at them with full inward and living force of knowledge, knows well that animals are not immortal, but knows too that animals experience in their group souls the whole tragedy of this not being immortal. The group souls outlast the individual life of the animal but what there is here on earth of the animals is—as I recently sale—in reality sick (see Lecture 1), and this is so on account of its deterioration through belonging to s world from which it is banished. And in his outer physical form man also is an exile in this world. He therefore remains crippled and a mere child. Man remains a child, the animal in his general being, in his physical form, is dried up. For what belongs to animal and man is found when we go through death and enter directly into the spiritual world, which then after death we observe. For actually a circle is described in the life between death and a new birth. What remains hidden here of animal kingdom and plant kingdom, what causes us to perceive that animals and men—as far as men's physical forms are concerned—are exiles from the spiritual world, banished out of the spiritual world, is first perceived by us when we pass into the spiritual world through the gate of death. There we go through an evolution and as we approach ever nearer the cosmic midnight, described in my mystery play, (see The Soul's Awakening, scene 6) we become clear that something is missing, that what is missing has run away from the spiritual world; we pursue it through birth and find it on the physical earth in the mineral and plant kingdoms. On entering this existence through birth we are never really surprised about the mineral and plant kingdoms because they are what we have been expecting. Finding animals on the physical earth, too, and men with an outer form that recalls that of the animal though it is more perfect, is astonishing to us in some measure after being born with our gift of consciousness. We begin ia understand this, however, when we know that a beginning has been made with this outer form of animal and man, which only develops in the world we enter through the gate of death.

Now it might be said: For the abstract and completely dried up religious conceptions that still persist (these conceptions were once much more full of life and really gave men something) for these abstract, dried up conceptions still remaining in our age of consciousness, all that men perceive here in the physical world, all that they should conceive as underlying the world experienced by man between death and a new birth, comes upon them too abruptly. What man experiences between death and a new birth remains on this account so problematical for men today, and can so easily be denied by the grossly material mind, because men in arriving at the age of the consciousness soul, which means the age of the intellect, lives as I have explained only in what is reflected into his consciousness. Therefore, he is also only able to live in reflected images when he goes out beyond the perceptions to where, if he stands firmly on his feet, the will plays into him in the way I have previously indicated. If no will plays in however—and in the immortal life after death no will does play in—when there is no interplay of the will and man is restricted to placing before his soul, the reflected images of his conceptions of what the world is between death and a new birth, then this world will have no certainty and will be not only ghostly but without certainty. Indeed we can go as far as to say that if men obstinately cling only to science, if they fix, their attention only upon the ghostly world given them by science, then they are quite right in denying any life at all after going through the gate of death. For what is given by science is only pictures, apparitions. And even this comes to an end when we pass the gate of death. Science is unable to contain anything of what we experience in the realm after death and before birth. For, you see, in books on mineralogy, in books on botany, in everything connected with Physiology, Geology end so forth, in any of the conceptions you can absorb about plants and minerals, you can absorb only about beings who are living in banishment here in this physical world. Again, you can also perceive in the bodies of animals and men only what has been banished here—even with all the help of your books on Zoology and Anthropology, and, if you widen the field of your thought you can really put all knowledge in the same category—you are only able to perceive what is living down here in banishment. But when you reflect that before birth you feel the lack because they really are not there of just these beings experienced here after birth, that in animals and men you then experience what does not exist down here, you will understand that into the conceptual life of science nothing at all of immortal life can enter, and that since it lives in images science in its own domain has a perfect right not to trouble itself about immortal life. It in for this reason that, since the fifteenth century, in the epoch when the conceptions of science are dominating the whole of mankind, man has on the one side the robust, crude nature actually representing for him the whole of reality, and on the other side a realm that he wishes to reach with only the weakened mirrored images of the age of the consciousness soul. This comes before him as though he were saying to himself: Now that I come to see (this happens in the subconscious, for it is there he comes to doubt immortality) when I come to see that what I think are only reflected images, then were I to believe these reflected images would still be there after my death, including the images of my self, I should be just as stupid as if I believed that there were coming towards me out of my mirror here on the wall the men who appear to approach me—that they were not simply reflected but were actually coming towards me.

It is simply characteristic of this epoch of the development of the consciousness soul that if man will not advance to a spiritual comprehension of the world, then connection with the world into which he will enter once he has passed through the gate of death will vanish from him more and more. It will also disappear from his thought life, from his conscious life, but he will not cease to long for it. And even the most hardened deniers of immortality have in the depths of their will, where longing is born, the longing to experience something of the world man enters through the gate of death, the world from which he comes on passing through the gate of birth. They have a longing. The present time is sick with this longing. And the many illnesses of the present time are the expression of this longing holding sway in man, and of man's inability to find conscious conceptions for his longing. If anything is living in the sphere of the will which we are unable to master by conception (again one has to develop very fundamental concepts to speaker these things) when man cannot overcome by his conception what is living in the sphere of his will, then he starts to rage. This is the essence of raging, or frenzy, that something is living in the realm of the will that man cannot comprehend with his capacity for conception. And if man refuses to give in and agree to recognise the existence of the spiritual world, so that through the recognition of the spiritual world he comprehends what has already taken shape in the sphere of the will, than this raging will become ever greater and greater in the world; the raging which indeed presents itself today as the next stage for men after the—not forthcoming but always hoped for—conclusion of peace. This is not anything which can be talked about in the way things ere discussed at a bowling club where, according to the usual philistine conceptions, people come to an understanding as to the possibility of getting some kind of relief or redress. No, it is something connected with the deepest reality of human evolution. Man cannot struggle against the development in him of what enters the sphere of his will. He has no power over it. He is able only to make up his mind consciously to penetrate to the sphere of the spirit so that he learns to understand what is permeating the region of his will. By this means an ordered co-operative life for men can be developed in future in place of this raging.

You see, men turning to the spiritual world which will be revealed in our time by a special wave of events, is not an affair only affecting mean subjectively; it is an objective necessity for man to turn to the spiritual world in this age of the consciousness soul. For changes have even now entered human evolution.

Up to the time in the Mystery of Golgotha took place in earthly life, up to that time, everything man needed for standing here in the world with some measure of security came just through sleep. Before the Mystery of Golgotha man slept in a different way from what he now sleeps, whatever the physiologists may say. Those prophetic natures like the Hebrew prophets to whom such sublime things were revealed in dreams, exist no longer, therefore, in the same form. For today these things are not given to men by God in sleep. This used to happen. This is just the great crossing point in evolution. And pictures of the future were not given only to the prophetic natures but in the time of the Greeks men still had their thoughts given them during sleep. On waking, man brought his thoughts back with him. The structure of the human organism was still such that man could bring back his thoughts. For quite a while this went on working, for the fact is that men actually became headless in the fifteenth century—you will forgive mel To become headless means that the head could no longer he used properly, the head could no longer bring back thoughts out of sleep.

One of the results arrived at through Spiritual Science is that we recognise our head as an instrument to have been really of much less use and much more dried up since the fifteenth century than it was before that time. But it is only now that this has become so noticeable; and it will become ever more noticeable if some means is not found to compensate, s0 that the evaporation of the head is made good again by the spiritual world. For up to the present, up to the nineteenth century, the other nature, man's breast nature has always been accustomed to what the head was still getting from sleep during the Greco-Latin period. The breast nature was inured to this, and in their headless condition men were still receiving impulses as an after effect; they were still in the habit—or I might say men still had the gesture of the thought, the shadow of the thought. But this shadow too will pass away and men will have no thoughts at all if they leave their thinking only to their head. And this is really how the matter stands; it is shown by men's reluctance to think. They have less and less will to think. On the one side they want to have thoughts dictated by nature, for what they like best is merely to make experiments and let the experiments say what they themselves should be thinking. But men prefer not to do the thinking themselves. They even have no proper faith in it, for it is their opinion that what they think out lacks true reality. It is true that there is no reality if you take the mere thoughts. We can come to see, however, that thinking, not the thoughts but the thinking, must become active. And when thinking is made active, this means the spiritual world is coming into play. Today when you really begin to think actively, you can do nothing further than let the spiritual world play a part in you. Otherwise you do not think; you think as little as the scientist thinks today who prefers to let his experiments or his investigations dictate everything to him. Or you think so little as the modern students of sociology who, because they have no will to be active, because they do not come to grips with real social impulses which can be grasped only by being active, actually work with what can be discovered in history, what is inherited from the past. Think for once how men, because they themselves no longer have impulses able to create the social structure, have come down to looking back to the time when thoughts were still formed. The matter is then seen from only a false point of view. It was Rousseau who held up to men the natural state, because he had the feeling that in his day nothing could be gained unless men became active in their pursuit of knowledge of the higher worlds. Well, and even modern socialism likes to indulge in a study of mankind's primitive state; it is something that particularly interests the socialists. They study the original conditions of mankind, their primitive conditions, they study the most savage original peoples, primitive peoples, so as to understand how men are meant to live in social co-operation. This is recognised by all who are familiar with these things. Everywhere there is a certain fear of what is making its presence so inevitably felt as the first dawning of connection with the spiritual world, a certain fear of active thinking. This is why there is difficulty in understanding my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, for example, which makes such demands on active thinking. In it the thoughts are different from the usual thoughts of today. And people often stop short when reading this book for the simple reason that they would like to read it as any other book is read. But the other books particularly popular today—well, I think you will agree, they are read in a comfortable easy chair where one can just let thoughts go by with as little trouble as possible. Many people do any reading they go in for just like that. Don't delude yourselves into believing that these men often read newspapers in a different way (present company, of course, always excluded); it is true that emotions are mixed up with this reading, and worries too. But even the newspapers that are devoured so sensationally are also read by letting the pictures slip by. Ah, but all one has tried to put into The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity cannot be read just like that. There you have continually to give yourself a shake to prevent the thoughts sending you to sleep, my dear friends! For it was not written with the idea that you would simply sit in an easy chair; naturally you can sit, even rest your back, but then, just because you are physically at rest, you have to try with the whole of you to set the inner being of soul and spirit in motion so that the whole thinking begins to move. Otherwise you get nowhere but go to sleep. Many indeed do go to sleep and they are not always the least sincere; the insincere ones are those who read The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity just like any other book and then believe they have really followed the thoughts. They have not followed them, they have on the contrary just jumped over them as if they were the husks of words; they go on reading the words without taking in what actually follows from the words as the spark should be produced by flint and steel. But this is something that must be required of what has to take hold of the evolution of mankind in the present and the immediate future, for through it man will gradually raise himself to the spiritual world in the right way. By active thinking man's inner relations to the spiritual world will be kindled and then he will make ever greater progress. Today he can already get very far by carrying out such things as are described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But there too it is sufficiently indicated how pre-eminently necessary it is to develop coherent, connected thinking where there is no broken thread—when the thread of the thought is carefully followed.

In this longing, today more or less lacking in clarity and consciousness, to push oneself upward with unconscious thinking to the sphere of the spirit—and it is possible to do this—there is mingled a desire from the past, a weary desire, to go on thinking incoherently. Just recently I have drawn your attention to how contrary it is to men's sense of comfort to have to progress step by step in conscious thinking. They would much prefer to leave things more to the unconscious, and not in thought go on to the next point and then again to make a further step. Isn't it so? You see, Spiritual Science as we understand it here and as in a sane way it reckons with the unbroken sequence of the thoughts in the way you know—well, it is not that this Spiritual Science cannot be understood if thinking is made active, but men simply want to understand Spiritual Science in a different way from how they must understand it; instead of which they would like the thread to be continually broken. When you go deeply into what Spiritual Science gives you, when you plunge into it with real energy (have patience, in the present epoch only faint indications of this can as yet exist) then, already today, by developing the power of thought, by following in thought Saturn, Sun and Moon, as described in my Occult Science, you can follow this evolution up to where man stands there in the world, and you can press on to your own life, penetrate this life of yours with the thought which is thus made vigorous. Then you come to certain conceptions which, although not as you would like them to appear but entirely in the connection, in the coherence, of the thinking, enlighten you about their being, about their nature, about what they are and their character. By bringing to life what is said about Saturn, Sun, Moon and their corresponding details, and then about the evolution of the earth, applying all this to your individual selves, you would be able to progress to your own being; only you have to go on in your thought to the perception of yourself, not letting the thoughts be broken but keeping them coherent and connected. What in this way man begins rightly today enlightens him up to the stage where he should become clear about his own personal being. In this longing, still present more or less unconsciously in men, however, something else is mingled with the broken thread of thought, something calculated! Man would like to find out something of the kind about his being; what does he do? He takes old antiquated knowledge of which, it goes without saying, the venerable nature is certainly not to be disparaged, which, however, has need of explanation when applied in a new epoch—he calculates, reckons, breaks the thread of thought at any point, calculates constellation of the stars, and after that the thread of thought can break, and quite externally without any sequence in the thought this being of man as he appears on earth is supposed to develop without any thinking.

You see, even if the Church, the Roman Catholic Church as I described it to you yesterday, denies what today is most necessary of all, this can be made good just by taking anything like the description of the inner vision of John of the Cross and living today in the sense of the evolution that conforms with Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. What is contained in this book follows on today precisely from what a man such as St. John of the Cross wills; whereas the Catholic Church denies it and wishes even today to see the old way of John of the Cross applied to modern man, as indeed it is to so many people. Because they are too comfort-loving they do not want a life that is active in spirit, a life that has already reached a stage of energetic activity when conceptions are accepted such as those given by Spiritual Science. They would like these to be brought up to date in a more usual form of thought, preferring to remain with what is old and hoping that out of this lack of thought there might spring what should explain present-day mankind. Naturally this is no adverse judgment about what is venerable, but from every point of view it must be indicated that one should not venture to deny what is placed as spiritual necessity into the present evolution of mankind, the evolution beginning with the age of the consciousness soul. The important thing is for man really to understand what today is required of mankind in world-evolution. I believe that out of right feeling for the very things which men find irksome, and do not want, a better attitude towards Spiritual Science will be adopted more and more, and only when this better attitude to Spiritual Science has come about will the social life also be enriched. At this point man will be able to become clear about the life of mankind because he will then have the necessary strength of thought to enlighten himself concerning man's life. For where this enlightenment about man's life is concerned man of today suffers from a very precarious state of affairs. Whether you are a follower of Lenin or Trotsky, whether you are a Marxist or any other kind of thinker about the right form for the social structure of men, in each of these views there lives a state of affairs that is precarious and cannot be understood without the fruitful intervention of Spiritual Science. Doubtless you will admit that man has now entered the epoch of the consciousness soul. He has to develop consciously what arises as social structure. Otherwise nothing will go right. He has to take his place consciously in the world; it is really necessary that man should be conscious. But he should also consciously grasp the relation between men, life in society, the social life. An uncertain state of affairs hinders him in this. The fatal thing is that man can never have a conception of more than one man. And as neither two men (I mean physical men) nor two things (physical things) can be in the same place at the same time—which decides the law of impermeability—two men cannot be in human consciousness at the same time, the actual conception cannot be made of two men! simultaneously. It is very important to take note of this. We cannot live with another man without making a conception of him, neither can we develop any knowledge about the social life in common unless we make conceptions about other men. But today man, because he is able to conceive only of one man, generally prefers to conceive only of himself, to make a conception of himself as man. And social thinking is content to demand a co-operative life in which man's conception is always merely of himself. Man does not get away from the conception of his own self; he often talks of doing so, but in reality today he does not easily get rid of himself. It is only when he makes every effort to fulfil the requirements of Spiritual Science that he gradually finds it possible in some measure to get free of himself. For Spiritual Science sows in the world the seeds of thoughts having a very wide perspective, and this is how man grows into the habit of getting free from himself. As today, if he becomes a spiritualist, man grows more egoistic than he was before, if he would penetrate into the spiritual world on that other path, the path of Spiritual Science, he becomes more selfless. Spiritual Science, therefore, is not simply the handing over of knowledge, but spirit-knowledge is actually something unconditionally necessary for educating modern man in social life. It is for this reason that no cure will be forthcoming if a start is not made in this matter, it men do not really give heed to the necessity for first making a conception. There can be no social reform without schooling to begin with, without men first being instructed. And when this is neglected men miss the possibility of receiving concepts that embrace their longing. And, if I am to get at the root of the matter, men will became more frenzied than ever.

This is the inner connection, my dear friends. But it is desirable that this same inner connection should be perceived. One would wish above all things that this inner connection should be felt by everyone entering upon Spiritual Science and wishing to live in it up to some point or other. This is something that everyone will want to ponder who has the wish to take Spiritual Science and the Movement of Spiritual Science in earnest. It cannot well be overlooked, it cannot well remain unnoticed, that when we enter into relation with Spiritual Science this Spiritual Science makes certain demands on the human heart and mind to widen the interests beyond narrow, personal interests. It is really true that in talking of Spiritual Science one simply speaks of things which, if a right relation is to be established with them, makes it necessary for man to free himself from his most narrow interests! He need have no fear of becoming unpractical on that account: he becomes much more practical. It is just this belief that he is practical which has gradually been arrived at through being unspiritual. In reality the practical man of today is terribly unpractical. And these 'practical' men have actually landed us in the present catastrophe. Herein lies something of tremendous importance which man really must always take for granted if he wishes rightly to understand what has to do with Spiritual Science, namely that he must get free from his narrowest interests. He must rid himself of the immediately personal; for it does not help matters when people carry their narrow personal interests into the Anthroposophical Movement. That is always just the cause of any kind of mischief in the relation taken up towards Spiritual Science. It is also naturally the reason for what is still such a difficulty in our Movement, that people although often abstractly in theory, having the good will to come to Spiritual Science with their own thinking, feeling and willing, nevertheless do not bring all the necessary strength really to enter upon selflessness, which indeed must be called upon for understanding rightly what is said from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. Thus a kind of spirit-condition not easily found today in the world, but the opposite of which is prevalent in the modern world, must be demanded for the health of the Anthroposophical Movement, my dear friends! For the difference between the sincere presentation of the knowledge of Spiritual Science and all other knowledge arising at present, lies in this presentation of Spiritual Science being no personal affair, no personal opinion. Were I obliged to hold the view that I should lecture only about merely personal opinions and not concerning what is revealed today and just what is necessary for mankind, I should prefer to remain silent. For to uphold personal opinions and personal aspirations in a Movement that is anthroposophical is something impermissible. That should not be. A Movement such as is striven for here is justified only when there is the will to present merely what one is allowed to observe out of the spiritual world.

When you describe the appearance of any town you may, according to circumstance, make the description either interesting or tedious, but what the town looks like does not depend upon you. You describe something objective. What you yourself want, what is your own opinion, should come just as little to expression in Spiritual Science. What must take effect in Spiritual Science according to modern demands is all that is spiritually observed. Those who are able actually to will merely what is personal can for that reason only imperfectly understand what should hold good in a movement for Spiritual Science. They continually confuse what should hold good in a Movement such as is meant here with something else drawn, more than ever from the personal. How many there are who coming to Anthroposophy would like their own opinion to be justified by Spiritual Science. They are not always equipped with the open mind necessary for the acceptance of Spiritual Science. Very often they come to it with something quite different to this open mind. They would like this or that to be true, then in some way, while admitting that the investigator of Spiritual science may know something about the truth, persuade themselves that what one thinks oneself one says. Then they would be happy. But this fine distinction must be noticed; it is a fine distinction although a tremendously far-reaching one; there is a far reaching and important distinction between the one who wants to accept what is imparted by the spiritual world and the one who actually wishes only to have confirmation of what it pleases him to think. Only by the most punctilious self-examination, by conscientious self-examination, will the distinction be discovered. The distinction is often unnoticed by those who come to Spiritual Science; it must, however, be noticed. If it is noticed it will become apparent that through a Movement for Spiritual Science something of a new stream of life must flow which was not there before. It is really not possible for an Anthroposophical Movement to be like a mere soft current of air blowing towards anyone who brings to Spiritual Science the Philistine tendencies of his earlier life and then believes he will find what he is only too willing to acknowledge in Philistinism corroborated by Spiritual Science.

When we proceed in this matter earnestly, conscientiously, we shall not want merely to find corroboration of our actual individual opinion; and we shall also come to understand many things which might be said to be obliged to arise as new things in a Movement for Spiritual Science of this kind, things that must do harm if left unnoticed. In a movement in the act of arising like this Movement for Spiritual Science much can work harmfully that cannot cause so much harm in old, dried up Movements, no longer of use or of very little use. We have really to go into these fins points, my dear friends! You see, connected with the endeavour merely to see our own opinions, our own aspirations, justified by what is revealed through Spiritual Science, a remarkable technique of 'touching-up' is developed concerning what comes forth and comes forth perfectly naturally, within a movement such as ours. In this movement for Spiritual Science we must be alive to the fact that phenomena with men cannot be taken as if in a bowling club or something of the kind where men can reveal how verbose they have become in the ordinary world where nothing new is required of them. We must recognise in all earnestness that the aims of investigation into what is spiritual cannot find expression through our own conceptions; we must really prepare ourselves to receive the things. We should picture that something is wishing to flow into the world, something that should more and more widen itself out, so that everything should really be received in full consciousness. Many connections not yet perceived will be perceived later. This willingness to receive everything as in some sense a preparation, will certainly not be present in those who carry their personal aspirations into the impulse of Spiritual Science, for at the first possible moment they will get done with things, giving them the bent of their ordinary opinions. They do not mould their opinions in accordance with Spiritual Science, they mould the knowledge gained through Spiritual Science in accordance with their opinions. And so we often have given out the kind of thing I would like to describe in the following way.

Now you know that the Anthroposophist has to judge the world in a certain way, the world of nature as well as the world of human beings. Education in Spiritual Science consists indeed in our learning to judge afresh the surrounding world and our relation to it and in our learning to look more deeply, into the world. People very often remark when, let us say, the relation of three men is in question: The Anthroposophist B. has been criticizing the man A. And, my dear friends, as soon as we overstep the usual Philistine sphere, so largely around us today, two standpoints can be put forward where the formation of judgment between man and man is concerned: one of these standpoints is that of reason, the second being the standpoint of sympathy. Thus B's judgment of A may be in accordance with what arises from an inner necessity at same time to do something or other purely out of his—B's—sympathy for A. Should it now suit C to be antipathetic because he does not reflect sufficiently and does not assume that it may be possible for pure sympathy to come into the matter here, out of necessity, then, basing his judgment simply on reason he will say: whatever can he be doing that for? Or this inner necessity may speak in such a way that it is not sympathy that becomes dominant but, because of certain factors, reason. Yes, and when it suits the other better he lets sympathy have its say and gives as his verdict: what an unsympathetic person! How utterly without feeling the man is and what a prosy rationalist! He judges purely from the standpoint of reason. In this way the crudest misunderstandings arise in the case of just those who bestir themselves to grasp the inner nerve of existence, where they have at one time to do something based on reason, another time something just out of sympathy. And when it suits this other man (C) in accordance with the sympathetic view he condemns what is done from reason, and what is done out of sympathy he condemns from the point of view of reason, and he can always condemn or praise as he likes. By this path we never arrive at what is right, we only arrive at what is right if we begin by saying: I must consider the case, I must look into the causes why sympathy or reason have held sway here. It is things like this out of which the little misunderstandings in life arise which often grow to very destructive proportions in men's life in common. It is just this that our education in Spiritual Science should help us to overcome. For life is such that it expresses itself in a twofold way. And because it expresses itself in a twofold way one can always condemn at pleasure one of the two cases. This is very little taken into account, however, above all not taken into account where the teachings of Spiritual Science itself is concerned. This, too, must be placed in the world with definite intention. In an individual case either one or other of the two standpoints can be chosen according to convenience, if greater attention is not paid to the deeper grounds out of which the spiritual seeker is obliged to act. He may often be misunderstood. And if there is no agreement in what must be done out of inner duty in accordance with the facts, then it is possible to misunderstand everything, since the world has this dual form of expression.

You see we can fall into the following error for example. When anyone is eager to have what suits him substantiated, he may just fall into the worst form of belief in authority. Belief in authority can naturally make its influence felt, and this influence is actually frequent and of wide range in the very sphere where Spiritual Science also would be active, which wishes to make man into a perfectly free, self-reliant being. The other pole of the belief in authority, however, is hatred of authority. And fundamentally the man who does not feel himself drawn to Spiritual Science through entering into the facts revealed from the spiritual world, but wishes to have these truths conveyed to him by authority, wanting to believe in authority because it is easier than going into things—this man is terribly apt to spring over from his belief in authority, that always has in it a certain kind of love of authority, to hatred of authority. And all manifestations that have arisen in our particular movement of this leap from blind worship of authority, which sometimes has even appeared with a certain shamelessness in the moment of passing over to hatred, this passing from blind worship of authority to hate—all this is something inwardly present as a danger. It is very important to keep these connections in mind, for these connections make it terribly difficult today to create an Anthroposophical Movement so that it will prosper. It must be created in a successful way for the sake of mankind's welfare.

Now, my dear friends, in my life I have found quite a number of people who were spiritual people and were seeking in all sincerity away into Spiritual Science, into some kind of Spiritual Science, who were also in a way advanced in their development. A certain type among them was disillusioned, people who had been disillusioned by one or other of the modern spiritual movements and who then in some place or another came across us—how many are disillusioned today by the Blavatsky Movement, the Besant Movement or some other Movement. There we do not see the characteristic phenomenon that takes such curious forms in the Anthroposophical Movement; but there we have people, for example, who are to a certain extent spiritually advanced; then after some time one again comes across them but now they say: You are completely wrong! And these meetings are not infrequent. Spirituality today is not at all common but there are men indeed who say to one after a time: You are actually wrong, for, you see, the things you give out in Spiritual Science—there's no possible sense in publishing them! But men are not in inclined to accept them; they are certainly not sufficiently mature. All this can only serve one purpose to be developed in oneself and then kept to oneself. I have found many such people who say: It is a definite characteristic of the man who is really advanced spiritually that it no longer enters his head to speak about it to his fellowmen; he keeps the matter to himself. There is indeed no lack of such people in the world. I have never been able to come to an understanding with these people about what out of a certain inner ground I learn from the spiritual world. These men do quite useful work in a spiritual community but they have a hermit tendency, even when at the same time they remain in association with others. For it is possible to become a hermit in spite of wearing elegant shoes and leading an Hotel life. This one sees this double life being led by a number of people; they are indeed the modern Hotel dwellers; for all I care they may be well dressed but they lead this life as an outward mask to hide what is within them; they have their inner life of the spirit with no wish to share it with their fellow men. This seems to one to be doing what is not right, to be sinning against mankind. For one is right in saying that such men have en effect on the spiritual life, what they experience goes into the spiritual stream. Man is not a self-contained being, therefore what he experiences has value and its own significance in the spiritual world, but the question of time always plays its part there. Men like this who live in such a way nowadays, as many do whom I have known, bring about something indeed in the spiritual world which however only comes to maturity after a long time, in the later epochs of mankind. Then, however, can, and quite certainly would, were there always only those who as hermits develop their spiritual being, having no wish to teach what knowledge they have gained from the spiritual world, what they have developed in themselves—then by the time the fruits of these men are ripe, people outside would have so deteriorated that they would no longer be able to receive the knowledge! Earth evolution would be endangered: connection would be missed. We live indeed today at a time when certain spiritual truths such as those of which we have been speaking must unconditionally be imparted to mankind. Things will not be helped by the attitude expressed, for example, by one of my acquaintances who in a certain sense was spiritually advanced. He came to Berlin and I asked him whether he would come to hear a lecture of mine, just to see how the Movement was run (this is some time ago). He answered: No, holding lectures and talking to people serves no possible purpose! To sit together for half-an-hour and have a little talk I find very pleasant—but let us leave spiritual things alone when we can; everyone must settle those for himself! To pay a civil visit and pass the time of day is best for just those people who are seeking the spiritual. And this attitude is a prevalent one. It would be more comfortable, my dear friends, to live in accordance with such an attitude. And the word comfortable certainly does not describe what it is nowadays days to get up in front of people to impart what one feels impelled to impart as a duty. In an Anthroposophical Movement it should be borne in mind that work is done out of inner necessity, and what happens is not a matter of choice but the punctual observance of a duty.

I have used these words at the end of our studies today because I have wanted once again to take the opportunity of calling attention to what is necessary if a movement for Spiritual Science is to be taken nowadays as earnestly as it should be taken. For what can be made of an Anthroposophical Movement, if personal aspirations, personal ambition, is brought in, can cause much injury must cause much injury. Besides there is still the shadow side, namely, that whoever thinks to find only what is just personal corroborated through Spiritual Science cannot discern whether the other may not be acting also merely from personal ambition. And a terrible doom is then forthcoming. I wanted to give an indication of these things, my dear friends. We shall be speaking further next Friday.

The following lecture was formerly in GA 136 entitled, The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature, published in German as, Die Geistige Wesenheiten in den Himmelskoerpern und Naturreichen. In Bn/GA 158, it is the 2nd of 12 lectures in the series, The Human's Connection with the Elemental World, published in German as, Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der Elementarischen Welt. Kalewala. Olaf Asteson. Das russische Volkstum. Die Welt als Ergebnis von Gleichgewichtswirkungen.

First of all I must apologise to you that I cannot give my lecture in the language of this country. The fact of this lecture being given is in response to the wish of the friends of our Theosophical Society, by whom I have been summoned hither to give a series of lectures lasting a fortnight, and who had the idea of making it possible within that time of adding the two announced public lectures. Hence I must crave your pardon if many of the names and designations which are borrowed from the national epic of the Finns are not rightly pronounced by me who have no language. Only in the lecture of next Friday shall we touch upon Occult Science or Theosophy; the consideration of this evening will rather have to do with a sort of neighbouring realm which in the profoundest sense of the word belongs to the most interesting of human historical considerations, of human historical thought.

The National Epics! We need only to think of some of the well-known national epics, of the epics of Homer, which have become the epics of Greece; of the legends of the Niebelungen in Central Europe; and finally of the Kalevala, and immediately the fact shines forth, that by means of these national epics we are led more deeply into the soul of humanity and the striving of humanity than by any other historical investigation; we are so led into the soul of humanity and the striving of humanity that ancient times are brought powerfully before our souls, as vividly as the present time, but in such a way that they affect us in the immediate present just as the fate aid life of the present day humanity living around us. How uncertain and dim from the historical point of view are the descriptions of the ancient people of Greece of whom the Epics of Homer tell us, and how, when we let the contents of the Iliad—of the Odyssey work upon us, do we look into the souls of those people who are far beyond the grasp of ordinary historical observation! No Wonder that the study of the National Epics is somewhat of a puzzle to those who are occupied with the scientific or literary aspect of them! We need only point to one fact with regard to the Greek Epics, to a fact which has been repeatedly expressed by an enlightened observer of the Iliad in a very beautiful book on Homer's Iliad which appeared only a few years ago,—I mean Hermann Grimm, the nephew of the great philologist of German myths and legends, Jacob Grimm. By letting the figures and facts of the Iliad work upon him, Hermann Grimm is again and again obliged to say: “Oh! this Homer!” We do not need to-day to go into the question of the personality of Homer; When he describes anything which is borrowed from a handicraft, from an art, it is as though he were an expert in that handicraft, in that art. If he describes a battle, a contest, he seems to be perfectly acquainted with all the strategic and military principles which come into consideration in the conduct of war. And rightly does Hermann Grimm point out that a stern judge in such matters, namely Napoleon, was an admirer of the reality of the description of battles in Homer; and he was a man who without doubt was qualified to give an opinion whether or not the military point of view is presented before our souls in a directly expert and vivid way. From the general human standpoint we know how plastically the figures are presented to our soul by Homer as if they were immediately in front of our physical eyes. And how does such a national epic as this continue to manifest itself through the various periods? For truly, he who observes dispassionately will not receive the impression that human artific or pedagogic cult could have maintained all through the centuries up to our own days, interest in the Iliad and the Odyssey,—for this interest is self-evident and universally human. Yet these epics set us in a certain sense a task; directly we study them they present to us a very definite—even an interesting task. They must be taken quite accurately in all their details. We at once feel that there is something obscure in such national epics if we try to read them as we read any modern work of art, a modern novel, or such-like. We feel even at the first lines of the Iliad that Homer speaks with exactitude. What does he describe to us? He tells us even at the beginning what he is describing. Much is known from other descriptions not contained in the Iliad, of events which form the connecting link with the facts of the Iliad. Homer wishes only to describe to us that which he states so pregnantly in the first lines,—the wrath of Achilles. And when we go through the whole of the Iliad and consider it impartially, we have to say to ourselves:—In very deed it contains nothing but what can be shown to be the result of the wrath of Achilles. Further, another peculiar fact appears at the very beginning of the Iliad; Homer does not begin simply with facts, he does not even begin with any personal opinion, but he begins with something which in modern times would perhaps be taken as mere words; he begins by saying:—Sing to me, Oh Muse, of the wrath of Achilles:—And the more deeply we penetrate into this national epic, the more clear does it become to us that we cannot at all understand the sense, and spirit, and meaning of it all unless we take these words at the beginning quite seriously But then we have to ask ourselves:—What do they actually mean?

And now to consider the manner of representation; the whole way in which the events are brought before our souls! For many, not only professional students, but even for artistic spirits like Hermann Grimm, there was a question in those words “Sing to me, oh muse, of the wrath of Achilles,” a question which penetrated deeply into the heart. How in this Iliad, as well as in the Niebelungen or in the Kalevala, are the deeds of spiritual-divine Beings—in Homer's poems chiefly the deeds and purposes and passions of the Olympic Gods—enacted in unison with the deeds, purposes and passions of men, men who like Achilles are far removed in a certain sense from ordinary humanity, and again with the passions, purposes and deeds of men who are nearer to ordinary humanity like Odysseus, or Agamennon? When Achilles appears before our souls, he appears to us to stand alone among the human beings with whom he lives; as the Iliad continues, we very soon feel that in Achilles we have before us a personality who feels himself unable to discuss his inner life with the other heroes. Homer also brings before us how Achilles has to settle his real affairs of the heart with divine spiritual beings who do not belong to the human kingdom; how the whole way through the Iliad he stands alone with regard to the human kingdom, and on the other hand stands close to super-sensible, superhuman powers. On the other hand how strange it is, that when we focus all our human feelings in the form and manner of thinking and perceiving we have acquired in the process of civilisation, and then direct our gaze towards this Achilles, he often appears such that we are obliged to say: How egotistical! How self-centred! A being in whose soul divine-spiritual impulses are at work acts, absolutely from personal motives for a long time, so important a war for the Greeks as the Trojan war of legend, was only carried on, only produced the special episodes which are described in the Iliad because Achilles fought out for himself what he personally had to fight out with Agamemnon. And we continually see superhuman powers taking part; we see Zeus, Apollo, Athene imparting the impulses, allotting to the people, so to speak, their places. It was always remarkable to me before I took up the task of approaching these matters from the standpoint of Occult Science or Theosophy, how a very intellectual man such as Hermann Grimm with whom I had often the pleasure of personally discussing this matter, should look at these things as he did. Not only in his writings but often in personal conversation, and then much more exactly expressed he used to say: “If we only take into consideration what historical powers and impulses perform in the evolution of humanity, we do not succeed in getting at what lives and creates there, especially in the great national epics.” Hence, for Hermann Grimm, the intellectual student of the Iliad and the national poems, there was something which transcends the ordinary powers of human consciousness, the intellectual, reasoning sense-perception, the ordinary feelings; something which was for him a real power as creative as the other historical impulses. Hermann Grimm spoke of an actual creative imagination permeating human evolution just as one speaks of a being, of a reality, of something which governs man and could say more to him at the beginning of the ages which we are able to observe, which could say more to him during the development and growth of the individual races that what the ordinary soul-forces mean to man. Thus Hermann Grimm always spoke of the creative imagination as the glimmering of a world which does not expend itself in the ordinary human soul-forces; an imagination which to him in some way fulfilled the role of a co-creator in the process of human development. It is strange however, that when we consider this field of battle in the Iliad, when we consider this description of the wrath of Achilles with all the interaction of the super-sensible, divine spiritual powers, we do not arrive at such an opinion as Hermann Grimm has; and in his book on the Iliad itself we find many a word of resignation which shows us that the ordinary point of view which is taken to-day in a literary or scientific way is not reconcilable with these matters. What does Hermann Grimm arrive at with regard to the Iliad and the Niebelungen saga? He ends by assuming that the historical dynasties, the races of rulers were preceded by other such races; this is literally what he thinks. Thus he considers that probably Zeus and his whole circle represent a sort of race of rulers which had preceded the race of rulers to which Agamemnon belonged. Thus he considers that there is a certain uniformity in the history of humanity, so to speak; he considers that in the Iliad or Niebelungen saga are represented Gods or Heroes of primeval humanity whom later humanity only attempted to represent by clothing their deeds, their characters, in the dress of superhuman myths. There is much that one cannot reconcile if one takes as a basis such an hypothesis, above all the special form of the intervention of the Gods in Homer. Let us take one case. How do Thetis the mother of Achilles, Athene, and other figures of the Gods intervene in the events in Troy? They so intervene by taking the forms of mortal men, inspiring them as it were, leading them on to their deeds. Thus they do not appear themselves, but permeate living men. Living men were not only their representatives but sheaths permeated by invisible powers which could not appear in their own form, in their own being on the field of battle. Yet it would be strange to admit that primeval men of the ordinary kind should be so represented that they had to take representative men of the race of mortals as a sheath. This is only an intimation which can prove to us all that in this way we shall not arrive at a true understanding of the ancient national epics. Just as little shall we succeed if we take the figures in the Niebelungen saga, Siegfried of Xanten on the lower Rhine who was removed to the Burgundian court at Worms, who then wooed Kriemhilde the sister of Gunther, but who by virtue of his special qualities can alone woo Brunnhilde. And in what a remarkable way are described such figures as Brunnhilde of Iceland, and Siegfried: Siegfried is described as having conquered the so-called family of the Niebelungen, as having acquired, won, the treasure of the Niebelungen, By means of what he has acquired through his victory over the Niebelungen, he gains special qualities which are expressed in the epic when it is said that he can make himself invisible, that he is invulnerable in a certain respect, that he has, moreover, forces which the ordinary Gunther has not! For the latter cannot win Brunnhilde who is not to be conquered by an ordinary mortal. By means of his special powers which he has as the possessor of the treasure of the Niebelungen Siegfried conquers Brunnhilde, and on the other hand, because he can conceal the powers which he has developed, he is in a position to lead Brunnhilde to Gunther his brother-in-law. And then we find how Kriemhilde and Brunnhilde whom we meet at the same time at the Burgundian court are two very different characters—characters in whom obviously forces are at work which are not to be explained by the ordinary soul forces. Therefore they quarrelled, and therefore also it came about that Brunnhilde was able to seduce the faithful servant Hagen to kill Siegfried. That again shows us a feature which appears so remarkably in the Sagas of Central Europe. Siegfried has higher superhuman forces; these superhuman forces he has through the possession of the treasures of the Niebelungen. Finally they make of him not an absolutely victorious figure, but a figure which stands before us as a tragedy. The powers which Siegfried possesses through the treasures of the Niebelungen are at the same time a fatality. Still more remarkable do things become if we take in addition the Northern Saga of Sigurd, the slayer of the dragon, but this is enlightening. In this, Sigurd, who is none other than Siegfried, appears as the conqueror of the dragon; as he who thereby wins from an ancient race of dwarfs the treasures of the Niebelunger. And Brunnhilde meets us as a figure of a superhuman nature, as a Valkyrie figure.

Thus we see that there existed in Europe two ways of representing these things; the one which directly connects everything with the divine-super-sensible, which shows us that in Brunnhilde is meant something which belongs directly to the super-sensible world; and the other way which represents the sagas in a human form. But we recognise even here, how the Divine resounds through everything.

And now from these sagas, these national epics, let us glance into that realm of which I really ought to speak only as one who can look at things from outside; only in such a way as one can understand them if one does not speak the language in question. I beg you to take into consideration that with regard to everything which in the Kalevala has to do with Western Europe, I can only speak as one who fixes his eyes on the spiritual contents—the great, mighty figures, and whose observation of course the undoubted fineness of the epic which can only appear when one has mastered the language in which it was written, must escape. But even in such a consideration how characteristically do we encounter the Trinity in the three—it is difficult to use a name for them; one can not say Gods, one cannot say Heroes, so we will say—in the three beings whom we encounter:—Väinemöinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen. These figures utter a remarkable language when we compare them in character with one another; a language in which we recognise that the things which are to be said to us surpass what can be accomplished with the ordinary soul-forces. If we only consider these three forms externally, how they increase till they become monstrous! And yet it is peculiar that while they increase to the point of monstrosity, every individual feature stands before our eyes, so that in nowise have we any feeling that the monstrosity is grotesque, or a paradox; everywhere we have the feeling that of course that which has to be said must appear in superhuman size, in superhuman significance. And then what enigmas in the contents! Something which spurs on our souls to think of all that is must human, but which on the other hand, surpasses all that the ordinary powers of the soul can grasp. Ilmarinen, whom one often calls the Smith, the clever, artistic smith, forges for a region in which dwell the—so to speak elder brothers of humanity, or at least more primitive humanity than the Finns, forges for a strange region at the instigation of Väinemöinen, the Sampo. And we next see this remarkable thing, namely, that far from the field of action on which the facts take place of which we are speaking, many things are happening; we see how time goes by; and we see how after a definite time, Väinemöinen and Ilmarinen are induced to fetch back that which has remained in the strange land—the Sampo. He who lets the peculiar spiritual language work upon him which speaks in the forging of the Sampo, in the removal of it, and the regaining of it, has directly the impression—I must beg you to consider that I am speaking as a stranger, and as such can only speak of the impression—that the most essential thing in this magnificent poem is the forging, the removal, and the later recovery of the Sampo. And what affects me very specially and remarkably in the Kalevala is the ending. I have heard that there are people who believe that this ending is perhaps, a later addition. I feel that this ending of Mariata and her son, this entry as it were, of a very remarkable Christianity into the epic—I say expressly a very remarkable form of Christianity—belongs to the whole; and because this ending is there, the Kalevala gains a very special “nuance”, a colouring, which can so to speak, make the whale matter comprehensible to us. I may say that to my idea, such a delicate, impersonal representation of Christianity is nowhere to be found as in the ending of the Kalevala. The Christian principle is detached from anything local, the coming of Mariata to Herod, who is called Rotus in Kalevala, is expressed so impersonally that one is scarcely reminded of any locality or personality in Palestine. Indeed one might say, one is not once reminded of the historical Christ Jesus. As a most intimate concern of the heart of humanity, we find delicately indicated at the end of Kalevala the penetration of the most precious pearl of civilisation into the civilisation of Finland. And with it is connected the tragic touch which can work so deeply upon our souls, that at the moment when Christianity enters, when the Son of Mariata is baptised, Väinemöinen bids farewell to his people in order to go to an undefined locality, leaving to his people only the purport and power of that, which as a bard he had been enabled to relate of the primeval events which were included in the history of this people. This withdrawal of Väinemöinen before the Son of Mariata seems to me so significant that one might see therein the living cooperation of all that which fundamentally governed the Finnish race, the Nation-soul of the Finns, from primeval times up to the moment when Christianity found admittance into Finland; and this primeval force relates itself tom Christianity in such a way-that everything which was then enacted in the soul can be felt with wonderful intimacy. That I state as something of the objectivity of which I am conscious, something which I could never state to give pleasure in the way of flattery. We in the West of Europe have in these national epics one of the most wonderful examples of how the members of a race actually live before us in the immediate present, with their complete souls; so that through Kalevala, Western Europe learns to know the soul of Finland in such a way as to become perfectly familiar with it.

Why have I said all this? I have said it in order to characterise how in the national epics something speaks which cannot be explained through ordinary soul-forces, even if one speaks of imagination as a real power. And if, to many what is said sounds only like an hypothesis, so may that which Occult Science or Anthroposophy has to say with regard to the being of these national epics, so may the same perhaps be alleged with regard to this consideration of the national epics. Certainly I am conscious that what I have to say aims at something to which in our present day few can give their assent. Much of it will probably be regarded as fancy, as imagination; but some will at least accept it among other hypotheses which are brought forward with regard to the growth of humanity. But for those who penetrate into spiritual science as I shall permit myself to describe it in the next lecture, for them it is not an hypothesis, but an actual result of scientific investigation. The things sound strange which have to be said, because that scientific method which is to-day believed to stand quite firmly on the ground of facts, of truth, of the attainable, restricts itself to what is perceived by the external senses, to what the intellect connected with the senses and the brain can tell of things. And to-day it is simply regarded as unscientific if a method of investigation is spoken of which employs other forces of the soul, forces whereby it is possible to look into the super-sensible, at the interplay of the super-sensible with the sensible. By this method of investigation, by Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, one is led not merely to the abstract imaginings to which Hermann Grimm was led with regard to the national epics, but one is led to something which far surpasses imagination, which represents quite a different condition of soul or consciousness from that which man can have at the present point of time in his evolution. And thus by means of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, we are led back in quite a different way to human antiquity than by ordinary science. Ordinary science is accustomed to-day so to look retrospectively at the growth of humanity that what we call man to-day has gradually developed from lower, animal-like creations. Spiritual science does not at all pretend to combat this modern investigation, but acknowledges fully the magnitude and the power of the acquisitions of this natural science of the 19th century: it acknowledges the importance of the idea of a transformation of animal forms from the most imperfect to the perfect; and it acknowledge the connection between the external human form and the most perfect animal form; but it cannot at all remain at such a view of the growth of humanity, of the growth of the organism as would be presented if with an external material gaze one could view that which has been accomplished in the course of the earth's happenings in the organic world up to man. For spiritual science, the humanity of today stands beside the animal world. We look into the world which surrounds us, at the various animal forms; we look at the—in a certain way—uniform human race distributed over the earth; in spiritual science we too have unprejudiced views of the fact that in the external form everything tells in favour of the relationship of man with other organisms on the earth; but in spiritual science, when we trace the growth of humanity backwards, we cannot do so in such a way that in the grey antiquity we let the stream of humanity flow directly into the animal train of evolution. Indeed we find if we go back from the present to the past that nowhere can we directly rank the present human form, the present man, as arising out of any animal form which we know in the present. If we go back into the evolution of humanity, we find first of all—one might say—the soul-forces, the forces of intellect feeling and will, which we have in the present day developed in man in more and more primitive form. Then we get back to hoary antiquity of which ancient documents tells us so little. Even when we go back as far as the Egyptians, or the early Asiatic races, we are led back everywhere into a primeval humanity which—certainly in a more primitive but yet in a great and noble form—has the same forces, the forces of feeling, intellect and will, which of course have only found their present-day development towards the present time, but which we discover as the most powerful impulses of humanity, as the most powerful historic impulses so far as we can trace humanity backwards when we take the present-day soul into consideration. Nowhere do we find it possible to place even the most remote human race in a special relationship with the present-day animal forms. This, which spiritual science must assert is recognised to-day by thoughtful investigators of nature. But when we go further back, and consider how the human soul has changed, when we compare how a present-day man—let us say—thinks scientifically or otherwise, how he uses his intellect and his mental powers,—when we trace that back, we can trace it fairly accurately; it first teamed forth in humanity at a definite time—we might say that it shone forth in the sixth and seventh centuries before Christ. The collective configuration of the present-day feelings and thoughts does not actually reach back further than to that time which is recorded as the period of the first Greek natural philosophy.

If we go back still further, and have a sufficiently unprejudiced view we find without reference to occult science, that not only does all present-day scientific thought cease, but we find that the human soul in general is in quite a different condition, in a much more-impersonal condition; and also in such a condition that we have to describe its powers as much more instinctive. Not indeed as if we meant to say that before this time men acted from such instincts as the present-day animals have, but that guidance by the reason and intellect as it exists to-day was not there then; instead of it there was a certain instinctive, direct certainty in man; he acted from direct elementary impulses, he was not then controlled by the intellect connected with the brain. And then of course we find that in the human soul those forces still ruled unalloyed which we have now detached as the forces of intellect on the one hand, and those forces which to-day we carefully separate from the forces leading to intellectuality and science, the forces namely, of imagination. Imagination, intellect and reason worked simultaneously in those old times. The further we go back, the more do we find that what then ruled in the soul of man, what then worked, was not separated into imagination and intellect; we ought no longer to describe it as we designate a soul-force to-day when we speak of imagination. We know quite well to-day that when we speak of imagination we are speaking of a soul-power whose expressions we cannot really make use of, to which we cannot ascribe reality. The modern man is careful in this matter; he takes care not to confuse what imagination gives him with what the logic of reason tells him. If we look at that which the spirit of man manifested in those pre-historic times, before imagination and intellect were separated, then we can perceive a primeval, elementary, instinctive force ruling in the soul. In its characteristics we can find the present-day imagination, but—if we may use the expression—what at that time gave imagination to the human soul had something to do with an actuality, a reality; imagination was not yet imagination; it was still—I must not shrink from using the expression directly—clairvoyant power, was still a special capacity of the soul, the gift of the soul whereby men saw things, facts, which to-day in his epoch of civilisation when intellect and reason are to be specially developed, are hidden. More deeply did those forces which were not imagination but clairvoyant powers, penetrate into the hidden forces of existence, into the forms of existence which lie behind the sense-world. It is to this that an unprejudiced consideration must lead us when we consider the evolution of humanity retrospectively. We have to say to ourselves:—Truly we must take the world evolution, development, seriously. That the humanity of the present day has come in the last hundreds and thousands of years to its present lofty powers of reason and intellect, is a result of evolution. These soul-forces have been developed out of others. And whilst these, our present soul-forces are limited to the impressions received from the external sense-world, a primeval humanity who laid no claim to science in the present-day sense, or to the use of the intellect in the present-day sense, a primeval human soul-power at the basis of every individual race saw into the background of existence, into a realm which as a super-sensible lies behind the sensible. In all peoples clairvoyant powers were once the property of the human soul, and out of these clairvoyant powers have been developed the present-day powers of human intellect and reason—the present manner of thinking and feeling. Those soul-forces which we have to describe as clairvoyant were such that man felt at the same time:—It is not I myself which thinks in me, feels in me. Man felt as if entirely subjected physically and spiritually to higher super-sensible powers which worked and lived within him. Man felt himself to be a vessel by means of which super-sensible powers expressed themselves. If one considers that, then one also grasps the meaning of the progressive evolution of humanity. Man would have remained a dependent being who would only have felt himself as a vessel, as the sheath of powers and beings had he not progressed to the proper use of intellect and reason. Man has become more independent by the use of intellect and reason, but at the same time has been cut off for a short period of his evolution, from the spiritual world in a certain respect, cut off from the super-sensible background of existence. In the future it will be different again. The further we go back, the further does the human soul by means of the clairvoyant forces see into the background of existence, see how, out of this background of existence those forces have also emerged which have worked on man himself in pre-historic times, up to a point of time in which all the relations of the earth were still quite different from what they are to-day, when they were such that the forms of living beings were much more changeable, much more subject to a sort of metamorphosis than they are now. Thus we must go back far beyond that which one at present calls the period of human civilisation, we must trace human development and animal development side by side. And lying much farther back than is usually believed to-day, is the separation of the animal forms from the human. The animal then became rigid, more immovable, at a time in which the human form was supple and flexible, and could be modeled and impressed by that which was experienced inwardly in the soul. Then indeed we come back to a period in the development of humanity which did not reach the consciousness of the present day, but in which another consciousness existed in the soul, which was in connection with the clairvoyant forces which have just been described. Such a consciousness which could survey the past, and which saw the development of humanity emerging from the past into complete separation from all animal life, this consciousness also saw how the human forces ruled, but still in active connection with the super-sensible forces which acted with them; it saw that which in the times, for instance, when Homer's epics arose, existed only as an ancient echo, and which in still earlier times existed in much greater measure. If we go back beyond Homer we find that men had clairvoyant consciousness, which as it were, recollected human pre-historic events, and in the recollection was able to relate the circumstances of human development. In Homer's time the circumstances were such that one felt that the ancient clairvoyant consciousness was disappearing; but one still felt that it existed. It was a period in which man did not speak from himself as an independent ego-being, but in which the Gods, super-sensible, spiritual powers, spoke out of him. Thus we must take it seriously as if Homer were not speaking of himself when he says “Sing to me oh Muse, of the wrath of Achilles”; “Let a higher being sing within me, who takes possession of me when I sing and speak.” This first line of Homer is a reality. Thus we are not referred to ancient dynasties of rulers who in the ordinary sense resemble present-day humanity, butt we are referred by Homer to the fact that in primeval times there was a different humanity, in whom the super-sensible lived. Achilles is absolutely a personality of the transition period from the ancient clairvoyant to that modern mode of vision which we find in Agamemnon, in Nestor and Odysseus, and which is then led on to a higher vision. We can only comprehend Achilles when we know that Homer wished to represent in him one belonging to the ancient humanity who lived in a time which lies between that period when man still reached directly up to the ancient Gods, and the present-day humanity which indeed begins with Agamemnon. Just in this same way we are referred to a human antiquity in the Niebelungen Saga of Central Europe. The whole representation of this epic shows us that in it we have not do with men of our present time, in a certain respect, but with such men of out present time who have still presented something from the period of ancient clairvoyance. All the qualities of which Siegfried had command, whereby he could make himself invisible, whereby he had the power to conquer Brunnhilde who could not be conquered by an ordinary mortal—side by side with the others of which we are informed in him, show us that in him we have a man who has brought over into present-day humanity as if in an inner human remembrance, the achievement of the ancient soul-powers which were connected with clairvoyance and the union with Nature. At what period of transition does Siegfried stand? That is shown to us in Brunnhilde's relation to Kriemhilde, the wife of Siegfried. What the two figures signify cannot be more clearly worked out here, but we shall understand all the sagas if in the forms which are brought before us, we see symbolical representations of inner clairvoyant, or remembered clairvoyant relations. Thus, in Siegfried's relation to Kriemhilde, we have to see his relation to his own soul forces which govern within him. His soul is in a certain measure a transitional soul, because with the treasures of the Niebelungen, that is, the clairvoyant secrets of the ancient times, Siegfried brought over into the new period something which at the same time made him quite unfit for his present time. The men of ancient time could thus live with these treasures of the Niebelungen, that is, with the ancient clairvoyant powers. The Earth has altered her conditions. Hence, Siegfried, who still carries within his soul an echo of the ancient ages, does not fit into the present time, hence he is a tragic figure. How can the present age stand in relation to what is still active in Siegfried? Something of the ancient clairvoyant powers are still active in him; for when he is overcome, Kriemhilde remains behind; the treasure of the Neibelunge is brought to her, she can make use of it. We learn how later, the treasure of the Niebelungen is taken from her by Hagen. We can see that Brunnhilde also is in a certain way capable of working with the old clairvoyant forces. Hence she stands in opposition to those human beings who are suited to the present time—Gunther and his brothers, Gunther above all, of whom Brunnhilde thinks nothing. Why is that? We know from the saga that Brunnhilde is a kind of Valkyrie figure, there we have something again in the human soul: and indeed that with which in ancient times the clairvoyant powers in man could still be united, but which has withdrawn from man, which has become unconscious, so that man as he lives in the present day in the age of intellect, can only be united with it after death. Hence the union with the Valkyrie at the moment of death. The Valkyrie is the personification of active soul-forces to which the ancient clairvoyant consciousness attained, but which present-day man only experiences when he passes through the gates of death. Only then is he united with this soul which is represented in Brunnhilde. Because Kriemhilde knew something from the ancient time of clairvoyance, and knew something of the powers which the soul receives through the old clairvoyance, she is a figure whose wrath is described as the wrath of Achilles is described in the Iliad. It is amply indicated that the men who in the ancient times were still gifted with clairvoyant powers were not controlled by the intellect, did not let the intellect rule, but worked directly from their most elementary, most intense impulses. Hence the personal element, the direct egoism of Kriemhilde, as of Achilles.

The whole matter of consideration of the national epics becomes specially interesting when we add the Kalevala to those already mentioned: We shall be able to show (to-day it can only be indicated owing to the shortness of time) that spiritual science in the present day can point to the ancient clairvoyant condition of humanity only because it is becoming possible again now—of course in a higher manner permeated by intellect, not as in a dream—to call forth the clairvoyant condition by means of spiritual education. The man of the present day is gradually growing again into an age in which from the depths of the human soul hidden forces which again point into the super-sensible,—of course henceforth guided by reason, not left uncontrolled by it—will grow up, when man will be guided into super-sensible regions; so that we shall again learn to know the region of which the ancient national epics speak to us from the dim consciousness of ancient times. Hence we can say:—One learns to know that it is possible to attain to a manifestation of the world not merely by means of the external senses, but by means of something super-sensible which lies behind the external physical human body. There are methods—of which we are to speak in the next lecture—by means of which man can make the spiritual, super-sensible inner being, that which is so often denied to-day, independent of the sensible, external body, so that man, when he is independent of his body lives not in an unconscious condition as in sleep, but perceives the spiritual world around him. Hence modern clairvoyance proves to man the possibility of living consciously in a higher super-sensible body which fills the ordinary body like a vessel. In spiritual science it is called the etheric or ether body. This etheric body lies within our sense body. By means of it we come even to-day, when we inwardly detach it from the physical sense body, into that condition of perception whereby we become aware of super-sensible facts. We become aware of two kinds of super-sensible facts. First of all, at the beginning of this clairvoyant condition we become aware of the super-sensible when we begin to know that we no longer see by means of our physical body, we no longer hear through our physical body, we no longer think by means of the brain connected with the physical body. Then we still know next to nothing of all the external world—I am telling you just the facts, the more exact proofs of which will only be possible in the next lecture—we know next to nothing of an external world. On the other hand, the first stage of clairvoyance leads us so much the more to a view of our own etheric body; we see a super-sensible body of human nature which underlies it, and we can only express it as something which works and creates like a sort of inner master-builder—which permeates our physical body in a living, active manner. And then we become aware of the following:—

We become aware that what we perceive in ourselves as the true activity of the etheric body is, on the one hand limited, modified by our physical body; that it is as it were, clothed on the physical side, the etheric body as it were filling and giving shape to eyes and ears, and to the physical brain; thereby be belong in a certain measure to the earthly element. In this way we perceive how the etheric body becomes a special, individual, egotistical human being sheathed in the physical body. But on the other hand we perceive how this our etheric body leads us into those regions where we encounter impersonally something higher, something super-sensible, something which is not us, but which is present in us at this very time, which works through us as spiritual, super-sensible power and force. Hence, according to the consideration of spiritual science, the inner soul life is divided for us into three principles which are as it were, enclosed in three external sheaths, filling them. In the first place, we live in such connection with our soul that in it we experience that which our eyes see, our ears hear, our senses can grasp, what our intellect can comprehend; we live with our souls in our physical body. In so far as our soul lives in the physical body, in occult science we call it the spiritual (or consciousness) soul, because only through a complete familiarity with the physical body has it become possible in the course of human development for man to advance onwards to the “I” consciousness. Then specially does the modern clairvoyant also learn to know the life of the soul in that which we have called the etheric body. The soul so lives in the etheric body that it certainly has its forces, but the soul forces so work there that we cannot say:—these are our personal forces; they are universal, human forces, they are forces through which we stand much closer to the collective hidden facts of Nature. In so far as the soul perceives these forces in an external sheath, in the etheric body, do we speak of the intellectual soul, or rational soul as the second soul principle. So that just as we have the consciousness soul enclosed in the sheath of the physical body, so have we the intellectual or rational soul enclosed in the etheric body. And then we have a still finer body, by means of which we reach up into the super-sensible world. Everything that we experience inwardly as our own original secrets, as well as that which to-day is concealed from the consciousness, and which in the time of the old clairvoyance was perceived as the growing forces in the process of human evolution, which was so perceived as if one could look back at the events of hoary antiquity,—all this we assign to the sentient soul, assign it to this, so that it is enclosed in the finest human body, in that which we call the astral body—please do not take offence at this expression, but accept it as a technical term .I t is that part of the being of man which as it were, in him connects the external, earthly part with that which works inspiringly in his inner being, that which he cannot perceive with his external sense, cannot even perceive when he looks through his own inner being into the etheric body, but which he can perceive when he is 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 intellectual or rational soul in the etheric body, and the spiritual or consciousness soul in the physical body. In the times of the old clairvoyance these things were more or less instinctively known to man, for they looked into themselves, they saw this three-principled soul-being. Not that they had by the use of reason analysed the soul, but when they had clairvoyant consciousness, the three-principled soul stood before them; the sentient soul in the astral body the intellectual soul in the etheric body, and the consciousness soul in the physical body. And when they looked back, they saw how the external part of man, the outer form—when the animal forms had long before hardened—developed out of what we encounter to-day in its results as the three-fold soul forces. Then they perceived that this threefold organisation is born from super-sensible, creative powers; they perceived that the sentient soul is born from super-sensible, creative powers which gave the astral body to man, 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 gates of death, and which he already had before he entered into existence through birth. Thus the old clairvoyant saw the sentient soul connected with the astral body; and that which, so to speak works inspiringly on man from the spiritual worlds and creates his astral body, they saw as the first creative force which built up man from the Cosmic whole. And as a second creative force they saw that, the result of which we have to-day in the intellectual or rational soul, and which so created the etheric body that this etheric body transforms all external substance, all external matter, so that it, can permeate the physical human form, in the human, and not in the animal sense. The creative spirit for the etheric body which in its results appears in our intellectual soul, was seen by the old clairvoyants as a superhuman Cosmic Power, working in man somewhat like magnetism in physical matter. They looked up into the spiritual worlds, saw the divine, spiritual power which framed, forged the etheric body of man, so that this etheric body became the master-builder which transforms external matter, breaks it up, pulverises it, grinds it, so that what formerly existed as matter is organised into man, and man receives human capabilities. The old clairvoyant saw how this creative power remodelled all matter in an artistic way, so that it could become human matter. Then again, they looked upon the third, upon the spiritual or consciousness soul which really makes the ego-man, which is the transformation of the physical body, and they ascribed those powers which rule in the physical body solely to the line of heredity, to that which is derived from father and mother, from grandfather and grandmother and great-grandfather, in short, to that which is the result of the human powers of love, of the human powers of propagation. In that they saw the third creative power. The power of love works from generation to generation. The old clairvoyant looked up to three powers, to a creative being who ultimately calls forth the sentient soul, in that it fashions the astral body in man which man had before he became a physical being through conception, the body which man will have when he has passed through the gates of death. This structure of forces—we might rather say—this heavenly structure in man which lasts on when the etheric body and physical body pass away, was at the same time to the old clairvoyants their direct experience proved this—that which could bring all culture and civilisation into human life. Therefore in the producer of the astral body they saw that power which brings in the divine, which itself only consists of the permanent, and by means of which the Eternal rings and resounds into the world. And the old clairvoyants from whom—I say it without fear—the characters in Kalevala have sprung, have represented in Väinemöinen the active, plastic form of that creative power whose results we encounter in the sentient soul which inspires the divine in man, Väinemöinen is the creator of that principle of the human body which endures beyond birth and death, and which brings the divine into the earthly. And we look at the second figure in Kalevala, Ilmarinen; if we go back to the old clairvoyant consciousness, we find that Ilmarinen brings forth everything that is copy or image, in his active moulding of the etheric body, from out of the forces of the earth, and from that which does not belong to the material earth, but to its deeper forces. We see in Ilmarinen the producer of that which fashions and grinds matter. We see in him the forger of the human form. And we see in the Sampo, the human etheric body, forged by Ilmarinen out of the super-sensible world, whereby material matter is pulverised, and can then be tarried on from generation to generation, so that in the powers which are given by the third super-sensible divine being, through the powers of love continued from generation to generation, the human spiritual or consciousness soul works on further in the human physical body. We see this third super-sensible divine power in Lemminkäinen. And thus in the forging of the Sampo we see the profound mysteries of the origin of humanity. We see profound mysteries from the ancient clairvoyant consciousness at the back of Kalevala, and thus we look back into human antiquity of which we have to say; that was not the age when one could have analysed the phenomena of Nature by means of the intellect; everything was primitive; but in the primitive lived the perception of what stands behind the material. Now it was so that when these bodies of man were forged, especially when the etheric body of man—the Sampo, was forged that it had first to be wrought upon for a time; did not at once possess the forces which were prepared for him by the super-sensible powers. Whilst the etheric body was being forged, it had first to grow accustomed to itself inwardly; just as when a machine is being prepared it must first be made ready, them as it were, fully matured, in order to be made use of. In human development—this shown in all evolution—there had always to be an interval between the creation of the principle in question, and the using of it. Thus man's etheric body was fashioned in remote primitive times; then came an episode when this etheric body was being sent down into human nature. Only later did it shine out as the intellectual soul, and man learnt to use his powers as external powers of nature; he brought forth from his own nature the Sampo which had remained concealed. We see symbolically in a wonderful way this secret development in the forging of the Sampo, in the concealment of it, in the inefficiency of the Sampo, in the episode which lies between the forging, and the rediscovery of it. We see the Sampo first sunk into human nature, then brought forth to the external powers of civilisation, which appear first as primitive forces just as they are described in the second part of Kalevala. Thus everything in this great national epic gains a profound significance when we see in it clairvoyant descriptions of the ancient occurrences in human development, of the coming into being of human nature in its various principles. I can assure you that to me who only learnt to understand Kalevala long, long after these facts regarding the development of human nature stood clearly before my soul, it was a wonderful, amazing fact to find again in this epic that which I had been able to represent more or less theoretically in my “Theosophy”, which was written at a time when as yet I knew not a line of Kalevala.

And thus we see how the secrets of mankind appear in that which Väinemöinen gives, he who was the creator of super-sensible inspiration, the history namely, of the fashioning of the etheric body. But there is yet another secret concealed. Now mark, I understand nothing of Finnish, I can only speak from spiritual science. I should be able to express the word “Sampo” only by endeavouring to form a word which could be formed in the following way:—In the animals we see the etheric body so active that it becomes the master-builder of the most varied forms, from the most imperfect to the most perfect. Into the human etheric body was forged something which collected all these animal forms as in a unity, with the one exception only, that over the earth the etheric body, that is the Sampo, is fashioned according to climatic and other conditions, so that this etheric body has the special national character, the special national peculiarities in its forces, so that it forms one nation differently from another. The Sampo is, to every nation that which determines the special form of the etheric body; which so places this special nationality in life that its members have the same appearance as regards that which shines out through them, through life-being, and physical-being. Just as similarity of appearance in the human form is modeled from the etheric, so do the forces of the etheric body lie in the Sampo. Thus in the Sampo we have the symbol of the cohesion of the Finnish people; that which in the depths of human nature has made the Finnish nationality assume a definite form.

But it is so with every national epic. National epics only arise when the culture is still enclosed in the forces of the Sampo, in the forces of the etheric body. As long as the culture depends upon the forces of the Sampo, so long does the nation bear the stamp of this Sampo. Hence this etheric body bears in all culture the national character, the nationality. When, in the course of the process of civilisation was it possible for a breach to occur in this nationality, this national character? It could occur when something entered into the process of civilisation which was not for one man, for one family, for one nation, but for the whole of humanity; which came froth from such depths of human nature, from such fine and intimate depths (and is then incorporated with the process of civilisation) that it influenced all mankind without distinction of nationality, of race, and so on. And that was given when those powers spoke to mankind which do not speak to a nation, but to the whole of humanity; those powers which are so impersonally alluded to even in the national sense, so finely and so delicately at the end of Kalevala, when the Christ is born in Mariata. When He is baptised, Väinemöinen leaves the land, for something has entered which connects the special national character with the universal-human. And here at this point where one of the most significant, most pregnant, most magnificent national epics ends in the description, the wholly impersonal—pardon the paradoxical expression—un-Palestine-like description of the Christ-impulse, then Kalevala becomes very specially significant. Here we are led specially into that which can be perceived when the benefits, the felicity of the Sampo are actively experienced as continuing to work through all human development, and at the same time in co-operation with the Christian idea, the Christian impulse. That is the infinite delicacy at the end of Kalevala, it is also that which explains to us clearly that what preceded this conclusion belongs to pre-Christian times. But as truly as universal humanity will only continue by preserving its individual character, so truly will the individual national civilisations which derive their being from the old clairvoyant conditions of the people, continue to live in the universal human; so truly will everything which is indicated at the end of Kalev as pertaining to the Christ, always be connected, keep up its special results through the endless working referred to in the inspirations of Väinemöinen. For Väinemöinen means something which belongs to that part of the human being which is raised above birth and death, which passes with man through the whole of human development. Thus, such epics as Kalevala represent something to us which is immortal, which can be permeated by the Christian conception, but which will make itself of value as something individual, and will always furnish the proof that the universal-human will continue to live in the many national civilisations just as the white light of the sun breaks up into many colours. And because this universal-human permeates the individual in the being of the national epic, and illuminates every man, therefore the individualities of the nations live so strongly in the spirit of their national epics. Therefore do the men of ancient times appear so vividly before our eyes, who, in their clairvoyance have looked upon the Beings of their own nationality as described in all the epics, and where it is still so wonderfully brought home to us in the conditions which surround humanity in its intimate life and nature as they exist in the Finnish nation; in the representation of that which lies in the depths of the soul, so that it can, as it were, be placed side by side with the latest revelations of spiritual science of the mysteries of humanity. At the same time, such national epics are in their very being a living protest against all materialism, against all derivation of man from merely external forms, material conditions, material beings. Such national epics, especially Kalevala, inform us that man has his origin and primitive state in the spiritual; therefore a renewal, a re-fructification of the old national epics in the most active sense of spiritual culture, can perform immeasurably great service. For as Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy to-day desires above all the renewal of human consciousness in the direction which roots humanity not in matter but in spirit, so an accurate consideration of such an epic as Kalevala shows us that the best which man has, the best that man is, is derived from the spirit-soul world. In this sense it was interesting to me that one of the Runic writings, the “Kantela,” raises a direct protest against interpreting the Kalevala in a materialistic sense. That instrument, that kind of harp, to which the ancient bards sang in olden times, is alluded to in the representation as if it were formed from the material of the physical world; but the ancient Runic writings protested in the sense of spiritual science, one might say, that the stringed instrument for Väinemöinen was not constructed of natural products which are visible to the senses. In reality, say the ancient Runic writings—the instrument upon which men played the melodies which came to him straight from the spiritual world, was derived from the spirit-soul world. In this sense the ancient Runic writings are to be explained in quite an occult sense as an active protest against the interpretation in a material sense, of what man may become; an indication that that which man possesses, that which is his being, and that which is only symbolically expressed in such an instrument as that ascribed to Väinemöinen that such an instrument is derived from spirit, and with it the whole being of man. The old Finnish Folk-Rune which is translated into German as follows, may serve us as a motto for the principles of occult science, and sums up in main outline and colouring what I was desirous of expounding in this lecture on the subject of the national epics.

“They certainly speak falsely and are in error, who believe that Väinemöinen fashioned the Kantela, our beautiful stringed instrument, from the jawbone of the like, and spun the strings from the tail of the Hiisi-horse; it was fashioned from sorrow, trouble bound its parts together, the tears of bitter longing and suffering wove its strings.”

Thus all being is not born of matter, but of spirit and soul; so says this Old Folk-Rune, so also says occult science which is to take its place in the active development of culture in our time.

German translation of Folk-Rune:—

“Falsches sagen die gewisslich and befinden sich in Irrtum die da glauben, Wainemoinen hab gezimmert die Kantele, unsere schönen Saitenspiele, aus den Kinnbacken des Hechtes, and dass Saiten er gesponne aus den Schweif des Hiisi-Rosses; sie ist aber aus der Not gezinmert, Kummer band dann ihre Teile, bittere Schmsuchstränen spannen and die Leiden ihre Saiten.”

Translated by Alice Wulsin

In yesterday's public lecture, you will have noticed that something was said that is very significant concerning how spiritual knowledge is comprehended in human life. I have indicated that some of our contemporaries here on the physical plane take up conceptions coming primarily from the sense world, or gained with the intellect bound to the sense world. Such individuals want to know of nothing but the sense world, and I have indicated how such persons after death are in a certain sense bound to an environment that still reaches very much into the earthly, into the physical region in which the human being resides in the time between birth and death. Thus destructive forces are created within this physical world by those persons who, through their life in the physical body, confined themselves to the earthly-physical world long after their death.

Such an issue touches on deeply significant mysteries of human life, mysteries that for hundreds and thousands of years were carefully guarded by certain occult societies. They maintained that the human being was not yet mature enough to receive such truths, such mysteries (we will not look at the justification for this view today), and that becoming acquainted with them would result in great confusion. We will not say much today about the justification for keeping back from human beings these deeply incisive truths that are so significant for life, instead nurturing them only in the narrower circles of occult schools. It must be said, however, that the time has approached in which wider circles of humanity cannot and should not be without the communications of certain mysteries concerning the super-sensible world, of the kind that were mentioned yesterday. Indeed, more and more must be accomplished in communicating such matters to the public.

In earlier times, when humanity lived under different conditions, it was justifiable to hold back such mysteries within certain limits, but now this is no longer the case. Now, in what we know as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the conditions of human life are such that the human being will invariably pass through the portal of death as a destroyer unless in life here on earth he increasingly seeks for mental images, concepts, and ideas that are concerned with super-sensible matters. It is incorrect, therefore, to claim that one may just as well wait and see what happens after death. No, we must know between birth and death about certain matters concerning the spiritual world, in the way that I suggested yesterday, in order to step through the portal of death with these mental images, with these ideas.

In earlier times of humanity's evolution it was different. You know that until the sixteenth century, until the emergence of the Copernican view of the world, human beings believed something entirely different concerning the structure of the world. Obviously it has been necessary for human progress, and also for the penetration of human freedom into the evolution of humanity, that the Copernican world view appeared, just as now spiritual science must appear. A different physical view of the world prevailed in pre-Copernican times, a view that may be called erroneous today. This view believed that the physical structure of the world, that the earth, stands still, the sun moving around the earth, the stars moving around the earth, and that beyond the starry heavens there is a spiritual sphere inhabited by spiritual beings. With this view of the structure of the world the human being could still pass through the portal of death without being held back after death in the earthly sphere. This world view did not yet result in human beings becoming destructive in the earthly sphere after passing through the portal of death.

Only with the abrupt entry of Copernicanism, with its picture that the whole world spread out in space is also subject to the laws of space, with its picture that the earth circles around the sun, only with such pictures arising in the Copernican view is the human being chained to physical-sensible existence and prevented from rising appropriately into the spiritual world after death.

Today one must also know the other side of the coin of this Copernican world view, now that centuries have passed during which the human soul has been confronted again and again with the magnificent advance of this view. One side is as justifiable as the other. The Copernican world view is still valued today as a mark of sophistication. It has really become a philistine sophistication to regard the Copernican world view as the only teaching that can save souls. People still consider the other view to be foolish today, the view that through the Copernican world view the human being is chained to the earth after death unless he makes for himself a spiritual conception, as can be offered by spiritual science today. Nevertheless it is true. You already know from the Bible that many a thing that is foolishness to man is wisdom for the gods.

When the human being passes through the portal of death, his consciousness alters. It would be erroneous to believe that the human being loses consciousness after death. This curious idea is even spread around in some circles that call themselves “theosophical.” It is nonsense. On the contrary, consciousness becomes much more powerful, more intensive, but it is of a different kind. Even regarding the ordinary conceptions of the physical world it must be said that the conscious conceptions after death are something different.

First of all, after death the human being meets those persons with whom he is karmically connected in his life. The departed one may meet many human souls in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Since there interpenetrability is the rule, not impenetrability, he passes through them and by them, if I may use the expression; for him they are not there. Those to whom he has some kind of karmic connection are there. Through life here on earth we must attain increasing growth into a general world connection, even after death. The founding of societies based purely on the spiritual is already a task of the present and of the future.

Why does one try to found a society such as the Anthroposophical Society? Why does one seek to unite human beings in a certain sense under such ideas? Because thereby a karmic bond is created between people who should find each other in the spiritual world, who should belong together in the spiritual world, something they would be unable to do if they carried on their lives in an isolated way here. Precisely by virtue of the possibility of sharing spiritual knowledge and wisdom with one another, a great deal is done for the life in the spiritual world. This then works back onto the physical-sensible world, which is continually under the influence of the spiritual world. What takes place here are actually only effects; the causes occur beyond in the spiritual world, even when we are here on the physical plane.

If we concern ourselves with a great deal that is accomplished with propaganda, we could say that it is possible to establish all kinds of unions, but regardless of the initial great enthusiasm from which they derive they are usually dedicated minimally to spiritual concerns. Many associations have as their goal to transform the earth gradually into an earthly paradise. Even before these past three years there were numerous such associations in which people worked toward gradually transforming Europe into a social paradise! What is taking place now doesn't especially support the hope that things will go as these people intended.

On the other hand, however, the working together of the physical world with the spiritual is extremely complicated. Nevertheless, it must be said that when associations are formed under the light of spiritual science, people work together not only on the world of effects but on the world of causes that lie behind the sense-perceptible effects. One must permeate oneself with this feeling if one wishes to understand properly the infinitely deep significance for humanity of living together in spiritual work both in the present and in the future.

This cannot result from any sort of merely casual association; it is a holy mission laid upon humanity of the present and the future by the divine-spiritual beings who guide the world. There are certain conceptions about the super-sensible world that human beings will have to take up, because fewer and fewer super-sensible conceptions will come from the sense world. You could say that super-sensible concepts are more and more driven out of the sense world by the advance of natural science. Thus human beings would gradually be entirely shut off from the spiritual world if they received no super-sensible, spiritual concepts. They would condemn themselves after death to being completely united with the mere physical earth, to being united also with what the physical earth will become.

The physical earth will become a corpse in the future, however, and the human being will face the terrible prospect of condemning himself, as soul, to inhabit a corpse unless he resolves to learn about the spiritual world, to take root in the spiritual world. Spiritual science's undertaking is thus a serious, significant task. We must call this task before our souls as a holy thought every day so that we never lose our fervour for this justified concern of spiritual science.

Such conceptions can be enlarged upon more and more when we work with what has already come into our spiritual stream in the many concepts about this spiritual world. Everything that comes to us in such concepts enables us to become free from bondage to the earthly, to what is destructive in the earthly, in order to work in other directions. We will still continue to be united with the souls we have left behind on the earth to whom we are karmically connected, and we will also be united with the earth, but united from different places. Indeed, we are more intensively bound to the souls we have left behind on earth if we are connected with them from higher spiritual regions, if we are not condemned by a purely materialistic life to haunt the earth, as it were, when that is the case, we cannot be joined in love with anything on earth but are really only centers of destruction.

You see, my dear friends, if we gradually develop our consciousness here from childhood on—well, we know how this consciousness grows and develops, we don't need to describe it. After death totally different processes prevail so that we gradually acquire the consciousness that we must acquire for the life between death and a new birth. Here on earth we walk around and do things, we have experiences, but it is not the same after death, when this is no longer necessary. What is necessary, however, is that we disengage ourselves from the powerful intensive element that is united with us when we have relinquished the physical body. When we have passed through the portal of death, we have grown together with the spiritual world described here by spiritual science. We describe it as the world of higher hierarchies: Angels, Archangels, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and so on; we describe it as the world of the higher hierarchies and the deeds and experiences of these hierarchies. Here the world is outside us, we are surrounded by the world of the mineral kingdom, of the plant kingdom, of the animal kingdom. When we have passed through the portal of death, these spiritual beings that we have enumerated as the higher hierarchies, and even the worlds of these beings, are within us. We are united with them, we cannot at first distinguish ourselves from them. We live in them through their permeating us.

This is a difficult concept, but we must accustom ourselves to it: here we are outside the world, there we are within the world. There our being spreads itself over the entire world, but we are not able to distinguish ourselves in it. After death we are stuffed full, as it were, with the beings of the higher hierarchies, and with what these hierarchies do. It is most important that we first be able to separate the nearest hierarchy by which we are permeated, the hierarchy of Angels, Archangels, and Archai, from the higher hierarchies. Over there we do not come to a proper ego-consciousness at all (I have already described this maturation of ego-consciousness from other points of view in cycles and lectures). We do not come to a proper ego-consciousness over there if we are unable to find the force in us to distinguish what is in us: an Angel? an Elohim? Which is a being from the hierarchy of Angeloi? Which is a being from the hierarchy of the Exusiai, the Spirits of Form? Over there we must learn to distinguish, we must have the power to separate what we want to know from what is united with us; otherwise it is in us, not outside us. Here we must come together with what is outside us, we must look at it; there we must disengage it from us, so that we may be united with it.

At the present stage of humanity's evolution, the world is such that we can release what we otherwise bear within us as if in a sleeping state only by acquiring spiritual concepts, those spiritual concepts that here people find so uncomfortable because they have to make a little bit of an effort, more effort than for ordinary concepts. If an individual acquires spiritual concepts, these concepts develop a tremendous force after death through which he gains the ability to recognize the spiritual world, to penetrate it. This is very important. People find it uncomfortable today to acquire spiritual concepts. They would rather go to presentations where slides are shown or something of that sort, so that they have to do as little super-sensible thinking as possible, since they can see everything. Or they like at least to go to presentations where they are told about things that they usually have before their eyes. But people avoid the effort of elevating themselves to concepts that are more difficult because they refer to no outer object, because their object is the facts to which they are related in the super-sensible world. Over there, however, they are the forces that first give the world to us in its reality.

Thus through spiritual ideas and concepts, we gain for ourselves the wisdom we need in order to have light on the other side; otherwise everything is dark. For what is acquired here as wisdom is light over there, spiritual light. Wisdom is spiritual light. In order that it may not be dark over there, we need wisdom. And if we do not acquire any spiritual concepts, we provide the best means to having no light in the spiritual world. Without light, one then moves out of the sphere that should be illuminated and comes back to the earth, where, being dead, one wanders around as a destructive center on earth. At best one can then be used by a black magician to give inspiration for very special projects and destructive works on earth.

Wisdom is therefore necessary so that one may have light after death. After death, however, an individual not only needs the ability to disengage himself from the beings of the spiritual world and have them before him but he also needs the capacity for love after death. Otherwise he would not be able to develop in the right way relationships to the beings that are seen through wisdom. One needs love. But the love that is developed here on earth is essentially dependent on the physical body; it is a feeling, which here in the physical world is dependent upon the rhythm of breathing. This love we cannot take over into the spiritual world. It would be a total illusion to suppose that the love developed here, especially at the present time, can be taken over into the spiritual world.

However one does take into the spiritual world all the force of the love from what one gains here in the physical world through sensory perception, through life with physical being. Love is already enkindled through the understanding that is developed here in the physical world for this physical world. And precisely such experiences as the experience of viewing the world with modern natural science—if one takes them up as feelings—develop love for the other side. Love may be something lofty or debased depending on the realm in which it unfolds. If you pass through the portal of death and must remain in the region of the earth as a destructive center, you have also developed a great deal of love, of course (for having to remain is a consequence of your having been united with purely natural scientific concepts), but you apply this love to the work of destruction, you love the work of destruction, and you are compelled to observe how you yourself love this destructive work.

Yet love is something noble when a person can rise to higher worlds and love what he conquers for himself through spiritual concepts. Let us not forget that love is something base when it works in a lower sphere, but it is noble and lofty and spiritual when it works in a higher, spiritual sphere. This is the essential point, the question of what it is approaching. Without being conscious of this, we cannot look at things in the right way at all.

You see, it is concepts such as these about the human being's life after death that an individual must make his own today. It is no longer adequate for humanity of the present time and it is especially inadequate for humanity of the near future for the preacher to say that they must believe this or that, that they must prepare themselves for eternal life. This remains inadequate if the preacher is never able to say something definite about the world the human being actually enters when he passes through the portal of death. In earlier times this was sufficient, because the natural scientific, naturalistic concepts did not yet exist, because human beings were not yet infected by the merely material interests that have gradually laid hold of everything since the sixteenth century.

In earlier times it was sufficient to speak to people about the super-sensible world in the way in which the religious faiths still want to speak. Today this will no longer do. Today people often get themselves into difficulties precisely because they wish to promote eternal bliss in an egoistic way through the religious faiths. This is done out of deep sympathy for humanity, it must be noted. In this way, however, people entangle themselves all the more in the physical-sensible, in the naturalistic world, thus obstructing the ascent after passing through the portal of death.

When this happens, an entirely different situation arises, one that makes it necessary to emphasize very strongly that in the present and in the future spiritual science must be pursued by humanity. People have a deplorable situation when they can create for themselves no spiritual scientific conceptions for the life after death. Spiritual science is at the same time something that one must try to spread. Thus out of deep sympathy for people, out of an inner compassion, spiritual science is something that must be spread further, because it is deplorable what happens when people resist spiritual scientific conceptions, when they resist by their lack of understanding.

We must be absolutely clear, however, that the spiritual world is present everywhere. Just think, the world in which the dead are with the dead, in this super-sensible world, the threads that join the dead to those still living, the threads that join the dead to the higher hierarchies, belong to the world in which we stand. Just as the air is around us, so truly is this world always around us. We are not separated from this world at all; only by conditions of consciousness are we separated from the world we cross into after death. This must be firmly emphasized, for even within our circle not everyone is clear about the fact that the dead will fully find the dead again, that we are separated only as long as we are in the physical body. The other is without the physical body, but all those forces must be acquired that bring us together with the dead through our disengaging ourselves from them. Otherwise they live in us, and we cannot become aware of them! We must also bring into the right sphere the force of love that is developed here through natural scientific conceptions, for otherwise this force becomes an evil force for us over there. Precisely the love that is developed through natural scientific conceptions is able to become an evil force. A force in itself is neither good nor evil; it is one or the other according to the sphere in which it manifests.

Just as we stand in connection with this super-sensible world in which the dead reside, so also is the super-sensible world projected into this physical-sensible world, though in a different way. Indeed, the world is complicated, and comprehension of it must be acquired slowly and gradually. But one must have the will to do so.

The spiritual world projects into our world. Everything is interpenetrated by the spiritual world. In the sense-perceptible there is everywhere a super-sensible element. The super-sensible element that has to do with man's own sense-perceptible nature must be of very special interest to him. Now I beg you to note the following very carefully, for it is an exceedingly important conception. We human beings consist of body, soul, and spirit, but that is by no means an exhaustive statement concerning our being. Our body, our soul, our spirit are what first approach our consciousness, as it were, but they are not everything standing in connection with our existence. Not in the least! What I am about to say is connected with certain mysteries of human becoming, of human nature, which must be known today and become ever better known.

When the human being enters into earthly existence through birth, acquiring his physical body, he does not gain only the possibility of giving his existence to his own soul. I beg you to consider this well. The human being by no means knows everything about this physical body. Many things go on in it about which he knows nothing! He gradually comes to know what goes on in this physical body, yet in a very unsuitable way, through anatomy and physiology. If we had to wait for nourishment until we understood the process of digestion—well, one could not even say that people would have to die of hunger, for it is unthinkable that one must know something about what the organs have to do in order to prepare food for the organism! Thus a human being comes into this world with the organism in which he has clothed himself but without extending down into this organism with his soul. The opportunity therefore exists a short time before we are born (not very long before we are born) for another spiritual being in addition to our soul to take possession of our body, of the subconscious part of our body.

A short time before we are born we are permeated by another being; in our terminology we would call it an Ahrimanic spirit-being. This is within us just as our own soul is within us. These beings spend their life using human beings in order to be able to be in the sphere where they want to be. These beings have an extraordinarily high intelligence and a significantly developed will, but no warmth of heart at all, nothing of what we call human soul warmth (Gemüt). Thus we go through life in such a way that we have both our souls and a double of this kind, who is much more clever, very much more clever than we are, who is very intelligent, but with a Mephistophelian intelligence, an Ahrimanic intelligence, and also an Ahrimanic will, a very strong will, a will that is much more akin to the nature-forces than our human will, which is regulated by the warmth of soul (Gemüt).

In the nineteenth century, natural science discovered that the nervous system is permeated by electrical forces. Natural science is right. But when natural scientists believe that the nerve-force that belongs to us as the basis of our conceptual life has something to do with electrical streams that go through our nerves, then they are incorrect. For the electrical streams, which are the forces put into us by the being I have just mentioned and described, do not belong to our own being at all. We carry electrical streams in us, but they are of a purely Ahrimanic nature.

These beings of high intelligence, but of purely Mephistophelian intelligence, and with a will more akin to nature than can be said of the human will, these beings once decided out of their own will that they did not want to live in that world in which they were destined to live by the wisdom-filled gods of the higher hierarchies. They wanted to conquer the earth, and to do this they need bodies; they do not have bodies of their own. They make use of as much of the human body as they can, because the human soul cannot entirely fill up the human body.

As the human body develops, these beings are able to enter this human body at a definite time before the human being is born, and below the threshold of our consciousness they accompany us. There is only one thing in human life that they absolutely cannot endure: they cannot endure death. Therefore they must always leave this human body, in which they have established themselves, before that body succumbs to death. This is a very harsh disappointment again and again, for just what they want to attain—to remain in human bodies beyond death—is thwarted. To do this would be a lofty achievement in the kingdom of these beings. Up until now they have not attained it.

Had the Mystery of Golgotha not occurred, had Christ not passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, conditions on earth would have been such that these beings would long ago have attained the possibility of remaining within the human being when he is karmically predestined for death. Then they would have completely triumphed over human evolution on earth, they would have become masters of human evolution on earth.

It is of tremendous and profound significance to have insight into the connection between Christ passing through the Mystery of Golgotha and these beings who want to conquer death in human nature but are not yet able today to endure it. They must always avoid experiencing in the human body the hour when the human being is predestined to die. They must avoid maintaining his body beyond the hour of death, of prolonging the life of his body beyond the hour of death.

This matter of which I am now speaking has long been known to certain occult brotherhoods. They knew these things well and withheld them from humanity (again, we do not want to discuss their right to do so). Today conditions are such that it is impossible not to equip people gradually with such concepts, which they will need when they have passed through the portal of death. Everything that the human being experiences here, even what he experiences below the threshold of consciousness, he needs after death, because he must look back upon this life, and in looking back this life must be entirely comprehensible. The worst thing is for him to be unable to do this. An individual will not have sufficient concepts to understand this life on looking back at it if he cannot shed light on a being that takes over a portion of our life. This is an Ahrimanic being, which takes possession of us before our birth and always remains there, always creating a figure around us in our subconscious. This will be the case unless we can again and again shed light upon it. For wisdom becomes light after death.

These beings are in general very important for human life, and knowledge of them must gradually lay hold of the human being, and will lay hold of him. Only it must lay hold of human beings in the right way. It must not be disseminated to humanity only by those occult brotherhoods who make it a power issue, intending thereby to enhance their own power. Above all it must not be guarded further for the sake of enhancing the power of certain egotistically minded brotherhoods. Humanity strives for universal knowledge, and that knowledge must be disseminated.

In the future it will no longer be wholesome for occult brotherhoods to be able to employ such things for the extension of their power. In the coming centuries human beings must increasingly gain knowledge of these beings. The human being in the coming centuries will have to know more and more that he bears such a double within him, such an Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian double. The human being must know this. Today the human being is already developing a great many concepts, but they are actually obscured, because the human being does not yet know how to deal with them in the right way. The human being develops concepts today that can have a proper basis only when they are brought together with the facts that lie at their foundation.

And here something is disclosed that in the future must really be followed up if the human race is not to experience endless hindrances, really endless horrors. This double about which I have spoken is nothing more or less than the creator of all physical illnesses that emerge spontaneously from within; and to know him fully is organic medicine, illnesses that appear spontaneously from within the human being come not through outer injuries, not from the human soul, they come from this being. He is the creator of all illnesses that emerge spontaneously from within; he is the creator of all organic illnesses. And a brother of his, who is not composed Ahrimanically but Luciferically, is the creator of all neurasthenic and neurotic illnesses, all the illnesses that are not really illnesses but only nervous illnesses, hysterical illnesses as they are described. Thus medicine must become spiritual in two directions. The demand for this is shown by the intrusion of views such as those of psychoanalysis and the like, where one keeps house with spiritual entities, as it were, but with inadequate means of knowledge so that one can do nothing at all with the phenomena that will intrude more and more into human life. For certain things need to happen, things that may even be harmful in a certain direction, because the human being must be exposed to what is harmful in order to overcome it and thereby gain strength.

As I have said, this double is really the creator of all illnesses that have an organic foundation that are not merely functional. In order to understand this fully, however, one must know a great deal more. One must know, for example, that our entire earth is not the dead product that mineralogy or geology thinks it to be, but it is a living being. Geology knows as much of the earth as we would know about the human being if we knew only the skeletal system. Imagine that you were unable to perceive other people with usual sense perception and instead there were only X-rays of our fellow human beings. Then you would know only the skeletal system of your acquaintances. You would know as much about the human being as the geologists and science in general know about the earth. Imagine coming in here and of all the respected ladies and gentlemen you find here you would see nothing more than bones. Then you would have as much consciousness of the people present here as science has of the earth.

The earth, which is known only as a skeletal system, is a living organism. As a living organism it works upon the beings who walk around on it, including human beings themselves. And just as the human being is differentiated within regarding the distribution of his bodily organs, so the earth is also differentiated regarding what it develops out of its living nature, by which it influences the people who walk around on it. When you think, you are not exerting your right index finger or your left big toe but your head. You know perfectly well that you do not think with your right big toe; you think with your head. Thus things are distributed in the living organism, which is differentiated. Our earth is differentiated in the same way. The same things do not at all stream out everywhere from the earth onto its inhabitants. In the different regions of the earth, something entirely different streams forth. There are different forces, among them magnetism and electricity, but also forces that enter more into the realm of the living. All these forces come up out of the earth and influence people in the most varied ways at different points on the earth. They influence the human being in various ways according to the geographical formation.

This is a very important fact. What the human being is initially as body, soul, and spirit has really very little direct relation to these forces that work up out of the earth. But the double about which I have spoken chooses to be related to these forces that stream up out of the earth. And indirectly, by way of mediation, the human being as body, soul, and spirit stands in relation to the earth, and to that which rays out at various points. This is due to the fact that his double cherishes the most intimate relationship to what streams forth there. There beings that take possession of the human being as Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian beings a short time before he is born have quite highly developed tastes. Some of these beings are especially pleased with the Eastern hemisphere: Europe, Asia, Africa. They choose to make use of the bodies of human beings born there. Others choose bodies born in the Western hemisphere, in America. What we have as a dim image in our geography is for these beings a living principle of their own experience. They choose their dwelling place according to this.

From this you will see further that one of the most important tasks of the future will be to foster again something that has been interrupted: geographic medicine, medical geography. With Paracelsus it was torn away from the ancient atavistic wisdom. Since then it has hardly been nurtured because of materialistic views. It must take its place again, and many things must become known again if we are to come to know the connection of the illness-producing being in man with earthly geography, with all the fusions, with all the outward radiations that emerge from the earth in the various regions. It is very important for the human being to become acquainted with these things, for his life depends on it. In a very definite way he is inserted into this earthly existence by this double, and this double has his dwelling place within, within the human being himself.

This has become so infinitely important only in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and will become especially important to human beings in the very near future. For this reason spiritual science must now spread, and this is now especially important because the present time calls upon the human being to reach an understanding of these things in a conscious way in order to find a relationship to these things. The human being must become strong in this epoch in order to adapt his existence to these beings.

This epoch began in the fifteenth century, our present period beginning in 1413. The fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greco-Latin, began in 747 B.C. and lasted until 1413. This was a time when a milder incision in history took place. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch began at that time, and we continue to live in it now. Only gradually is it bringing forth its special characteristics in our time, although these have been in preparation since the fifteenth century. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch it was chiefly the Intellectual Soul (Verstandes- und Gemütseele) that was developed; now it is the Consciousness Soul that is being developed in the general evolution of humanity.

When the human being entered into this epoch, the guiding spiritual beings had to consider his special weakness in relation to this double. Had the human being taken into his consciousness very much of everything connected with this double, it would have gone badly, very badly for the human being. Already in the centuries before the fourteenth century, the human being had to be prepared by being protected, so that he would take in very little of what was suggestive in any way of this double. Therefore the knowledge of this double that existed throughout earlier ages was lost. Humanity had to be guarded so that it would not take up anything of the theory of this double; not only this, however, but it had to come in contact as little as possible with anything connected with this double.

For this purpose a very special arrangement was required. You must try to understand what developed at that time. In the centuries preceding the fourteenth century, the human being had to be guarded from this double. The double had to be gradually withdrawn from man's circle of vision. Only now is he gradually permitted to come into it again, now when the human being must adapt his relationship to him. A really significant arrangement was required, which could be attained only in the following way. Since the ninth or tenth century, conditions in Europe were gradually adjusted in such a way that the European people lost a certain connection that they had formerly, a connection that was still important for human beings in earlier centuries, the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. Beginning in the ninth century and especially from the twelfth century on, the entire shipping exchange with America with the kind of ships there were at that time, was abolished.

This may sound very strange to you. You will say, “We have never heard anything like this in history.” In many respects, history is just a fable convenue a legend; for in earlier centuries of Europe development, ships continually sailed from the Norway of that time to America. Of course it was not called America it had a different name at that time. America was known to be the region where the magnetic forces particularly arose that brought the human being into relation with this double. For the clearest relations to the double proceed from that region of the earth that comprises the American continent. And in the earlier centuries people sailed over to America in Norwegian ships and studied illnesses there. The illnesses in America brought about under the influence of earthly magnetism were studied by Europe. And the mysterious origin of the older European medicine is to be sought there. There one could observe the course of illness that could not have been observed in Europe, where people were more sensitive with regard to the influence of the double.

Then it was necessary for the connection with America to be gradually forgotten, and this was essentially brought about by the Roman Catholic Church through its edicts. And only after the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch was America rediscovered in a physical, sense-perceptible way. This was only a rediscovery, however, which is so significant because the powers that were at work actually achieved their purpose: that nothing very much should be reported in the record of the ancient relations of Europe with America. And where it is reported it is not recognized, it is not known that these things relate to the connection of Europe with America in ancient times. The visits were nothing more than visits. That the Europeans themselves became the American people (as is said today when the expression “people” is confused with “nation” in an incomprehensible way) was possible only after the physical discovery of America, the physical rediscovery of America. Earlier there were visits that were made in order to study how the double plays a very special role in the differently constituted Indian race.

For a long time before the beginning of the development of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, Europe had to be protected from the influence of the Western world. This is the significant historical arrangement that was cultivated by wisdom-filled world powers. Europe had to be protected for a long time from all these influences; and it could not have been protected if the European world had not been completely shut off from America in the centuries before the fifteenth century.

The effort had to be made for a long time in the preparatory centuries to give something to European humanity that carried the finer sensitivity. You could say that the intellect, which had to take hold of its proper place in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, had to be very carefully protected in its first appearance. What was supposed to be revealed to it had to be presented to it very gently. Often this refinement was similar to the refinement of education, where sound measures of punishment are also applied, of course. Everything to which I am referring pertains, of course, to greater historical impulses.

Thus it happened that Irish monks in particular who were under the influence of the pure Christian-Esoteric teaching developed in Ireland, worked in such a way that the necessity was perceived in Rome to cut Europe off from the Western hemisphere. For it was intended that this movement arising in Ireland should spread Christianity over Europe in such a way, in these centuries before the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, that people would not be disturbed by all that was emerging from the sub-earthly regions in the Western hemisphere. Europe was to be kept ignorant of all the influences from the Western hemisphere.

This is a good place to speak about these conditions. Columban and his pupil Gallus were essential individuals in the greatly significant mission movement that sought its success in Christianizing Europe by surrounding Europe at that time with spiritual walls, and allowing no influence to come from the direction I have indicated. Individualities such as Columban and his pupil Gallus, who founded the city where I am lecturing today and from whom it gets its name (St. Gallen) saw above all that the tender plant of Christianity could be spread in Europe only if Europe were Surrounded by a wall, as it were, in the spiritual respect.

Behind the processes of world history lie deep mysteries filled with significance. The history taught and learned in schools is only a fable convenue. Among the facts most important for an understanding of modern Europe is this one: that from the centuries when Ireland began to spread Christianity in Europe until the twelfth century, the Roman Church worked on the problem at the same time through papal edicts, which gradually forbade shipping between Europe and America, so that Europe completely forgot the connection with America. This lapse in memory was needed so that the early period of preparation in Europe for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch could be developed in the right way. And only when the materialistic period began was America discovered again to the West, as is related today. From the East, America was discovered under the influence of the greed for gold, under the influence of purely materialistic culture, which simply must be taken into account in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and to which man has to find a suitable relationship.

These things are actual history. And these things, I also think, clarify what is actually the case. The earth is really something that must be called “living being.” In accordance with geographical differentiations, the most varied forces stream up out of the various territories. Therefore people must not be separated according to territory but must receive from one another what is good and great in each territory and what can be produced just there. Hence a spiritual scientific world view is intent upon creating something that can really be accepted by all nations in all regions. For people must advance in the mutual exchange of their spiritual treasures. This is the important point.

On the other hand, there very easily arises from individual territories the endeavor to increase power and power and power. And the great danger emerging from the one-sided way in which the evolution of modern humanity is advancing can be judged from concrete, from truly concrete conditions, only when one knows that the earth is an organism, when one knows what is actually occurring from the various points of the earth. In Eastern Europe there is relatively little inclination purely toward what streams out of the earth. The Russians, for example, are fervently connected through the soil, but they receive quite special forces out of the soil, forces that do not come from the earth. The secret of the Russian geography consists of the fact that the Russian receives from the earth the light that is first imparted to the earth and then reflected back again from the earth. The Russian actually takes from the earth what streams toward it from outer regions. The Russian loves his earth, but he loves it because to him it is a mirror of the heavens. Because of this the Russian, even though he is so territorially minded, has something in this territorial inclination that is extraordinarily cosmopolitan although today this remains at a childlike stage—because the earth, moving through space, comes into relation to every possible part of the earth's environment. And when a person receives into his soul, not what streams upward from below in the earth but what streams downward from above and then upward again, then it is different from receiving streams directly from the earth, which are placed in a certain kinship to human nature. But what the Russian loves in his earth, with which he permeates himself, gives him many weaknesses, but above all it gives him a certain ability to conquer that double nature of which I have spoken previously. Therefore he will be called upon to offer the most important impulses to the epoch in which this double nature must finally be subdued, in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch.

A certain portion of the earth's surface shows the closest kinship to these forces. If a person goes to this place, he enters their realm; as soon as he goes elsewhere, he is again outside their realm. For these forces are geographic; they are not ethnographic, not national, but purely geographic forces. There is a region where the force streaming up from below has the most influence on the double, and where, because with the outstreaming forces it enters most into kinship with the double, it is again imparted to the earth. This is the region of the earth where most of the mountain ranges run, not crosswise, from east to west, but where the ranges primarily run, from north to south (for this is also connected with these forces) where one is in the vicinity of the magnetic North Pole. This is the region where above all the kinship is developed with the Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic nature through outer conditions. And through this kinship much is brought about in the continuing evolution of the earth.

Today the human being should not move blindly through earthly evolution; he must be able to see through such relationships. Europe will be able to come into a proper relationship with America only when such conditions can be understood, when it is known what geographical determinants come from there. Otherwise, if Europe continues to be blind to these things, it will be with this poor Europe as it was with Greece in relation to Rome. This should not be; the world should not be geographically Americanized. First, however, this must be understood. Things should not be taken with such lack of seriousness as is so common today. Things have deep foundations, and knowledge is necessary today, not merely sympathy and antipathy, in order to gain a position in the connections in which present-day humanity is so tragically placed. Such things as we can discuss here more intimately can only be hinted at in public lectures. Yesterday I called attention to the necessity for spiritual science really to penetrate also into social and political concepts. For America's endeavor is to mechanize everything, to drive everything into the realm of pure naturalism, and gradually to extinguish European culture from the earth. It cannot be otherwise. Obviously geographical concepts are not concepts of a people as such. It is only necessary to think of Emerson in order to know that nothing is intended here as characteristic of a people. But Emerson was a man of European education through and through. This simply shows the two opposite poles that are developing. Precisely under such influences as have been characterized today, people such as Emerson develop, who develop as they do because they confront the double with complete humanity. On the other hand, people are developing such as Woodrow Wilson, who is a mere sheath of the double, through whom the double himself works with special effectiveness. Such people are essentially actual embodiments of the geographic nature of America.

These matters are not connected with sympathy or antipathy, or with any kind of partisanship. They are connected solely with knowledge of the deeper causes of what human beings undergo in life. But it will achieve very little for the salvation of humanity unless clarification is given about what is really active in these matters. And today it is very necessary to make a connection again with much that had to be torn apart at the turning-point of a new epoch when the way to America was blocked. And I would like to offer human beings such as Gallus as a symbol of what you can feel and experience here in so many ways. They had to create a ground for their activity through the barrier they had erected. Such things must be understood.

Spiritual science alone will create real historical understanding. But you see prejudice upon prejudice will naturally pile up. For how could one think otherwise than that such knowledge too would begin to be partisan! But this was one of the reasons that certain occult brotherhoods concealed these things, though this reason is a cowardly one. They were concealed for the simple reason that knowledge is often uncomfortable for people. People do not want to become universally human, and this is especially the case with those who are predisposed to unite themselves with geographic outstreamings.

Questions of public life will gradually become questions of knowledge, lifted out of the atmosphere into which they have been forced today by an overwhelming majority of humanity. They will be forced out of the mere sphere of sympathies and antipathies. What is effective will by no means be decided by majorities. But what is effective can only have its effect if people do not shrink back from receiving important facts into their consciousness.

You could say that I have spoken here today in this way because the genius loci of this place requires it of me. It has been pointed out to you in a special example that for people of the present it is not enough any more to know history, to take the ordinary textbooks in hand, for there one discovers only that fable convenue known today as history. What does one discover there about the important paths of exchange—particularly those lying in the dim origins of medicine—that still led from Europe to America in the early Christian centuries? What exists, however, does not really cease to be just because people later render their consciousness blind to it, like the ostrich that sticks its head in the sand so as not to see and then believes that what he fails to see is not there. A great deal is concealed from people simply by the fable convenue called “history,” a great deal whose influence is quite near to contemporary man. Spiritual science will bring much more to light about the historical course of humanity, for people want to be clear about their own destiny, about the connection of their souls with their spiritual evolution.

Much of what has been historically lost spiritual science can bring to light. Otherwise humanity will have to decide to remain ignorant about a great deal that is close at hand. And although the human being of the present is informed about everything but how he is informed!—he will be able to make a judgment about the present only from a spiritual scientific standpoint. For with all due respect (you know one always says “with all due respect” when one says something unflattering), humanity is informed today about all sorts of things by the press, but it is informed by the press in such a way that the essential aspect, the true aspect, the real aspect, that which matters, is hidden.

And the human being must come to this degree of the knowledge of reality! This is not in the least something either personal or impersonal directed against the press, but it is intended to show that the press is connected with the active forces of the present and cannot be otherwise. Things cannot be otherwise, but man must be conscious of them. The great error is for a person to believe he must criticize things. What he must do is characterize them. This is the point.

I have tried to give you today a picture of many kinds of impulses that are active in the individual human being and in humanity as a whole. Apart from the particulars about which I have spoken, I wanted most of all to call forth, through the kind of impulse I have touched upon, a feeling for how the human being must notice the way in which he is imbedded with his whole being in a concrete spiritual world, with concrete spiritual beings and concrete spiritual forces. I do this not only so that we grow into the world we enter after death and in which we live between death and a new birth but also, while we are here in the physical world, so that we may understand this physical world if we understand the spiritual world at the same time.

Medicine can endure only if it is a spiritual science, for illnesses come from a spiritual being that only makes use of the human body in order to profit from it, which it cannot do in the place assigned to it by the wise guidance of the world, against which it has revolted, as I have shown you. This is actually an Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian being within the human nature, which before birth is inhaled into the human body as into its home and leaves this human body only because it may not endure death under its present conditions, which cannot overcome death. Illnesses emerge because this being works in the human being. And when remedies are employed it means that something is given to this being from the outer world that it otherwise seeks through the human being. If I provide a remedy for the human body when this Ahrimanic-Mephistophelean being is at work, I give it something else. I stroke this being as it were. I come to terms with it, so that it lets go of the human being and becomes satisfied with what I have tossed into its jaws as a remedy.

All these things are just beginning, however. Medicine will become a spiritual science. Just as medicine was known as a spiritual science in ancient times, so it will again come to be known as a spiritual science.

Now, of course, I will also have called forth in you this feeling: that it is necessary not only to acquire a few concepts from spiritual science but to feel one's way into it; for in doing so one feels one's way also into the human being. The time has come when many scales will fall from people's eyes, even regarding outer history, for example, as I proved a couple of days ago in Zurich. There I at least showed that it is not perceived outwardly by the human being but is dreamed in reality, that one understands it only if one grasps it out of the dream of humanity not as something that is accomplished outwardly.

It is to be hoped that these things will then be carried further by the force that humanity has acquired in very small part (all too small) in what we call the anthroposophical movement. But this anthroposophical movement will be connected with what humanity will have to pursue in the future as its most important concerns. We must often remind ourselves of that simile that I have often used. The very clever people in the world think, “Oh, those anthroposophists; that is only a sect with all kinds of fantastic stuff, with all kinds of foolishness in their heads. The educated part of humanity need not bother itself with that.” This “educated part of humanity” thinks today about this sub-earthly, sectarian assembly among anthroposophists and theosophists in the same way, although modified by time, that the Romans, the distinguished Romans, felt when Christianity was spreading. The difference is that at that time the Christians had to be physically down below in catacombs; up above those things went on that were regarded by the distinguished Romans as the only right, while the dreaming Christians were down below. In a couple of centuries this was different. Romanism was swept away, and what had been down in the catacombs came up. What had ruled civilization was cast out.

Such comparisons must strengthen our forces, they must live into our souls so that we find strength in them, because we ourselves must still work in small circles. But the movement that is characterized by this anthroposophical stream must develop the force that can also actually come up. Once up above, to be sure, it finds little understanding for its spiritual basis. In spite of this, however, we must again and again think back to something like these conditions of the early Christians in the Roman catacombs. Despite the fact that it was sub-earthly, to a much greater degree than the anthroposophical movement is today, it nevertheless found its way to the surface. And many of those within this anthroposophical movement who have come to an understanding of spiritual concepts have already found the possibility in the sphere in which these spiritual concepts, which here are wisdom, unfold as light, of reckoning with that light.

And we must say again and again that among the membership that works together in the anthroposophical movement there always stand side by side those who are in the physical world and those who are already beyond in the super-sensible world, who have already passed through the portal of death and who are keepers today of what is gained here as spiritual wisdom. In this connection we can think of quite a number of members whose souls reside in the super-sensible. At this moment we remember Fraulein Sophie Stinde, one of our faithful coworkers on the building in Dornach. I think we will recall her today because it is a year ago in these days that her physical death-day took place, which is the super-sensible birthday for spiritual life.

What matters, my dear friends, is that we really strive to stand within the positive anthroposophical movement, to deepen in ourselves the feeling that we take up the concrete concepts about the spiritual world through what is really united with us. Now these are difficult times. We know that there are even more difficult times ahead. But whatever the conditions may be with regard to our being together on the physical plane, however long or short a time it may be until we meet again, let me say to you that we want to feel together and think together even if we are spatially separated from one another. We want always to be together in our spiritual scientific endeavors.

My dear Friends,

I would like today to centre our study around a scene from a play of Hamerling's that can serve to illustrate many things that I have been explaining. A course of lectures on a subject of this kind is necessarily all too short, and I can in any case do no more than make a few suggestions in the hope that these may stimulate you in your work. None the less, although our time is short, I propose to use the present hour to throw light by practical example upon the importance of what I have said about developing, in preparation for speaking on the stage, a feeling for word and a feeling for sound, in contradistinction to the feeling for sense and idea. today, therefore, we will take this practical demonstration as a basis for our study; and it is my intention to speak the parts in such a way as will enable you to glean at least an elementary understanding of how a reading rehearsal should go, if it is to prepare the ground for the actual performance of the play on the stage. Thus, having in the first part of our course given our attention to the forming of the speech, we shall now be considering all that has to do with production as such, with the right forming of the stage-picture.

It goes without saying that before any such rehearsal, the explanations I have been giving of what is required for an artistic way of speaking must have already taken root in the unconscious, and be present there as artistic instinct. Where mention is made of these matters at all in rehearsal, it will be presumed that in those who are to take part, the feeling for sound and the feeling for word have, by long practice, become a complete matter of habit. It will, in fact, be of quite other matters that one will have to speak there, alluding only as need arises to the fundamental principles of speech formation; for of these the actor should bring with him an intimate knowledge, no less surely than a pianist who is preparing himself—or, maybe, a pupil—for a concert brings with him the faculty he has acquired for piano-playing.

The scene I propose to take is the opening scene of a drama of Robert Hamerling, entitled Danton and Robespierre, a play that is concerned, as the title tells us, with the French Revolution. I have chosen it because I think the moods that come into consideration for this scene—and I need not remind you how important it is for the moods to find clear expression in the performance—are such as can easily be conveyed to the minds and hearts of people in general. For they are unmistakable and sharply distinguishable in their colouring. The scene is moreover also valuable for us, in that the moods give opportunity for transforming, by stage technique, even the most prosaic content into an artistic formation of sound and word.

We are here transported into an important moment in the history of the French Revolution, when the mood of the public was undergoing a change. That stage in the revolution is just being reached when the popularity of Danton is beginning gradually to give way before the popularity of Robespierre. A great number of people are on the point of transferring their loyalty and devotion from the one to the other.

Let us first of all see that we understand the true nature of the people's loyalty to Danton. Some were loyal to him out of a sincere and faithful devotion, in others their loyalty was prompted rather by their own political aspirations; but all might be said to regard him with what I may almost call a savage admiration. Consequently, we find permeating the scene something of the sound- and word-feeling—I am speaking here from the point of view of stage technique—that results from the working together of a (wonder and admiration for Danton) and o (a certain rude affection for the man). The scene is pervaded by an a-o (ah-oh) mood, in the sense in which I have explained this to you in the earlier lectures. Tune your feeling to the sounds a-o, and you will have the mood that prevails at the beginning of the scene.

Loyalty to Robespierre was of quite another kind. At first it only reached men's hearts in a fitful, spasmodic way. The lean and lanky man, looking so like a schoolmaster, whose words cut like knives, did not easily inspire admiration in his fellowmen; he had to seize on every opportunity to win it. In fact, the first stage of Robespierre's popularity was marked by a kind of wariness and caution. In the case of individuals as well as of the masses, it was out of a certain defensive attitude that admiration for Robespierre was born. Translated into feeling for sound, it is a sounding together of e (ay in ‘say’) and a. So that in the people's feeling for Robespierre we have the mood that you can hear in e-a.

In this scene, therefore, which evinces throughout a delicate instinctive feeling on Hamerling's part for sound and word, we have to find the transition in the whole speaking of the parts from a-o to e-a. And we shall be able to do so if we look into the scene carefully. That is indeed the reason I have chosen it, because of all we can learn from it.

Hamerling built up the scene with an instinctive discernment for what is required in dramatic art. I shall draw attention, as we go along, to features that would require to be noted in the reading rehearsals. My remarks will naturally be rather sketchy; in actual rehearsals, the various points would need to be further elucidated. For we have here a scene that can provide us with an excellent lesson in the very things we are concerned with in these lectures.

Note how we are introduced, first of all, to a countryman who had been in Paris fifteen years before and never once since. The man has been deaf during the last six years, and on this account it has easily come about that he has as good as slept through whatever echoes of the big events penetrated into the provinces; he has heard nothing of all that went on. He was treated for his deafness by the village barber who was also something of a surgeon, as was still usual in those days, but with no particular success; and he was advised to go to Paris. One can certainly have one's doubts as to whether even in Paris the cure would be such an easy matter! However, here he is again in Paris, cured of his deafness and bearing his part in the change-over of moods that I have described—but all the time as one who has only just become able after six years to hear what is being said around him. You will find at once the basic tone for this man's speaking if you give yourself up to an a feeling that is tinged with o. Let us see what this will mean. For throughout the first part of the scene, the countryman will be the chief figure. The whole attention of the audience will be centred upon him. It might even be said that the other characters are present only in order to give colour and variation to the main interest that attaches throughout to this man. Actually, the success of the play as a whole will depend to a great extent upon how the part of the countryman is played in this first scene.

We know of course that a signifies wonder and admiration. The mood is a little modified in this character of the countryman, but the actor will do the part well if he takes pains to speak, as much as he can, with his mouth open. (I shall be dealing with gesture and mime in the later lectures; today I will confine my remarks to the speaking.) This will allow the a mood, which is the prevailing mood of the scene, to pass almost imperceptibly into o, which is what the part requires.

From the very outset, we sense also that a change of mood is imminent; we are moving towards the transition from the a-o to the e-a mood. This is portrayed for us with wonderful artistic skill. You can feel here with what a delicate touch Hamerling works; and that is what I want you to notice before all else—the artistic achievement, quite apart from the prose content of the scene. The countryman is put there on purpose that we may be still hearing the echo of the mood connected with Danton, while at the same time having our expectation aroused for the gradual transition to the mood that is connected with Robespierre, the mood that we can clearly detect in the second part of the scene where the conversation of the various characters goes clanging back and forth like sounding brass.

So much for a rough sketch of the mood in which you will have to experience this scene if you want to take part in it and form your speaking in the right way.

The scene is laid in an open space in front of Notre-Dame.

DER LANDMANN. Wenn ich nur erfahren könnte, warum sie den steinernen Bildern überall rote Mützen aufsetzen... Ich finde mich nicht mehr zurecht in diesem verwünschten Paris, obgleich ich vor fünfzehn Jahren einmal dagewesen.

(Zwei Bürger treten auf.)

ERSTER BURGER. Auf dem Stadthause wimmelt's bereits wie in einem Ameisenhaufen.—

ZWEITER BURGER. Mein Nachbar, der Barbier Rabaud, hat soeben die Göttin der Vernunft frisiert.

---

COUNTRYMAN. If only I could find out why the statues everywhere have red caps on their heads.... I no longer know my way about in this accursed Paris although I was once here fifteen years ago.

(Enter two citizens.)

FIRST CITIZEN. The Town Hall's already swarming like an ant-heap?

SECOND CITIZEN. My neighbour, the barber Rabaud, has just been dressing the hair of the Goddess of Reason.

These citizens are fellows of quite another stamp than our countryman. They are Parisians, who exhibit to the full the mood that was then uppermost in Paris; and they give a new colouring to the countryman's words that have set the motif at the beginning of the scene. We are to think of the first citizen as having a kind of i (ee) mood, and the second a rather quieter and more serious ii (French ü in ‘du’) mood. You will remember how I explained these in the earlier lectures.

‘ZWEITER BÜRGER: Mein Nachbar, der Barbier Rabaud, hat soeben die Göttin der Vernunft frisiert.’

Yes, you are right! The audience will laugh at these words; but they must be spoken with all the seriousness of one who is taking a responsible part in a revolution. And that is a seriousness of an altogether different stamp from the seriousness with which we are accustomed to approach everyday affairs.

You have to picture the countryman saying those first words of his alone, to himself. Then the citizens come an the scene. They stand at a little distance from him, and now he goes up to them.

DER LANDMANN. (sich nähernd) Auf ein Wort, ihr Herren—

ERSTER BÜRGER. ‘Ihr Herren?’—Da seht die ländliche Unschuld!—Es gibt keine Herren mehr, Bauerntölpel!

DER LANDMANN. Um Vergebung, wie komm' ich von hier in die Königstrasse?

ERSTER BÜRGER. Es gibt keine Könige mehr. Die Strasse heisst jetzt Sansculottenstrasse.

LANDMANN. Finde mich nicht mehr zurecht hier in Paris, obgleich ich vor fünfzehn Jahren dagewesen. Alle Plätze, alle Strassen anders.—Heut' Morgen komm' ich an einer Kirche vorüber, denke: trittst ein, hörst eine Messe. Da seh' ich ein Gedräng' von Leuten, und auf der Kanzel steht ein Mann, der predigt. Komme gerade recht zum Worte Gottes, denk' ich und hör' andächtig zu. Da merk' ich aber, dass der Mann auf der Kanzel entsetzlich fluchte, obgleich ich ihn nicht recht verstand. War so ein schneidiges, gelbes, dünnes Männchen, meinte jeden Augenblick, es werde ihm der Schaum vor den Mund treten. Als er aufhörte zu reden, da fingen die Leute wüst zu schreien an und taten wie besessen und klatschten gar mit den Händen, dass mir die Ohren gellten.—Ich schlug ein Kreuz und ging.

ZWEITER BÜRGER. (lachend) Armer Tropf, du bist unter die Frommen der Jacobinerkirche geraten.—

LANDMANN. Darauf kam ich in eine andere Kirche.
Da sah ich einen Heiland auf dem Kreuz:
dem war ein grosser Schnurrbart
angestrichen, und eine rote Mütze aufgesetzt,
und drunter stand geschrieben: ‘Jesus Christ
von Nazareth, der erste Sansculotte’.
Weiss denn die Obrigkeit von solchem Unfug nichts?

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Mensch, hör' einmal, wie kommt's, dass du so wenig Wind hast vom neuesten Weltlauf? Sitzt ihr Bauern auf den Ohren?

LANDMANN. Ich bin sechs volle Jahre taub gewesen. Vorige Woche—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Dekade sagt man jetzt—DekadeLANDMANN. Ei, wie? Dekade muss ich sagen? Also vorige Dekade—doch nein, es war noch Ende April—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Floreal, du verwünschter Kerl, Floreal—

LANDMANN. Floreal? Potztausend! Ihr habt eine verwunderliche Art zu reden in Paris!—Nun also im Floreal sagte ich zu unserem Dorfbader: ‘Herr’, sagte ich, `ihr versteht den Teufel von der Sache; ich gehe nach Paris und lasse mich dort heilen!’ Gesagt, getan. Ich ging, als ich das Reisegeld beisammen hatte, und verwichenen Sonntag—

ERSTER BÜRGER. Es gibt keinen Sonntag mehr.

LANDMANN. Was? keinen Sonntag?

---

COUNTRYMAN. (approaching) A word, gentlemen—

FIRST CITIZEN. ‘Gentlemen?’ Hark to his innocence! There aren't any gentlemen nowadays, you country bumpkin!

COUNTRYMAN. Beg pardon, how do I get to King Street?

FIRST CITIZEN. There aren't any more kings. The street's called Sansculotte Street now.

COUNTRYMAN. Oh, I'm properly astray in your Paris although I was here fifteen years ago. All the squares, all the streets, different.—This morning I came to a church and thought to myself: let's go in and hear Mass. Inside I find a crowd of folk and a man in the pulpit preaching. Just in time to hear God's word, think I, and listen all devout. But then I notice that the man in the pulpit is using terrible language, though I didn't understand him well. He was such a sharp-spoken, yellow, lean little bit of a man; it seemed every moment as if he was going to foam at the mouth. As soon as he stopped talking the people began to cry out wildly, behaved as if possessed, and clapped their hands enough to break my ear-drums.—I crossed myself and came out.

SECOND CITIZEN. (laughing) Poor simpleton, you landed up among the pious worshippers at the Jacobins' Church.—

COUNTRYMAN. Thereupon came I to another Church
And there I saw a Saviour on the Cross:
A great moustache was daubed upon His face,
A red cap had been set upon His head,
While underneath was written ‘Jesus Christ
Of Nazareth, the first of sansculottes’.
Do those who rule know nothing of such shame?

SECOND CITIZEN. Listen, you man. How comes it that you know so little of what's going on now in the world? Do you peasants stop up your ears?

COUNTRYMAN. I've been deaf over six years. Last week—

SECOND CITIZEN. We say decade now—decade

COUNTRYMAN. Eh? Decade have I got to say? Well, last decade–but no, it was still April—the end of April—

SECOND CITIZEN. Floreal, confound you, Floreal

COUNTRYMAN. Floreal? Zounds! You have an odd way of talking in Paris !—So in Floreal I said to our village barber, Sir,' say I,’ you don't understand a damned thing about it. I'm going to Paris to be cured.' No sooner said than done. Directly I'd got together the journey money, I started; and last Sunday—

FIRST CITIZEN. There's no Sunday any more.

COUNTRYMAN. What? No Sunday?

The name of the month is not after all a matter that touches him very nearly; that he can accept. Now he is called upon to grasp the further fact that there are no longer any Sundays!

ERSTER BÜRGER. Quintidi, guter Freund, wenn Euch Euer Leben lieb ist—

LANDMANN. Nun meinetwegen! Am Crainte de Dieu also kam ich hier in Paris an, und heute, Gott sei Dank—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Gott sei Dank? Mensch, du nennst da ein bankrottes Haus! Die Firma Gott und Sohn mit der Prokuraführung des heiligen Geistes hat falliert—

LANDMANN. Was? auch keinen Gott? da soll ja doch—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Räsoniere nicht, Mensch, und schweig, und lass' deine Füsse, so geschwind sie können, dich wieder nach deinem Dorfe zurücktragen. Du könntest Unglück haben auf dem Pflaster von Paris. Du könntest hier deinen Kopf verlieren, unversehens, wie einen Knopf von deinen Hosen. Mach' dich auf die Beine, Mensch—du bist verdächtig—

LANDMANN. Wieso verdächtig? Was nennt ihr denn verdächtig?

ZWEITER BURGER.Verdächtig? Sieh', das ist zum Beispiel einer,
der Lilien in seinem Garten pflanzt—
auch einer, dessen Bruder oder Vetter
ins Ausland ging mit einem Emigranten
als Kammerdiener—oder einer, der
im Traum das Wörtlein König flüstert—oder
der bleich wird, wenn sie seinen Nebenmenschen
an die Laterne hängen—

Mach', dass du fortkommst, sonst lassen sie dich den Karpfensprung machen auf dem Grèveplatz—

LANDMANN. Ich verstehe euch nicht.

ZWEITER BURGER. Ich will sagen, sie werden dich durchs rote Fenster gucken lassen—

LANDMANN. Ich verstehe euch noch immer nicht.

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Dummkopf! sie werden dich (macht eine bezeichnende Geberde) mit dem grossen Nationalrasiermesser rasieren! Verstehst du's noch nicht ?—Du wirst das grosse Los in der Lotterie der heiligen Guillotine gewinnen! Verstehst du's jetzt?

LANDMANN. Hol' mich der Geier, wenn ich diese Heilige jemals im Kalender gelesen habe.

ERSTER BÜRGER.
Das ist eine wunderliche Heilige.—
So eine Art von Eisenjungfrau, scharf
verseh'n mit Schneidezähnen—Denke dir
zwei Galgenhölzer und ein blankes Beil
Querbalkengleich von oben—nun, du legst
den Kopf auf einen Block—das Beil fällt nieder,
ein wenig von der Seite—so—und sichelt
den Kopf im Hui so glatt und reinlich dir
herunter, dass es eine Lust zu sehn. Der Kopf
merkt gar nicht, dass er keinen Rumpf mehr hat,
und niest deshalb auch manchmal unbefangen,
als wäre nichts geschehn, noch in dem Sack,
in welchen ihn der Knecht des Büttels wirft—
als hätt' er etwa nur’ne starke Prise
geschnupft.—Guillotinieren heisst man das:
's ist’ne schöne, sanfte Todesart.

LANDMANN. Guillotiniert man viel?<

ERSTER BÜRGER. So ein Schock täglich; auch mehr, wenn schönes Wetter ist.

---

FIRST CITIZEN Quintidi, friend, if you value your life—

COUNTRYMAN. Oh, well, it's all the same to me! So in the fear of God I came here to Pans, and today, thank God—

SECOND CITIZEN ‘Thank God?’ Why, man, that firm's gone bankrupt! The house of God and Son, with its junior partner the Holy Ghost, has failed—

COUNTRYMAN. What? No God either? But then—

SECOND CITIZEN. No arguing, man. Shut up, and let your feet carry you back to your village as quick as they can. You might come to harm in the streets of Paris. You might lose your head unexpectedly like a button off your breeches. Make off, man, you're a suspicious character—

COUNTRYMAN. What d'you mean, suspicious? What d'you call suspicious?

SECOND CITIZEN.
Suspicious? Hark, this man, for instance, is:
The one who lilies in his garden plants—
And also one whose brother or whose cousin Follows some emigrant as serving-man
To foreign parts—or then again a man
Who whispers in his dreams the small word ‘King', Or turns a chalky white to see them hang
One of his fellows to the lamp-post?

Make haste and be off, otherwise you will come to a sorry end on the Place de Grève?

COUNTRYMAN. I don't understand you.

SECOND CITIZEN. I'm wanting to tell you that they'll make you look through the’ red window'—

COUNTRYMAN. I still don't understand.

SECOND CITIZEN. Blockhead! They'll do this (makes a descriptive gesture), they'll shave you with the great national razor! Don't you understand yet ?—You'll win the big prize in the lottery of Saint Guillotine. Now do you understand?

COUNTRYMAN. The devil take me if I've ever seen that saint in the Calendar.

FIRST CITIZEN.
This is a very funny kind of saint,
This maiden made of iron and well provided
With finely sharpened teeth that bite. Just think,
Two gallows posts and then a shining axe
In cross-beam fashion from above—you lay
Your head upon a block, the axe comes down
A little from one side, like this, and mows
Your head inside your hat so smoothly down,
So neatly off—a pleasure 'tis to see!
Your head marks not that it has lost its trunk
And therefore sometimes sneezes, quite unmoved,
Just as if nought was wrong, e'en in the sack
As if it had, p'raps, taken a good pinch
Of snuff—it's guillotining that the people call it.
It is a fine and easy way o' dying.

COUNTRYMAN. Do they do much guillotining?

FIRST CITIZEN. Quite a lot, every day, and more when the weather's fine.

And now a sansculotte makes his appearance. When you come to look carefully at this sansculotte, you will find you can best enter into his part by combining the a mood with the i mood. For he has undoubtedly wonder and astonishment, and these have fired him with enthusiasm; but he has at the same time, as it were in the background, the pleasure and enjoyment that his own self-consciousness affords him.

(Ein Schwarm von zerlumpten Männern und Weibern kommt gezogen, voran ein Sansculotte, der ein Beinkleid auf einer Pike trägt.)

Wüstes Geschrei: Ça ira! Ça ira!

DER SANSCULOTTE. (zu dem LANDMANN und den beiden BÜRGERN) Angeschlossen, Patrioten! angeschlossen und eingestimmt! Ça ira! Zu Ehren der Hose da, die wir eben einem Aristokraten abgezogen, weil er auf keine andere Weise ein Sansculotte werden wollte. Ça ira!

WEIBER. (den LANDMANN umringend) Komm auf ein Tänzchen, Bäuerlein! Komm, wir tanzen die Carmagnole!

SANSCULOTTE. (zum LANDMANN, ihm ins Ohr schreiend) Ça ira gesungen, du Schelm, Ça ira!

LANDMANN. (ängstlich) Verzeiht, ich bin gar nicht musikalisch!

SANSCULOTTE. Höre, Kerl! wenn du nicht dümmer bist als die Rinder in deinem Stall, so musst du Ça ira brüllen können, so gut als einer—

LANDMANN. Verzeiht, ihr Herren—

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Ihr Herren!’ Habt ihr's gehört? An die Laterne mit dem Schuft!

---

(A swarm of ragged men and women come straggling along, led by a sansculotte holding aloft a pair of breeches on his pike.)

Wild shouting of the song ‘Ça ira, Ça ira!’

SANSCULOTTE. (to the COUNTRYMAN and the two CITIZENS)
All united and all of one mind, patriots! All united and all of one mind! Ça ira! Do honour to the breeches here that we've taken off an aristocrat, because he wouldn't be a sansculotte anyhow else! Ça ira!

WOMEN. (surrounding the COUNTRYMAN) Come and dance, peasant! Come along with you, we're dancing the carmagnole!

The sansculotte has noticed that the countryman does not hear very well.

SANSCULOTTE. (to the COUNTRYMAN, shouting in his ear)
Ça ira's being sung, you knave. Ça ira!

COUNTRYMAN. (anxiously) Excuse me, I'm not a bit musical!

SANSCULOTTE. Listen, fellow! If you're not more stupid than your own oxen you must be able to roar out Ça ira as well as a—

COUNTRYMAN. Excuse me, gentlemen?

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Gentlemen!’ Did you hear that? To the lamp-post with the blackguard!

In those days anyone who dared in Paris address a man as ‘gentleman’ was hung up on the nearest lamp-post.

ERSTER BURGER. Lasst ihn laufen; er ist volle sechs Jahre taub gewesen and erst heute wieder geheilt worden.

SANSCULOTTE. Dann hätte das erste, was er hörte, sein sollen, dass es keine Herren mehr gibt. Nicht einmal der Mainzer Nachtwächter singt mehr: ‘Lobet Gott den Herrn!’ sondern: ‘Lobet Gott den Bürger!’—Schlingel! kein Franzose benennt jetzt mehr den anderen Herr, sondern—

LANDMANN. Ich begreife, man sagt jetzt Kerl, Tropf, Schlingel, Schelm, und so dergleichen—

SANSCULOTTE. Was?

LANDMANN. Ihr tituliert mich so—

SANSCULOTTE. Dummkopf! das ist was anderes. Bürger sind jetzt alle Franzosen, hörst du! nicht mehr, noch weniger!

LANDMANN. So sind wir's draussen auch in der Provinz, so gut als ihr, und können ein Wort mit drein reden?

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Dreinreden?’ Hört ihr, Leute ? Der Kerl ist ein Föderalist! Ein verlaufener Girondistenknecht! er faselt von Autonomie der Provinz!

---

FIRST CITIZEN. Let him be; he's been deaf for six years and only just cured today.

SANSCULOTTE. Then the first thing he ought to have heard is that there are no more gentlemen. Not even the night watch at Mainz calls out any more ‘Praise God, gentlemen!’ but ‘Praise God, citizens!’—You clown, no Frenchman calls another ‘gentleman’ any longer, but—

COUNTRYMAN. I know. Now you say fellow, booby, clown, scoundrel, and things like that—

SANSCULOTTE. What?

COUNTRYMAN. That's what you call me—

SANSCULOTTE. Blockhead! That's a different matter. All we French now are just citizens, d'you hear that? Neither more nor less!

COUNTRYMAN. And are we in our province just as good as you, and can we put in our say?

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Put in our say?’ D'you hear that, folk? The fellow is a federalist, a runaway Girondist! He's drivelling about the autonomy of the provinces!

The day of the Girondists is past and over. The sansculotte imagines that the countryman is thinking of the autonomy that was enjoyed by the provinces when they were in power.

WEIBER. Hängt ihn, hängt ihn! er ist ein Föderalist! (Man will ihn ergreifen.)

LANDMANN. (ängstlich schreiend) Scharwache! Polizei! Zu Hilfe!—Mörder! Räuber! Diebe! Zu Hilfe! (Einige lachen.)

WEIBER. Er nennt Sansculotten Räuber und Mörder! An die Laterne!

ALLGEMEINES GESCHREI. An die Laterne! (Man ergreift ihn.)

DER SANSCULOTTE. (dazwischen tretend) Einen Augenblick, Bürger! Keine blinde Wut!—Wenn man Septembermann gewesen, wie ich, so weiss man, wie das rechte Verfahren in solchen Dingen ist.—Höre, Schlingel!

LANDMANN. Was hab' ich denn verbrochen?

SANSCULOTTE. (würdevoll) Mit dieser Frage verteidigt sich kein französischer Bürger und Patriot. Ob Föderalist oder nicht, ich will dir beweisen, dass du zehnmal gehängt zu werden verdienst, auch wenn du der republikanischen Freiheit nie ein Haar gekrümmt haben solltest. Ich frage dich bloss: Was hast du getan für die Freiheit? Wie hast du dich kompromittiert für die Freiheit? Was hast du getan, um gehängt zu werden, wenn eine Reaktion.einträte und die Gemässigten ans Ruder kämen?

LANDMANN. Ich? O—wartet nur, ich besinne mich ja seht, es fällt mir etwas ein.—Ich fand einmal im Wald einen halbverhungerten Mann unter einem Haufen dürrer Streu versteckt—der machte mir solch jämmerlich flehende Zeichen (denn hören konnt' ich nur wenig von wegen der Taubheit) dass ich ihn mit nach Hause nahm, ihn labte und in aller Stille beherbergte. Als er abzog, vergass er in der Dachstube etliche zerknitterte Papiere, aus welchen ich ersah, dass es ein gar wichtiger Mann gewesen sein musste, einer von denen, die jetzt hier in Paris regieren—so einer aus eurem—wie heisst's doch gleich? hab' heute davon gehört—aus eurem Nationalkonvent.—Sah auch aus den Papieren, wie er hiess. Er hiess Bri—ha, es fällt mir schon ein, Brissot.?

(Grosse Sensation im Volke, dann wildes Geschrei: Verräter! Verräter! Schurke!)

SANSCULOTTE. Still!—(Zum LANDMANN) Unglückseliger! du hast das Haupt der dem Henker verfallenen Girondisten und Föderalisten, der Gemässigten, der heimlichen Volksverräter bei dir beherbergt!—Mensch, deine Sache ist eine verlorene. Dir ist nicht mehr zu helfen! Hängt ihn!

VOLK. An die Laterne!

ERSTER BÜRGER. Ach, lasst ihn doch! Ihr seht ja, dass er ein Dummkopf ist, und sechs Jahre lang ist er taub gewesen.

EINIGE STIMMEN. Was? der Gewürzkrämer verteidigt ihn? Auch ein Verräter!

ERSTER BÜRGER. Bin ich nicht ein guter Patriot? Hab' ich nicht kürzlich bei der grossen Hungersnot meinen Zuckervorrat pfundweise ans Volk verteilt, ohne Entgeld?

EIN FISCHWEIB. Du betrogst uns mit dem Gewicht! Als ich mein Pfund zu Hause nachwog, da fehlte dran ein halbes Lot!

WEIBER. Hängt sie alle beide!

EINER AUS DEM VOLKE. Hier vor dem Bücherladen des wackeren Patrioten Momoro!

(Man zerrt den Bauer gegen den Laternenpfahl, der vor Momoros Laden steht.)

MOMORO. (tritt aus der Tür, sein Käppchen, das er auf dem kahlen Kopfe trägt, lüftend) Guten Morgen, Sansculotten! Was belieben die freien Männer und edlen Bürger zu treiben hier vor meiner Tür?

---

WOMEN. Hang 'im, hang 'im! He's a federalist! (They make as if to setze him.)

COUNTRYMAN. (shouting in alarm) Watchman! Police! Help! Murder! Robbers! Thieves! Help! (Some laughter.)

WOMEN. He's calling sansculottes robbers and murderers! To the lamp-post!

GENERAL CRY. To the lamp-post! (He is seized.)

SANSCULOTTE. (stepping between them) One minute, citizens! No blind rage!—When one's been a September man, like me, one knows the right way to act in these matters.—Listen, Clown!

COUNTRYMAN. What have I done wrong?

SANSCULOTTE. (with dignity) No citizen and patriot of France stands up for his rights by asking that question. Whether you're federalist or not, prove to you that you deserve ten times over to be hanged, even if you've done nothing to hurt republican freedom. I simply ask what you've done for freedom? Have you euer compromised yourself for freedom? What have you done to risk hanging if reaction sets in and the moderates come to power?

COUNTRYMAN. I? Oh—Wait a bit, I'm calling to mind—yes, it's just coming back to me. Once in a wood I found a half-starved man under a heap of dry straw—he made such pitiful, beseeching signs to me, for I couldn't hear much on account of my deafness, that I took him home and gave him something to eat and kept him in hiding. When he went off he forgot some scraps of paper in the attic; from these I saw that he must have been a very important man, one of those who rule now here in Paris, one of those belonging to your—what d'you call it, I've heard the name today—to your National Convention—even saw from the papers what he called himself. His name was Bri—yes, it comes back to me, Brissot—

(Great Sensation among the people, then a wild shout: Traitor, traitor, villain!)

SANSCULOTTE. Silence!—(To the COUNTRYMAN) Wretched man! You sheltered the chief of the Girondists and federalists who have fallen to the hangman, chief of the moderates, of the secret betrayers of the people!—Man, it's all up with you. Nothing can help you now! Take him and hang him!

PEOPLE. To the lamp-post!

FIRST CITIZEN. Oh, leave him alone. See what a blockhead he is, and he's been deaf for six years—

VOICES IN THE CROWD. What? The grocer sticks up for him? He's a traitor too!

FIRST CITIZEN. I'm not a good patriot, then? Didn't I, a short time ago, during the great famine, divide up all my sugar and give it to the people by the pound, and that gratis ?

FISHWIFE. You didn't give us fair weight! When I got home it was live grammes short!

WOMEN. Hang both of them!

A VOICE FROM THE CROWD. Here, in front of the bookshop of the honest patriot Momoro!

(The peasant is dragged towards the lamp-post in front of Momoro's shop.)

MOMORO. (comes out of the door, raising the Linie cap that covers his bald head) Good morrow, Sansculottes! What does it please our free men and noble citizens to do here in front of my door?

Momoro is a citizen too, and moreover, as we shall see, a man of some importance who stands with the whole force of his personality right in the immediate moment of the revolution. He is, however, at the same time, beginning to feel that the ground under his feet is getting a bit shaky.

Fresh people now come forward and prepare the way for a new mood, the mood that I characterised as reminiscent of sounding brass. We are, in fact, at the moment when loyalty to Danton is passing away, in favour of loyalty to Robespierre. We must accordingly watch for die transition from the a—o mood to the e—a mood. Loyalty to Robespierre is quietly stealing in, and that fact must find expression in the whole mood of the scene from now on.

EINER AUS DEM VOLK. Guten Morgen, Bürger Momoro. Wir hängen einen Föderalisten, einen Girondistenknecht—

MOMORO. Gerade hier vor eines Patrioten Tür? Lasst das bleiben, ehrenwerte Bürger der Republik! Wozu haben wir denn das Revolutionstribunal, das ja ohnedies im ganzen wenig zu wünschen und zu hängen übrig lässt? Und überhaupt, tut mir den Gefallen, hängt keinen, bevor er die neuesten Broschüren gelesen hat, die in meinem Buchladen soeben erschienen. Wenn ihr einen solchen Menschen tötet, so verfault der Kerl unnütz unter der Erde und labt höchstens die Würmer. Wenn ihr ihm aber Zeit lasst, die neuesten Broschüren zu lesen, so könnt ihr den widerhaarigsten Aristokraten in einen feuerspeienden Patrioten verwandeln, der hingeht und sich mit Freudentränen in den Augen jeden Augenblick für die Republik totschlagen lässt. Ich frage: was ist besser?—Da seht einmal (er weist einen Pack Flugblätter und Broschüren vor): ‘Neueste Trauerrede auf den Tod des göttlichen Marat’—‘Laternenpfahl und Guillotine; fliegende Blätter für Freiheit, Gleichheit und allgemeine Menschenliebe’—‘Neuer und unfehlbarer Plan, royalistische Städte binnen drei Tagen mit Nelkenöl in die Luft zu sprengen’—

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Good morrow, Citizen Momoro. We're hanging a federalist, a Girondist?

---

MOMORO. What? Just here at the door of a patriot? Wait a bit, honourable citizens of the Republic. What is the Revolutionary Tribunal for, which on the whole leaves us very little to wish for and very few people to hang? At least do me the favour not to hang anyone till he has read the latest pamphlet that has just appeared in my shop. When you kill a man of this sort the fellow rots uselessly in the ground and at best feeds the worms. But when you give him time to read the latest pamphlet, you may change the most cross-grained aristocrat into a fire-spitting patriot who goes off ready to die at any moment for the Republic. I ask you, which is the better? Just look (he points to a pile of broadsheets and pamphlets): ‘Latest Funeral Oration on the Death of the Godlike Marat’—‘Lamp-post and Guillotine'; leaflets on liberty, equality and universal human love.’ New and infallible Plan to blow up Royalist Towns with Oil of Cloves’?

Momoro talks the most naturally of them all, and helps to lead over to the new phase of the revolution. He is, at the moment, in high esteem, and this must be apparent to the audience.

VOLK. Hoch Momoro, der Patriot!

MOMORO. Es lebe die Republik!—Alles für wenige Sous!(Viele drängen sich herbei, die Blätter zu kaufen.)

SANSCULOTTE. Du verkaufst deine Scharteken zu teuer, Bürger Momoro!

MOMORO. Keinen Sou verdien' ich dran. Ihr kennt mich!

IN ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER. Der ‘Vater Duchêsne’! Der ‘Vater Duchêsne' von heute! Zwei Sous das Blatt!—Er ist verzweifelt wild heute, der Vater Duchêsne!—Kauft das Journal des gefeierten Patrioten Hebert!—in 30 000 Exemplaren verbreitet! Er ist verzweifelt wild heute, der Vater Duchêsne!—

MOMORO. (nachspottend) ‘Er ist verzweifelt wild heute der Vater Duchêsne!’ So ruft er alle Tage. 30 000 Exemplare? Allen Respekt vor dem Bürger Hebert, aber ich habe mir sagen lassen, dass ganze Stösse seines Journals gratis in die Gasthöfe wandern—für die ‘Bedürfnisse’ der Reisenden! hahaha! für die ‘Bedürfnisse’ der Reisenden!—Das Gediegenste, was aus den Federn der Patrioten fliesst, findet man doch immer noch bei Momoro. In meinem Hinterstübchen haben schon unter dem Königtum die radikalsten Männer Klub gehalten und halten da noch Klub heutigen Tages.—

ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER. (spottend) Ja, Graukopf, sie halten Klub bei deinem jungen Weibchen.

MOMORO. Tropf! sie bringen ihr den neuen republikanischen Kalender bei, der den Weibern so schwer in den Kopf will. Und mehr! noch mehr! 0, die Patrioten wissen den alten Momoro zu schätzen, und um ihn zu ehren, haben sie, müsst ihr wissen, keine andere als eben sein Weibchen zur Göttin der Vernunft erkoren. Schon am frühen Morgen ist sie heut' abgeholt worden auf das Stadthaus, damit man für das Fest sie würdig herausputze. Nun ihr werdet sehen! Auf diesem selben Platze wird sie prangen.

ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER. Und dir werden zur Feier des Tages die Hörner vergoldet?

VOLK. Es lebe Momoro und sein Weibchen!

MOMORO. (zu einem Manne, der ein Plakat an die Mauer klebt) Mensch, du klebst ja dein Plakat hier über ein anderes.

DER MANN. Ach, das alte ist ein gemässigtes; das da aber ist von der Kommune.—

VOLK. (das sich indes immer zahlreicher gesammelt) Von der Kommune? lasst doch sehen!

EINER AUS DEM VOLKE. (lesend) ‘Hebert und Chaumette laden das souveräne Volk zum heutigen Feste der Vernunft, das denkwürdig bleiben wird für alle Zeiten!’—

VOLK. Hoch Hebert! Hoch Chaumette! Hoch die Republik! Ça ira! (Die Weiber tanzen)

EIN STELZFUSS. (im Gedränge) Heissa! springt und brüllt, wie ihr wollt, aber tretet einem verdienten Krieger der Republik sein hölzernes Bein nicht weg!

---

PEOPLE. Cheers for Momoro the patriot!

MOMORO. Long live the Republic! Any one of these for a few sous!

(Many of the crowd press round him to buy the leaflets.)

SANSCULOTTE. You sell your trash too dear, Citizen Momoro!

MOMORO. Why, I don't make a sou on them. You know me!

NEWSPAPER-VENDOR. ‘Father Duchêsne’! ‘Father Duchêsne’ ! today's ‘Father Duchêsne’! He's desperately savage today is Father Duchêsne! Buy the paper of the good old patriot Hebert! 30,000 copies given out! He's desperately savage today is Father Duchêsne!—

MOMORO. (ridiculing him) ‘He's desperately savage today is Father Duchêsne.’ That's what he calls out all day. 30,000 copies? With all due respect to Citizen Hebert I venture to say that whole stacks of his paper find their way into the inns gratis—‘For the requirements of travellers’ ! Ha! Ha! Ha! ‘For the requirements of travellers’!—What is of value from the pens of the patriots is still always to be found at Momoro's. In my room behind the shop, even under the King, all the most radical men used to meet, still meet today?

NEWSPAPER-VENDOR. (mockingly) Yes, old fellow, the club meets where your young wife is.

MOMORO. Booby! They explain to her the recent Republican Calendar which takes so long to get into the head of a woman! What's more, what's more—Oh, the patriots know how to appreciate old Momoro, and how to do him honour; you must know they have chosen no one else but his little wife to be the Goddess of Reason. today, quite early, she was taken to the Town Hall to be all properly decked out for the festival. You'll see. She'll be on show in this very square.

NEWSPAPER-VENDOR. And will your horns be gilded for the occasion?

PEOPLE. Long live Momoro and his little wife!

MOMORO. (to a man sticking a placard on the wall) Hi, you, you're sticking that on top of another—

THE MAN. Oh, that old thing is one of those moderates, but this, here, comes from the Commune—

PEOPLE. (gathering round in their numbers) From the Commune, let's see!

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. (reading aloud) ‘Hebert and Chaumette invite the sovereign people today to the Festival of Reason which will remain in memory for all time!’

PEOPLE. Cheers for Hebert! Cheers for Chaumette! Cheers for the Republic! Ça ira! (The women dance.)

MAN WITH WOODEN LEG. (among the crowd) Hurray! Jump and shout as much as you like but don't stamp off the wooden leg of a deserving soldier of the Republic!

For at this point, in order to show how the mood is changing, moving all the time in the direction of the note that has been sounded by Robespierre, a new speaker steps forward from among the crowd, who is under a certain disability—a man with a wooden leg. The crowd, we shall find, is gradually working its way free of the completely different mood that has hitherto prevailed and beginning to enter into the mood that is connected with Robespierre. The i (ee) mood that belongs to him, begins to be heard.

SANSCULOTTE. (auf ihn zugehend) Was seh' ich? Battiste, du wieder in Paris? Verflucht—dein Bein

STELZFUSS. Hainbuchenes Kernholz—

SANSCULOTTE. Brav gefochten für die Republik? Nicht Tod noch Teufel gefürchtet ? Nie in Gefangenschaft geraten?

STELZFUSS. Bin ein einziges Mal von feindlichen Reitern allein überfallen worden, and da waren ihrer bloss vier—

SANSCULOTTE. Viele Strapazen ausgestanden?

STELZFUSS. Donnerwetter! Ihr habt es leicht, hier im warmen Paris als Ohnehosen herumzulaufen: aber im Feld kampieren und auf Vorposten stehen, ohne Schuh', in einer Kälte, bei welcher die Kinder im Mutterleibe erfrieren, so dass wir Schiesspulver in den Branntwein tun mussten, um uns den Magen zu erwärmen? Dann wieder tagelang fechten in der Sonnenglut—

SANSCULOTTE. Ach, was schadet das dem Krieger im Eifer des Gefechts?

STELZFUSS. Natürlich, wenn dir eine Kanonenkugel den Kopf wegreisst, so stirbst du nicht am Sonnenstich—

EINER AUS DEM VOLKE. Bist du nicht der, den sie als jungen Burschen den kleinen Barbier nannten—Gehilfe beim Barbier Flatte in der Strasse Pompadour?

STELZFUSS.
Der bin ich und habe mein Handwerk nicht verlernt—
Zu Lille, wenn eine Bombe niederflog
und vor mir platzte, griff ich eine Scherbe
vom Boden auf, gebrauchte sie als Schüssel
mit Seif' und Wasser und rasierte dann
so zwanzig Kameraden auf dem Fleck.
Ei, das gefiel euch wohl hier in Paris,
wenn die Armee mit den geschwungenen Fahnen
wegwedelte von Frankreichs Leib des Auslands
Schmeissfliegenschwarm, der zahllos ihn umschwirrt—
Wenn ihr vernahmt, dass wir so Sieg auf Sieg
erfochten, dachtet ihr da hinterm Ofen
wohl auch daran, wie oft wir barfuss liefen
und nichts zu beissen hatten als Patronen,
und oft nicht einmal die?

SANSCULOTTE. Was? lassen nicht die Weiber von Paris ihre Männer zerrissen laufen, um Zelttücher und Uniformen für euch zu nähen? Behelfen wir uns nicht statt der klingenden Münze mit lumpigen wertlosen Assignaten? Was? Wir nicht an euch gedacht? Und sind wir etwa müssig gewesen, indess ihr im Felde standet? In den Septembertagen hättest du hier sein sollen?

STELZFUSS. Kann mir's denken—erinnere mich noch recht gut, wie du vor drei Jahren einmal bei einem Volksfeste dem Pferde des Generals Lafayette, ohne dass es der General merkte, den Schweif an einen Laternenpfahl bandest, weil die Stute damit immer dir und anderen, die hinter dir standen, ins Gesicht flunkerte?

SANSCULOTTE. Possen! Aber in den Septembertagen...

STELZFUSS. Ist es denn wahr, dass ihr in diesen Septembertagen zuletzt auch die sämtlichen seltenen Tiere in der Menagerie von Versailles habt über die Klinge springen lassen?

SANSCULOTTE. Was? Die sämtlichen seltenen Tiere? Nein, nur die Löwen und Adler, weil das die Könige der Tiere sind, und dann was die sogenannten Wappentiere sind, wie sie die Aristokraten in ihren Wappen hatten?

STELZFUSS. Teufelskerle! Wie kam euch denn das so auf einmal?

SANSCULOTTE. Weiss nicht. Auf einmal, sagst du? Gar nicht auf einmal Es kam so nach und nach, wie der Appetit mit dem Essen?

STELZFUSS. Was sagten denn die Gemässigten?

SANSCULOTTE. Kein Wort. Hinter den Sansculotten stand die Kommune, und diese selber deckte der breite Rücken Dantons, der sich damals eben zum erstenmal aufgerichtet hatte als ein brüllender Leu. Gegen den waren die anderen nur ein Rudel bissiger Hunde. Jetzt ist er träg geworden und überhaupt, wie alles grosse Getier, nicht so beständig munter und beisslustig wie die kleineren Kläffer—

EINER AUS DEM VOLK. Ah, diesem Simson haben's auch die Weiber angetan?

SANSCULOTTE.
Ja, ja, doch sag ich euch,
steht der noch einmal auf, so lang er ist,
stösst er die Decke durch und reisst die Säulen
im Tempel um, grad' wie der Simson auch—

EIN ANDERER. Ach was, der steht nicht wieder auf. Den hat der andre unter’sich gebracht. Und dieser andre ist schlau?

STELZFUSS. Wer?

SANSCULOTTE. Ei wer? Hast du von Robespierre im Lager nicht gehört?

STELZFUSS. Robespierre? Robespierre? Ist das das kleine steife Männchen, das man spottweise das’ Talglicht von Arras’ nennt, weil er von Arras kam und gern glänzen wollte, aber nicht heller flackerte als eine Talgkerze? Sie lachten ihn immer aus, wenn er in der Nationalversammlung sprechen wollte.

SANSCULOTTE. Das war damals. Der führt jetzt im Nationalkonvent, im Wohlfahrtsausschuss, im Jacobinerklub das grosse Wort.

STELZFUSS. Ich sah ihn einmal—nur von fern. Trägt er nicht Brillen?

SANSCULOTTE. Nein.

STELZFUSS. Es kam mir doch so vor.

SANSCULOTTE. Er hat ein gelbes Gesicht und bläulich- gräuliche Ränder um die Augen—die wirst du in deiner Einfalt aus der Entfernung für Brillen gehalten haben?

STELZFUSS. Bleich im Gesicht?

SANSCULOTTE.
Gelb—grau—nein, eigentlich—wie soll ich sagen?
Graugrün, wenn man's genau nimmt—tiefe Augen
und widerhaar'ge Braun—ein schlichtes Männchen;
nichts gegen Danton! Aber wenn vor dir
hier Danton steht, der mächtige Koloss,
und dort das schneid'ge Männchen Robespierre
sprichst du mit dem frei von der Leber weg
wie mit dem jovialsten Kameraden,
und vor dem andern stockt die Rede dir
im Schlund—nicht grad' als ob er dich so dreist
ansäh', im Gegenteil, sieht eher etwas schüchtern
und unbehilflich aus vor vielem Volk—
doch geh' nur einmal auf die Galerie
des Nationalkonvents, sobald er spricht:
da kennst du ihn nicht mehr. Wenn festen Schritts
er steigt zur Rednerbühne, wird's so still,
dass du die Mäuschen pfeifen hören kannst
in ihren Löchern. Steht er anfangs dann
aufrecht und ruhig droben wie ein Pfahl
und spricht gelassen, denkst du: nun, er spricht nur eben
wie ein Schulmeister, oder wie ein Pfaff
spricht auf der Kanzel—plötzlich aber wirft
er ein paar Worte hin mit einer Stimme,
so kalt und scharf wie Stahl—in einem Ton,
dass dir ein Schauer über'n Rücken läuft-
Und fängt dann gar der Winkel seines Mundes
zu zucken an, und ruft er bittersüss
in seiner scharfen, schneidigen Manier:
‘Du armes Volk!’ und’ Tugendhaftes Volk!’
da packt dich was im Herzen wie ein Krampf:
du legst die Hand ans Messer, wenn du eins
verbirgst an deiner Brust, und möchtest gern
dich vor ihm niederwerfen und ihn fragen,
wen du zuerst von den verfluchten Feinden
der Republik damit durchstossen sollst—
Zuweilen aber schweigt er wochenlang
und lässt die anderen reden. Es geschehe
viel Dinge noch, von welchen man nicht weiss,
ob sie ihm lieb sind oder leid. Zuweilen
laviert er bloss und wartet auf den Wind.

Eben in letzter Zeit ist er wieder sehr schweigsam geworden?

---

SANSCULOTTE. (going up to him) What? You, Battiste, back in Paris? Damn it all—your leg—

WOODEN LEG. The prime cut of a hornbeams

SANSCULOTTE. Well fought for the Republic? No fear of death or the devil and never taken prisoner?

WOODEN LEG. Only once, fallen upon by enemy cavalry and then they were four to?

SANSCULOTTE. Stood up to plenty of hardship?

WOODEN LEG. By Jupiter! You've an easy time here in warm Paris, running around as sansculottes; but to camp out in the fields and to be on outpost duty without shoes in a cold that's enough to freeze a baby in its mother's womb, so that we had to put gunpowder in our brandy to warm up our stomachs? Then the whole day long to fight in the blaze of the sun?

SANSCULOTTE. Oh! What does that matter to anyone in the heat of the battle?

WOODEN LEG. Naturally if a cannonball takes off your head you can't be said to die of sunstroke—

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Are you the one they used to call the little barber when you were a bit of a thing—used to help Barber Hatte in Pompadour Street?

WOODEN LEG. That's me, and I've never forgotten my trade—
Once when a bomb came down at Lille and burst
In front of me I seized a fragment up
From off the ground and used it as a dish,
And then with soap and water, on the spot,
Gave a good shave to twenty of our lads.
Ha, this pleased you all right well in Paris here
When our brave army with its colours flying
Swept from our France the dirty foreign flies
Which in a countless swarm did buzz around.
When you did hear of all the victories
That we were gaining, from beside your stoves
Had you a thought how often with bare feet
We went about and nothing had to eat
But cartridges—not even those at times?

SANSCULOTTE. What? Don't the wives of Paris let their men go in rags while they stitch at tent-cloths and uniforms for you? Don't we have to put up with dirty, worthless paper in place of ringing coins? What? We don't think about you? And are we idle when you're fighting? You should have been here in the September days—

WOODEN LEG. I can imagine—I remember quite well how three years ago on a people's holiday, without the General noticing it, you bound the tail of Lafayette's mare to the lamp-post because it cavorted about in your very faces?

SANSCULOTTE. Buffoonery! But in those September days...

WOODEN LEG. Is it true then that in those September days you put to death the whole collection of rare animals in the menagerie at Versailles?

SANSCULOTTE. What? The whole menagerie? No, only the lions and eagles because they are the kings among the animals; besides they're what are in the so-called coats-of-arms that aristocrats used to bear.

WOODEN LEG. You devils! How did that suddenly come into your heads?

SANSCULOTTE. I don't know. Suddenly, did you say? It wasn't a bit sudden. It came gradually—like appetite comes with eating—

WOODEN LEG. What said the moderates?

SANSCULOTTE. Not a word. The Commune is behind the sansculottes, and that's protected by Danton's broad back, and just at that time he was beginning to roar like a lion. Compared with him the others were only a pack of biting dogs. He's become lazy nowadays and like all the great beasts not always so full of vigour and lust for using his teeth as the small curs are—

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Ah! This Samson too has been bewitched by the women!

SANSCULOTTE. Yes, yes, but I would have you know
When upright he does stand he is so tall
He'd push the ceiling through, break down the pillars,
Just as did once your Samson in the temple—

ANOTHER. Oh well! He no longer stands at his full height. He's under the other now, and this other is crafty—

WOODEN LEG. Who?

SANSCULOTTE. Who Haven't you heard of Robespierre in your camp ?

WOODEN LEG. Robespierre? Robespierre? Is that the stiff little man they call in fun the ‘tallow candle of Arras' because he came from Arras and wanted to shine but gave no more light than a flickering tallow candle? They laughed him out of court when he wanted to speak in the National Assembly.

SANSCULOTTE. That was in those days. He leads now in the debates in the National Convention or in the Committee of Public Safety—in the Jacobin Club too.

WOODEN LEG. I saw him once—only from a distance. Doesn't he wear spectacles?

SANSCULOTTE. No.

WOODEN LEG. It looked as if he did.

SANSCULOTTE. He has a yellow face and a blue-grey rim round his eyes, which you in your ignorance may at a distance have taken for spectacles—

WOODEN LEG. Pasty-faced?

SANSCULOTTE. Yellow—grey—no indeed, what shall I say?
Grey-green, to be exact, with deep-set eyes
And stubborn brow—a simple, little
man, Nothing compared with Danton! But if here
That great Colossus Danton were to stand
And there the little sharp-edged Robespierre,
With Danton one could speak out at one's ease
As with the friendliest among one's mates,
But with the other all your talk would be
Stuck in your throat; not that he's arrogant,
Quite on the contrary for he seems shy
And at a loss before a lot of folk—
But hear him at the National Convention!
You will not know him; when with a firm step
He goes up to the rostrum, all's so still
That you can hear the piping of the mice
Inside their holes. He to begin with stands
Upright and cool above us like a pillar
And speaks so calm, you think: well, now he talks
Just like a schoolmaster, or like a priest
Talks in a pulpit—then, quite suddenly
He hurls out a few words, but with a voice
As cold and sharp as steel, and in a tone
That sends a shudder running down your back;
And then the corner of his mouth begins
To twitch and he cries' out, so bittersweet,
In that sharp way so full of energy,
‘O you poor folk’ and ‘O you virtuous folk!’
And something seizes on your heart like cramp,
And if you have a knife concealed about you
You grasp it firmly, with the strong desire
To throw yourself before him and to ask
Which, to begin with, of the cursed foes
Of the Republic you should plunge it in.
But sometimes he is silent weeks on end
Letting the others speak. Many things occur
Of which one does not know whether they please
Or do not please him. Then too there are times
When he just tacks and waits upon the wind.
He's been quite silent recently again—

Note the skilful way in which the personality of Robespierre is introduced. The sansculotte abandons his role as sansculotte, and suddenly shows himself as a marvellous portrayer of character. If this moment in the scene is rendered with the colouring that it has been my intention to give to it in my reading, then in this speech that the sansculotte addresses to the people around him, the audience will eel the swing-over of loyalty of which we have spoken. The critical moment of transition has come; and as we go on, I shall indicate here and there some of the points that it would be important for a producer to have in mind The second mood is now upon us, it overwhelms the scene as though with a confused and deafening noise; I compared it, you will remember, to the clash of sounding brass.

EIN SCHREIBER DER KOMMUNE. (erscheint mit Handlangern, die Bretter und Handwerksgeräte mit sich tragen) Platz da! Platz, Sansculotten! Das Gerüst für die Göttin der Vernunft und für die Redner wird aufgeschlagen! Der Festzug wird in kurzer Zeit da sein.

---

CLERK TO THE COMMUNE. (appears with workmen carrying planks and tools) Make way there; make way, sansculottes. The stand is to be put up for the Goddess of Reason and the orators. The procession will shortly be here.

Here we have the ö (French eu in ‘feu’) mood. It has to be spoken forward; we must let the speaking strike on to the front part of the palate.

VOLK. Ça ira! Es lebe die Göttin der Vernunft!

SCHREIBER. (zu den Handlangern) Hierher, ihr Leute! in der Mitte des Platzes! Notre-Dame gerade gegenüber! (Die Handlanger machen sich an die Arbeit.)

---

PEOPLE. Ça ira. Long live the Goddess of Reason!

CLERK. (to his men) Here, you people! In the middle of the square! Over there by Notre Dame! (The men set to work.)

From now on, the women speak more in the ei (as in ‘height’) mood. With the entry of Robespierre into the conversation, the revolutionary impulses begin to be imbued with a sort of coy and affectionate enthusiasm—e a.

EIN WEIB. Seht nur, dass es nicht wieder so geht, wie im vorigen Jahre bei dem grossen Feste, wo sich ein paar Kerle unter den Brettergrund des Gerüstes versteckten—vermutlich um die Männer und Frauen, die darauf standen, in die Luft zu sprengen, bis man sie entdeckte, hervorzog und totschlug—

DER SCHREIBER. (schäkernd) Ach, das waren bloss ein paar Verehrer eures Geschlechts, die durch die Ritzen herauf- blinzelten... Was läge daran, wenn man heute der Vernunft ein wenig nach den Waden guckte? Sein Augenmerk auf die Vernunft und all ihr Detail zu richten, ist ja fortan Bürgerpflicht!

WEIBER. (ihn umringend) Du Schelm!—Werden sie bald da sein?

SCHREIBER. Sogleich.

WEIBER. Heissa, gleich werden sie da sein! Es lebe Hebert und Chaumette! Es lebe die Kommune! Es lebe der Konvent! Es lebe Danton! Es lebe Robespierre!

A WOMAN. Look to it that what happened last year at the great fête doesn't happen again, when a few fellows hid underneath the platform—as it was thought, to blow up the men and women on it—till they were discovered and pulled out and killed—

---

CLERK. (waggishly) Aha! They were simply one or two worshippers of your fair sex squinting through the crevices. ... What of it if today, too, someone has a peep at the Goddess of Reason's legs? To make Reason in all her details his aim, is henceforth one of the obligations of a citizen!

WOMEN. (pressing round him) You rogue! Will they soon be here?

CLERK. They're just coming.

WOMEN. Hurray! They're just coming! Long live Hebert and Chaumette! Long live the Commune! Long live the Convention! Long live Danton! Long live Robespierre!

(Translated by V. E. W.)

I wanted to show you by practical example how a scene like this should be treated. I have laid on the colouring a little more strongly than would be necessary in a performance, because I wanted you to have a particularly clear picture of how the different moods come severally to expression in the treatment of sound. We saw, for example, that the countryman has to be spoken throughout with the mouth open, for he is to reveal the a mood; a slight intoning of a should even be audible in every sound he utters. Similarly, you will find the clerk has to speak so that something of an i enters into each one of his sounds. His voice is always in front of that i-boundary in the mouth, of which I was speaking the other day, and is continually striking the front part of the palate. It is by paying careful attention to details like this, that we can gradually learn to give form and style to our speaking on the stage.

Dear attendees! From my remarks yesterday, you will have gathered that the basis of the observation of the social problem on which this is built is not based on the aspirations or demands of this or that social class, this or that party, or on what emerges from interests that stem from very specific areas of economic, legal or other areas of life; but here we must build on what arises from the life forms and life necessities of contemporary humanity itself, insofar as these life necessities and life forms can be observed through a truly spiritual scientific investigation of what humanity has worked through in the course of its development to the present.

What use is it, dear attendees, to point out the necessity of this or that social legislative measure out of one-sided interest, out of a one-sided party tendency? And even if you succeed in realizing something that corresponds to such a demand, what if what you bring into the world as a result is beneficial on the one hand, but on the other hand, of necessity, must bring about all kinds of harm? That which is truly beneficial can only follow from an all-round, unprejudiced observation of the necessities of human society itself.

This observation of the necessities of life, as they exist in particular in present-day humanity, have actually, I might say, been revealed and revealed in abundance by that which has emerged, as I already indicated yesterday, from modern technical operations on the one hand – precisely that was to be shown yesterday – and from the capitalist economic system on the other. It is precisely these special forces, which have arisen out of modern technology and out of modern capitalism, that have produced demands of life, including social demands, demands of life that cannot be satisfied by a particular further development of capitalist or technical scientific forces, but whose satisfaction must be sought from quite a different direction.

I said yesterday: People's gaze has been hypnotized and focused solely on what the modern economic order has produced. And today's socialist agitator also has the opinion that what is effective in technology, in the economic order that has become through technology in the capitalist economic form, one must simply transfer it into something that can develop out of itself. For those who look more deeply into the developmental forces of humanity, it is clear that in our modern life through capitalism and technology, which as such were absolutely necessary in the course of human development and will continue to be necessary, that through technology and capitalism, phenomena have arisen that can almost be called forms of illness. These forms of illness must be cured. But some of the ideas of the modern man, whether he is a socialist or anti-socialist partisan, do not lead to a cure of the forms of illness that technology and capitalism have brought about, but rather to a continuation of these forms of illness. What must be striven for is to seek the healthy social organism behind those phenomena that are described as social forms of illness.

The one-sided view of economic life of the human being, of the modern human being, has certain ideas, such as you can find in the things that are eaten, so to speak, the extraordinarily justified striving of the modern proletarian. This view has given rise to certain ideas and certain connections between ideas which, if they were to permeate the social organism, could almost be compared, with regard to this social organism, to the ideas that Wagner in Goethe's “Faust” leads to his “homunculus”, to the creation of this homunculus! A social order could arise, an apparent, inanimate social order could arise from the realization of what is today often called, whether by socialist or antisocialist parties, the social idea, the will to socialism. For it is thought that there must be certain measures, there must be certain institutions that need only be realized, and then one has the right social organism. The considerations on which my present exposition is based proceed from something quite different. They do not at all want to give birth to such ideas, such concepts, such social aspirations, which lead to a kind of social homunculus; but they want to indicate the conditions under which a living social organism can arise!

For the starting point here is the realistic view that it would be just as foolish to try to build a social organism out of human ideas, however clever they may be, without that social organism having its own life force within it. It would be just as foolish to try to build a natural human organism from all kinds of chemical ingredients in a retort according to preconceived ideas of the connection between static forces.

The only thing that can be desired in social life is to seek out the conditions that must be realized if a social organism is to truly grow out of its own living conditions, out of its own necessities of life. This corresponds to a realistic, this corresponds to a truly practical way of thinking.

Therefore, it is important to recognize what the conditions of the social organism are. No matter how much the approach taken here is still regarded by some as impractical idealism today, the longer this realistic view of life and social life is regarded as impractical idealism, , the longer it will be inconvenient to address the true living conditions of the living social organism, the longer the disaster that has befallen humanity in such a catastrophic way will last.

If you know a little, dear attendees, what is alive in the development of humanity, you are not a “practitioner” in the sense of all those who sniff at the very closest things in life a little with the tip of their nose and then consider themselves practitioners from their narrow point of view and brutality rejects everything that does not want to follow their conditions, but is one a practitioner according to the general conditions of humanity, and one looks a little into the developmental conditions of humanity, so one knows that much of what can prevent later social disaster in the social fabric of humanity, very, very far back in its essence must be recognized! It is not easy to recognize too late what is happening in the social life of a nation, but it is very easy to do so in other fields. Once instincts are unleashed, as they are already beginning to be in a large part of the civilized world, the possibility of understanding is no longer there. Therefore, the appeal that arises in the heart of the one who recognizes the necessity that the seeds be sunk in the course of time, so that not disaster but salvation can occur in later time, is serious.

If we consider the social organism that is to emerge, which of course is not yet there, we first come to the conclusion that the following observation, the following premise, is necessary as a feeling, I could say: social forces have always present in the development of humanity; wherever any kind of cohesive human society had developed, whether a people, a state, a tribe or something similar, social impulses were always at work between people and their associations and organizations.

But up to that point in time, which I indicated yesterday as the point in the cycle at which human development passes from instinctive life to fully conscious life, up to that point in time, the social impulses also functioned more instinctively. And just the one sphere, the one area of our social life: the economic sphere with its modern technology, which has to be driven so consciously as an economy, with its modern capitalism, which has to be driven so consciously – just that has conjured up one-sidedness in one area of consciousness.

The old instinctive social life must give way to a fully conscious conception of the social organism. Our humanity must develop a sense of how the individual fits into the overall social organism. And without this social feeling, this social sense, arising from a real insight into the social organism, no salvation can come from the further development of humanity.

That people learn their multiplication tables, that people learn other things in life, is taken for granted today. It must gradually be taken for granted that the growing human being, through education, through school, takes in that which makes him feel like a member of the living social organism. And this living social organism, if it is healthy, is not an abstract homunculus-like unit, as it is often presented today: it is a structured organism.

And to make myself clear, esteemed attendees, I would like to start with a comparison today, but I will immediately note that this comparison is intended to be nothing more than a basis for establishing understanding and for averting misunderstandings.

I would like to say: just as the natural human organism is structured in such a way that it is actually a tripartite in the most eminent sense, so too is the social organism, when it is healthy, a tripartite structure in itself, not an abstract unity. The social organism is not any of these things: it is a threefold unity.

Dearly beloved, for decades I have tried to gain a truly scientific basis for the true threefold nature of the natural human organism. I have given hints about this in my book Von Seelenrätseln (The Riddle of the Soul). I have shown that present-day natural science, biology, will recognize the true organism as threefold when it passes over from that hustle and bustle which is now criticized by such biologists as, for example, [gap in transcript] himself, when it passes over from there to real science. This biology, this true science, which must first develop out of today's, will recognize the real organism as a threefold one.

I have tried to describe this threefold nature of the organism, as it is meant here, in such a way that the human being in his or her entirety is, firstly, the system that I would like to call the nervous-sensory system, which is more or less centralized in the human head. The second is the system that I would like to call the rhythmic system, which is more or less centralized in the rhythmic activities of the respiratory organs and the heart. And then, the third human being, so to speak, the third link of the human natural organism, that is the entire metabolic system. And it can be shown that the human being, insofar as he is active, is composed of these three systems.

But these three systems have a certain autonomy within them. The metabolic system, which is built on the digestive organs in the most eminent sense, cannot help but function independently and must be centralized independently within itself. Next to it, in a certain autonomy, is the lung-heart system, the rhythmic system, and next to that, in turn, is the head system, the nerve-sense system. And it is precisely through this that the living activity in the organism exists, that there is not an abstract centralization, but that these three systems each work within themselves with a certain relative independence; each wants to send the results of its activity into the other systems. The fact that they work alongside each other, on each other, is what makes the organism what it is.

Now I am far, far from simply bringing the social organism into a playful way, by an analogy game, into a comparison with the natural human organism. And the one who, from a superficial understanding of what I am going to present here, will say: Oh, yet another analogy game, as unfortunately created by Schäffle and now again in the book “Weltmutation”, yet another such analogical game in which the processes of the organism are transferred to the social order of society, which is governed by completely different laws; anyone who says that will judge what I actually want to present from a completely misleading point of view. My concern is not to transfer something that happens in the natural human organism to the social organism, but rather that realistic thinking, which teaches us to understand the human natural organism in the right way, realistic thinking is also applied to the social organism, and that the social organism, which is also a threefold nature, is objectively recognized in its living conditions, precisely by recognizing this threefold nature of it.

Those who seek analogies in a playful way, as in “Weltmutation” or in the works of Schäffle and many others, would simply say: the human natural organism has a spiritual part in the nervous-sensory system spiritual part, a regulating part in the rhythmic life of the respiratory and cardiac systems; and thirdly, in the metabolic system, it has that which is based on the coarsest material processes of the human organism. And what would such a system say by analogy with the social organism? It would compare the spiritual impulses that develop in the social organism with those that arise in the human head system, the nerve-sense system. It would thus compare the outer material economic life with that which is bound up in the human being with the coarsest material processes.

But anyone who simply observes the social organism in the same realistic way as one can observe the human being's natural organism, will, strangely enough, come to exactly the opposite conclusion! They will in fact come to observe all of it – whether one can describe it as the lowest or the highest, that is not the point here – but the first link of the social organism, the economic system. But this economic system cannot be analogously compared with the metabolic system of the natural human organism. Indeed, if one wants to use a comparison for the laws of economic life as they express themselves in the social organism, then these laws can only be compared with those laws that prevail in the so-called noblest system of the human organism, in the head system, in the nerve-sense system, the system from which human gifts arise, the system on which all human giftedness and also all human education must be based. In that which is connected with the natural gifts of the nerve-sense system, something enters into the natural, individual natural human organism that cannot be conjured up by mere learning, which brings the outside into the human being, but which must be brought out, depending on how it is predisposed in the human being, which must be demystified from a certain basis. Just as in the individual human development for education and shaping of life there is simply the intellectual gift, the physical and emotional disposition of the human being, so in the social organism there are natural foundations for all human living and working together, in addition to what can be achieved in this social organism through social thinking, that is, through the actions of people! By belonging to a social organism, man is related to certain natural foundations of all human existence through this social organism. The social organism is related to these natural foundations as the individual human organism is related to its innate talents, and no social thinking may deny these natural foundations in their influence on the shaping of all social life. No matter how beautiful the observations on the interaction of land, rent, capital, wages, entrepreneurial profit, and so on, and so on, if one does not understand how to correctly evaluate that which stands as a natural foundation, through which the social organism opens up to an element outside itself, then one does not arrive at a realistic observation if one cannot see this.

Just consider the following, esteemed attendees. Of course, it is of infinite, great importance what part human labor, as human labor, plays in the shaping of any social context of people. But this human labor is, after all, tremendously dependent on the natural foundation. Just as the developing human being is dependent on his or her predispositions, so the social organism is dependent on the natural foundation. Take the following example: Let us hypothetically assume a social organism whose main nutrient is bananas. The means necessary to transport the bananas from their place of origin to where they can be profitably consumed by humans, [to do so] a labor is necessary that is related to the labor necessary to bring the wheat from its point of origin to human consumption, a labor necessary from the material banana culture to the material wheat culture, a necessary labor in the social organism, which is approximately 1:100; that is to say: A hundred times more labor is required to develop labor power in the social organism where wheat production is concerned than where banana production is concerned.

Or assume something else: human labor must be employed to transform the natural product so that it can enter into the social process of circulation, to the point where it finds its end in consumption. You only need to consider the following: in Germany, in areas with medium yield, wheat yields seven to eight times the amount sown; in Chile, wheat yields twelve times the amount sown In northern Mexico, wheat yields seventeen times the amount sown, and in Peru seventeen times. In southern Mexico, it yields twenty-five to thirty-five times the amount sown! There you can see the influence that nature has. And this can also be applied to the yield of this or that raw material for any processing. There you see the relation, the ratio of the fertility of nature to human labor. What a different measure of labor is needed to produce the same yield, where wheat yields twenty-seven times its seed as a result, than where it yields only seven to eight times!

Now, these are radical examples. But the ratio of what nature, what ordinary production in general gives man to his labor, to the labor that is necessary, is just as different within each social context. There we have, I would say, the starting point of one link of the human social organism. Everything that flows out of the natural foundation into the process that takes place between the production, circulation, and consumption of commodities is just as much a closed system in the healthy social organism as the nervous-sensory system is a closed whole with relatively independent laws in the natural human organism.

And to allow something else to play a role in the economic organism, whose essential nature is in the circulation of goods, is just as unhelpful as it would be beneficial if the pulmonary-cardiac system were to play a role in the nervous-sensory system of the head. However strange it may still seem to people today when one speaks in this way, it is something that must underlie as a fundamental truth all, not only social thinking, but all social measures that can somehow be taken for the benefit of humanity in the healthy social organism in the present and future. That which takes place in the cycle of the commodity system must not flood and overwhelm the entire social organism, but must be a relatively independent system in its own right, with its own life. For anyone who then gets to the bottom of things in practice, this system of pure economic mechanism is already automatically distinguished from the other two systems.

The second system of the social organism is the one that encompasses everything that could be called public legal life and everything that regulates the other systems, in other words, that establishes the dignified relationship between people.

The establishment of a dignified relationship between people has nothing to do with the laws that govern pure economic life, with what leads to the circulation of goods within an economic body. The system of public law, the system of regulating life, the system that establishes the right relationship between people, will, just as the pulmonary and cardiac system, in the results of its activity, plays into the head system, so this system of public law, of public regulation of legislation, into what may be called political life in the broadest sense of the word; it will, especially if it develops relatively independently, also play a proper, vital role in economic life in the right, living way. Only the two systems must develop quite independently alongside one another, each according to its own laws, according to its own inner, essential impulses!

One could say that the great misfortune in recent times is that people have chaotically mixed up what can only flourish when it develops separately, in relative independence.

In older times, in keeping with human ideas and human needs in these older times, the three systems I have spoken of today were also in a corresponding relationship in the social organism.

The relationship that present and future humanity needs has yet to be found. However, we have started from many erroneous assumptions, out of a certain conservative attachment to what has been handed down from older times. Something has developed from older times, which was well founded in the old Roman conceptions of the state, developed through monarchies and other forms of state, that which one could call the constitutional state, the political state. Connected with this constitutional state, this political state, here and there was something of economic life, agriculture and forestry here and there. Other branches had claimed what was run as a state for themselves; so that, to a certain extent, the state, which was mainly a constitutional state, a political state, a political community, stood as a protective community with its armed forces against external influences, that this state also became an economist in a certain respect.

And when the modern era approached with its complicated economic systems of technology and capitalism, at first people found salvation in them, not separating the old economic areas that the constitutional state, the political state, had already incorporated, and establishing the two spheres neatly side by side: the rule of law, which aims to organize the relationship between people, and, on the other hand, the economic body. Instead, the two were conflated.

And more and more, the state, which actually has the task of regulating the relationship between people, was saddled with the postal system, telegraphy, railways, in short, the things that serve modern technology and modern economic life. What can be called the flooding of the purely political state system with the economic system developed. Under the influence of precisely those things that technology and capitalism have brought about for the detriment of modern humanity, modern socialist views have developed, so to speak, which, out of thoroughly good intentions and justified demands, want to take what can be called the “flooding of the constitutional state with economic life” to the extreme, but only out of a lack of understanding of old conditions that arise from a realistic observation of the social organism.

The salutary development does not lie in merging the economic social sphere with the political sphere, with the public legal sphere, with the sphere that has to regulate the relationship between people, but in separating each of these spheres to achieve relative independence.

We have seen, esteemed attendees, how damagingly the economic interest groups can operate when they do not organize according to economic impulses in their particular economic areas, but instead enter the representations of the political and legal state and want to push through what are purely economic interests, for which they want to establish rights and special privileges, where completely different foundations of political life should prevail. But what pulsates in economic life must be based solely and exclusively on the healthy conditions of economic life itself.

From what has arisen partly in external reality, partly in human perception, in human sentiment and in the elaboration of human demands from the confusion of economic life with pure politics, with pure state life, that is precisely what has been formed, disguised, and shaped into one of the most essential demands of the modern proletariat. The fact that economic life has flooded everything, that economic life has gradually, one might say, crept into political state life, has meant that an impulse in human activity has not been placed in its proper place – alongside other things, admittedly; but one of the most important, one of those that most deeply intervenes in the social problems of the present.

It will never be possible to separate the mere economic sphere from human labor, from character, from the character that everything in the economic sphere has, from the character of a commodity!

But, as I explained yesterday, the modern proletarian perceives this as the real inhumanity, that there is a labor market, a labor market in which the economic value of the commodity that is his labor power is simply determined according to the law of supply and demand. However the modern proletarian may express his demands, this demand, as something that is unconsciously at the center of all the other demands, even if one is unconscious of it: this demand, as something that is unconsciously at the center of all the other demands, even if one is unconscious of it, is the main thing: the removal of the commodity character from human labor. Human labor should no longer be a commodity!

If you were to socialize in the way that a large proportion of people, those people who want to socialize, intend to carry it out today, then you will not detach the labor force from the commodity, but on the contrary you will make this human labor force more and more into a commodity!

No abstract remedy can be given as to how the human labor force can be stripped of the commodity character – a commodity that can be bought and sold; rather, as stated at the beginning of today's lecture, it can only be said: Do not look for magic remedies, for remedies that are superstitious in the modern sense of the word, to cure socially, but look for the living conditions of the social organism. Then this social organism will develop with its own vitality. And as economic life, according to its own impulses, and the political body of the state, which has to establish the relationship between people, will simply develop side by side, again according to its own laws and impulses. This will happen in such a way that - not in such a way that one can say theoretically: This is how human labor will detach itself from the economic process, and human activity will develop. And it will fall naturally into that link of the social organism that can be described as the political link, as the link that regulates the relationship between people.

There is – and I already pointed this out at the beginning of the century in an article I wrote on the social question for my magazine Lucifer-Gnosis, which was published at the time – there is a certain law for human labor in the totality of a social organism. This law is evident to the true observer of the social organism as something fundamental in social life. So one could then, and still can today, speak of this law, which can be proven in all its details and is important for real knowledge of social life. One preaches to deaf ears with such a fundamental law among those who are there or there to teach people “correct concepts” about economics and the like.

This law, dear attendees, is the following: When someone works, be it manual labor or intellectual work within a larger social community, not within a small one, since the law is not expressed in the same way, but in a larger social community, as it alone comes into consideration in today's consideration of the social question, when a person works in a larger social community, it is impossible for him to benefit personally from what he has worked for as an individual within the social process, within what goes on in the body of society! He can never, so to speak, have the fruits, the results of his own labor. Today, of course, there would not be enough time for this, because it would require hours of individual observations to substantiate this in detail. I can only say that the law I have stated is a law that can be fully substantiated scientifically. What the individual works through his activity can only seemingly serve him in his result. In reality, what the individual works is distributed among the social organism to which he belongs. All people benefit from his work; and he, what he has within a social organism, cannot come from his own pocket if the social organism is healthy; but it comes from the work of other people.

This is simply due to the objective circumstances that take place. If I may use a rough comparison: you can no more live [in an economic sense] on what you work [...] than you can live in a physical sense by eating yourself!

It is a basic law of economic life that one cannot live on one's labor. If one lives on it, it works to the detriment of the social organism. The social organism is only healthy when each individual works for the others, and all others work for the individual.

This is not just a matter of ethical altruism, it is a law of a healthy, organic structure. Therefore, esteemed attendees, it falsifies the basic laws of the social organism if you simply pay for labor like a commodity - for the reason that you are starting from something that is not real. You want to give the worker his earnings; you want to let the person live off his life force. You do not integrate him into the social organism by doing this, but exclude him.

And because the modern economic order has led to the outward, masked, and seemingly settlement of the proletarian with what is supposed to be the product of his labor, it has, precisely through the counter-effect of resistance, produced in him that which he himself, with all his other astute knowledge, cannot develop, that which arises from the killing of social connections, that which is produced in him and he wants to be part of the social connection. He is exposed by that which commodifies his labor power; he wants to be reintroduced; he wants the deadly element to be set aside. This is contained in the one form of social demands that I already mentioned yesterday and to which I must return in this form today.

But if what is introduced into the social organism by labor, by human labor, what, under socialist ideas, wants to introduce more and more of this labor into the purely economic organism, were to take hold, then the proletariat would be increasingly pushed out of the social body.

The fundamental issue depends on the fact that alongside the mere economic body there is another, political body, with relative independence, which does not have to deal with what the circulation of goods is, but has to deal with what establishes the relationship between people. And in the most eminent sense, you can see it as soon as you can gain a relationship to the law that you do not work for yourself but for other people.

In the truest sense, human labor, the regulation of human labor, belongs in this second link of the social organism, in the political organism. It is the duty of the state to see that human labor is not abused. But human labor can never be accorded its rights among other human beings if these rights are to come from the mere economic body - the mere economic body, which is supposed to exist according to its own laws, independently, separate from the political, the purely political body, from the pure state body!

What has come about today, because people are so often accustomed to regarding it as right, what is often regarded as right today, yes, that does indeed speak against what is stated here. However, esteemed attendees, either we will make an effort to live according to the laws of a healthy social organism, or we will be driven into even more terrible catastrophes than we have already been driven into, simply because we have not striven for such a clean-cut distinction between the individual members of the social organism.

We can trace the causes of the war back to the confusion of economic and state affairs.

We will study, because we will be forced to study more and more closely the factors that led to the catastrophe in which we are now mired up to the point of crisis. We will find that among the many causes – I cannot, of course, discuss them exhaustively in this context – is the fact that states could be driven against each other by economic circles that had simply taken control of the political bodies for their own interests! If the political bodies had not allowed themselves to be led by the confounding of certain purely economic interest groups, dear attendees, then the catastrophe could not have taken on this character! The international politics of people, the international will of people, also depends on recognizing the laws of the social organism.

A third link of the social organism is then the spiritual life, dearest ones, this spiritual life, as it has gradually formed into a kind of ideology in the present stage of human development, into which old forms only protrude like remnants - I described it yesterday. But this spiritual life, which arose from certain social instincts and existed in a certain independence until the middle, until the end of the Middle Ages, has also been absorbed. Just as economic life is to be absorbed influence of certain modern aspirations, economic life has been absorbed by state life or vice versa, one could also say: this spiritual life has been absorbed by that life which should only regulate the relationship between people. How people should relate to each other, purely by the fact that they are legal subjects, must be the subject of a special social link in the social organism.

Spiritual life must be a special link in the social organism with relative independence. For the entire social organism, what comes from the spiritual life in its true form is just as important as the absorption of food and metabolism is for the individual human organism. This spiritual life in the social organism must be compared with the most primitive system - the so-called most primitive system - in the natural human organism.

Everything that can only arise from the physical and mental abilities of the human being belongs in this system; everything that can only be placed on the basis of the individual freedom of the human being. Everything that plays a role in the religious life of human beings belongs in this system. This includes everything that belongs in the school and education system, in the broadest sense, from the lowest to the highest level. In addition to much else, in addition to the cultivation of all the arts, in addition to all other cultivation of free spirituality, this also includes - and it would lead too far to give the details here, because it would take hours again - private and criminal law. Public law belongs to the second link of the social organism, public law that establishes the relationship between people in healthy human coexistence.

If, with regard to violated private interests, if, with regard to criminal offenses, a person is to judge another person, then such an individual relationship between the judge and the judged person is necessary before a true observation of reality, that the whole process can only be placed in the realm of individual freedom. One must, as a real judge, submerge oneself in the subjectivity of the person one has to judge, whether in a civil or criminal matter, to such an extent that it is not possible otherwise than for the impulse of individual human freedom to prevail.

I could cite many examples; I will mention just one: anyone who, like me, has observed for decades, through direct experience, the conditions that prevailed where, [officially] and [inofficially], many more individual nationalities lived alongside and mixed with each other than in Austria. Anyone who has observed this, anyone who has observed how much the court relationships contributed to the chaos into which the tremendous Austrian catastrophe has now led, knows the importance that must be attached to the incorrect regulation of the court relationships!

However, within such circumstances, it only manifests itself in a radical way. Consider this: we have an area where Germans and Czechs live together. If a Czech has committed some crime, he is tried by a judge who speaks German, because that is simply the way it is under the current political conditions. The Czech does not understand a word of what is being said about him. He knows he cannot trust his judge, who, according to national characteristics, is different from him.

All this – I can only touch on it briefly – should have led to the conclusion decades ago, in order to avoid this terrible present catastrophe, that it would have been necessary, however the other territorial borders were drawn, with regard to the legal relationships of private and criminal law, to proceed in such a way that for five or ten years everyone freely elects their judges, just as, incidentally, in the field of intellectual life, everyone is free to choose the school for their descendants and so on. This liberation of the school system, of the education system, of the whole of intellectual affairs, includes infinitely much more of the rest of the economic and purely state-run affairs of the social organism.

Naturally, people will be least willing to accept this necessary idea, because many see the nationalization of the school system, the extension of the state's tentacles over free spirituality, as the most sacred of all. Nevertheless, this is the opposite of what is salutary. That which should or can develop as spirituality with a real character can only develop if this spirituality is based purely on itself in the social organism, if the state organism has only to ensure that this spiritual life can develop freely.

The socialist agitators and their supporters have so far discovered only one area, and that out of a misunderstanding, which they treat in this way: the religious area. They hear within the socialist agitation areas: religion is a private matter - but not really because one wants to protect religion in its freedom from state and economic intervention, but because one has no real interest. They want to isolate it; they want it to live for itself, and perhaps die for itself.

The right thing would be to have the greatest respect for the spiritual life in all its individual aspects; then one would know that this spiritual life can only flourish if it has its own administration, its own organization, its adequate, relative independence. This spiritual life must be conceived in the broadest sense, not only in the sense of the actual spiritual ideas, not only in the sense of the actual spiritual achievements that emanate from these spiritual realms, but also in the sense of everything that extends as spiritual impulses to the other two realms. It must emanate from these realms; the technical ideas, that which actually sets the economic life in motion, will emanate from the spiritual-soul work.

But this spiritual and mental work must not be maintained, administered or legislated by the other two spheres; it must govern itself with relative independence so that it can act in the appropriate way, just like the [digestive] system on the two remaining systems of the natural organism, that it can act in the right way through its freedom, through its independence, on the two other social systems.

Thus, it is to be thought that the economic link of the social organism, the area that regulates the relationship of man to man, and the area that, as the actual spiritual area, is based on the individual freedom of all that arising from the spiritual, mental and physical faculties of man, that these areas live side by side in such a way that each has its own administrative and legislative body, as befits its own nature. Not the one parliament that confuses everything together is the salutary thing for the social development of the future, but the three representative bodies, of which one concerns all people: that of the political organism, which will probably be purely democratic in most of the territories of the earth, the civilized world; while the other two will be appropriate in their representation.

The economic body will be built on an associative basis. We can already see the beginnings of this today, in that man must grow together with what is available to him as a natural basis for his economic life, how he must join forces with other people; this union, as it is attempted today in cooperatives and union, and so on, must be built on purely economic foundations: the economic foundations of production, the economic foundations of consumption, the economic foundations of trade, which will regulate each other according to purely economic principles.

The political body, which is based on the legal relationship between people, will become more and more democratic in essence, because it deals with each person's relationship to the circulation of goods. That which is the spiritual realm will be built on what follows from the spiritual life of the individual's advancement in the spiritual life.

These three areas, in a healthy social organism, are effectively sovereignly juxtaposed, and thus responsible to each other like sovereign states. It is precisely because the individual members of the social organism are relatively independent that the delegations can work together in the right community!

One can admit that these ideas may seem too radical for many people today. However, they are not intended, esteemed attendees, to transform any social community overnight in the way that might seem natural when such things are expressed. No, the thinker of reality — and that is always the spiritual scientist, the true spiritual scientist — thinks extremely little of the formation of such theories as theories. He thinks much more of people permeating themselves in their whole will and in their immediate life with what follows as impulses from such a view of life, so that they give the corresponding direction to all the details of their actions, their measures.

It would certainly be a mistake to try to remodel the social organism overnight, as is being attempted in many fields today; but people have always been confronted with the necessity of organizing this or that. You can organize it in such a way that you are obsessed with the idea that everything, in a state of confusion, must be a state entity; or you can take what is most common to everyone and shape it in such a way that it is integrated into the gradual realization of these three coexisting links in the social organism. even more than many socialist thinkers of the present day, who do not dream of bringing about a different organization of the social organism overnight, but think of a slow development, the one who, because his observation is based entirely on these explanations, thinks that a direction is given to social development that is slowly being realized.

This realistic thinking does not speak of any kind of confused social revolutions, for example, that take place quickly. But what is discussed, dear attendees, is that one should be comfortable directing one's thoughts towards what follows from the realistic observation of the social organism itself.

What I have presented to you here, esteemed attendees, appears to me, from what I believe is an objective consideration of present-day events, to be particularly important for this present time, and particularly necessary for this present time to heal many things that need healing. And I may say: it is not merely on theoretical considerations that the ideas which I have presented to you today have been given their final form.

What I have explained to you – I could only give you an outline due to the short time – can be justified in all its details

can be expanded in all its details. This can already be done today in a completely scientific way! Anyone who wants to take this direction can already do so today by working together with those who are willing to devote their energy to giving the social organism a form that makes it truly healthy in the face of a realistic view of life. This can be done; it can be carried out in detail today – in detail, that which I could only present to you today in a comprehensive sketch.

These ideas did not arise out of mere theoretical consideration; they arose out of the observation of the conditions under which these conditions have developed, so that in the end nothing else could result from them but this European catastrophe.

Those who have immersed themselves in the inner workings of these conditions in the contemporary civilized world may have experienced something like, for example, - I could also cite others - me with regard to a certain point. I truly do not want to boast about these things in any way. But, dear ladies and gentlemen, these things are serious; and even if something that one uses for understanding looks like something personal, then perhaps it may be said today in the face of the terrible seriousness of the times.

It was still the time that preceded this [war] catastrophe, when [diplomats], politicians and statesmen and other clever people in Europe had a sunny smile when it was mentioned how peace, or something similar, was established and firmly established in the world. At the time, I had to give a lecture in Vienna, as part of a series of lectures, about what the deeper foundations of our social conditions are heading towards. I spoke at a time when the approaching catastrophe was not yet being noticed from the outside, when diplomats still had a sunny smile on their faces about the good deeds they had done. I spoke of the fact that something like a social carcinoma, like a cancer, was creeping through our social order long before the amateurish book “Weltmutation” (World Mutation) had appeared, with all sorts of socialism gimmicks! And I said at the time: The times are so serious that one feels something like an obligation to cry out to humanity, so that souls may be shaken, so that they may know: The right thing must be done at the right time, so that disaster later, unspeakable disaster would be averted.

That was said before the war.

During the war, however, urged on by the seriousness of the burning social issues, which were brought to the surface in their true form and manner during the catastrophe of war, I had presented to many an influential person within the social organism what was necessary for recovery. Outwardly, in theory, some people understood this; but they could not bridge the gap between theoretical understanding and will, because their understanding was not thorough enough.

Now one would like to believe that what influential people refused to understand during the war catastrophe, now, one would like to believe, now some of those who were brought to misfortune by this war catastrophe in Central and Eastern Europe and some others who have been given a reprieve, now they should understand, at the right time, show understanding for things! For two or three years ago, when things could still have taken a different course from that which they took in the autumn of 1918, I said to many people in Central Europe: What is expressed in these ideas of the threefold social organism must become foreign policy; then the whole course of events will be given a different direction, a more salutary direction. And I then said: You have the choice of either accepting these things at the right time through reason, because these things are not made up, these things are not programs, these things are not an abstract ideal, as abstract ideals have certain societies or parties, but these things are observed from the developmental forces of humanity; they simply want to and must be realized in the next ten, twenty, thirty years. Whether I or you or anyone else wants something in this direction is not what it depends on. What it depends on is whether the developmental forces that humanity must go through themselves want this, whether it is their will that this must happen. You have the choice of either using reason to help shape such a social organization, or revolutionary catastrophes and cataclysms will take place in the field, for which you are now also responsible. The choice between reason and the unleashing of the most terrible instincts, which can then no longer be overcome by mere understanding, this choice is set before people.

It is essential that people move away from the mere search for comfortable thinking, that people come to the point where those who are the real practitioners of life, because they see the formative forces of humanity development, that these people are no longer portrayed as “impractical idealists” and are thus rendered harmless or avoided, but that precisely what they have to say be made fruitful - that is what matters! In many areas, real life practice is quite different from the narrow-mindedness of those who often consider themselves the ultimate practitioners. What these “practitioners” have done over decades has led directly to the misfortunes of the present.

These ideas were also misunderstood in the opposite direction, in that it was believed that they were merely internal ideas, for shaping some kind of closed social organism within.

Now, it is understandable that people who have not learned anything, could not have learned anything, nor through the military catastrophes of recent years, could not understand the intervention and incisiveness of such social ideas coming from reality. Of course, such ideas could not find their way into a state-run country, for example, into a state-run country and life whose leader was able to write such a book over a long period of time, as Bülow did under Wilhelm II; that this book could still be taken seriously, that this book was not taken as an historical document of how Germany's misfortune was brought about by a lack of understanding of modern human development, is one of the special characteristics of our time, which will often give cause to be judged according to a special scientific field - I already mentioned it yesterday: “social pathology” or “social psychiatry”. I don't use that just as a “witticism”, I mean it very seriously.

But what would be necessary to realize, which has not been understood by those to whom I have presented these ideas so far, is that these ideas do not just apply to the inner shaping of some social territory, but that they must gradually become the basis of a true international foreign policy for every state, although each state can start them individually, on its own.

The issue at hand is that, furthermore, states do not negotiate with each other as if they were closed territories, but that each social entity negotiates with every other social entity – it can also be done unilaterally, so each state can start with it – or that each state negotiates with each other state, or one state negotiates with another state that still adheres to the old confounding, and gives its trust to the fact that on the one hand, the representatives of the purely economic body come into consideration, who in turn deal with the economic life of the outside world for themselves, from the foundations of the economic body, in political thought, political relationships, those factors that deal with the relationship between people in general, with the corresponding factors of the other social territory. Likewise, the spiritual representatives of the other territory with the spiritual representatives.

Thus, the so-called “national borders” take on a completely different meaning; what leads to conflicts through national borders is no longer, as it happens now, that everything is thrown together and welded together, but a conflict in one area is balanced by the other areas that work alongside it.

We need only look at the way in which this threefold structure will function across the whole earth in the international relations of nations [and establish something different] that is deeply organic compared to what is attempted out of good will but only out of abstract thinking: a league of nations, intergovernmentalism and the like. All this will not be built up like a human organism, but, brought about according to its conditions, it will become like a living social organism when the threefold nature outlined today is brought into the current that is expressed in the flowing social will and thinking and feeling of humanity.

The contradiction between these three ideas seems just as clear as the great, obvious power of these ideas.

Only when one advances from a mere abstract, from a merely theoretical thinking, which would have to lead to a social homunculus, to a realistic feeling, can one understand how these three ideas must relate to human social reality:

Freedom leads to the area in which spiritual life must unfold.

Equality leads to the place where the relationship between people develops in the political arena, which is what it should properly be called.

Brotherhood leads into the realm of economic life, where everyone should give and receive according to their economic means.

If one knows that the social organism is structured according to three relatively independent links, then one knows that these ideas must contradict each other, just as the laws of development contradict the threefold structure of a natural human organism. If one knows that the great, decisive ideas and impulses; then one is not surprised at the contradictions that arise when one wants to believe that these three ideas must be applied to a social organism in which everything is supposed to be jumbled up and welded together.

Thus, what humanity felt was necessary for social life at the dawn of modern times will only be able to become established in the true social reality of humanity if the three elements of this social reality of humanity are incorporated into the social organism through a realistic [observing, acting and willing] in the social organism.

I know how much prejudice and preconception still speak against these things today. However, without in any way lapsing into vanity or pride, I would like to express what it is all about in conclusion by means of a comparison. Many a person will say: Well, someone with a background in the humanities wants to solve a social problem in such a simple way. Yes, esteemed attendees, I may perhaps compare, for the sake of someone to whom this attempt at a solution seems so simple, so primitive, and does not seem appropriate in comparison to the great erudition economics teachers and other people, I may perhaps venture the comparison for such a person: Once upon a time there was a poor boy who worked as a servant on a Newcomen steam engine. He had to manually operate the two cocks that had to be pushed and pushed all the time, one of which was to let the condensation water into the engine and the other to let the steam into the engine. Then the little boy noticed that this opening and closing of the two cocks, which he had to push back and forth with his hands at the appropriate time, with regard to their swinging up and down, he came up with the idea of tying the cocks together with strings, to control the cocks with strings. And it turned out that the cocks opened and closed by themselves in his up and down, so the cocks that let the condensation water flow in on one side and the steam flow back out on the other. And from this observation of the little boy, one of the most important inventions of modern times emerged: the self-regulating steam engine.

It could also have happened that a “very clever person” would have come and said to the boy: You good-for-nothing, what are you doing there? Get rid of the strings! Take care of your cocks as before by hand, do what you are told! And don't think you can do anything special there!

As I said, you can compare things, but a comparison always has something of a limp. You can use the comparison for something else, that is, for something you look down on with a certain arrogance: for this humanities that now also wants to extend its experience to the social problem! But perhaps I may venture the comparison with the little boy after all. If the “very clever people” today find it extraordinarily foolish for someone from the humanities to dare to tackle the social problem, I would like to say to them: Such people just want to be nothing more than the little boy who just notices what the others have not noticed in all their cleverness and erudition, perhaps also wrong erudition.

For I believe I can be convinced of this, precisely from an insight into the social workings and rule of today's humanity and its demands. I believe I can be convinced of this: What matters is that if one observes in the right way how the three areas of the social organism can develop in their independence, one has discovered the life of this social organism. And just as life itself is control and regulation, so the social organism will regulate itself if only the laws of its individual areas are found in the right way.

That, dear ladies and gentlemen, is what inspires anyone who is serious, especially in today's serious times, with what is necessary for humanity in terms of social demands.

Let me conclude by saying that I actually compress everything that needs to be said in this regard into one sentiment: May there at least be enough people in the present who are moved by what must happen in the next 20 to 30 years because it lies within the developmental forces of humanity, may there be enough people today who open their hearts and minds to what humanity must do to lead the future, so that even greater disaster does not occur! Because if that which is believed by most of those who consider themselves practical – in their own sense, in the right sense – disappears, then there will not be a healing of the misfortune, but rather an immeasurable increase of this misfortune!

Therefore, may as many people as possible be found who open their hearts and minds to what must be done to make possible an understanding, an understanding between heart and heart, an understanding between soul and soul within the social coexistence of humanity, before the instincts are unleashed to such an extent that such an understanding between people, given the terribly animalistic instincts, will no longer be possible.

In the face of facts that speak loud and clear, we do not need to prove that the social question is now one of the most burning public concerns. However, those who can observe these facts without prejudice can also see that much deeper human questions play into modern social demands than the problems usually associated with slogans. If you look beyond current academic activity and trends to social facts, you can see how deeper human questions in a certain respect spring from these social problems.

It is obvious that, for the most part, academic life stands by helplessly when confronted with these burning social demands. I need only mention two things to prove this helplessness. We know that in the course of recent cultural development, in addition to the other branches of science, a theoretical socio- or world economics has emerged. We know how the differing schools of thought have affected the area of world economics in the last centuries, particularly in the nineteenth century. We know that there was a mercantilist school, a physiocratic school and so forth, and we know how these different streams have attempted to understand social facts. They have attempted to discover how human social understanding can become a part of human willing, for example, in various governmental programs. However, we have seen that these different theoretical viewpoints have not resulted in any really thorough, fruitful social initiatives. The clearest proof of that is the form that world economic theory has taken. It has slowly withdrawn into a scientific observation of social life and world economics. It has withdrawn into a description of social facts.

Specifically, we see the newest efforts in this area developing into all manner of descriptions or statistical observations and such. However, we do not see anywhere an impulse that can really be carried into social will, that can be fruitful for the social activity of public life. The incapacity of world economic theories in this area is thus evident.

On the other hand, we see the growth of social ideas and social demands from a wide spectrum of the working class.

Certainly, we would have much to discuss if we wanted to speak about the historical development of these more-thanhalf-century-old social demands. Here we wish to take note of only one feature, of one characteristic of these demands. I wish to express it like this: There were also older efforts in this direction, efforts that did not simply rely upon theoretical contemplation, as has been done in world economics, but that were based upon the goals of people seeking a new social structure. Since the time of these efforts (we need only recall Fourier, Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc and so forth), a quite different element has entered into these contemplations. This can be characterized by a certain mistrust. Among the masses and their socialist leaders a certain antipathy is prevalent concerning everything that arises out of the spirit, out of contemplation, out of the human willing that should lead to a rejuvenation of social relationships.

Those whose feeling and thinking embody the intellectual impulses of modern times have much goodwill toward achieving social change. Regardless of that goodwill, the belief has arisen that all this has a utopian character. In spite of all the human inventiveness and goodwill, the belief has arisen that it is impossible to create impulses that will lead to practical changes in social life, to a truly practical reformation of social life. Disbelief in the human spirit and its social ideas has become the prevailing sentiment of the masses and their leaders.

Thus, something has come forth that people in these groups feel to be a foregone conclusion—so much a foregone conclusion that to fight against it is extraordinarily difficult. The conviction has arisen that on/y the means of economic production can stimulate a reformation. The conviction has arisen that, in a certain sense, the human will is powerless and must wait until the means of production themselves cause a different configuration in social life. It has become a habit to speak of everything created through thinking as an ideology, as something powerless in real life. It has also become habitual to speak as though only material relationships and changes are real, as though thinking emerges from these like a wisp of smoke. People speak of historical materialism because they see reality only in materialism, particularly in economic activity. People view what comes from the human spirit as something that rises like smoke out of what is real—in this case, economic activity—and forms a kind of ideological superstructure.

If we look at theoretical world economics, based as it is on the world view of conventional science, or at the thoughts of such thoroughly honest, creative personalities as Saint-Simon or Louis Blanc, whose work comes fully out of modern intellectual life, a question arises. We now ask, given what these two sides desire, is it so incomprehensible that a disbelief in true spiritual impulses has occurred?

No, it is not. If we look at the basic character of modern intellectual life we will find the main reason. The basic character of modern intellectual life has slowly become purely abstract, something foreign and removed from reality.

We must constantly note that attitudes arising from what intellectual life has become in the last centuries have created ethical and moral viewpoints. However, the question is, do these moral viewpoints have the power to affect outer reality? Do they have the power to be creative in outer reality?

Neither science nor moral points of view have been able to create a true bridge between what lives in people’s spirit and what lies in material or natural processes. We see that over time the concerns of the human soul, the concerns of the human spirit, have become the intellectual monopoly, the cultural monopoly, of those groups who have made this or that credo their own. Thus, scientific endeavors have slowly become unaccustomed to concerning themselves with spirit and soul. People believe they are free from prejudice, that they follow a completely unprejudiced science, when they limit scientific methods to what is sense perceptible. People believe these methods immediately go beyond the bounds of human cognition when they enter the spiritual realm, when they enter the supersensible realm. People think that they are unprejudiced when, in fact, they are only following those forces that arise out of the historical course of events.

Those religious groups who, due to historical development, have had a monopoly in creating dogmas concerning the essence of spirit and soul out of old traditions, concerning the essence of human immortality, were in a position to prevent scientific research into these things. These groups applied pressure upon research until it simply succumbed to the pressure and accepted the dictates of the credo. Slowly the sciences came to believe they followed their own lack of prejudice, their own objectivity, because they were no longer conscious that what they actually followed are the prohibitions of the Church.

This “objective” approach has limited itself completely to external, sensible reality and has not endeavored to examine spiritual life with the conscientious methods that have brought modern science such great triumphs. It has, nonetheless, been able to affect the realm of spirit and soul. Thus the realm of spirit and soul has become something foreign to life. Life, external reality, is measured with exact methods. However, what concerns spirit and soul has slowly lost all living concepts. Those of you who follow the usual, the respected, the official textbooks and lectures on psychology and such will find in them nothing sparkling with life. Spiritual life has become something disconnected from life.

The only thing that could be a basis for the spiritual attitude of such people as Saint-Simon or Fourier or Louis Blanc when they considered social questions has remained unfruitful because nowhere were the living effects of the human spirit upon social reality taken into account. People go around talking in abstractions. With normal modern intellectuality, we cannot refute the statement that social facts can be observed only through economics, that no steps can be taken to fulfill human social longings. With only these means, we can make no counter argument when people insist that nothing results from spiritual life that could lead to a true healing of social relationships, that we must leave social development to the means of production. Modern intellectual life has become abstract. In a certain sense modern intellectual life is an ideology. Thus those who are, in the widest sense, members of socialist circles believe that a//thinking must be ideological.

This is just what lies so heavily upon the souls of those who accept spiritual science. Spiritual science does not want to follow the same path taken by that burned-out academic science that has developed in modern times. Spiritual science wishes to lead people back to the true spirit. It wishes to lead people to an understanding of the true spiritual life to which they belong in just the same way that their bodies belong to physical reality, in the same way that through their material needs they are part of economic reality.

When we speak of real spirit today, when we attempt to speak of real spirit, we not only meet opposition, we meet mockery. We meet the kind of ridicule that derides all spiritual desires as pipe dreams or worse. We really meet modern disbelief when we say that what we mean as spirit cannot be comprehended with the usual powers of cognition that lead us through everyday life, through conventional science. We meet disbelief when we emphasize that to grasp and understand this spirit, it is necessary first to awaken powers of cognition that otherwise only sleep in human nature—in the same way that we awaken the usual powers of cognition in the developing child. Modern people will not admit that there could be something like an intellectual unpretentiousness, that there could be something like a further development of the inner human out of our childhood when we instinctively and dully step into life. They will not believe that we can awaken this later development to assist the normal powers of cognition, and that we can continue its development. But, it is not continued because modern intellectual life has resisted its continuance.

It is not our intent to speak in a vague way about spirit and its reality. Due to the spiritual development of the last centuries, it is easier to speak to the hearts and souls of people when we talk about spirit and spirituality in generalities instead of in a more definite manner. When people speak about spirit, they almost immediately think of spirit as an abstraction, something foreign to life. We might say that true spirit has become so foreign to them that they expect this spirit to reveal itself only in an occasional guest appearance.

Now I do not want to hold you up long with things common to the spiritualism to which modern thinking has fallen prey. In the end, however, what is this spiritualism other than the final decadent outstreaming of a desire for an abstract spiritual life! What we must understand is a true, concrete spiritual life to which human spirit can connect itself, and which we can grasp at every step in physical and cosmic reality. true spiritual life is not there to fulfill people’s desires for theatrical effects, to show itself in spiritualist seances or in other ways desired by abstract mystics. The science of the spirit cannot speak of a spirit that partakes of guest appearances that have nothing to do with external reality, and are called forth simply to convince passive people that spirit exists. The science of the spirit cannot speak of such a spirit. Spiritual science can speak only of the spirit that in truth participates in every material effect and every material event. It speaks of the spirit with which people can connect themselves in order to master external reality. Thus, I will primarily speak about the activity of the spirit we must turn toward if we wish to learn how the spirit, working through people, can have an effect in life.

We first need to look at the way the spirit gradually develops out of the growing human. The growing child presents us with one of the greatest riddles of the world—a riddle we in education continuously try to solve. People have recently brought even this amazing riddle to a particularly abstract, nebulous height. Recently, there has been much talk about recognizing the power of education. People have recently made many attempts to use various educational principles. All such attempts have failed. They will stand as evidence of the goodwill of their proponents, but in the face of the great, the intense demands of our lives, these attempts must fail if they do not arise from a recognition of human essence.

People will not recognize human essence if they attempt to understand it only through modern science, or by intellectually assimilating the observations gained through science. Human essence reveals itself only if we understand how to observe it. It shows itself only if we develop the capability to investigate that certain something that reveals itself with every day, every week, every year after human beings enter into physical existence through birth or conception. We must observe the specific stages in the life of young humans if we do not want to remain in abstractions, but instead want to understand the spiritually concrete activity in external reality.

People value these things much too little today. For the observer of human essence, the stage when children change teeth, around six or seven years of age, indicates a deep change in the totality of human nature. If you have an organ that can truly examine such things empirically, the way we can empirically observe physical experiments in laboratories or in the astronomical observatory, then you can see such things. When you examine the life of the soul before this stage, you find that during the time preceding the change of teeth, people are primarily imitators. The imitative element, a kind of intuitive dependence upon the environment, motivates their entire being until seven years of age. In the first seven years of our lives we learn everything through imitation, through the most strict conformity to what is in our environment, right down to our movements, our gestures, our intonation.

In extreme cases, we can easily observe such things. I wish to mention only one of the many cases that become obvious if you have any sense at all for such things in life. I could mention a hundred others. I knew a young child who limped. Even though there was nothing wrong, the child limped, and people could not get her to stop limping. The reason the child limped was that she had an older sibling who, due to a diseased leg, actually had cause to limp! This imitative principle that motivates people until the change of teeth is thus expressed in an extreme case.

The true observer sees that quite new forces enter into the human life of body, soul and spirit when the change of teeth is complete. Then, what children perceive in their environment does not motivate them as much. Instead, they are especially ready to believe, to accept, what they feel to be the opinion or the belief of those who, through age or bearing, they intuitively perceive as authorities.

Until the time of puberty, this acceptance, this automatic acceptance of authority, is like a law of human nature. If you wish to properly affect the human essence during this time, then you must turn to this intuitive principle of authority.

Those who, without prejudice, without some pet theory, observe the life of young people, those who work with facts, know how much it can mean for their whole life if children have someone they can look up to as an authority. You need only observe how people’s feelings about such an authority change! You need only observe what later in life results from these feelings toward authority! Everything that we develop as truly free independent democratic feelings in human social life, everything that we gain in true human understanding and human respect, is at heart a result of appropriate development under intuitive authority during the period from the change of teeth until puberty.

We should not meddle with such things through special programs. We should approach this area through purely empirical observation. Then we will discover what we need to think and feel when we receive the school child who has developed in imitation of the care—or the neglect—of the parents. We will see how we must work out of the principle of authority in school if we truly want to work appropriately. We can only be effective when we derive our pedagogical methods and develop our whole teaching activity out of a human understanding.

If you are not able to observe from year to year, from week to week how other demands develop out of the core of the child and rise to the surface, then you will not be able to work with human developmental powers, you will work against them. Educational material and methods must, in fact, meet these requirements of the developing child.

If you do not know how authority works, if you do not know the intimate interactions that exist between the authority and the growing child, then you will never be able to work positively in the education of children this age. I wish to mention a single concrete example. You know that due to certain programs and prejudices, there is now much discussion concerning visual aids. You are supposed to show the children everything. This often implies that you should teach the children only about things you can place before their eyes, or at least demonstrate to their intellect, so that they can immediately understand everything with their immature comprehension.

You need only look at the books that are to serve as guides for such teaching. Certainly, illustrative material is, within bounds, quite appropriate. But, what is appropriate within certain boundaries leads to error when we extend it beyond these boundaries. Visual aids—as I mentioned, you can see it in the guides—often lead to extremely materialistic triviality. People try to limit instruction to what children can understand, to what such people, in their simple-mindedness, believe is the maximum children can understand. However, they neglect something. They do not take into account what teaching out of authority means to human life. Individuals who are thirtyfive years old may, due to some event, suddenly remember that when they were seven, eight, nine or ten years old, they learned something in school from a highly regarded authority. They say to themselves, “I did not really understand it then. I only looked with high regard to that honored authority. When that honored authority said something, led something into my soul, I knew it instinctively. I did not know how I knew it, but I felt it was something valuable. I remembered it, perhaps only as words, but it lived in me for many years afterward. After many years, now that I have become mature, I recall what I learned long ago.” When people are mature, these recollections of things they accepted in youth upon simple authority now become a source of strength. They now know what it means that things they learned as children can first be fully understood as recollections in later life. In this way, we can give people living strength!

I wish to mention one other thing about the intimate workings between educational authority and the child. We want to teach the child certain things meant for a later period in life. Of course, the child does not understand these things. Thus, we clothe them in all kinds of allegories and pictures. Let us take a picture someone might think of, for instance, the picture of immortality. The teacher might say, “Here you have the cocoon of a butterfly. The animal is nestled within it. It will creep out, the beautiful butterfly will come out of the cocoon.” Now, the teacher might go further and say, “Just as the butterfly is in this cocoon, in the same way the immortal soul lies within your body. When you go through the gates of death, this immortal soul will appear in the spiritual world just as the butterfly will appear here. Remember how here in the physical world the beautiful butterfly comes out of the cocoon.”

You can make such a picture. It may touch the child. But, such a picture will not achieve what it should achieve if, as a teacher, you only have the consciousness that you are clever and the child is dumb, and that, therefore, you have to clothe in a picture what the child cannot yet understand. There are great intangibles in living human relationships. Regardless of what occurs between the intellect of the authority and the child’s intellect, something will happen in the child’s subconscious that comes from the discrepancy between the teacher’s disbelief in the picture and the intent to develop the child’s belief through the picture.

You need only observe how differently things occur—this is something paradoxical—when you yourself believe that the picture of the cocoon and the butterfly is not simply a picture, when you are clear that you do not make this picture, but the creative natural powers themselves make this picture. The one and only great artist, Natura, forms this picture. She carries her divinity within her in such a way that this picture expresses the same thing at a lower level as immortality expresses at a higher level. In other words, when you have complete belief in the picture, when it is not something made up for someone else, when it is your own inner belief, then something occurs in your telling of it to the child. Then, when it affects the child in the proper way, later in life the grown child’s soul will carry a true picture of immortality. Today we must not judge the things connected with the principle of authority by appearances. To really understand what occurs in people’s lives, we need, at the least, a careful study from the standpoint I will discuss in a moment. We need such a study to understand what to use in education during the period between the change of teeth and puberty.

Real capabilities of judgment, of free, independent reason, first appear in human nature after puberty. If we activate this independent reason too early, if we appeal too much to the child’s intellect before puberty, then we do not appeal to what can be given from one person to another through authority. Then we kill much of what we need to develop between the ages of six to seven and fourteen to fifteen, that is, during the time of elementary school.

Now we must ask, where will the teachers gain insight into the forces they must use, first when the child is an imitator, then when the child is between the change of teeth and puberty, and then in that stage of life after puberty? Our detractors can mock, they can ridicule what spiritual science means when it says that particular powers, higher powers of cognition, must be formed in human nature so that people can recognize the spiritual and its actions in the different ages of human life.

In my book How to Know Higher Worlds, 1 have described in detail how people can obtain these higher powers of cognition. The same thing is in the second part of my Outline of Occult Science, and in other books. I have shown how people can use common everyday cognition, common scientific cognition, as a basis to rise through three higher stages that I have called (do not be disturbed by the names, you have to use some common names) Imaginative cognition, Inspired cognition and Intuitive cognition.

We can obtain Imaginative cognition when we systematically do quite specific meditations that I describe in the abovenamed books, when we train thinking beyond the level of normal life and conventional science. Imaginative cognition first gives us the possibility of developing pictures in our soul life, pictures that are not spatial, not fantasy, but that represent spiritual reality.

People learn to recognize that, in the end, everything humans develop as ideas, as conceptions, as sense perceptions for normal life and for conventional science is connected to human physical existence. We learn to slowly disengage the life of the soul from simple bodily life as we increasingly undertake to raise our powers of thinking to a meditative activity. We rise to an Imaginative cognition that at first consists only of pictures, but that shows us reality the moment we further develop ourselves as I describe in the above-mentioned books. When the Inspiration (which we have first prepared ourselves to be capable of comprehending) enters from the spiritual world that is just as much around us as the physical world, then the effects of the spiritual world fill these pictures.

If we then rise to Intuitive cognition, we will meet spiritual beings in just the same way we meet physical beings in the physical world. Today I can merely mention this and must direct you to the books where I describe these things in detail. If we can really rise to what I call Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive cognition, then these stages of cognition are not phantasms, are not daydreams as our contemporaries, with their lack of spirituality, call them. When they are feeling kindly, they say at best, “Well, all right, the product of a sick mind!” However, they will judge differently if we only indicate the true basis, the real source of this higher knowledge—and I will do that today by referring to a characteristic I have mentioned before. Where in human nature do these forces lie that we must develop in life so that we can look into the spiritual world?

Think for a moment. We have certain forces that make us into imitative beings until the change of teeth, forces that, in a certain sense, later recede. These forces find no further use in normal modern social life—they recede. However, they remain connected with human nature. Again, there are the forces that act between the change of teeth and puberty to stimulate the inclination toward authority out of the soul-physical realm. These forces, which I described in connection with the intangibles living between the teacher and the children, are real forces in childhood, but they, too, later recede.

Furthermore, as human beings we have forces that are active from puberty until around the age of twenty that also later recede. (Of course, now we seldom see what we call youthful idealism, youthful motivations that lead to living ideals. At one time people perceived living ideals in the same way that we perceive external life.) These are the same forces that after puberty first form the foundation of true judgment and that need to be brought to a special level of development. They also recede after the age of twenty-one or twenty-two.

In the last centuries, human life has developed such that we only cultivate intellectual capabilities, scientific capabilities, the ability to observe natural and social things. To the extent that this development has taken place, those powers active in the first three stages of life have receded. We can, however, bring them forth again. Imaginative cognition is nothing more than those forces whose spiritual activity forms the human body and soul from puberty until the age of twenty. It is nothing more than those soul forces that, under the direction of my book How To Know Higher Worlds, we can bring forth out of the depths of human nature. The spiritual researcher brings forth again what has receded. Where it otherwise remains hidden, we bring it forth again so that it enters into consciousness. Then it develops Imaginative cognition.

It is more difficult to bring forth those human forces that are active from the change of teeth until puberty but that recede later in life and lie deep in the organism. However, through such exercises as I have described in my books, we can call them, too, into consciousness. These prove to be identical with forces that are active in children, but remain unknown and unnoticed by science. We learn how to master these forces. Through an Inspired cognition, they bring into our consciousness certain spiritual secrets of our surroundings. This is not a made-up force, not something that does not already exist in life. This is something that proves itself to be active during the most important developmental years. Spiritual research brings it forth again to become the basis of insight into the spiritual world.

Because they remain hidden from observation, the most difficult forces to bring forth are those forces that are active in human nature between birth, we can even say between conception, and the change of teeth. Those forces find their conclusion in the permanent teeth and later completely withdraw into the human organic system. Nevertheless, we can bring these forces forth after we have called forth the others.

We see that we now connect ourselves with these forces when we grasp them with our full being, these forces that actually gave us the life impulse. In a certain sense, we unroll in the first seven years of our life—we bring forth out of our deepest souls the actual impulse, which we recognize as spirit, that we received in the first stage of life. When we bring into our consciousness what has receded, then we have Intuitive cognition. We do not connect ourselves only with our own being, but with something in comparison to which our normal thoughts are absurdities. We connect ourselves with something that is one and the same as the Being of the World. We then recognize the spirit in us as connected to the Spirit of the World.

You see, teachers who understand human beings through spiritual science, who have the developing human before them, look at what the spirit forms out of this developing human. The teachers meet this developing human with their educational skills. The teacher working from spiritual science does not have in mind a pedagogy used to educate children according to abstract rules, as is normal today. For this teacher, each child is a riddle. What should come to life in each child is something the teacher must solve in a living way every day, in every hour. However, when the teacher acquires the viewpoint of this living, working spirit in the living development of the child, he or she absorbs a recognition of reality that does not remain in concepts, does not remain in abstract generalities, but permeates the will with spirit. Such a teacher really becomes a pillar of knowledge, and he or she will develop a truly living pedagogy because it comes from an understanding of the human being, from a recognition of the complete, whole person.

Spiritual science is nothing other than what we can create out of the forces that are spiritually active in the stages of human development. It is not some fantasy. The source for the development of higher spiritual powers does not come from just anything that might arise in people, but from the conscious apprehension of what works in the healthiest forces of growth and life in the first three stages of human development. In that we become spiritual researchers, we raise into the consciousness of our understanding of the world and of people what really causes our growth and development as human beings.

So closely related is Anthroposophy to the spiritual sword and shield of cognition! For that reason, spiritual science is not something we can take up simply through our intellect. Since we bring it forth out of the being and growth forces of the whole human, it permeates our whole being, our feeling and will. It becomes a basic human force. Immaturity and unconsciousness are concepts that lose their relevance through the activity of the spirit in human beings. We may not say that people lose their instinctive, basic forces when they consciously develop the spirit. No, this remains. The same basic strength that is otherwise present only in instinctive actions is present when the spirit permeates people in this way. The spirit really enters into the being of the teacher, into the effectiveness of the teacher, into those who are to develop social pedagogical forces in youth. What spiritual science is comes from the same source from which people themselves grow. Self-development is only a transformation of our growth forces.

You see, these are things, at least in their underlying principles, that modern people often regard much as people once viewed the science of Copernicus and Galileo. What most people once viewed as an absurdity has now become a matter of course. In the same way, the knowledge of the three stages of life, their basic forces and their transformation into Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition through spiritual science will become a matter of course.

Our age can notice that modern intellectual life (I have shown this in two examples) has become powerless in the face of social life and social desires. When modern people see that the intellectualism developed in the last centuries (abstract, foreign and removed from life) is not the only possibility, that there is also a science that comes from the transformation of growth forces, they will develop sympathy and interest. This spiritual science can understand the living spirit that does not play guest roles in life, but is present and active in life; and the human spirit, by connecting itself with that living spirit, develops social pedagogical strength.

Why (again we put this question) are we so seldom able to transform into social will what we receive in ideas, what we develop in ideas? How is it that such disbelief has arisen that people speak only of ideology when they refer to the power of the spirit?

The period that is just behind us was a time of great triumphs for modern science. Those great scientific triumphs could arise only when people first turned away from what was within them and devoted themselves to the activities of nature and to the scientific method. Those who are spiritual researchers will certainly recognize the conscientiousness, the exactitude, of modern scientific methods, and will also recognize the fertility of these methods within their areas. They will certainly not go into a simplistic, unsympathetic criticism of limited and bounded material knowledge. However, we must be clear about one fact of experience that people do not observe today. People do not observe it because they can see, completely correctly from at least one point of view, that scientific methods are well suited to give a picture of natural phenomena. Because scientific methods work so well in this realm, people are not inclined to ask how this experience, derived in this way, affects the whole essence of humanity.

Concerning observations of nature and the recognition of natural laws, people accept only what their senses believe and their intellect can process. They consciously shut out everything that comes from their feeling and will life. What they understand about nature does not affect the will and feeling life. Thus, many people who view the entire situation without prejudice speak about modern science and its effects differently than those who simply accept all the great scientific triumphs.

If we look at the human essence, the picture we can achieve through the scientific method has something fatalistic about it—it is something that fills only our intellect, but does not touch our will. If we use the scientific method in popular or scientific thinking about social life, then social life in a sense ebbs away, falls apart. Just as something finely ground runs through a sieve, true social life slips past our observation when we approach it only with modern scientific methods. We can see how strict causal scientific thinking fails the moment it is applied to the social realm or general external society. I want to give an example of this: There is perhaps no other book in a much-debated area that so beautifully develops exact scientific thinking as Das Werden der Organismen, eine Widerlegung der Darwinschen Zufallstheorie (The development of the organism—a rebuttal of the Darwinian theory of chance), by the well-known biologist, Oskar Hertwig. We can offer only the highest praise for this book’s attempt to characterize conventional scientific insights into the theory of evolution.

A short time after Hertwig’s book appeared, he also published something about social, legal and political issues, issues concerning general society. It would be impossible to think of something more dilettantish and incompetent than this firstrate biologist’s stroll through an area generally encompassed by the concept “social life”!

There are hundreds, thousands, of such examples. They all show what we can directly observe, namely, that even the highest devotion to natural scientific knowledge causes us to fill our consciousness with ideas that are actually the content of an ideology that cannot pulse into our feeling and will. These ideas remain unfruitful in feeling and willing.

I want to expressly emphasize that in considering such things, it is not my intention to go in the reverse direction. I do not wish to contend that the way of thinking of the vast majority of modern people is simply the outcome of the scientific way of thinking. No, quite the opposite. The last centuries have brought forth a certain kind of common thinking. Those who really study history, not simply a fable convenue, a convenient story, see how human life, particularly social life right down to the peasantry, has changed in the last three or four centuries. What has come forth as natural scientific thinking is, in my opinion, only an external expression of what has generally taken hold of human soul life. I do not wish to call human thinking and feeling a product of modern scientific attitude and knowledge, but just the opposite. I see in the scientific attitude and knowledge only the external symbol, the revelation, of what is the general direction of human thinking, the general attitude toward life and external reality.

What has developed is the basis for a thinking and feeling foreign to life, for a spiritual life foreign to life. If, on the other hand, you consider what forms the basis of spiritual science (I have just shown that this spiritual science is only a transformation of the human forces of growth and development), then you can rise to see a real world in these things. Then what we take in with spiritual knowledge enters into our powers of feeling and will. This is the only healthy way for people now and in the near future to come to a truly social willing. It is necessary for the future to infuse this social willing with the knowledge that can come from the spiritual.

We would not say that everyone can effortlessly achieve the development of higher spiritual powers. We certainly do not at all contend that. Certainly, only a few people will be able to recognize the secrets of spiritual life through direct vision of the highest spiritual facts. This recognition is first connected to a certain inner courage, a certain boldness. Human will, human intellectual power, all human soul forces must develop so that they extend beyond the normal level of strength. These soul forces must grow so they can grasp the spiritual world that flits past ordinary human cognition, the spiritual world people cannot usually perceive. In a certain sense, we must reach for the finest among everyday capacities. The spirit does not come in the same way that external realities come. The spirit comes when you connect yourself with it in the same way that you feel pain, that you feel desire and distress that flood through your soul, as something very real. In this way you will feel, experience and recognize the spiritual through a flooding in your soul, only you know that it is not something simply subjective like desire and distress. It is so intimately connected with the soul, like desire and distress, joy and sorrow, yet it streams into our souls as something foreign, something spiritual. At first, it will be something unexpected. We expect something quite different in external life. Thus, we must accept this spiritual life in sorrow and pain, since we receive and perceive around us a life that we do not expect. No one comes into the spiritual world who does not struggle for this entrance, step by step, through sorrow and pain. This, though, only concerns research of the spiritual world.

In contrast, we must say that the capacities to understand what spiritual research has to say comprise only ordinary healthy common sense. For spiritual researchers, it is unimportant simply to assure others that they love truth and see what they speak of as spiritual. Rather, spiritual researchers can speak so that people with healthy common sense can understand their path of thinking. Of course, their thinking is formed from spiritual vision. However, people can recognize that it has the same inner logic they learn from external, sense-perceptible reality. Thus, if it is not limited by opposing prejudices, healthy common sense can judge whether spiritual researchers talk nonsense. Healthy common sense can judge from the way spiritual researchers speak whether the spiritual world is open to them, whether they really see into it. Thus, what individual spiritual researchers bring into social life is itself a social pedagogical force.

If people accustom themselves to acquiring understanding, to acquiring the healthy common sense to be able to perceive the convincing power of what spiritual science reveals as the true reality of human life, then they will develop another social force. This social force will lead people to one another and will bring into the structure of the social organism things that cannot come into it any other way. These things form a more intimate recognition of one person by another, an ability to accept other people, a germination of true social impulses.

This is what develops in human interactions based upon true spiritual cognition and everything connected with it. People will feel how social pedagogical forces can enter social will when they begin to extend what we can draw from human growth and development into the living social organism. Only then will they understand that human essence embodies social organs. People will be able to bring into the social organism what they understand of the spirit working in the natural organism.

People will not come to true social pedagogical strength until they are able to draw social pedagogical forces from the motives, from the impulses, of spiritual knowledge!

Where does our understanding of spiritual scientific knowledge come from? It comes from those diminished forces that made physical and spiritual adults from little children. We do not need to let those forces lie fallow, we need to use them. We need only to apply our own humanity to external social order for a true social pedagogical strength to develop in the education of children. Then, too, that indefinable but very real activity in education that lies in human relationships, in human interactions, will develop between us. If we will only understand what meets us from the personality of the whole person, if we will only understand what mysterious things lie in each person, how individuals can, in their sub- and superconsciousness, grow beyond themselves, then a social pedagogical strength will exist in human interactions. We will so interact with one another that the being of one raises and carries the being of the other. In short, social pedagogical strength flows out of spiritual recognition, not only for the education of children, but for the totality of human life.

You see, the idea of the threefold social organism does not, in truth, come from some program, like so many social ideas. It comes from a new spiritual direction for which, on the one side, modern people have only very little sympathy. But, on the other side, they yearn for it with all of their subconscious desires and instincts. They thirst for it. Much more than people consciously believe, they carry in their subconscious a thirst for the spiritual. Today we see that people clothe their social desires in all sorts of formulas, forms and demands. What is characteristic about them, if you look at what meets us from people’s well-meaning will forces, from correct rightful needs, is that they cannot generally be understood. They cannot be so understood that genuinely constructive activity could arise from them.

This is quite characteristic, and it is very remarkable the way those people who have worked for years on ideas and programs for social reform, the way all their thinking, everything they have derived from their spiritual life, fails. Recently a letter from a well-known social revolutionary appeared in the newspapers, a letter from Kropotkin to George Brandes. In it Kropotkin describes the bleak situation in eastern Europe. In his way, he really describes the whole European situation, and concludes, “Yes, the only thing we can hope for is that we are given bread and tools to produce bread.”

You see a social revolutionary, who has for years attempted to think about his ideas, has come so far as to state that the world is to be organized so that the tools to produce bread shall be properly provided, so that people can be fed. In the end, only an abstract cry for bread and tools results! Disbelief in abstract spirituality, in his own spirituality!

We have to see through the cry for bread, to see that it is nothing other than a modern cry for the spirit. Only out of an understanding of the true spirit can come the social strength of will that can properly provide tools for bread production. The point is not to cry for programs, but to turn rightly to human faculties, to turn to the strength of human activity. That means to correctly understand people, so that they find their proper place in life and can work in the most efficient way to feed their families, to work for the whole life of their fellow human beings.

We must make the social question a question of humanity in the broadest sense. Otherwise, no good will come of it. It is possible to improve things when we recognize that the social question is complete only when we perceive it out of the spirit.

What we strive for in the threefolding of the social organism arises out of a new spiritual direction, out of a recognition of the demands that are so nebulous today. Although they are correct, they are nonetheless nebulous. What we strive for arises out of the recognition that an unconscious longing for this new spirituality lives in these demands. Everything we recognize as decadence in the striving for spirituality is an expression of people’s still clumsy search for the spirit. Certainly, one of the most decadent forms of this search is spiritism, or false mystical paths. This decadent direction has come out of centuries, we can even say in this case millennia, of education through which people have not learned to search for the spirit in reality itself, in the reality to which they belong. The striving toward spirituality has been carried to such abstract heights because dogmatic monopolies wanted to usurp it.

Spiritual science wants to prove that the same powers that can grasp external nature, if we develop them further as I described today, can also penetrate spiritual life. Then people will not strive toward an abstract spirit, toward a spirit created for the occasional gratification of human consciousness, but toward a spirit that is in reality, that is ome with material life. We do not recognize the spirit when we look at matter simply as matter, and say that it is only matter and the spirit is somewhere else. No. Those who seek the spirit through abstract formulations and think they should seek it along the path of spiritism, for instance, in the dark corners of life, have not yet achieved the correct human relationship to the spirit.

We have achieved the proper human relationship to spiritual life only if we seek such a spirit as we can see in nature around us, particularly in human life itself, in the life of children, in social connections. We have achieved the correct relationship when we know that in everything around us, even in economic life, the spirit is active, and when we search in such a way that we connect this spiritual activity to ourselves. A proper seeking of the spirit exists only when people want to understand the spirit, only when they love the spirit that is active in themselves. It exists only when people can form a bridge between the spiritual reality in themselves and the spiritual reality in the world. Only through such a spirit and through the knowledge of such a spirit can we develop the social pedagogical strength that we need for human life now and in the near future.

Thus, we can only repeat time and again:

May the dark unconscious desires living in human hearts and minds flame up into the conscious life of soul, so that humanity may find, in this age when social concern has become so bright, the true spiritual power of the world with which inner spiritual powers of humans can connect.

Out of this union between the World Spirit and the human spirit will flow the best source of social pedagogical strength for human life.

After a short discussion, Dr. Steiner concluded with the following:

Now, of course, those who speak out of spiritual science will not be of the opinion that what has come forth recently as science, philosophy or art needs to be thrown away simply because it has led to the false path mentioned by the previous speaker. However, the essence of spiritual science should be that the one-sided human activities that arose in the last centuries out of modern scientific assumptions should give up their one-sidedness and merge into a general stream of all-encompassing life.

You will not expect that I am in any way against what science, philosophy or the arts have generated within their rightful boundaries, if you follow not only my spiritual scientific books but also, for example, my description of the progress of philosophy in The Riddles of Philosophy. 1f you look at the way I have interpreted the essence of art—the Goetheanum in Dornach that houses the School for Spiritual Science, which, in its external appearance, attempts to represent spiritual science—you will not see an opposition to the modern developments in science, philosophy or art, to the extent that they occur within their proper limits. The one-sidedness that has come forth in these areas seems to me even to be something necessary. Life develops in contradictions, even polar contradictions. Thus, if we introspectively consider history, we can see that periods when certain activities were one-sided alternate with periods when these activities flow into a certain universal, consonant, harmonious life activity. However, it is the fructification of modern scientific views, of philosophical considerations and modern artistic trends that spiritual science should particularly accentuate.

Let us take, for example, to use something that I could barely mention in the lecture, many of the more modern trends in art. Certainly, we can easily make fun of such trends in art. But, you see, even though certain things like expressionist art appear incomplete to our souls, nevertheless we must say that they are only a preliminary, often clumsy attempt to come to something that is really in accordance with life. In the last century, we have slipped into a kind of intellectuality. Intellectuality is unfruitful. In social life and in art, what has been the consequence? The necessary consequence has been that although people have wanted to be artistically active, they have slipped into naturalism, into the simple imitation of nature.

The simple imitation of nature can never be art in an absolute sense. I say that not in deference to the art critics, but simply because when someone so strongly imitates what they see in external nature, they will never reach nature. If you have a sense for it, you will always prefer nature over what simply imitates nature.

An outrageously inept thing often occurs (you will excuse me if I bring up this trivial example) that is the expression of outrageously bad taste. You show people, let’s say, an apple that you find particularly pleasing, beautifully polished, and so forth. Then, you say, “It’s as though it were made out of wax!” It is impossible to think of something more outrageously inept than when someone compares something from nature with an artificial thing, regardless of how good this artificial thing is! For the simple reason that we can never reach true nature in art, we must reject absolute naturalism.

It is something quite different if, in the expressionist manner, the artist wants to embody something that people experience beyond what is simply natural—even though the embodiment may be clumsy. However, to recognize that clumsy beginnings should be neither over- nor undervalued, you must be open to what is today often expressed by a slogan, but which, in connection with human life, people do not correctly understand.

The following may sound like a paradox. I certainly belong among those who have the highest admiration for Raphael. However, from my point of view the only people who have a right to admire Raphael are those who are convinced that if someone today were to paint just as Raphael painted, it would be impossible and inconsistent with modern times. It would not be art that we could accept today as contemporary art. This may sound paradoxical. However, what has occurred during human development belongs to its particular stage. You must really take this whole idea of development seriously. What developed since the middle of the fifteenth century in science, philosophy and art is completely justifiable as an educational impulse in developing humanity. However, human development has today reached a stage where it must strive for the other pole. As humans, we needed to go through a one-sided science for a time. We needed to absorb the thoughts of this science, to come to a mood of soul brought about by our noticing the powerlessness of these scientific thoughts. This powerlessness calls forth a counterforce in the active soul life, the counterforce toward spiritual recognition, toward a spiritual viewpoint.

If you take Lessing’s thoughts earnestly, that history is an education of humanity, then you can best come to grips with such things. Thus, today in certain areas people’s prejudices allow what spiritual science has to offer to enter directly into social pedagogy, that is, into external reality.

It has been possible to make artistically visible in the Dornach building what moves us inwardly, to express in forms what moves us inwardly. I might also mention that only very recently has it been possible to attempt to found a school upon real pedagogy. Our friend Emil Molt integrated the founding of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart into a modern industrial undertaking (people are beside themselves in ridicule over this), into the Waldorf cigarette factory in Stuttgart. Here we can now build a unified elementary school upon what can result for pedagogy from an understanding of the spiritual point of view. I held the pedagogical seminar for the faculty of the Waldorf School, and I must say that this belongs among the most beautiful of things I could imagine as a task for myself. There, a pedagogy was founded that does not exist to fulfill norms imagined as necessary to train people, but rather a pedagogy that results from a true understanding of the whole person, that is, the body, soul and spirit of human beings. This is a pedagogy that paradoxically makes life more difficult for the teacher than it would be with simple, normative education.

Those who believe in standardized education, who preach programs, who give educational principles, know how to instruct. However, those who teach directly from life can only receive impulses to observe what really occurs in the developing human being, from year to year, from week to week, from month to month. Even though it may be a large class, you must continuously be in living interactions. You must understand what it means not to practice a learned pedagogy from memory, but to invent at each moment the individual methods that this child needs.

What is effective in life cannot be based in memory or in habit. What we have in our memory, what we practice from memory in our human activities, what we practice out of habit is something that in all cases is simply a cliché. What results from spiritual life can never be a cliché!

There have been times, and probably still will be, when I have lectured on the same theme week after week. I do not think anyone can say I have ever spoken about the same theme in exactly the same way. When you speak from the spirit, your concern is to create something immediate. It is not at all possible in the normal sense to memorize what comes from the spirit, because it must continuously develop in direct contact with life. For those who are active out of the spirit, the simple memorization of spiritual knowledge is about the same as if someone were to say, “I am not going to eat today because I ate yesterday; why should I eat again today? My body will continue simply on the basis of what I ate yesterday.” Yes, our physical organism is such that it continuously renews itself. This is also true for the spirit. The spirit must also be within this vigorous life. The true spirit must at all times be a creator. In the same way, education carried by the spirit must be a continuously creative art.

There will be no blessing upon our elementary schools, and there will also be no healing in our school systems, until education becomes a continuously living, creating art, carried by true love and those intangibles of which I have spoken.

We can see in all areas how necessary it is in the face of the unconscious and subconscious demands of modern humanity (and in the near future it will be even more necessary) to take what people wish to make into a comfortable intellectual program and go from that to a truly productive experience of the spirit. This will be much less comfortably achieved than a great deal of what people today call spiritual life. However, this will become the social pedagogical force that we need. On the one hand, it is true that after so many years of devotion to scientific thinking the innermost souls of modern people long for a direct recognition of the spirit. It is on the other hand true that social demands cry for a spiritual deepening. It is true that the subject of my lecture is not something thought of haphazardly, but something heard from contemporary human development. However, you must first educate yourselves to it and connect yourselves with it.

In conclusion, I would like to point out one other thing that is particularly necessary now. Because everyone thinks that some fruitful philosophical life can result from subjective opinions, we must indicate how to understand questions today. I want to do that with an example.

Many years ago I held a lecture in a southern German city in which I spoke about the Christian saints. There were two priests at the lecture. Since they could say nothing against the content of the lecture, they came to me and said, “We don't have anything to say against the content of what you said today. However, we do want to say something about the fact that you claim to speak for people whose path leads them to your way of thinking. We, however, speak for all people.” This is what they said. I, of course, addressed them with their proper title. You must always be polite. I said, “You see, Reverend, you believe that you speak for all people. I find that natural and reasonable since, subjectively, that is the case. However, whether I speak, or whether you believe that you speak, for all people doesn't mean anything, particularly not in the present when individual human lives exist so much in the whole of society. Today we must learn not to define our tasks by subjective arbitrariness, but to develop them individually out of objectivity and objective facts. And so I ask you, Reverend, if you think that you speak for all people, then look at the facts. Does everyone go to church?” There they could not say yes! You see, thus speak the facts. I then said to them, “I speak for those who no longer come to you in the church.” That is what the facts teach us today.

Things do not merely guide us in the direction of an objection. Rather, we must see the facts as they are and let them form the argument. It is something quite natural that people think that they speak for everyone.

What is important today is that (although we can know that the majority of people consciously resist real spiritual scientific impulses) if we can understand the revelation, we can also know that these impulses have the effect of a subconscious cry, “Make whole again what has split into philosophy, science, art, religion and the other areas, especially the social areas, of culture!”

However, we can only make these things whole according to their own spirit. Only then do things speak to us not out of the abstract, but out of a concrete unity where the true spirit that we find in all individual things is the one spirit in everything.

However, because the unifying spirit is something concretely alive, we cannot understand it by encompassing it with abstract concepts, with ideology. We must resolve to seek the living spirit. We can only seek it, though, if, with a certain intellectual modesty, we find the bridge between the sleeping inner human forces that are of a spiritual nature, and the spirit that lives in nature, in human life, in the whole cosmos. Thus, in concluding, I wish to emphasize once again that we must take into account the longing that lives in the depths of the human soul to bind the human spirit with the Spirit of the World. Much of the solution to humanity’s burning questions lies in this bond between human spirit and World Spirit.

I do not want to arouse the belief that we can solve every problem. However, humanity is on the path to a partial resolution of riddles that have always been presented to it. In this partial resolution lies true human progress in that we recognize how the spirit lives in everything, and how this spirit can light the way if we awaken the spirit in ourselves. The greatest, most important contemporary social tasks live in this recognition, and it will lead to healing when wider and wider circles realize this.

[ 1 ] In looking at the world at the present time with open eyes we are constantly confronted with what is called the social question. Those who take life seriously have in some way to consider what is involved in this question. And it must appear as a matter of course that a way of thinking that has undertaken to promote the highest ideals of humanity should somehow come to terms with the demands made in social life. The way of thinking practiced by the science of spirit sets out to do just this for the present time. It is therefore only natural if questions arise about the relationship of the science of spirit to the social question.

[ 2 ] Now it may appear at first as if the science of the spirit has nothing in particular to say about this. What characterizes it more than anything else is the deepening of the soul life and the awakening of the ability to see into the spiritual world. Even those who have had only a passing acquaintance with the ideas promoted by speakers and writers whose work is based on the science of spirit are able by means of unbiased observation to give recognition to this striving. It is, however, more difficult to see that this striving has practical significance at the present time. And in particular it is not easy to see its connection with the social question. Someone may well ask how such a teaching can improve our bad social conditions, a teaching which is concerned with reincarnation, with “karma,” with “the super-sensible world,” with “the origin of man” and so on. Such a way of thinking appears to be divorced from all reality, whereas in fact it is now an imperative necessity for everyone to take his whole thinking in hand in order to do justice to the tasks which the reality of earthly life places before us.

[ 3 ] We shall now take two of the many views concerning the science of spirit which we inevitably come across today. The one is, that it is seen as the expression of uncontrolled fantasy. It is only natural for such a viewpoint to exist. And least of all should it be inconceivable to someone striving according to the method of the science of spirit. Every conversation that takes place in the presence of such a person, everything that goes on around him that brings happiness and joy to the human being, all this can teach him that he makes use of a language which for many is bound to be quite ludicrous. He must of course add to this understanding of his surroundings the absolute certainty that he is on the right path. Otherwise he would hardly be able to hold his own when he becomes aware of the clash between his ideas and those of others who belong to the educated and thinking part of humanity. If he has the necessary assurance, if he knows the truth and weight of his views, he can say: I know quite well that at the present time I can be regarded as an oddity and I can see why this is, but the truth is sure to prevail even when it is ridiculed and mocked, and the effect it has does not depend upon the views which people have about it, but upon its own firm foundations.

[ 4 ] The other view affecting the science of spirit is that although its thoughts may be beautiful and satisfying, these really apply only to the inner life of the soul and cannot be of any value for the struggles of daily life. Even those who turn to this substance of the science of spirit to satisfy their spiritual needs can all too easily be tempted to say: This world of ideas cannot tell us anything about how to deal with social needs and material needs.—But this opinion is based upon a complete misjudgment of the real facts of life and in particular upon the misunderstanding about the fruits of the way that the science of spirit looks at things.

[ 5 ] Practically the only question that is asked is: What does the science of spirit teach? How can what it teaches be proved? And then what people seek to get out of it is found in the feeling of satisfaction which is given by the teachings. Nothing Could be more natural. For we have first to acquire a feeling for the truth of statements that we meet. But what we really have to seek, the real fruit of the science of spirit cannot be sought in this. For this manifests itself only when those who are inclined toward the science of spirit tackle tasks in practical life. It depends on whether the science of spirit helps them to take up these tasks judiciously and with understanding to seek ways and means of solving them. If we want to work effectively in life we have first to understand life. Here we come to the heart of the matter. As long as we only ask: What does the science of spirit teach, we shall find its teachings too “exalted” for practical life. But if we direct our attention to the schooling that our thinking and feeling go through by means of these teachings, we shall then stop raising such an objection. However odd it may appear to a superficial view, it is nevertheless true that the ideas of the science of spirit, even if they may appear to be lost in the clouds, create an eye for the proper conduct of daily life. The science of spirit sharpens our understanding of the demands which social life makes just because it leads the spirit into the luminous heights of the super-sensible. However paradoxical this may appear, it is nevertheless true.

[ 6 ] An example will show what is meant. An extremely interesting book has recently appeared called As a Worker in America (Berlin, K. Siegismund). The author is a certain government councilor named Kolb who took it upon himself to spend several months as an ordinary worker in America. Through doing this he acquired a judgment about human beings and life which apparently neither the education which led to his councillorship had been able to give him, nor the experiences he had had in his post and in the other positions one occupies before becoming a councilor. Therefore for years he held a relatively responsible position, and it was only after he had left this and lived for a short time in a distant country that he got to know life in such a way that he was able to write the following noteworthy sentence in his book: “How often had I asked with moral indignation when I saw a healthy man begging: Why doesn't the scoundrel work? Now I knew. Yes, in practice things are different from what they seem to be in theory, and even the most unpleasant aspects of political economy can be managed quite bearably at one's desk.” Now there is not slightest intention here of creating a misunderstanding. The fullest possible recognition must be given to a man who persuades himself to leave his comfortable position in life and to undertake hard work in a brewery and a bicycle factory. The high esteem accorded to this deed is strongly emphasized in order to avoid the impression that we are about to indulge in negative criticism of him.—But to everyone who wants to see, it is absolutely clear that all the education and knowledge that he had gained had failed to give him the means of judging life. Let us try to understand what is implied in this admission: We can learn everything that makes us capable of taking a relatively important position, and at the same time we can be quite isolated from the life which we are supposed to influence.—Is this not rather like being educated at an engineering school and then, when faced with building a bridge, not knowing anything about it? But no: it is not quite like that. A person who has not studied the building of bridges properly will soon have his weaknesses made clear to him when he begins the actual work. He will prove himself to be a bungler and will be rejected everywhere. But a person who is insufficiently prepared in social life will not reveal his weaknesses so quickly. Badly built bridges collapse, and even the most prejudiced will realize that the builder was a bungler. What is bungled in social life only comes to light in the sufferings of those whose lives are regulated by it. It is not as easy to have an eye for the connection between the suffering and this kind of bungling as it is for the relationship between the collapse of the bridge and an incapable builder.—“But,” someone will say, “what has all this to do with the science of spirit? Does the scientist of spirit really believe that his teachings would have helped Councillor Kolb to have a better understanding of life? What use would it have been to him to have known something about reincarnation, karma, and all the super-sensible worlds? No one would want to maintain that ideas about planetary systems and higher worlds would have enabled the councilor to avoid having to admit one day that the most unpleasant aspects of political economy can be managed quite well at one's desk.” The scientist of spirit can really only answer—as Lessing did in a particular case: “I happen to be this `no one,' and I insist upon it.” Only this does not mean to say that the teaching of “reincarnation,” or knowledge about “karma” enables a person to act in the right way in social life. That would naturally be naive. It would of course be no good directing those destined to be councilors to Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine instead of sending them to Schmoller, Wagner or Brentano at the university.—What it depends upon is this: Would a theory of political economy originating from the scientist of spirit be such that it could be managed well at one's desk but would let one down in actual life? And this would not be the case. When can a theory not hold its own in life? When it is produced by means of a thinking that is not trained for life. Now the teachings of the science of spirit are just as much the real laws of life as are the theories of electricity for a factory for electrical apparatus. In setting up such a factory we have first to acquaint ourselves with theories about electricity. And in order to work in life we have to know the laws of life. The teachings of the science of spirit may appear to be remote from life, but they are, in fact, just the opposite. To a superficial view they appear divorced from the world; to a true understanding they reveal life. It is not just out of curiosity that we retire into a “spiritual-scientific circle,” in order to get hold of all sorts of “interesting” information about the worlds beyond, but we train our thinking, feeling and willing on the “eternal laws of existence” in order to enter into life and to understand it clearly. The teachings of the science of spirit are a roundabout way to thinking, judging and feeling according to life.—The movement for the science of spirit will not be rightly orientated until this is fully realized. Right action arises out of right thinking, and wrong action arises out of wrong thinking or out of a lack of thinking. If we believe that something good can be brought about in the social sphere, we have to admit that it depends on human capacities. Working through the ideas of the science of spirit brings about an increase in the capacities needed for working in social life. In this connection it is not simply a matter of which thoughts we acquire through the science of spirit, but of what is made of our thinking through them.

[ 7 ] Of course it must be admitted that within the circle of those who have taken up the science of spirit, there is not all that much to show so far. Nor can it be denied that just for this reason those outside the science of spirit have every reason to doubt what has been maintained here. But it must also not be overlooked that the movement for the science of spirit as it is at the moment is only at the beginning of its work. Its further progress will consist in entering into all the practical spheres of life. We shall then see, for instance, as far as the “social question” is concerned that instead of theories “which can be managed quite well at one's desk” there will be ideas which give us insight to reach unprejudiced judgments about life and to stimulate our will to such action as brings welfare and blessing to our fellow human beings. Some people would say that the case of Kolb shows that it would be superfluous to refer to the science of spirit. It would only be necessary that in preparing themselves for any particular occupation people would not learn only theories in their studies, but that they be brought into touch with life through having a practical as well as a theoretical training. For as soon as Kolb had a look at life, what he learned was sufficient to change his opinions.—No, it is not sufficient, because the lack lies deeper than this. If someone sees that his insufficient education only enables him to build bridges which collapse, this does not say that he has already acquired the ability to build bridges that do not collapse. He must first undergo a really suitable preparatory training. Of course we need do no more than look at social conditions, however insufficient a theory we may have about the fundamental laws of life, to prevent us from saying to someone who does not work: “Why doesn't the scoundrel work?” We can understand from the conditions why such a person does not work. But does this mean that we have learned how conditions should be brought about in which human beings can prosper? It is doubtless true that all the well-intentioned people who have thought up plans for the improvement of man's lot have not judged as Councillor Kolb did before his journey to America. They were surely all convinced before such an expedition that not anyone who gets on badly can be dismissed with the phrase, “Why doesn't the scoundrel work?” Therefore are all their plans for reform fruitful? No, because they often contradict one another. And so we have the right to say that the positive plans for reform which Councillor Kolb had after his conversion cannot have much effect. It is an error of our times that everyone considers himself capable of understanding life, even when he has not taken the slightest trouble to come to grips with the fundamental laws of life and when he has not first trained his thinking to see the real forces at work in life. Furthermore, the science of spirit is a training for a true judgment of life because it gets to the roots of life. It is no use seeing that conditions bring the human being into unfavorable situations in life, in which he is found; we have to acquaint ourselves with the forces by means of which favorable conditions can be created. Our experts in political economy can do this just as little as someone can do arithmetic who does not know his two times table. However many rows of numbers are put before him, merely looking at them will not help him. If reality is placed before someone who understands nothing about the underlying forces of social life, however penetratingly he may be able to describe what he sees, he will not be able to make anything of how the forces of social life interact to the well-being or detriment of man.

[ 8 ] A way of looking at life that leads to the real sources of life is necessary at the present time. And the science of spirit can be just such a way. If all those who wish to form an opinion as to “social needs” were to go through the teachings about life to be found in the science of spirit, we should get much further.—The objection that those who take up the science of spirit only “talk” and do not “act,” is no more valid than the one that the opinions of the science of spirit have not yet been tested and so could be exposed as vague theories like the political theory of Kolb. The first objection does not mean anything because it is naturally not possible to “act” as long as the ways to action are barred. However much a person who has great experience in dealing with people knows what a father should do to bring up his children, he cannot “act” unless the father employs him to this end. In this respect we have to wait patiently until the “talk” of those working according to the science of spirit has some effect on those who have the power to “act.” And this will happen. The other objection is just as irrelevant. And it can be raised only by those who are unfamiliar with the real nature of the truths put forward by the science of spirit. Those who are familiar with them know that they do not come into existence as things can be “tried out.” The laws of human well-being are laid in the fundament of the human soul just as surely as the two times table. We have only to penetrate sufficiently deeply into this fundament of the human soul. Of course, we can make what is written into the soul in this way evident just as we can make evident that twice two are four if we place four beans in two groups next to each other. But who would maintain that the truth “twice two are four” first has to be “tested” with beans? The true situation is: Whoever doubts a truth of the science of spirit has not yet recognized it, just as only a person could doubt that “twice two are four” who has not yet recognized the fact. However much the two differ, because the latter is so simple and the former so complicated the similarity in other respects is nevertheless there.—Naturally this cannot be realized so long as we do not enter into the science of spirit itself. This is why it is not possible to offer a “proof” of this fact for someone who does not know the science of spirit. We can only say: First get to know the science of spirit and then all this will become clear to you.

[ 9 ] The important role of the science of spirit in our times will be revealed when it has become like a leaven in the whole of our life. As long as the way into this life is not trodden in the full sense of the word, those working in harmony with the science of spirit will not have advanced beyond the first beginnings of their work. And as long as this is the case they will no doubt also have to listen to the reproach that their ideas are inimical to life. Yes, they are just as inimical to life as was the railway to a life that regarded the mail coach as the “symbol of true life.” They are just as inimical as the future is inimical to the past.

[ 10 ] In what follows, particular aspects of the relationship between “the science of spirit and the social question” are discussed.—

[ 11 ] There are two opposing views concerning the “social question.” The one sees the causes of good and bad in social life more in the human being, the other more in the conditions in which men live. Those who represent the first view want to encourage progress by endeavoring to increase the spiritual and physical ability of the human being and his moral feeling; those who tend toward the second view are above all concerned to raise the standard of life, for they say that when men learn to live properly, their ability and ethical feelings will rise by themselves to a higher level. We cannot deny that today the second view is constantly gaining ground. To stress the first view is felt in many circles to be the expression of a quite antiquated way of thinking. The point is made that anyone who has to struggle with the bitterest poverty from morning to night cannot do anything about the development of his spiritual and moral powers. Such a person should first be given bread before you talk to him about spiritual matters.

[ 12 ] This last assertion in particular can easily become a reproach to a striving like the science of spirit. And it is not the worst people who make such reproaches today. They say, for instance: “The genuine theosophist does not descend willingly from the devachan and karmic spheres to the earth. One prefers to know ten words of Sanskrit rather than be taught what ground rent is.” This we read in an interesting book, The Cultural Situation of Europe at the Reawakening of Modern Occultism, by G. L. Dankmar (Leipzig, Oswald Mutze, 1905).

[ 13 ] This is an easy enough way of putting the objection. It is pointed out that nowadays families of eight people are herded together into a single room so that even air and light are insufficient, and the children have to be sent to school where weakness and hunger cause them to break down. It is then said: Should not those who are concerned about the progress of the masses concentrate all their efforts on alleviating such conditions? Instead of directing their thinking to teaching about the higher worlds of the spirit they should direct it to the question: How can these terrible social conditions be dealt with? “Let Theosophy descend from its icy loneliness to the people; let it put the ethical demand of universal brotherhood earnestly and truly at the top of its program, and let it act according to this without worrying about all the consequences; let it make the word of Christ about loving one's neighbor a social deed and it will become and remain a precious and indispensable possession of humanity.” This is what we read in the above-mentioned book.

[ 14 ] Those who make such an objection against the science of spirit mean well. In fact, we must even admit that they are right concerning some people who have studied the teachings of the science of spirit. Among the latter there are, without doubt, some who are interested only in their own spiritual needs, who only want to know something about the “higher life,” about the destiny of the soul after death, and so on.—And it is certainly not wrong to say that at the present time it appears more necessary to work for the common good and to develop the virtues of loving one's neighbor and of human welfare than, in isolation from the world, to cultivate any higher faculties which might be dormant in the soul. To desire the latter above all else could mean a kind of refined egotism where the well-being of one's own soul is placed higher than the normally accepted human virtues. Another remark that is heard just as frequently is that only those who are “well off” and who therefore have “time to spare” can take an interest in such things as the science of spirit. And therefore we should not wish to stuff people who have to toil from morning to night for a miserable wage with talk about universal human unity, about “higher life,” and similar things.

[ 15 ] It is only too true that in this respect quite a number of sins are committed by those following the science of spirit. But it is just as correct to say that life led according to the science of spirit, rightly understood, must lead the human being, as an individual, to the virtues of willingly offered work, and of striving for the common good. At any rate, the science of spirit cannot prevent anyone from being just as good a person as the others who do not know or do not want to know anything about the science of spirit.—But as far as the “social question” is concerned, all this misses the main point. Much more is necessary to penetrate to this main point than the opponents of the science of spirit wish to admit. We can agree without hesitation with these opponents that much can be achieved with the means that have been suggested by many for the improvement of man's social condition. One party wants one thing, others something else. To a clear-thinking person, some of the demands which such parties make prove to be devoid of any real substance; on the other hand, some of it certainly contains the making of something really substantial.

[ 16 ] Robert Owen, who lived from 1771 to 1858 and who certainly was one of the noblest social reformers, emphasized again and again that the human being is molded by his environment in which he grows up, that his character is not formed by himself, but by the conditions in which he lives. What is so obviously right in such a statement should not be disputed. But neither should it be treated with a disdainful shrug of the shoulder, even if on the surface it appears to be more or less self-evident. Rather, it should be readily admitted that much in public life can be improved by working according to such ideas. The science of spirit, therefore, will never prevent anyone from doing anything for human progress which sets out to produce a better lot for the oppressed and suffering classes of humanity.

[ 17 ] The science of spirit must go deeper. Really effective progress cannot be achieved by such means any longer. If we do not admit this, we have not recognized how conditions come about in which people live. For inasmuch as the life of man is dependent on these conditions the latter themselves are brought about by man. Or who has arranged it that one person is poor and another rich? Other people, of course. But the fact that these other people have normally lived before those who flourish or do not flourish under the conditions, does not alter anything in this situation. The sufferings which nature itself places upon the human being are not directly concerned with our social position. These sufferings have to be mitigated or even removed by human action. If something is lacking in this respect it is in the arrangements that human beings make for each other.—A thorough knowledge of things teaches us that all evils connected with social life originate in human actions. In this respect it is not the individual human being but the whole of humanity that is the “fashioner of individual fortune.”

[ 18 ] However certain this is, it is also true that by and large no part of humanity, no caste or class, maliciously causes the suffering of another part. All the statements that support this are based on a lack of understanding. Nevertheless, although this too is really a self-evident truth, it must be mentioned. For even if such things can easily be grasped with the understanding, in practice people still act in a different way. Those who exploit their fellow men would naturally not want the victims of their exploitation to suffer. We would make considerable progress if people not only found this self-evident, but also adapted their feelings to it.

[ 19 ] This is air very well, but what are we supposed to do about such statements? Thus, without doubt, a “socially minded person” might object. Is the exploited person supposed to look at the exploiter with benevolent feelings? Is it not only too understandable that the former hates the latter and out of hate is led to his party views? It would certainly be a bad recipe—the objection would continue—if the oppressed were admonished to practice human love for his oppressor, somewhat in the same sense as the saying of the great Buddha: “Hate will not be overcome by hate, but only by love.”

[ 20 ] Even so, it is only the knowledge which follows from this point that can lead us to truly “social thinking” at the present time. And it is here that the approach of the science of spirit begins. This of course must not cling to the surface of our understanding, but must penetrate into the depths. It therefore cannot remain satisfied with merely showing that misery is created by any particular conditions, but it has to advance to the only knowledge that is fruitful, that is, as to how these conditions are created and continuously created. Compared with these deeper questions, most social theories prove to be only “vague theories” or even mere manners of speech.

[ 21 ] As long as our thinking remains on the surface, we attribute quite a wrong influence to conditions and to external things altogether. These conditions are in fact only an expression of an inner life. Just as the human body can be understood only when it is known to be the expression of a soul, the outer conditions of life can be rightly judged only if they are seen as the creation of human souls that embody their feelings, attitudes and thoughts in them. The conditions in which we live are created by our fellow human beings, and we shall never create better ones unless we set out with other thoughts, attitudes and feelings from those that those creators had.

[ 22 ] Let us consider these things in detail. A person who maintains a home in grand style, who can travel first class on the railway, may easily appear on the surface to be an oppressor. And a person who wears a threadbare coat and who travels fourth class will appear to be the oppressed. But one does not have to be an incompassionate individual nor a reactionary in order to understand the following clearly. Nobody is oppressed or exploited because I wear a particular coat, but only because I pay the man who made the coat for me too little. The poor worker who has acquired his inferior coat for little money is, in relation to his fellow human beings in this respect, in exactly the same position as the rich man who had a better coat made. Whether I am poor or rich, I exploit if I acquire things for which insufficient payment is made. Actually today nobody ought to call someone else an oppressor; he ought first to look at himself. If he does this carefully he will soon discover the “oppressor” in himself. Is the work which you have to deliver to the well-to-do delivered only to them at the price of bad wages? No, the person who sits next to you and complains to you about oppression enjoys the work of your hands on exactly the same conditions as the well-to-do whom you have both turned against. One should think this through and one will then find a different way of approaching “social thinking” from the more usual ones.

[ 23 ] Thinking things over in this way makes it clear that the concepts “rich” and “exploiter” must be completely separated. It depends on individual ability or on the ability of our forefathers, or on quite different things, whether we are now rich or poor. The fact that we exploit the work of others has absolutely nothing to do with these things. At least not directly. But it is very much connected with something else. And that is, that our social situation and environment are built upon personal self-interest. We have to think very clearly for otherwise we shall arrive at a quite wrong idea of what is said. If I acquire a coat today it appears quite natural, according to the conditions which exist, that I acquire it as cheaply as possible. This means: I have only myself in mind. Here, however, we touch the point of view that governs our whole life. Of course, it is easy to raise an objection. We can say: Do not the socially-minded parties and personalities try to do something about this evil? Is there not an effort to protect “work?” Do not the working classes and their representatives demand higher wages and shorter working hours? It has already been said above that the present-day view can have absolutely nothing against such demands and measures. Nor is there any intention here of agitating for one or the other of the existing party demands. From the present point of view, we are not concerned with taking sides on particular points, “for” or “against.” This, in the first place, lies quite outside the approach of the science of spirit.

[ 24 ] However many improvements are introduced to protect a particular class of workers and that would certainly contribute much to the raising of conditions of one or the other group of people, the actual nature of exploitation will not be mitigated. For this depends on a person acquiring the products of another person's work from the point of view of self-interest. Whether I have much or little: if I make use of what I have to satisfy my self-interest, the other person is bound to be exploited. Even if in maintaining this point of view I protect his work, it may seem that I have done something, but in fact I have not. For if I pay more for the work of the other person he will also have to pay more for mine, providing the one is not supposed to acquire a better position through the deteriorating position of the other.

[ 25 ] This can be clarified by another example. If I buy a factory in order to earn as much as possible for myself, I shall see that I acquire labor as cheaply as possible, etc. Everything that happens will be done from the point of view of self-interest.—If, on the other hand, I buy a factory from the point of view of looking after 200 people as well as possible, all my actions will take on a different character.—In practice today the second case can certainly hardly be differentiated from the first. This simply depends on the fact that a solitary selfless person cannot achieve much in a community which otherwise is based on self-interest. It would be quite different, however, if work not based on self-interest were universal.

[ 26 ] A “practical” thinker will naturally be of the opinion that no one could manage to help his workers get better wage conditions just by a “good attitude.” For we cannot increase the return on our goods through meaning well, and without this it is not possible to offer better conditions for the workers.—But it is important to realize that this objection is completely erroneous. All our interests, and therefore all our social conditions, change when in acquiring something we no longer have ourselves in mind, but others. What does a person have to look to who only looks after his own well-being? To seeing that he earns as much as possible. How others have to work in order to satisfy his needs cannot be his concern. He therefore has to develop his powers in the struggle for existence. If I establish an undertaking which is to bring in as much as possible to myself, I do not ask how labor that works for me is mobilized. If I do not consider myself but hold the point of view: How does my work serve others? everything changes. Nothing then forces me to undertake anything prejudicial to someone else. I then place my powers not at my own disposal, but at someone else's. The consequence of this is a quite different unfolding of the powers and capacities of the human being. How this changes social conditions in practice will be discussed at the end of the essay.—

[ 27 ] In a way Robert Owen can be called a genius in practical social activity. He possessed two characteristics which may well justify him being called this: a far-ranging eye for measures that would serve social life, and a noble love for human beings. We only have to consider what he achieved by means of these two capacities in order to appreciate their significance. He created a model industrial set-up in New Lanark and employed his workers in such a way that they not only had a dignified existence materially, but that they also lived in conditions which were satisfactory from a moral point of view. The people who gathered there were in part those who had come down in the world and were given over to drink. Better elements were mixed with these, and their example had an effect. And so the best possible results imaginable were attained. What Owen achieved there makes it impossible to place him on the same level as other more or less fantastic “improvers of the world”—the so-called Utopians. He restricted himself to measures which could be put into practice, that anyone not inclined to day-dreams could assume would lead, within a particular limited area, to the abolition of human suffering. And it is not being impractical to believe that such a small area could serve as an example, and that from it a healthy development of the human condition in the social sphere could be stimulated.

[ 28 ] Owen presumably thought along those lines. That is why he was not afraid to take another step in the direction he had already taken. In 1824 he worked toward setting up a kind of small model state in Indiana, in North America. He acquired a district where he wanted to found a human community based upon freedom and equality. Everything was so arranged that exploitation and servitude were an impossibility. Whoever takes such a task upon himself has to bring with him the best social virtues: a desire to make one's fellow men happy, and a belief in the goodness of human nature. He must be convinced that if work organized in the appropriate way appears certain to bring blessing, the desire to work will unfold within human nature.

[ 29 ] Owen believed this so strongly that a lot of serious things had to happen before he began to waver.

[ 30 ] These serious things really did begin to happen. After much noble effort Owen had to admit that “the realization of such colonies must always come to grief unless the general way of living is transformed first;” and that it would be more valuable to influence humanity in a theoretical way rather than by practical measures. This social reformer was forced to this view by the fact that there were sufficient people who disliked work, who wished to get rid of their work on others, for strife, quarrels and finally bankruptcy to ensue.

[ 31 ] Owen's experience can be a lesson to all who really want to learn. It can be a bridge for all artificially created and thought-out measures for the salvation of humanity to a social work which is more fruitful and which reckons with actual reality.

[ 32 ] Through his experience Owen was able to be completely cured of the belief that all human misery comes about through bad “conditions” in which people live, and that the goodness of human nature would come to life of itself if these conditions were improved. He was forced to the conviction that good conditions can be maintained only if the human beings who live in them are naturally inclined to maintain them, and when they do this with enthusiasm.

[ 33 ] One might at first think that it would be necessary to give theoretical instruction to those who are to live in such conditions, that is, in explaining to them that the measures are right and meet the purpose. It is not difficult for an unbiased person to read something like this into Owen's confession. But even so, it is only possible to achieve a really practical result by penetrating more deeply into the matter. We have to advance from merely a belief in the goodness of human nature that deceived Owen, to a real knowledge of man.—However clear people have been about how purposeful certain measures are which can bring blessing to humanity—in the long run all such clarity cannot lead to the desired goal. For the human being is not able to gain the inner impulse to work by having a clear understanding if, on the other hand, the impulses to be found in egotism rear their heads. This egotism happens to be part of human nature. And this means that it stirs in the feelings of the human being when he lives together with others and has to work within a community. This necessarily leads to the fact that in practice most people think the best social conditions to be those where the individual can best satisfy his needs. Thus under the influence of egotistical feelings the social question comes to be formulated quite naturally as follows: What must be done in society in order that each person can have the returns of his work for himself? And particularly in our own times with their materialistic way of thinking, only a few people would base their view on any other assumption. How often does one hear it accepted as a matter of course that a social order based on goodwill and feeling for one's fellow human beings is an absurdity. Rather it is assumed that the totality of a human community can prosper best when the individual can pocket the “full” or greatest possible yield of his work.

[ 34 ] Exactly the opposite of this is taught by the science of spirit, which is founded on a deeper knowledge of the human being and of the world. It shows that all human misery is simply a consequence of egotism, and that misery, poverty and distress must necessarily arise at a particular time in the human community if this community is based on egotism in any way. It is naturally necessary to have deeper knowledge than the kind to be found here and there sailing under the flag of social science, in order to understand this. This “social science” takes only the outer aspect of human life into account, and not the forces which lie deeper. In fact, it is even very difficult with the majority of modern people to awaken even a feeling in themselves that one can speak about such forces. They regard anyone who comes along with such ideas as peculiar. Now in this essay it is not possible to attempt to evolve a social theory based on these deeper-lying forces. For this would need a much fuller work. The only thing that can be done is to point to the true laws which govern how people work together, and to show what reasonable social considerations arise for someone familiar with these laws. Only a person who builds up his view of the world on the science of spirit can have a full understanding of the matter. And it is to convey such a view of the world that this whole magazine works. One cannot expect it from a single article on the “social question.” All that this article can hope to do is to shed some light on this question from the spiritual point of view. After all, there will be some people who are able to have a feeling for the Tightness of what is briefly described here and which cannot possibly be explained in every detail.

[ 35 ] Now, the main social law set forth by the science of spirit, is the following:“The well-being of a total community of human beings working together becomes greater the less the individual demands the products of his achievements for himself, that is, the more of these products he passes on to his fellow workers and the more his own needs are not satisfied out of his own achievements, but out of the achievements of others.” All the conditions within a total community of people which contradict this law must sooner or later produce misery and distress somewhere. — This law holds good for social life with absolute necessity and without any exceptions, just as a natural law holds good for a particular sphere of natural processes. But it should not be thought that it is sufficient for this law to be held as a universal moral law, or that it should be translated into the attitude that everyone should work in the service of his fellow men. No, in actual fact the law will be able to exist as it should only if a total community of people succeeds in creating conditions where no one ever can claim the fruits of his own work for himself, but where, if at all possible, these go entirely to the benefit of the community. And he in turn must be maintained by means of the work of his fellow human beings. The important thing is to see that working for one's fellow human beings and aiming at a particular income are two quite separate things.

[ 36 ] Those who imagine that they are “practical people”—the scientist of spirit has no illusions about this—will only be able to smile about this “hair-raising idealism.” But despite this, the above law is more practical than anything which has ever been thought out by “practical people,” or that has actually been introduced. If we really study life we can find that each human community that exists or has existed has two tendencies in its social set-up. One of these corresponds to this law, the other contradicts it. This has to be the case, irrespective of whether people want it or not. Every community would collapse immediately if the work of the individual did not benefit the whole. But from times immemorial human egotism has thwarted this law. It has sought to get as much as possible for the individual from his own work. And it is just what has been produced through egotism in this way that has always led to distress, poverty and misery. This means that the aspect of human conditions that is bound to prove impractical is the one that is introduced by the “practical people,” that reckons either with one's own egotism or somebody else's.

[ 37 ] Now of course we are not only concerned with understanding such a law, but actual practice begins with the question: How can the law be carried out in real life? It is clear that it says nothing less than this: The smaller the egotism is, the greater the human well-being. Thus in putting the law into practice, our concern is with people who extricate themselves from the path of egotism. This is in practice, however, quite impossible if the well-being of the individual is measured according to his work. Whoever works for himself is bound gradually to succumb to egotism. Only someone who works for others can gradually become an un-egotistical worker.

[ 38 ] For this, one prerequisite is necessary. If a person works for another he must find in this other person the reason for his work; and if someone is supposed to work for the community he must be able to feel the value, the being and the significance of this community. He can do this only if the community is something quite different from a more or less undefined collection of individuals. It has to be permeated by a real spirit in which each person can partake. It has to be such that everyone says: It is right, and I want it to be like that. The total community must have a spiritual mission; and each individual must wish to contribute to the fulfillment of this mission. None of the indefinite and abstract ideas of progress which we normally read about are able to provide the formulation of such a measure. If only these ideas prevail, an individual will work here or a group there without seeing that their work is of any use beyond satisfying their own needs or perhaps the interests they happen to have. This spirit of the total community must be alive right down into each individual.

[ 39 ] From earliest times good has prospered only where such a life has been somehow permeated by a spirit common to the whole community. An individual citizen of an old Greek city, or even a citizen of a free city in the Middle Ages, had at least something of a vague feeling of such a spirit. In this respect it makes no difference that, for instance, the Greek way of life was dependent on an army of slaves who did the work for the “free citizens,” and who were not urged on by the spirit of the community, but by the compulsion of their masters.—The only thing we can learn from this example is that human life is subject to development. Humanity has reached a stage today where the kind of solution of the social question practiced in ancient Greece is no longer possible. Even the most noble Greek did not find slavery wrong, but a human necessity. That is why, for instance, the great Plato could put forward an ideal for the state in which the spirit of the community finds its fulfillment in the fact that the majority of workers are compelled to work by the few with understanding. The task of the present day, however, is to put people in a position where each one can do his work for the whole community out of the impulse to be found within his own being.

[ 40 ] This is why no one should think of looking for a solution to the social question applicable to all times, but of how we must formulate our social thinking and actions in accordance with the immediate needs of the present in which we live.—It is not possible today for anyone to think up something theoretical or to put it into practice so that it could solve the social question. For he would have to have the power to force a number of people into the conditions he has created. There can be no doubt that had Owen had the power or the will to force all the people of his colony to do the work appointed them, the undertaking must have succeeded. But at the present time, such force cannot be used. It must be possible for each person to do what he is called upon to do according to his ability and measure of power, out of his own accord. Just because of this, it can never be the case that a mere point of view can convey to people how economic conditions can best be ordered—in the way that Owen in the above-cited confession thought that people should be influenced “from a theoretical point of view.” An economic theory by itself can never be a stimulus to work against the powers of egotism. Such an economic theory can for a while give the masses life which on the surface, appears like idealism. But in the long run, such a theory can help no one. Whoever injects such a theory into a crowd of people without giving it something really spiritual, commits a sin against the real purpose of humanity.

[ 41 ] The only thing that can help is a spiritual view of the world which can permeate the thoughts, feelings and will, in short, the whole soul of the human being, out of what it is in itself and out of what it is able to offer. The faith that Owen had in the goodness of human nature is only partly right, the other part being a gross illusion. He is right, inasmuch as a “higher self,” that can be awakened, slumbers in everyone. But it can only be redeemed from its slumber by a view of the world which has the characteristics mentioned above. If people are brought together in conditions such as were thought out by Owen, the community will prosper in the best possible way. But if people are brought together who do not have such a view of the world, what is good in these conditions will sooner or later of necessity have to become worse. With people who do not have a view based on the spirit, the conditions which further material well-being must also necessarily intensify egotism and thereby produce distress, misery and poverty.—The original meaning of the saying is undoubtedly right: Only an individual can be helped by the gift of bread alone; a community can only acquire its bread by being helped to a view of the world. It is also of no use to wish to procure bread for each individual in the community. After a while it would inevitably come about that many have no bread.

[ 42 ] Knowledge of these fundamentals removes several illusions from those who set themselves up to be bringers of happiness to the people. For it makes work designed to improve the social well-being a really difficult matter. And it means too that the overall success of such work can, in certain conditions, only be pieced together out of very small individual successes. Most of what whole parties proclaim as remedies for social life loses its value and proves to be vain delusion and empty talk without sufficient knowledge of human life. No parliament, no democracy, no agitation of the masses, nothing like this can have any meaning for someone who looks more deeply, if it goes against the law mentioned above. Such things can only have a favorable effect if they conform to the intention of this law. It is a serious illusion to believe that an elected member of a particular parliament can contribute anything to the salvation of humanity unless his work is carried out in conformity with the main law of social life.

[ 43 ] Wherever this law appears, wherever someone works according to it as far as is possible in the position which he occupies in the human community, good is achieved, even if in very small measure in individual cases. And it is only by means of such isolated examples of work which arise in this way, that beneficial progress in the whole social sphere will come about.—It is also true that in some cases larger communities have a natural tendency which enables them to achieve a greater result in this direction. There are also some particular human communities where something of this sort is being prepared within their natural tendencies and capacities. They will make it possible for humanity to take a step forward in social evolution. Such communities are known to the science of spirit, but it cannot undertake to speak publicly about such matters.—And there are also means of preparing larger groups of people to take such a step forward, even within a reasonable space of time. What anyone can do, however, is to work in conformity with the above law in his own particular sphere. There is no position which a person might have in the world where this is not possible, however insignificant or without influence it may appear to be.

[ 44 ] The most important thing is that each person seek out the ways to a view of the world which is based on real knowledge of the spirit. The spiritual approach of anthroposophy can develop into such a view for everyone, when it evolves more and more according to its content and inherent possibilities. By means of it the human being comes to know that it is not by chance that he is born in a particular place at a particular time, but that he is placed out of necessity into the situation in which he is by the spiritual law of cause, karma. He can see that it is his own well-founded destiny that has placed him into the human community in which he lives. He can also become aware of how his abilities have not come to him haphazardly, but that their existence is dependent on the law of cause.

[ 45 ] And he can realize all this to the extent that it does not remain just a matter of sense or reason, but gradually fills his whole soul with inner life.

[ 46 ] He will come to feel that he is fulfilling a higher purpose when he works in accordance with his place in the world, and in accordance with his abilities. The result of realizing this will not be a kind of shadowy idealism but a tremendous impulse of all his powers, and in this respect he will regard his action just as much a matter of course as in other respects he regards eating and drinking. And furthermore, he will realize the particular significance of the human community to which he belongs. He will come to understand the relationships which his human community has to other communities, and so the individual personalities of these communities will draw together through a unified picture of spiritual aims, a picture of the common mission of the whole human race. And his knowledge will be able to reach out from the human race to the meaning of the entire earth existence. Only someone who will have nothing to do with a view of the world tending in this direction could be doubtful that it could have the effect suggested here. Of course, it is true that today most people have little inclination to go into such things. But the right approach of the science of spirit cannot fail to attract increasingly wider circles. To the extent that it does this, people will do the right things to further social progress. One cannot doubt this, just because no particular view of the world has so far brought happiness to humanity. According to the laws of human evolution it has never been possible to achieve what is now gradually becoming possible: to transmit a view of the world to every person with the prospect of the practical result already indicated.

[ 47 ] The views of the world that have existed so far have been available only to individual groups of people. But what good has been achieved in the human race so far, stems from the various views of the world. Only a view of the world that can inspire everyone and can kindle inner life in everyone is in a position to lead to a universal salvation. This the approach of the science of spirit will always be able to do, where it really evolves according to what is latent within it.—Of course, we should not only look at the form which this way of looking at life happens to have at this moment, in order to recognize what has been said as right, it is imperative to realize that the science of spirit has still to evolve and rise to its lofty cultural mission.

[ 48 ] Until today, for several reasons it has not been possible for it to show the countenance it will have one day. One of these reasons is that it must first gain a foothold somewhere. It has therefore to turn to a particular group of people. And naturally this can only be one that through the particular nature of its development has a desire to seek a new solution to the riddle of the world, and which can bring to such a solution understanding and interest by means of the few people in it who have the necessary preparatory training. Of course, the science of spirit has for the moment to clothe its message in a language suited to this group of people. The science of spirit will find further means of expression to speak to wider circles of people to the extent that conditions allow. Only someone who insists on having fixed dogmas can believe that the present form of the message of the science of spirit is a lasting or even the only possible one.—Just because the science of spirit is not concerned with remaining a mere theory, or merely with satisfying curiosity, it has to work slowly in this way. To its aims belong the practical points of human progress characterized above. But it can bring about this progress of humanity only if it creates the necessary conditions for it. And these conditions can be created only when one person after the other is conquered. The world moves forward only when human beings want it to. But in order to want it, everyone has to work in his own soul. And this can only be achieved step by step. If this were not the case, the science of spirit also would produce a lot of woolly ideas and do no practical work.