The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I should like to begin today by saying a few words about the boiler house attached to the Goetheanum and the architectural principle underlying it. If you want to study what motivated the architectural forms of this house, you must bear in mind that it is part of the whole Goetheanum building and belongs to it. This fact of it belonging to the building has to come to expression in the artistic conception of the building itself, if this conception is correct. It should not be an abstraction but has to be expressed in the artistic form.

Now let us have a look at the whole question of related artistic forms. We get closest to this if we do what human beings unfortunately do far too seldom, and think of the tremendous artistic creative activity we find exemplified if we are able to look at the spiritual aspect of nature and recognise natural creation as a product of the spirit. I would like to draw your attention to the forms of the bony system because it is easiest to see there. Man's bony system, especially, is less difficult to study than the forms of any other living organisms.

You will know that I have been trying for decades to arouse some understanding in the world for the significant discoveries Goethe made in the field of anatomy and physiology, which I should like to call his second major achievement in this realm. I will not touch on the first one today but only refer to the second. This second significant discovery owes its origin to what one might, in the external materialistic world, call the combination of chance and human genius. Goethe himself relates that one day when he was going for a walk in the Jewish cemetery in Venice he found a sheep's skull that had fallen apart at the seams. Picking it up and looking at the form of the bones the thought occurred to him, ‘When I look at these head bones, what actually are they? They are transformed dorsal vertebrae.'

You know, of course, that the spinal cord that encloses the spine marrow as a nerve cord is composed of rings which fit into one another, rings with a definite shape and processes (procesus vertebralis). And if you imagine one of these rings expanding so that the hole the marrow passes through—for the rings fit into one another—begins to get larger and the bone gets correspondingly thinner and expands like elastic, not only in a horizontal direction but also in other directions, then the form that arises out of this ring form is nothing else but the bone formation which forms our skullcap. Our skullcaps are transformed dorsal vertebrae.

On the basis of spiritual science we can develop this discovery of Goethe's even further and can say today that every bone man has is a transformation, a metamorphosis of a single form. The only reason we do not notice this is because we have very primitive views of what can arise through transformation. If you think of a bone of the upper arm—you know of course what it looks like—a tubular bone like that would not immediately strike you as being similar to a bone in our head. But that is only due to our not having developed the concept of transformation far enough.

The first idea you will have is that the tubular bone has to be puffed up until it is hollow inside, then you ought to arrive at the form of the head bone. But that is not the principle underlying the shapes of the bones. A tubular bone would first have to be turned round, and you would not see the similarity it has to the skullcap until you had turned it inside out like a glove. But when a person turns a glove inside out he expects it to look the same as it did before, doesn't he? This is because the glove is something dead. It is quite different with something living. If the glove were alive, the following would happen when it was turned inside out: changes would occur like the thumb and the little finger getting very long, the middle finger very short, and the palm contracting, and so on. The turning inside out and the varying elasticity of the material would bring all sorts of changes about, in fact, the glove would acquire a totally different form, although it would still be the glove. This is how you must imagine a tubular upper arm bone being turned inside out, and then a skullcap would emerge.

You will realise that the wise powers of the Godhead in the cosmos possessed a greater wisdom than arrogant man has today, to be able to set the forces of transformation in motion that are needed to form a skull.The inner unity in nature comes from the very fact that, fundamentally, even the most dissimilar forms are transformations of one archetypal form. There is nothing in the realm of life that could not arise as a metamorphosis of a primary form. In the course of this metamorphosis something else happens as well. Certain parts of the primary form become larger at the expense of others, and other parts become smaller; also various limbs expand, but not all to the same extent. This produces dissimilarities, although they are all transformations of the same primary form.

Now look at the primary form of our whole Goetheanum building. I can only give you a very sketchy account of what I want to tell you, and only mention one point of view. If you look at the Goetheanum you will see that it has double domes and that the domes rest on a cylindrical sub-structure. The fact that it is a building with double domes is vital, for these double domes are an expression of the living element. If there had only been one dome then in essence our building would have been dead. The living quality of our building is expressed in the fact that the consciousness of the one dome is reflected in the other, as it were, that the two domes mirror one another, just as the part of man that is in the external world is reflected in man's organs. The basic concept of the double dome must be borne in mind in relation to anything organically connected with the Goetheanum, for if it were not to contain the double dome form, however hard it was to recognise, it would not express the essential nature of the concept of the building. Therefore the annexe must also contain the concept of the double dome.

Now look at the double dome and its additional constructions. First of all we have the interpenetration of the two dome motifs, whose importance I have often referred to. They represent a kind of new innovation in architecture and, as you know, were done with the help of Herr Englert. The interpenetration of the two domes is of special importance in the main building because it expresses the inner connection of the two elements which mirror one another. I am giving you this concept of mirroring in an abstract way at the moment. A very great deal is contained in this interpenetration of the two dome motifs; an infinite amount of different aspects. The further stage of the building, the artistic stage, that expresses the image of the concept of spiritual science, can only come into being because we have succeeded in achieving this interpenetration of the double dome motifs. So we have this interpenetration in the main building. If we were to cancel the interpenetration and separate the dome motifs, we move towards the ahrimanic principle. If we bring them closer together or overlap them completely, by building one inside the other, we would approach the luciferic principle.

So the ahrimanic principle has to be taken out of the building. In the annexe the domes have to be pushed apart, for in the case of the annexe, too, the dome concept is vital. And now imagine the domes kept apart. Imagine that on one side, this side motif (south portal of the main building) has shrunk to nothing, so the dotted line has gone, and on the other side it has grown considerably larger (and become the chimney). With the main building in mind, imagine that here (south) you have the separated domes, here is a front structure, and here the whole thing has been pushed in (see a). There the whole thing has been pulled out instead of being pushed in (b) but here (a) it has shrunk to nothing instead of growing. Imagine that on the other side (the front structure of the north portal) it developed considerably, and you have the transformation motif for an annexe of our main building which has developed out of the primary forms. For if you imagine this getting smaller and smaller (the chimney), that coming out again and the whole thing pushed together, then the annexe would be transformed into the main building.

(Dr. Steiner was using a model of the boiler house as he spoke.)

The point is that this metamorphosis of our main building shall be suitable for its purpose. Just as a vertebra arises out of the same primary form as the human skull, and you can think of one changing into the other, you can also think of the main building and the annexe changing from one to the other. The concept of the form can pass from one form to the other, if it metamorphoses and becomes alive.

We really have to become apprentices of the creative hierarchies who created by means of metamorphosis, and learn to do the same thing ourselves.

Now imagine the kind of force necessary to enlarge this insignificant-looking part on this side (north portal of the main building which becomes the chimney). If you have a small rubber bag that you want to enlarge, you have to press it this way and that way from inside so that it gets bigger. A force has to be there that can enlarge things and develop them. So if one of these side wings really has to be puffed up, it would have to be done by a force working from inside, from here (see left diagram).

What kind of forces can they be, in there? You can study these forces in the forms of the architraves. If you imagine the forces in the architraves jumping into the side structure and pushing this up, you get this form (chimney and back wall). You have to try and slip inside these forms of the architraves with your formative artistic thinking and contract and expand them. Imagine, that because you have slipped inside, you enlarge what is small in there. Then this form arises (chimney and back wall). There is no other way of going about creating things that belong together, than by trying to get inside them.

This slipping into things and being inside them is another way of imitating the creative forces in nature, and unless modern industrial civilisation does this, it will not overcome its godforsakenness. It would be impossible to imagine the ordinary kind of chimney as a product of natural creation. It only exists because there is a denial of divine-spiritual forces in nature. There is hardly anything outside in nature that you could compare with an ordinary chimney except possibly the rather hideous-looking asparagus plant. But that is a kind of exception. Whatever grows with the forces of earth can never go straight upwards like a chimney. If you want to study the forces that work in an upward direction, a tree is the best example in which to find what corresponds to the hidden forces in the earth, for a tree does not only develop a trunk in the vertical, but also has to reach out with its branches. The point obviously is not to imitate this directly in the model, but to study those forces which radiate out from the earth and overcome the purely vertical direction of the tree trunk by reaching out breadthways and putting forth branches. This part here does justice to the centrifugal forces in space, in the cosmos, to what I would like to call the branchlike centrifugal forces (on the chimney).

Although I have only been able to show you the roughest principles, I could justify the principles behind this architectural form in minute detail in the case of every single plane, but it would take too long.

Now a form such as this is only complete when it is fulfilling its purpose. If you look at the form now it is not complete. It will only be complete when the heating is actually functioning inside and smoke is coming out; smoke belongs to it, it really belongs, and this has been included in the architectural form. One day when the rising of the smoke is observed clairvoyantly, and the smoke coming out of the chimney, the spiritual part of the rising smoke will also be taken into consideration—for we shall know, when we have really observed it clairvoyantly, that the physical also contains a spiritual element. For just as you have a physical, an etheric and an astral body, the smoke also has at least an etheric part. And this etheric part goes a different way from the physical: the physical part will go upwards, but the etheric part is really caught by these twigs that reach outwards. A time will come when people will see the physical part of the smoke rising while the etheric part wafts away. When this kind of thing is expressed in the form, a principle of all art is gradually being complied with, namely, the presenting of the inner essence in outer form, really making the inner essence the principle according to which the outer form is created.

As I said, I would have to do a lot of talking if I were to go into all the details on which these architectural forms are based, although these might be far more interesting than those we have already discussed. One of these interesting things is that it was possible to express everything that had to be expressed in this modern material, and build with concrete. For it will be possible to go a long way with form-making in this modern material, especially in the designing of buildings in this style that will serve modern ahrimanic civilisation. In fact it is essential to do so. There is no need for me to go into any further details, because I am more concerned with showing you the principle of this building and everything to do with it. This principle can he modified in many respects. For instance the dome can be modified so that it does not look like a dome any more, if it is looked at merely from the geometrical-mathematical point of view and not organically, and so on. But today I wanted to discuss the particular principle of inner metamorphosis and transformation, the life principle within these. I wanted to cite this to show you in what way real artistic creativity, when it has to do with our spiritual-scientific conception, has to differ from any kind of symbolic interpretation, for that is external. It is a matter of getting an inner grasp of what you are being shown here and following the process with your whole soul.

When the building is eventually finished we do not continually want to be asked, ‘What does this mean and that mean?', and have to witness people happily believing that they have discovered the meaning of some of these things. Regarding some of these interpretations, we have come into a strange position along some of the by-paths of theosophy, with respect to quite a number of poetic and literary works. For instance, people have explained plays by saying that one person means manas, another person buddhi and a third person atma, and so on. If you want to, you can of course explain everything like this. But we are not concerned with this kind of interpretation, but with entering into things and joining in the process of creativity that came from the higher hierarchies and fills and forms the whole of our world. There is no need to avoid doing this just because it is more difficult than symbolic or allegorical interpretation. For it leads into the spiritual world and is the very strongest incentive for really acquiring imagination, inspiration and intuition.

A vital part of the present-day impulses for change is that we acquire more and more understanding for the way the human soul rises into the realms that open up to imaginative, inspirational and intuitive observation. For these realms contain the elements that will make our world whole again, and which will lift us up out of mere maya and lead us to true reality.

It has to be stressed again and again that the new spiritual knowledge we are moving towards, cannot consist of repeating the results of earlier clairvoyance. There are certainly a lot of people striving to repeat earlier clairvoyance, but the time for this clairvoyance is over, and it is only atavistic echoes of ancient clairvoyance that can possibly occur in these few individuals. But the levels of human existence to which we must ascend will not open up to a repetition of ancient clairvoyance. Let us have another look at the essential basis of this new clairvoyance. We have often referred to the principle of the thing, and now we want to try and approach it from another angle.

Again we will start with something we all know, namely, that during waking day man lives with his ego and his astral body within his etheric and his physical body. But I have already emphasised during the past few days that, awake as he is between waking up and going to sleep, man is not fully awake, for something in him is still asleep. What we feel as our will is really only partly awake. Our thoughts are awake from when we wake up until we go to sleep, but willing is something we carry out completely in a dream. This is why all the pondering about freedom of will and about freedom altogether has been in vain, because people have failed to notice that what they know about the will during the daytime is actually only the dreaming of their will impulses. If you have an impulse of will and make a mental image of it you are certainly awake. But in waking life man only dreams with regard to how the will arises and goes over into action.

If you pick up a piece of chalk and make a mental image of picking it up, that is of course something you can have a mental image of. But with only your day consciousness and without clairvoyance you know no more about how the ego and astral body stream into your hand and how the will spreads out, than you know about a dream whilst you are dreaming. We can only dream about the actual will with ordinary waking consciousness, and where most things are concerned we do not even dream, we just sleep. You can clearly visualise putting a mouthful of food on your fork, and to a certain extent you can visualise chewing it, but you do not even dream about swallowing it. You are usually quite unconscious of it, as you are unconscious of your thoughts while you are asleep. So during waking life a major part of our will activity is carried out in waking day sleep.

If we did not sleep with regard to our desires and the feeling impulses bound up with them, something strange would begin to happen. We would follow the course of our actions right into our body; everything we do out of will impulse would be followed up inside us in our blood and throughout the whole circulation. That is, if you could follow the picking up of a piece of chalk from the point of view of the will impulse, you would follow what is going on in your hand right into the blood circulation; you would see the activity of the blood and the feelings that are bound up with this from inside. For instance, you would have an inner perception of the weight of the piece of chalk and become aware that you are seeing the nerve channels and the etheric fluid inside them. You would feel yourself moving through the activity of the blood and the nerves, which would amount to an inner enjoyment of your own blood and nerve activity. But we have to be free of this inner enjoyment of our own blood and nerve activity during earthly life, otherwise we would go through life wanting this inner enjoyment to accompany everything we do. Our enjoyment of self would increase enormously. But as man is now constituted he should not have this enjoyment. And the secret of why he should not have it can again be found in a passage of the Bible, for which we ought to feel greater and greater reverence.

After what had occurred in paradise and is told in the paradise myth, man was permitted to eat from the tree of knowledge but not from the tree of life. Now this inner enjoyment would be the enjoying of the tree of life, and man is not permitted to do this. I cannot develop this theme further today as it would lead too far, but through meditating on it yourselves you will be able to discover more about it. Another thing that can have special significance for us in connection with these present lectures and arises out of this, is the following: not being able to eat from the tree of life means not being able to enjoy the blood and nerve activity going on within us. Yet just because we know the outer world by means of our senses and our reason, something comes about that surely has something to do with this kind of enjoyment. Whenever we perceive anything in the outer world and whenever we think about it, we follow the course of our blood circulation in the region of the senses—eyes, ears, nose and taste nerves—and, in the case of thinking, the nerve channels. But we do not have the perception of what is going on in the blood circulation and nerve channels, for what we would have perceived in the blood is reflected and mirrored by the senses, thus causing the sense impressions to arise. And what is conducted through the nerve channels is also reflected and conducted back to the nerve ends, where it is then mirrored as thought.

Now imagine for a moment a human being who is in the following situation: he does not just follow the course of his blood as it responds to the outer world and then receive a mirror image of what his blood does, nor does he just follow the course of his nerves and receive a mirror image of what his nerves do, but he is in a position to experience within himself what is denied us with regard to our blood and our sense nerves; he experiences the blood moving towards the nerve and the eyes. If this were the case he would enjoy his own inner process, at least in the blood and the nerves in this area. This is how the inner pictures of atavistic clairvoyance arise. What we see reflected are only pictures, filtered pictures as it were of what is in the blood and the nerves. There are world secrets in the blood and nerves, but the kind of world secrets that have already given their substance to creating us. It is only ourselves we get to know when we acquire the imaginations resulting from experiencing the blood circulating to the senses, and it is only the inspirations which have the task of building up our bodily nature we get to know, when we experience ourselves in the nerves leading to our senses.

A whole inner world can arise in this manner, and this inner world can be a collection of imaginations. Yet although, when perceiving the outer physical world in a way that is proper for our earth evolution, we perceive reflections of our blood and nerve activities, we still cannot get beyond the senses when we indulge in inner enjoyment, but reach only to the point where the blood circulation flows into the senses. Then the experience of the imaginative world is comparable to swimming in blood like a fish in water. But this imaginative world is in reality not an outside world but a world living in our blood. If one lives in the nerves leading to the senses one experiences an inspirational world full of music of the spheres and inner pictures. This is cosmic again but it is nothing new. It has already fulfilled its task in that it has flowed into our nerve and blood systems.

The kind of clairvoyance arising in this way, and leading man further into himself instead of beyond himself, is self-enjoyment, veritable self-enjoyment. This is why a kind of refined voluptuousness is brought about in people who become clairvoyant in this way and experience a world which is new to them. And on the whole we must say that this kind of clairvoyance is a return to an earlier stage of evolution. For although this experiencing of a person's own sense organs and blood, as I have been describing to you, did not exist then in the form in which it does today, the nervous system was already there in a germinal state. This kind of perception was the normal one for man on ancient Moon, and what he had then in the way of the beginning of nerves served to give him an inner perception of himself. The blood had not yet taken form inside him. It was more like a warm breath coming towards him from outside, like we receive the rays of the sun. Therefore what is now, on the earth, a perception of the inner blood system was regular, normal perception of the outside world at the Moon stage.

You could say that if this is the borderline between man's inner and outer world (a diagram was drawn), then, what are now our nerves were already there, in germinal form, on the Moon. By following the course of the nerves he could perceive what was within him, as a world of inner imagination. He saw that he himself belonged in the cosmos. He also had an imaginative perception of what came to him as a breath from outside and not from inside. That has now ceased, and what was outside, on ancient Moon, has become internalised as the blood circulation in Earth evolution. So it is a regression to the old Moon evolution.

It is good to know of these things, because that kind of clairvoyance keeps on making its appearance. It does not need to be acquired along the hard path of meditation and concentration described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. The kind of clairvoyance that arises as a result of learning to experience one's nerves and blood as an inner enjoyment is just a more refined development of organic life, a further development of the experience of eating and drinking. This is certainly not mankind's present task, but is a kind of hot-house plant which arises when self-enjoyment of things such as eating and drinking is developed to a fine art. Just as a wine connoisseur has an inner after-taste which is only an imagination of the taste and is not formative, some people have a subtle inner enjoyment which is their clairvoyance.

A lot of clairvoyance is nothing more than a subtle, refined, forced kind of after-taste of life. We must become aware of these things again in our time. For people have not known about these secrets nor referred to them in literature since the first half of the nineteenth century. Then the second half of the nineteenth century came, with all the discoveries that are considered so wonderful, and they certainly are wonderful from their point of view, and an understanding of these things and the finer connections of existence were lost. But what has not yet been lost—and this is said in parenthesis—is the enjoyment of the effects of the coarser things we imbibe. Mankind continues to be able to live in the after-enjoyment of eating and drinking, and, precisely in the materialistic age, has cultivated this to an extent.

But mankind lives in a rhythmic cycle where things like this are concerned. Of course, because it has eradicated the general feeling it used to have of indulging in self-enjoyment in the senses, nerves and blood circulation, which people had to a greater extent in the past, the materialistic age can devote itself even more strongly to the effects of eating and drinking. You can easily study the whole change and rapid development that has taken place in a relatively short time in this realm. You have only to compare a hotel menu of the 1870's with a present-day one (1915), and you will see the progress that has been made in the sphere of refined pleasures, in the self-enjoyment of one's own body. Yet things of this kind also move in cycles, and achievements are only carried to a certain level. Just as a pendulum can only swing to a certain point before it has to go back again, the indulgence in mere physical pleasure will also have to go in the other direction once it has reached a certain point. This will occur when the keenest epicureans, that is, people with the most longing for pleasures, will look at the choicest dainties and say, ‘Ugh! I don't feel like having that, that is just too much!' This moment will certainly come, for it is a necessary development. Everything moves in cycles.

Man experiences the other side of life during sleep. His thought life is asleep and quite different conditions prevail, of course. Now I said that it was chiefly the first half of the nineteenth century that had insight into these matters still; and the kind of clairvoyance that arises when one follows the course of one's own blood and nerve channels was still called pythian clairvoyance at that time, from certain memories the people had, and it is indeed related to the foundations of ancient pythian clairvoyance.

Other conditions prevail during sleep. Man is outside his physical and etheric body with his ego and astral body. In ordinary life thoughts are then suppressed and devitalised. But between falling asleep and waking up man lives continually with the longing for his physical body. This is precisely what sleep consists of, acquiring a longing for his physical body from the moment he falls asleep. This rises to a climax and then urges him more and more to return to his body. When he is asleep the longing to return to his own physical body becomes stronger and stronger. And because the longing pervades the ego and the astral body like a mist, the life of thought is dimmed. Just as we cannot see the trees any more when mist encloses them, we cannot experience our life of perception within us when the mist of our longing envelops us.

Now it can happen that this longing grows so strong during sleep, that man does not keep it outside his physical and etheric body, but that his greed grows to the extent that he partly takes hold of his physical and etheric body and comes into touch with the extreme ends of his blood and nerve channels; he penetrates from outside as it were through his senses into the extreme ends of his blood circulation and his nerve channels.

In ancient times, when man still had experiences like these with the help of the gods, as it were, it was a normal and healthy process. The old Hebrew prophets, who accomplished so much for their people, acquired their prophetic gifts through making use of the tremendous love they bore precisely for the blood and nerve composition of their own people, so that even during sleep they did not want to let go altogether of that which lived physically in their people. These prophets of Jewish antiquity were seized with such longing and filled with such love that even in sleep they wanted to remain bound to the blood of the people to whom they belonged. This is precisely what gave them their prophetic gifts.

This is the physiological origin of these prophetic gifts, and splendid achievements came about through this channel. This is precisely why the prophets of the various peoples had such significance for their people, because even when they were outside the body they maintained a contact with it in this way.

As I mentioned, there was still a certain awareness right up to the first half of the nineteenth century, of this connection in the life of humanity. Just as they called the other kind of clairvoyance pythian clairvoyance, this kind of clairvoyance, which came about through contact of the ego-astral nature of man with the blood and nerve channels of the physical body during sleep, was called prophetic clairvoyance.

If you look at the literature of the first half of the nineteenth century you will find descriptions of pythian and prophetic clairvoyance, even if they are not as precise as spiritual-scientific descriptions of them would be today. People do not know the difference between them any more, since they have no understanding for what they can read about them in the books of the first half of the nineteenth century. But neither of these kinds of clairvoyance can really help humanity forward today. Both of them were right for olden times. Modern clairvoyance, which has to develop further and further in the future, can come about neither through enjoying what is going on in our bodies while we are awake, nor by entering into the body from outside in a sleeplike state, urged on by love—even if it is not for ourselves, but for the part of mankind to which our body belongs. Both these levels have been superseded.

Modern clairvoyance must be a third way, neither a taking hold of the physical body from outside, in loving longing, nor an enjoying of the physical body from inside. Both these phenomena, that which lives within and floods the body with pleasure, and that which can seize hold of the body from outside, have to go out of the body, if modern clairvoyance is to occur; they may only have the sort of relationship with the body, during incarnation between birth and death, in which they neither enjoy nor love the blood and nerves, either from inside or from outside, but remain connected with the body whilst freely abstaining from such self-enjoyment or self-love. The connection with the body has to be maintained nevertheless, of course, otherwise it would mean a dying. Man must remain bound to the body that belongs to him in physical incarnation on earth, and this must be done by means of the organs which are remote, as it were, or at least relatively remote from the activity of blood and nerves. A detaching from the activity of blood and nerves must be achieved.

When a person no longer indulges in enjoyment of self along the channels leading to the senses, nor takes hold of himself, from outside, as far as the senses, but has the kind of relationship to himself, both from inside and from outside, in which he can actually take living hold of what symbolises the death of physical life, then the proper condition has been reached. For we actually die physiologically because we are able to develop the bony system. When we are capable of taking hold of the skeleton which folk wisdom recognises as the symbol of death, and which is as remote from the blood system as it is from the nervous system, then we come to what we can call spiritual-scientific clairvoyance, which is higher than either pythian or prophetic clairvoyance.

With spiritual-scientific clairvoyance we take hold of the whole and not just part of the human being, and it actually makes no difference whether we take hold of it from inside or outside, for this kind of clairvoyance can no longer be an act of enjoyment. Instead of being a subtle enjoyment it is an opening up and rising into the divine-spiritual forces of the All. It is a uniting with the world. It is no longer an experiencing of the human being and the mysteries that have been woven into him, but an experiencing of the deeds of the beings of the higher hierarchies, whereby one truly lifts oneself out of self-enjoyment and self-love. Man must become a thought as it were, an organ of the higher hierarchies, just as our thoughts are organs of our souls. To be thought of, pictured and perceived by the higher hierarchies, is the principle of spiritual-scientific clairvoyance. To be received, not to take oneself.

I would like to express the wish that what I have just been saying might become a real object for your meditation, for precisely that which I have been telling you today can bring many, many things to life in all of you and enliven the actual impulses of our spiritual-scientific movement to an ever greater extent. And how seriously we have to take the enlivening of our spiritual-scientific movement has often been spoken of during these days together. We could bring to realisation a further part—I will not say of what was intended—but of what ought to be intended within this spiritual-scientific movement, if as many people as possible would resolve to think about this threefold form of knowledge of higher worlds in a living way, so that our thoughts become clearer and clearer about what, at bottom, we all intend, and which can become so easily confused with what can be had much more comfortably.

Truly, it is not for nothing that we work from cycle to cycle to accumulate more and more concepts and ideas. It is not needless work studying these concepts and ideas, for it is precisely the way to prepare the soul impulses that will lead us to real spiritual-scientific clairvoyance. By snatching up one or two ideas given by anthroposophy you can sometimes make a chink in one or another part of the human organisation, causing fragments of pythian and prophetic clairvoyance to arise, enough to make people proud of themselves. If this is the case, we often hear statements like this, ‘I don't need to study everything in detail, and I don't need what the cycles say. I know all that, I knew it already.’ And so on. Many people are still satisfied with the principle of living in a few imaginations which we could call blood and nerve imaginations. A lot of people fancy they have something really special if they have a few blood and nerve imaginations. But this is not what can lead us to selfless co-operation in mankind's development. Indulging in blood and nerve imaginations actually leads to a heightening of self-enjoyment, to a more subtle form of egoism. Then, of course, the cultivation of spiritual science can be the very thing that breeds an even more subtle kind of egoism than you ever find in the outside world.

It is taken for granted that one is never referring to the present company nor to the Anthroposophical Society, which is, of course, here. But it should be permissible to mention that there are societies in which some people manage to turn the principles in their favour, and without really giving their unselfish support, make use of one or another thing, preferably those things which stimulate blood or nerve imaginations, and then imagine they can spare themselves the rest. As a result they acquire an atavistic clairvoyance, or perhaps not even that, but only the feelings that accompany that kind of imaginative clairvoyance. These feelings are not an overcoming of egoism, just a heightened form of it. You find in societies like this—the Anthroposophical Society excepted for politeness’ sake—that although it would be people's duty to develop love and harmony out of the depths of their hearts from one member to another, you find disharmony, quarrelsomeness, people telling tales about one another, and so on. I can say things like this, for as I said, I always make an exception of the members of the Anthroposophical Society.

This shows us that dark shadows are thrown just where a strong light is about to appear. I am not finding such faults because I imagine these things can be exterminated overnight. That cannot happen, because they come from nature. But at least each person can work on himself; and it is not a good thing if you are not made aware of these things.

It is thoroughly understandable that just because a particular movement has to be founded, the shadow sides also make themselves felt in these societies, and that what is rampant in outside life is far more rampant within them. Yet it always gives one a bitter feeling if this happens in societies which, by their very nature—otherwise there would be no point in having a society—should develop a certain brotherliness, a certain loyalty, but just because they come closer together, certain faults that are short-lived in the outside world develop all the more fiercely. As the present company, the Anthroposophical Society, is excepted, it will give us all the more opportunity to think and reflect about these things quite objectively and impartially, so that we really know what they are about. Then if we come across them somewhere, we shall know them for what they are, and not imagine that if someone thinks he has a particularly deep grasp of anthroposophy, that we cannot understand that faults which occur in the outside world appear much more strongly in him. We shall understand it, but we shall also know that we have to combat them. Sometimes we cannot combat them until we have really understood them.

This is another example showing how closely connected life is with the spiritual-scientific outlook; that this spiritual- scientific outlook cannot, in fact, achieve its aim unless it becomes an attitude to life, an art of life, and is brought into the whole of life. How wonderful it would be if in—let us now say the Anthroposophical Society—all the various human relationships proved to be as harmonious as we have tried to make the forms of our Goetheanum building, where they change from one to the other and each is in harmony with the other. If it could be the same in life as it is in the Goetheanum, and the whole life of our Society could be like the wonderful co-operation among the people engaged in building the Goetheanum, so that even this very building activity is a harmonious and noble image of what comes to expression in the building itself.

Thus, the inner significance of the life principle of our Goetheanum building and the inner significance of the co-operation among the souls—no, I would rather not say that—the inner significance of the harmony of the forms of our building, should find their way into all the various human relationships in our society, and their inner formative force should stand before us as a kind of ideal. I should just like to assure you that the wrong words did not slip out just now, when I stopped in mid-sentence. I stopped quite deliberately, and sometimes the thing is said without actually saying it.

To summarise the theme I have given in many variations over these days; what I want to recommend to you most warmly is not only to look at the thoughts and ideas of spiritual science, the results of spiritual research, with your intellect and reason, but to take what lives in spiritual science into your hearts. For the salvation of mankind's future progress really depends on this. This can be said without presumption, for anyone can see it if they try at all to study the impulses of our evolution and the signs of our times. With these thoughts I will close the series of lectures I ventured to give you at the turn of the year.

In a lecture Kurt Eisner recently gave to students in Basle we find a remarkable sentence. Eisner starts with a really curious question about the present external world, namely, whether what can be expressed as the present situation of mankind is a reality or a mere dream; whether what mankind is now experiencing is not actually a sort of dreamed reality? What he said about it ran something like this: “Do we not hear, do we not see clearly that pressing for realisation there lives a longing in our life to know that this life, as we have to live it today, is only the outwardly expressed invention of some evil spirit? Picture to yourselves, gentlemen, some great thinker living about 2000 years ago and knowing nothing of our times, who dreamed what the world would look like in 2000 years. With the most vivid imagination he could never have a thought-out a world like the one in which we are destined to live. Nevertheless what persists is the one Utopia in the world, and what we want, what lives in us as this longing, is the final and deepest reality, and everything else is horrible. Only we are confusing dreaming and waking. Our task is to shake off the old dream of our present useless existence . Look at the war—can it reasonably be thought possible that such a thing could be thought-out? If the war were not what is called reality it was perhaps a dream out of which we are now waking. We are in a society in which, in spite of railway, steam and electricity, we men see nevertheless only a small part of the star on which we were born.” And so on and so forth …

This is what Kurt Eisner felt, and what he said about it shortly before his death in Basle. The reality makes us ask ourselves today whether we are awake or dreaming. Is this reality a reality at all? It would be a good thing today were the mass of humanity to set themselves such questions. Above all it is of importance that we should be in a position to discern the actual truth about what surrounds us in the external world. It is particularly important that what the world needs and above all what is needed for our social life should no longer be judged according to the old customary way of thinking during recent centuries. For it is this customary thinking that has led to the present catastrophe, which becomes plain when one really studies all the conditions. With this way of thinking many of those who think themselves really practical have started out with mere abstractions which they have tried to carry out in real life. And it is because such men have applied their customary way of thinking to social conditions in the common life of men that reality has gradually become unreality, a mere image incapable of dealing with life. And there man stands regarding it as reality, and he lacks the forces to bring about conditions possible for life.

These are things that cannot be too strongly emphasised today; they must be given clear and unmistakable expression by everyone who without prejudice looks facts in the face. These facts, working in the external everyday world, speak to us clearly and show us that the cure for existing conditions can come only from impulses out of the spiritual world. For what has become estranged from the spiritual world, what has held sway economically without regard to the spiritual world, has today lost its way in a blind alley. Believing as men do today that they can continue their economic life in the way that has brought the world to this catastrophe is simply refusing to think.

We have been living through a time in which existence was believed to have come to the highest point of material civilisation, Looking back before August, 1914, how comfortable life was, how easily, if we had the means, we could travel from country to country. Consider how simple it was to communicate by telegraph or telephone between the most distant places and across national frontiers. Think of all men called modern civilisation. And then think of what since August, 1914, has become of this modern European civilisation, consider the conditions in which we now live. Truly it does not need much thought to see that the one does not exist without the other, that in the life we led until August, 1914, so comfortable, so civilised, was contained the present situation, so much so indeed that in lectures given in Vienna before the war I referred to it as a carcinoma, a cancerous growth, in human society. [ Note 01 ] We should give due weight to the fact that at the time everything was so ‘comfortable’ and the world so ‘civilised’ and all going according to the wishes of those whose social position allowed of their fulfillment, at that time Spiritual Science forced those who saw into the real state of affairs to say: this is not a healthy society we are living in, but an unhealthy one. It has long been offered the anthroposophical way of thinking for its healing. For this healing nothing will serve but the realisation that all other ways of thinking, not directed to what is really spiritual, are more or less quackery. Reality must come into the dreams men dream today. Whence is this reality to come? It does not exist in the region whence practical men derive their thoughts. Reality exists only where the spirit can be seen. From there the principles and impulses flowing into social life must be found. That is why the connection between such things must continually be stressed.

Now in connection with these lectures I have often mentioned the name Fritz Mauthner. When in a series of catchwords he classified alphabetically the thinking of the present-day, he made of this two volumes and called them a Philosophical Dictionary. In this philosophical dictionary, in Mauthner's own style, with his criticisms that were often caustic and biting, a description of present-day thinking was contained. There, among other things, he deals with the State, the res publica. From his outlook Mauthner even arrives at some sort of answer to the question: What exactly is the State? And his particular definition is that the State is a necessary evil, the necessity of which there is no denying. But it has dawned on some people that the social structure we today call the State has led to what we are living in the midst of now. That is why people call it a necessary evil, for its evil character in its present form is before their very eyes. The question, however, is how a positive conception is to be arrived at in contrast to all that is negative.

If something be rejected, what would be acceptable in its place must be indicated. If someone says that the State is a necessary evil it is important to define the good, in contrast to this evil of the State. What is this something of which this State should be the opposite: In the spiritual-scientific connection something very remarkable appears. To understand the State one must have insight into the form of the rights that prevail in the State, which is regulated according to possession, work and so on. One has also to ask to what this form of rights can be compared.

Now the conditions existing in the spiritual world in the time lived through by man between death and a new birth have often been described to you. How do these conditions existing between man and man between death and a new birth stand in relation to the conditions of rights established within the State community on the physical plane? As soon as this question is put intelligibly, we get the answer: All that the State consists in is the exact opposite of this. The human relations that are State-controlled are the exact opposite of those in the spiritual world. This gives you a true idea of the State. Men who know nothing of the spiritual world can get no idea of the State, because they have a purely negative attitude towards the relation between man and man. What is positive is the relation arising between one soul and another in the spiritual world. With this in view, read the chapter on the soul-world in my book Theosophy; you will there find a certain regulation existing in the relation of soul to soul, which may be described as the mutual working of soul to soul, continuing into what is called spirit-land, and governed by forces going from sympathy end antipathy. Read in this same chapter how sympathy and antipathy bring about a certain connection between the souls in the spiritual world. You will see that there in the spiritual world everything depends on the inner life, namely on what through the forces of sympathy and antipathy is working from soul to soul. In man on the physical plane the forces of antipathy between soul and soul are concealed by the physical body, and because this is so its place in the State has to be taken by all that is most external—what has to do with rights, Whereas we must describe the unfolding of the innermost forces of the soul as belonging to the actual spiritual world, what can live in the State is all that is most external in the relation between men. And the State is not in a healthy condition when seeking to establish anything beyond the external relation of rights. Therefore everything should be eliminated by the State that does not concern this most external relation. As opposed to the State itself on the one side must be the spiritual sphere, the administration of the affairs of spiritual culture, and on the other side the third member, the purely economic life of the social organism. Whereas the actual State represents the exact opposite of the spiritual world, the spiritual life signifies a continuation of what we experienced before we descended through birth into earthly existence. What we experience here in religion, schooling, education, art, science, and so forth, in company with others, what develops from our mutual relation as between man and man, all this, though a mere reflection, is the earthly continuation of the real spiritual life before birth.

And in the economic life, in what we call ordinary material life, we find the origin of much that we shall have to experience beyond the gate of death, that is, in the life after death.

But the State has nothing to do with spiritual life. It is its very opposite. To understand the terrible facts of today men must learn to penetrate this fact in all its significance. Present-day man must learn to grasp that, to come to a conception of external reality, it is essential once more to have in mind spiritual reality. In the spiritual world sympathy and antipathy work together. What persists in us from the spiritual world as antipathy, what has to go on working as antipathy, is experienced down here as spiritual culture. Through speech we learn as men to understand each other and to create a spiritual bond between man and man. And by understanding one another in speech we have to overcome certain antipathies still left over from the spiritual world. We learn to speak among ourselves in certain conceptions, developing thoughts in common, in a common art, in a common religious belief, thereby overcoming certain mutual antipathies we had in the spiritual world. We learn here in our economic life to help one another, to work for one another, to be of advantage to each other economically, thus laying foundations for certain sympathies to be woven into the life after death between souls who, through their ordinary karma have found no previous bond.

In this way we have to understand how to unite this earthly world with the spiritual world. Ultimately, the deepest and most active cause of our present time of catastrophe is that man has lost his connection with the spiritual world, which has largely become for him mere empty words. It has become so for the upper classes to an increasing degree during the last four centuries. And there has developed more and more in the dumb instincts of great masses of the proletariat a subconscious, unconscious yearning for something different from what the upper classes can offer as so-called culture, science, art, religion, and so forth.

Where the spiritual life is concerned people become accustomed with such difficulty to the necessity of gradually learning to understand a new language. They would prefer to go on speaking the old one for they think that will serve their purpose.

And we hear unctuous prophets today holding forth on their views—I have often referred to these views. One such prophet, greatly respected today, says for example how this war has shown that men have been living in a kind of external organisation but have not inwardly come nearer each other. And so in the guise of this war there has come a lapse into barbarism.—To rescue us from this barbarism only empty and sentimental words are forthcoming, exhorting men to return to a kind of inward spirituality. But today it is not a question of reprimanding people, telling them they should once more become good Christians, learn to love their fellow men, and to find an inward bond between man and man. It is far more important now to develop a power of the spirit able to give external relations a form in which the social organism can prosper. One cannot with honesty say that the real reason for man's sickness today is first and foremost his not believing in the spirit. There are still plenty of men who believe in the spirit. And every little village still has its church where I fancy there is much talk of the spirit. Even those who struggle against it have a certain respect for the spirit. In ordinary thought, too, there are still certain references to it. Those who would say in the true Anzengruber manner: “As sure as there is a God in Heaven I am an atheist” are no great rarity though they may not put this into words. The point is not whether the spirit is spoken of nor whether people believe in the spirit, but that the spirit should become effective in all material life and that it should be realised how there can never be any matter without spirit.

At present, however, we are farther than ever from such insight. One man may affect superiority, despise external material life, consider it a necessary evil and turn his attention to the inner life, perhaps becoming a theosophist so that he can develop an inner life alongside the external one. He thinks the external life to be without spirit and that it behooves him to give himself up to a life of inner contemplation. Another does not go directly this way—said by the socialist to be very middle-class and decadent—but still believes that on the one side there is material reality in which there lives all that is capital, human labour-power, credit, mortgages and money in any form; in short, spiritless reality. And on the other side he sees spiritual reality which has to be striven for out of the depths of the heart.

We could quote many variations of this particular way of understanding the connection between the material life and that of the spirit, as it holds sway today. For people generally feel that, to reach the spiritual, they have to turn away from external material reality. Ultimately this is all connected with the fact that in these days we see so many broken lives, so many people discontented with external existence. My dear friends, indeed I am not speaking just for the honour of the cause—pro domo—for it is my karma alone that obliges me to do this work. Had my karma led me to something different, I should be able to understand that too. No, I am speaking quite objectively. In spite of this I venture to say that there is nothing in life that is not interesting if only we have a healthy social organism in which man is rightly placed in accordance with his karma. Strictly speaking, no one has cause to consider any world-current of less worth than another. The healing of the social organism must, it is true, be brought about by every single worker having as much connection with the spiritual life as those who can now have the good fortune to occupy themselves with it. For it is one of the greatest defects in present social life that certain interests inaccessible to ethers are cultivated in exclusive circles. Just realise how today this exclusiveness has been increasingly fostered in religion, in art, and in everything else, in bourgeois circles, and how the proletariat stand outside all this. That is why the proletariat have been given ‘People's Institutions’, ‘People's Houses’, ‘People's Art’, and so forth. But all this has arisen out of the experiences of the middle-class. Received by the proletariat it becomes one of the lies of life, for only what has arisen out of general experience can become a common spiritual life. There is no general experience where one member of the community stands at a machine eight hours a day (you see I take the eight-hour day as an actual fact) whereas another is able to build a social life peculiar to his class, and then throws as crumbs to those working at the machines what, in its inner structure, can really be understood only by those who have always belonged to the governing classes.

Within these governing classes it is possible, with its up-bringing and education, to speak of the Sistine Madonna—to take a concrete example. I have taken working men into galleries and have seen how false it is to show them anything arousing the kind of impression the Sistine Madonna creates upon the bourgeoisie. It is an impossibility. By trying to do so one brings about a false situation, since there is no common life between the two classes. And where there is no common life there is no common speech. Those who up to now have formed the upper classes were destined during man's former evolution to receive something, even in art for example, that can take root in the experiences of their life. Through the way mankind has lived. until now, a picture like the Sistine Madonna has become a real gift for the upper classes. For the others it is incomprehensible. There has first to be sought a speech common to both, and that means efforts have to be made to find a cultural life common to all men. At present our schools and universities are very far from such a cultural life. In these there will never be realised what is so often striven for—a universal school for the people. In a school common to all must be taught what is derived from a free life of the spirit which, as an independently working member, has its roots in the social organism. We must teach something very different from what is taught today, for in his innermost being the proletarian does not understand what is now taught in the ordinary schools.

Now you may be right in saying that I am contradicting myself, and you may tell me that in the schools the people all are on a level, so why should the proletarian child understand less than the bourgeois child? But the bourgeois child in reality does not understand anything either, for the teaching in our ordinary schools is so unsound that everything is incomprehensible. And it is only because members of the upper classes, who have the means to go to the better schools, reflect something of what they learn there, like a shadow, on to the people's schools so that something of what was formerly learnt is understood. Those who have no opportunity to receive the reflection of what was learnt earlier cannot profit by the education which is present in our life like the dream of something real.

Due attention should be paid to this; it is deeply connected with the gravity of the present times and the present situation. And can we not actually feel that our only salvation lies in a new life of the spirit. Now try to be honest about what concerns one sphere or another. Consider what has happened in the course of the last centuries in the sphere of art, for example, and the appreciation of art. Try to look intelligently at what has been said about art, what artists themselves have said about the arts of painting and sculpture and so on, how critics have influenced public opinion. Follow this, than try to make it clear to the working-man, who is supposed to listen to it, after eight hours at a machine—for him it is just meaningless rubbish! For him it is a life lived by others from which he is excluded in an anti-social way, and he can form no idea of its necessity for human existence; to his mind it is simply luxury. It is not that I am giving judgment; I am merely stating facts that are comprehensible.

But now let us consider what fruits have been produced by this worthy middle-class society which continued to develop so comfortably up to the year 1914. I was still experiencing it in the eighties when, for instance, the young people of Vienna were imitating everything originating at the time in Paris as the new trend in art. These young people wrote a great deal of verse, and having done everything calculated to make dark rings under their eyes, wandered about in pensive mood declaring their preference for the decadent and their desire to sleep in rooms scented with hothouse flowers, and so forth. Then with this background they propounded how verse should be written. I have no wish to criticise all they did; it is just one side of the human being coming to expression in an extreme way. But eventually it was carried so far that something resulted which to a great many people today may seem merely an impulse towards cultural extravagance, cultural luxury, which in any case could not appear to them as necessary for a dignified human existence. Everything in life finally depends upon what pulsates in the human soul, and upon the way in which human souls can be moved in life. It was indeed a cancer breaking out in a dreadful way in human society. From all these things we must recognise that these facts are now so firmly established that we no longer speak with the some conceptions; we must learn a new language. And it is clearly manifest that we have to strive for something that besides being human is universal.

In our building we have striven for something universally human, but how far this is so will not immediately be understood. Within it there is meant to be nothing of interest only for the middle-class and incomprehensible to the proletariat. Even if the very highest spiritual claims are made, what is striven for is something everyone can understand. Much is certainly imperfect and what is middle-class still meets us in much of it, but on the whole—naturally I am not here referring to the people—the chief thing striven for is quite generally human. It can be understood from the point of view of life. And because men have various standpoints in life today we must speak to each one differently. But it is possible now to bring to the simplest, most primitive hearts and minds what is meant to be expressed in the forms and other features of our building. Thus the attempt has really to be made in every sphere of life to leave behind what is old, to speak a new language , and to see how it was the old ideas that landed us in this catastrophe.

Today it is often said that to oppose the aims of modern Socialists, really frightening to many people, we might hold up the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, where not by class struggles but by love, the weary, heavy-laden should be led to a new world-order. This is not something just thought-out but the way of speaking adopted in the moral sermons of well known tub-thumpers and repeated over and over again in recent weeks. Only a few days ago in Berne you could have heard someone saying that we should go back to the pure spirit of Christianity, to the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, which is not to be found in the modern class struggle. Unfortunately the speaker went on—The Christian spirit prevails only in private lives; it ought, however, to do so in the life of the State too; external public, life must be christianised.—Then people get up and say: Ah, that is spoken out of the spirit! And they finally show the path modern man must take to free himself from all this unfortunate materialism and turn back to the spirit of love. The fact remains, however, that for nearly two thousand years people have been talking thus, and it has not helped a whit, so that at last they ought to be able to see how today what we need in a new language.

But today the difference between the two languages often remains unnoticed. It is still unnoticed that something different is represented by this new life of the spirit that directly penetrates material reality. This is because the new spiritual life is convinced that spirit lives in all matter, and that matter must be regarded as matter and not in an unreal way as a thing to be despised. Where there appears to be nothing but matter one is simply not seeing the spirit. Therefore today we must be conscious of the pressing need to develop the spirit that can master reality and penetrate material life. This spirit will not teach us to say: Deepen yourself within and you then discover the God there; you will be able to unfold the source of love within you. You will then find the way out of the present social order to one in which men will stand inwardly united with one another! No, today it is a matter of finding such spirit, such speech, such Christianity, that we shall not merely talk of ethics and religion bit be so strong in spirit hat we are able to comprehend the most everyday things. Out of this spirit it must be asked: What should we do to discover the right way to heal the wastage, the ravages of this capitalism to which man's labour power is exposed?

As things are, people feel what is destructive and unsound in the social organism without knowing the causes. In matters great and small it can be seen how money is the root of much that is harmful. Many who may not themselves have money can see today in small matters around them that something is wrong with it. The time has come to end the old indifference when things were brushed aside with the saying: “One holds the purse, the other the money”. The time has come when this saying no longer holds good. People even when seldom crossing the frontier notice that much harm is created by money. Is it not true that though we now have peace, people cannot cross this frontier even as easily as during the war? Beyond it the mark has a certain value, here it is worth very little. With the money question is united that of standard values. In big things and small, people are realising that with money a situation has arisen that has to do with the most ordinary affairs of men. They wonder what the remedy may be for the harm done today, but they do not see the necessity of shaking off the ordinary superficial thoughts bound up with the situation, and of penetrating the thoughts that are original, primal. For certain primal thoughts are the basis of all human affair. It is, however, inherent in human life that these affairs gradually grow farther and farther away from the thought originally behind them. Then these original thoughts withdraw into the inner regions of man's being, and turn into feelings, instincts, that then express themselves in such a way that their original nature is no longer recognised. The social demands made today are the reaction of the primal thoughts on modern human relations. Men who formulate their thoughts merely in accordance with these relations are the most vexatious of all fanatics; for all the demands made by the proletariat are nothing but veiled feelings having their roots in primal thoughts. To such thoughts belongs the separation of the spiritual, political and economic spheres of life as we have seen it here, for which the instincts strive. And they will not rest until that direction at least is now taken again towards these archetypal thoughts. For it is because we have come so far from them that we are now going through this difficult crisis.

All other remedies are quackery, even where the most external material questions are concerned. For today the question is often put, even from the lecture platform, what actually is money? And there are innumerable discussions as to whether money is a commodity or a mere token of value. One person deems it a commodity among other commodities to be bartered in the economic market and considers that men have simply chosen a convenient commodity to avoid certain other difficultly in modern economic life. Suppose you were carpenter and there were no such thing as money. You would have to eat, to have vegetables, butter, cheese, but being a carpenter you would make only tables and chairs. So you would have to betake yourself with your tables and chairs to the market , and try, for example, to get rid of a chair so that someone will give you a certain amount of food in exchange for it. You have to get a table taken in exchange for something else, perhaps a suit of clothes. Imagine what all that would mean! In reality, however, it is exactly what one does. Only it is disguised by an ordinary marketable commodity, money, being there, for which one can exchange everything else, so that the other goods can then wait until needed.

Now it appears as if money were only there as a medium for the exchange of commodities. Thus many national economists hold the view that money is a commodity. Paper money is looked upon as a substitute for this commodity. For the commodity on which it depends is really gold and States have been obliged to introduce the gold-standard, having had today to follow the leading economic State, England, because it chose gold as its medium of adjustment and its sole standard of value. Thus the medium of exchange is there and the carpenter has no need to take his chairs to market, but sells his wares to those who want them, and gets money with which he can then, on his part, buy his vegetables and cheese.

Others hold a contrary opinion about money. For them it is not a question whether one has a piece of gold or not, but a matter of the existence of a substitute medium bearing a certain stamp. Our modern paper money, for example, bears a stamp stating its value. And there are economists who consider it quite unnecessary that the corresponding value in gold should be lying at the back. There are also, as you may know, individual States having only paper values with no corresponding gold. With it, however, under present conditions they can to a certain extent carry on their economy.

In any case you see—in our sphere we must take our stand on the basis of a purely human point of view—that now-a-days there are clever people who consider money to be a commodity, whereas other clever people regard it merely as something stewed, marked, a mere mark. But which is it in reality? Under present conditions it is actually both! It comes to this, that as things are today we see that on the one hand in international trade money has the character of a mere commodity, while on the other hand it represents outstanding debt. What serves as the real covering is the exchange of gold as a commodity carried on between States. Everything else depends upon there being the assurance that when a certain amount of paper or barter goes from one State to another, whoever has been responsible for this possesses the gold also, that the commodity gold is also there to be dealt with in the some way as any other commodity. A merchant is given credit no matter whether he possesses gold or fish or anything else, if only there is something real behind this as a covering. In this sense therefore money is a commodity in international trade.

But the State has interfered and has gradually made money into something assessed, something stamped. Thus the two things work together. The trouble that arises comes from the control of money not being given over to what we have called the third member of the social organism. Were money entirely controlled by the economic part of the organism, that means freed from the State member of the organism, money would then have to be a commodity and derive its commodity value in the commodity market. The present curious dependence expressing itself in the remarkable relation between value and wages would no longer exist. The curious thing now is that when wages rise, values fall, so that the worker often derives no benefit from higher pay, since he is unable to buy more than he could with his former smaller wage. When both wages and cost of living rise at the same time, which means that a change takes place in values, no other conditions can help. Help can come only by the economic commodity, money, being freed from the political State, and when the money that exists for the purpose of balance can be controlled by the third member, the economic member of the healthy social organism.

Thus on the path of the threefold order special problems too are resolved in the right way. Therefore whoever wants to work out sound ideas for the social organism must go back to the primal thought. Those administering the State today are asking what they should do in face of the chaos that has arisen in values. The answer, and the only answer, is that as long as they have to do with the control of the political State they should not meddle with values at all, but leave the control of money and values to the economic organism. Only there can the sound basis be created for these affairs. We must be able to get back to what today will create a healthy state of things. Before the catastrophe of the war there was the strange fact that because a condition existed between States upon which the internal political taxation had no influence, we had relations between individual States which, for example, in the economic life resulted from the economic life itself. Thus these relations arose internationally between the States. They did not take effect within the individual States because the States extended their control over the economic life, Therefore the conflict broke out from which the world can be freed only by real striving towards the threefold order. Then every time adjustment is needed facts of one member of the organism will be corrected by the facts of another. There are no other means possible than a return to primal ideas, to the practical trinity—spiritual life, political life, economic life. Only those so placed in a community thus organised will be able to solve our present problems from one or another point of view. The health of the social organism can be brought about only when economic matters are regulated by one member, democratic rights discussed in another, and all cultural, spiritual relations arranged by the third. For, as in the human being the three members, head-system, heart- and lung-system and digestive-system, work together naturally, so also do the three members in the healthy social organism. They work over into each other. And as in the head you can trace disorder in the stomach in spite of the separation of the systems because the stomach is not taking care of the head, so too in the healthy social organism one member, say the economic, works over into the rights member and the cultural member. They work together in the right way only when relatively independent. But this correct mutual working, when in order, really takes place only when the three members are independent and each governed by its own laws. How, for example, how does the spiritual life work into that of the economic? You know what is the spiritual element in the economic life? Capital is the spirit in economic life: And a great part of the present evil rests on the control of capital, the fructifying of capital, being withdrawn from the spiritual life. The relation between the physical workers to those organising with the help of capital, must in a healthy social organism be managed on a basis of mutual trust and understanding. Take, as an example of this, the election in our Waldorf School. In a healthy social organism the existing gulf between employer and worker will necessarily cease. Today the worker stands at a machine without knowing what it is producing. For this reason outside the factory he naturally wastes his time in trivialities. The employer, again, has his own life that corresponds to what he has made of it. I have already described the young men who went about with dark circles under their eyes and slept with tuberroses beside their beds! The employer leads this freed spiritual life, freed, that is, not for himself but for others. But when a spiritual, cultural life has been built up, which includes those who work physically and spiritually, capitalism will be out on a social basis, not, it is true, in the way the modern sentimentalist would approve, but so that a possibility is created for every individual worker to have a spiritual life in common with all those who organise his work in the social organism, and distribute the products throughout the world.

It must be regarded as essential that with the same degree of regularity with which work is done at the machine, discussions take place concerning business relations between employer end employed, so that the worker can have a comprehensive grasp of all that is happening. In future the aim must be to oblige the employer to have frank and full explanation of all details to the employed, so that factory and management may be limited in a common spiritual life. This is what is important. Only than will it be possible for the situation to arise when the worker will say: The employer is just as necessary as I am; for what would my work be in the social organism without him. He gives it its right place. But he is also obliged to give the worker his right place end to allow him to come into his own. Then everything will become quite clear.

There you see how the spiritual life must play into the working of capitalism. Everything else today is simply talk, sheer sentimentality. Sound relations between work and capital cannot come about in the social bureaucratic way, but only through a spiritual life common to all men having the individual capacity for it, all men who are in a position to out it into practice and to produce capital for a sound social organism. With this will come the free understanding of those who do the physical work. Understanding will then be able to arise for the initiative of the individual faculties which, in a free life of spirit, are socialised from the start. Today they work in an anti-social way because of unnatural relationships. Socialism must rest upon the free initiative of individual faculties and the free understanding of what these faculties promote. There is no other socialism that is genuine. From symptoms already appearing in the social organism we can realise the truth of this.

There are two things in the world the value of which for everyday life can be, and is, very differently estimated. The one is a piece of bread, the other a world-outlook. About a piece of bread everyone will admit that it is the means for satisfying man is hunger; there is no disputing the fact that he will have bread. But about a piece of world-outlook there is a great deal of despite what one man finds true the other thinks false. And however true a world-outlook is it cannot have universal value. There can be strife about the spirit but not about affairs of, the economic life. This is merely because the spirit is not working as a reality but only as something connected with the economic life and the life of the State. When it is based upon itself it will have to display its reality to the world and to reveal itself, and then reality will flash out from the spiritual. And then it will certainly not be found in the idle talk of the would-be moralist, in what is said by those who, because they regard as spiritual only what is entirely divorced from reality, exhort people to be good Christians, and uphold all manner of virtues having nothing to do with external, material reality. There must be a bridge between this abstract form of the spirit and the spirit working in capital, for capital is also spirit in its organising of labour. This organising, however, must in actual fact be the result of spiritual direction.

Thus on the one side the control of money must be left to the economic life, whereas the organising of labour by capital should be under the control of the life of the spirit. There you see the interworking of things which, to outward appearance, are separate; for naturally in industry capital is represented by money. The relation, however, between employee and employer, this whole relation based on trust and especially the fact that the employer has a certain position as giver of work—all this is organised from the spiritual sphere. The equivalent of a certain commodity in money will be regulated by the economic life, and for the health of the organism things will be woven into each other, just as they are in the three systems of the human organism.

In this way you will be able to penetrate into the things of everyday life, and you will see that what your attention has been called to here comes from the actual and real archetypal thoughts which must be the basis for the cure of the social organism.

Notes:

1. See The Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth, Lecture 6

Out of the whole spirit of our anthroposophical work, you will have seen, in the course of years, that its aim is not to work on, as it were, something directly sensational, but to follow tranquilly those facts connected with spiritual happenings, the knowledge and cognition of which can be important for our life. One does not merely serve the day, spiritually, by always speaking on what concerns the day, but one also serves it by assimilating a knowledge of the great connections of life. Our own individual life is fundamentally connected with the great events of existence, and we can only rightly judge our own life, when we estimate it by the greatest phenomena of life. Hence it arises, that within our seven-yearly cycle in the German Section of the Theosophical Society, for four years we have occupied ourselves with the foundation of our views, of our knowledge, and in the last three years we have tried to deepen these basic views with reference to world-embracing questions. And you will have seen from what has come to you in the explanations given in various lecture-cycles, that considerations concerning the Gospels belonged to the latter. Not merely because the material and content of the Gospels should be brought close to us, but because through their study, many things touching human nature can be learnt. And so today, something can be said about the Gospels, with various applications to the personal life of man.

These Gospels are regarded less and less by external science as a historical document for the knowledge of the greatest Individuality, of the greatest Impulse, which has entered the evolution of humanity—of Christ Jesus. The attitude to the Gospels in the first Christian centuries, and for a long time through the middle ages, was quite different from what it has become in recent times. The Gospels are first felt today as four mutually contradictory documents, and nothing appears more natural today than to say: How can four documents be historical, when they contradict each other, as the four Gospels do, each of which professes to give us an account of what happened at the beginning of our era in Palestine.

Yet one thing could strike human thinking, unless it tries today to avoid seeing the most important matters. For example, it might be said: It does not really need very much today to realise that if the four Gospels are read consecutively they do indeed contradict themselves in that sense as one understands it today. Any child could see that, one might retort! But it might be added: Now the Gospels are in all hands, now everybody occupies himself with them. But there was a time before the invention of printing, before the modern spread of books, when these Gospels were by no means in all hands, when they were really read only by very few, and these few, they were just the people who stood at the peak of the spiritual life. Fundamentally, in the first centuries, only those had the Gospels in their hands who stood at the summit of the spiritual life. The content was imparted to the others, brought near so that they could grasp it. One might ask: Were then these few, who stood at the summit of the spiritual life, really such terrible fools, such mightily stupid people, that they could not see what any child can see today: that they do contradict each other, in the ordinary sense? Were then all those people, who endeavoured to grasp the gigantic Christ Event in the sense of the four Gospels, really such fools, such terribly stupid men, that they did not see what the critic sees, working in the modern sense with these contradictions? This is a question for oneself.

If we pursue such a question, we soon notice something else: i.e., that the whole world of man's feeling towards the Gospels stood differently to them than it does today. Today it is the critical intellect, which has learnt its whole training, its whole manner of thought, at the hand of external sense-reality, it is this which attacks the Gospels, and for this it is truly not difficult to find these intellectual contradictions; for they are childishly easy to find.

How, then, did those who stood at the summit of the spiritual life and centuries ago took the Gospels in hand get on with what one today calls contradictions? You see, these men of old had an infinite reverence, unthinkable today, for the great Christ Event through the four Gospels, and they felt extraordinarily that because they had four Gospels, they had all the more to revere and value this event. How is that possible? That was because these old judges of the Gospels kept in mind something quite different from what is kept in mind today. The modern critics do not proceed more cleverly than one who, perhaps, photographs a nosegay from one side—he thus gets a certain photograph of the nosegay. He now goes through the world with this photograph. People notice what the photograph looks like, and say: Now I have an exact idea of the nosegay. But then someone comes who photographs it from another side. The picture is quite different. He shows the picture of the same nosegay to people, but they say: That can't be a picture of the nosegay. The pictures contradict each other. And if the nosegay is photographed from four sides, then the four pictures do not appear similar, yet they are four views of the same thing. This was how the old judges of the four Gospels felt. They said: the four Gospels are representations of one event, from four different points of view, and because this is the case, they give us thereby a complete picture, because they are not alike—and first when we are in a position to form a complete representation from the four sides, do we then get a complete idea of the events of Palestine. And so these people said: We must look up with all the greater humility, when we see the events of Palestine presented from four sides. For this event is so great, that one cannot understand it, if it is only described from one side. We must be thankful that we have four Gospels, which describe this great event from four sides. We must only understand how these four different points of view have come together, and then, when we have convinced ourselves of this, can we form a perception of what the individual person can have from the four Gospels.

That which we call the Christ Event is a mighty happening in the spiritual evolution of mankind. How can we insert what took place then in Palestine in the whole of human evolution? We can regard it in such a way that we say: Everything, all that mankind previously experienced spiritually, which humanity had gone through spiritually, all that flowed together streamed together into the event of Palestine, in order from then to flow on farther in one common stream.

There we have—just to mention but one thing—let us say, the old Hebrew teaching, as is laid down in the Old Testament, if we understand it aright. That is one contribution. It flowed in, as the event of Palestine took place.

There was then another stream which proceeded from Zarathustra. This flowed into that which from then streamed on through the world as Christianity as a main stream.

There is that which we can call the Oriental spiritual stream, which found its most significant expression in Gautama Buddha. That also flowed into the one great main stream, and still others, in order then to flow on together. All of these single streams are today within Christianity.

You are not shown what Buddhism is today by one who warms up again the teachings which Buddha gave out 600 years before our era. These teachings have flowed into Christianity. You are not shown what Zarathustrianism really is by one who takes the old Persian documents, and from thence will show the nature of Zarathustrianism today; for he who taught in ancient Persia what exists in the ancient Persian documents has evolved further, and has let his contribution flow into the spiritual life of mankind, and we must seek Zarathustrianism also within Christianity, as well as Buddhism, and the old Hebrew stream.

And now we must ask ourselves, in order to have, in a slight degree, a picture of the real relationship: How have these three streams of Buddhism, Zarathustrianism, and ancient Hebrewism, flowed into Christianity.

If we will understand how Zarathustrianism flowed in, then we should call to mind something which has often been mentioned here: that that individuality whom we mention as Zarathustra, was the great teacher of the second post-Atlantean epoch, and first taught in the so-called ancient Persian people, and then incarnated again and again. After he ascended higher and higher through each incarnation, he appeared about 600 years before our era as a contemporary of the great Buddha. He appeared in the secret schools of the old Chaldean-Babylonian sphere of culture. This Zarathustra was incarnated there, he was the teacher there of Pythagoras, who went to Chaldea, in order to perfect himself in the right manner. Then this Zarathustra, who at that time 600 years before our era appeared under the name of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was born again at the beginning of our era, reborn so that he appeared in a body which sprang from the parental pair called Joseph and Mary, mentioned and described in the Matthew Gospel. We designate this child of Joseph and Mary, of the so-called Bethlehem parents, as one of the two Jesus children who were then born at the beginning of our era. Zarathustra incarnated in him. Therewith we have implanted in that old Palestine the individuality who was the bearer of Zarathustrianism, the one significant spiritual stream.

But not only this spiritual stream has to live again, in order to be able to stream into Christianity in a new form, but other spiritual streams also. Many different things had to come together and combine for this. For instance, it had to happen also that Zarathustra was born in a body, which as a body, through its physical organisation, made it possible for Zarathustra in that incarnation at the beginning of our era, to develop those faculties which he possessed, through having ascended so high from incarnation to incarnation. For we must permit ourselves to say: If such a high individuality descended and found an unsuitable body (which could happen through his being unable to find a suitable body), then he would not be able to express the faculties which he possessed in soul and spirit, because the instruments were not there, in order to express on earth the corresponding powers. One must have a definitely formed brain, if one will express such powers as Zarathustra possessed. That means, one must be born in a body, which, as a body inherited from forefathers, has those qualities which render it a suitable instrument for the faculties which come over from an earlier incarnation. And so, in the case of that Jesus child described in the Matthew Gospel, care had to be taken, that he did not merely have inwardly, in that which reincarnated such a high psychic-spiritual organisation, that he could exercise that mighty effect which had to be exercised, but that also, this soul could be born in a perfect physical organisation, which was inherited. Zarathustra had to find forthcoming this suitable physical brain.

What was thus worked out as a perfectly adapted physical organisation was now the contribution which the ancient Hebrew people had to make to Christianity. A suitable physical body had to be created out of it with the utmost conceivable perfect physical instruments. A suitable body had to be created through purely physical heredity for him who incarnated here. Preparation had to be made for this throughout all the generations lying far back, so that the right qualities could be passed on to that body which was born at the beginning of our era. To transmit the right body was again the mission of the ancient Hebrew life.

Now we will form for ourselves an idea of how this life flowed into the great main stream of our present spiritual life. That means, just as we have seen the mission of Zarathustra within Christianity, so we will now seek the mission of the ancient Hebrew people for the entire civilisation of our earth.

Here it must be said that the more spiritual science progresses, the more it sees in the Bible, compared with what we have today as external history. What is unearthed in the latter really appears childish compared with what stands in the Bible, only one must read it rightly to understand it. This is really the more correct, to the eyes of true spiritual investigation. And so, among other things, it is correct that in a certain connection, that which was the later Judaism, arose from a tribal father, from the father Abraham or Abram. Something absolutely correct lies behind that if we go back along the generations, we come to a tribal father, to whom quite special powers are imparted from out of the spiritual world itself. And in the sense of spiritual science, we can speak of a tribal father of the Jewish people, of Abraham or Abram. Quite special powers were imparted to him from out of the spiritual world. What were these? If we want to understand what special faculties were imparted to him, then we must call to mind a little the various things we have already said here.

We have said: If we go back to earlier times, we find that human beings had other powers of soul, which we can designate as a kind of dim clairvoyance compared with those of today. They could not look out into the world in such a self-conscious intellectual way as modern human beings, but they still had the faculty to see the spirit which exists in the outer world, spiritual phenomena, facts and beings; even if this seeing, because it occurred in a dimmed consciousness, was more like a living dream, yet it had a living connection with reality. This old clairvoyance had to become weaker and weaker, so that man could educate himself to our present modern perception and intellectual culture.

The whole evolution of mankind is a kind of education of humanity. The various faculties are gradually acquired. Our present way of seeing, without our perceiving, for instance the astral body winding round a flower, when we behold it in ordinary consciousness—whereas the ancient observer saw the flower and the astral body round it—this modern perception, which beholds objects with the sharp contours of the intellect, had to be trained in man, through the disappearance of the old clairvoyance. But one definite law prevails in spiritual evolution. Everything which man acquires must take its starting point from one individuality. Faculties which are to become common to a large number of people must, as it were, first begin in one. Those faculties which relate especially to a combination turned away from clairvoyance, to the judging of the world according to measure, number, and weight, these faculties which tend especially not to see into the spiritual world, but to combine sensible phenomena, were first implanted from out of the spiritual world in that individuality who is designated as Abraham or Abram. He was chosen first to develop especially those powers which are bound in the most eminent degree to the instrument of the physical brain. Abraham or Abram is not for nothing called the discoverer of arithmetic, that means, that faculty which judges and combines the world according to measure and number. He was, as it were, the first of those, in whose soul-powers the old dreamy clairvoyance was extinguished, and whose brain was so prepared as a perfect instrument, that just that faculty which makes use of the brain, comes most to the fore.

And so in Abraham or Abram, there was a man, in whom the physical brain was so developed, that it was applied most of all to external perception on the physical plane, whereas all human beings earlier made less use of the physical brain, while they saw clairvoyantly in the outer world the spiritual world, without always using the physical brain. That was a significant, mighty mission which was especially allocated to Abraham.

And now this faculty, which was laid as a seed from out the spiritual world in Abraham, like any other seed, had to develop more and more. You can easily conceive that whatever appears in the world must develop. Similarly this power of considering the world through the physical brain had gradually to develop from the seed. The evolution of this faculty now occurred through the succeeding generations, while that which was given to Abraham was carried over to the succeeding generations through the times which followed. But something else had to happen than formerly when the mission of older people was carried over to the younger. For the other missions were not yet bound to a physical body; the greatest missions especially were not bound to a physical brain. Let us take Zarathustra. What he gave to his disciples was a higher clairvoyant vision than other people had. That was not bound to a physical instrument; that was carried over from teacher to pupil, the pupil again became teacher, carried it over to his pupils, and so on. Now it was not a question of a teaching, of a method of clairvoyant perception, but of something bound to the instrument of the physical brain. Something of this nature can only be implanted into later times by being inherited physically. Therefore, what was given to Abraham as mission was bound up with its being inherited physically from one generation to the other. That means, this perfect organisation of the physical brain must be inherited from Abraham by his descendants from generation to generation. Because his mission consisted in the physical brain becoming more and more perfect, this had to happen from generation to generation.

Thus the mission of Abraham was something bound up with procreation, in order to become ever more perfect in the course of physical evolution. But now something else was united with this contribution which the old Hebraic people had to perform. This we will understand if we consider the following.

If we take the other people in other civilisations, with their old dim clairvoyance, then we must say: How did they receive that which was most important, which they venerated most of all in the world? They received it in such a way that it shone as Inspiration in their inner being, shone entirely inwardly. One did not have to investigate so far afield as today. Today man acquires his science by investigation outwardly, by experimenting, he derives his laws by combining external facts. The ancients did not experience what they sought to know in this way, for it shone in them as inspiration. They received it in the inward being. The soul had to give birth to it inwardly. They had to turn the gaze away from the outer world if they let the highest truths arise as inspirations. This had now become different in that people who derived their mission from Abraham or Abram. Abraham had to bring to men just that which can be won through observation outwardly, and through combination. If then a member of other civilisations, which were built on the old clairvoyance, looked up to the highest, then he said to himself: I am thankful to the God Who reveals Himself to me within. I turn my gaze away from outside, and the God becomes present to me in the spirit, if, without looking outwards, I let the inspirations of the Divinity shine within. That people which arose from Abraham, however, had to say: I will renounce the inspirations which merely come from within. I will prepare myself to turn my gaze into the world around. I will observe what reveals itself in the air, and water, in mountain and plain, in the starry world, there will I send my gaze, and then I will be able to ponder how one thing stands by another. I will combine the things outside with each other, and will see how I can win an all-embracing thought. And when I comprise what I see in the outer world with an all-embracing thought, bringing it into one single thought, then I will name that which the outer world says to me Jahve, or Jehova. I will receive the highest through a revelation from outside, through a revelation which speaks through the outer world. That was the mission of the Abrahamitic people: to give mankind that which came as revelation from outside, in contrast to that which the other peoples had to give. Therefore this instrument of the spiritual life had to be inherited so that it corresponded in its formations to the revelations from outside, just as earlier the inner soul-powers had to correspond to the revelations from within.

Now let us ask ourselves: What happened there, when the old clairvoyants gave themselves to the revelations from within? Then they turned their gaze from outside, for what revealed itself in the external world could say nothing to them about the spiritual world. They even turned their gaze from sun and stars, for they listened solely to what was within, and then the great inspirations about the secrets of the world revealed themselves. Then the perceptions appeared concerning the structure of the world. And that which they knew about the stars and their movements, about the laws of the starry world, about the spiritual worlds, was not acquired by them through external observation, these members of the ancient civilisations. They knew something of Mars, Saturn, etc., because the nature of these stars revealed itself in their inner being. Thus it was the laws of the entire cosmos, which as it were, were inscribed in the stars, were at the same time inscribed in the souls of these people. They revealed themselves there through inspiration. As the laws of the world which dominate the hosts of the stars revealed themselves in the soul, so now the external laws which rule the world should reveal themselves through external combination to the Abrahamitic people, which now should be won through external observation. For this, heredity had to be so guided that thereby the brain got those qualities through which it could see the right combinations there outside. That wonderful conformity to law was implanted in the seeds which were transmitted to Abraham, which could so develop through i.e. generations, that their development corresponded with the great world-laws. The brain had to be inherited so that its inner powers, its configuration, developed like the laws of number of the stars, out there in the cosmos. Therefore, it was said by Jahve to Abraham: Thou wilt see generations arise from thee, which in their ordering are arranged as the number of stars in the heavens. As the stars in the sky are arranged in harmonious relationships of number, so should the generations also be arranged in harmonious relationships of number. That means these generations should carry laws in themselves, like the starry laws in the heavens, There we have twelve constellations. An image of this had to appear in the twelve tribes, as they arose from Abraham, so that the corresponding faculties, which were implanted as seed in Abraham, could be led down through the generations. And so, in the whole organic structure of this people developing from age to age, an image was created of the number and measure in the heavens. A translation of the Bible has rendered this by saying: Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in heaven.... Whereas in truth, the passage should run: Thy descendants shall be arranged regularly in the blood relationship, so that their arrangement is an image of the laws of the stars in the heavens. O, the Bible is deep! But what is today offered as Bible is coloured by the modern view of the world. There it runs, “Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky,” whereas in truth it is said: Everything shall be so regular in thy descendants that, for example, twelve tribes result, which correspond to the number twelve in the constellations of heaven.

And so the individual characteristics had to appear that all the time there came to expression the mission of the Abrahamitic people: I get as a gift from outside—not as something which shines in my innermost—that which forms my mission. There is given to me from outside that which I have to bring to the world. That is wonderfully expressed in the Bible, that the mission of Abraham is something given to him from outside, in contrast to the old revelations which were given from within. What had the mission of Abraham to be? The mission of Abraham had to be this: to provide the blood, and what flows through the blood, to Christ Jesus. That is the mission of Abraham. The entire spirituality of a certain stream had to be permuted in this. That had to work as if it came from outside, a gift from outside. Abraham had to give to the world the old Hebrew people. That is his mission. If that is to correspond to the whole nature of his mission, then this people itself, which is his mission, this people itself must be a gift from outside, must be given by him as a gift. Abraham had a son—Isaac—whom he had to sacrifice, as related in the Bible. And as he came to sacrifice him, this son was given anew to him by Jahve. What is thus given him? From Isaac originate the entire people. If Isaac had been sacrificed, there would have been no Hebrew people. The whole people were thus given him as a gift. In the sacrifice of Isaac is this character of gift wonderfully expressed. The people itself is the mission of Abraham; and with Isaac, he receives the entire Hebrew people from Jahve as a gift.

The presentations in the Bible are thus deep, and all correspond in detail to the inner character in the progressive evolution of humanity. This old Hebrew people had to give up bit by bit the old clairvoyance, which the other civilisations comprised within themselves. This old clairvoyance was bound to faculties which came out of the spiritual world. One designated these clairvoyant faculties, according to their nature, by expressions derived from the starry constellations. The last faculty which was given up, for the old Hebrew people to be bestowed on Abraham, was the one connected with the starry sign of the Ram. Therefore a ram is sacrificed in place of Isaac. That is the external expression for the sacrifice of the last clairvoyant power so that the old Hebrew people could be bestowed on Abraham. Thus this people was chosen to develop just those powers which depend on the observation of the outer world. But atavistic relics of the earlier appear in all, and so it came about that again and again the old Hebrew people was forced to exclude what did not lie purely in the blood. The carrying over of these faculties directed externally that which still remained of the old clairvoyance. That which came as an inheritance from other peoples had always to be excluded.

We here touch a chapter which is only described with difficulty today, because it contains a truth which lies as far as possible from modern thinking. But it is nevertheless a truth, and one may make the demand, that those who have worked a longer time in anthroposophical groups, can bear such truths, withdrawn somewhat from modern habits of thought.

We must be clear that for certain human classes in ancient times, they retained older faculties into later ages, especially with reference to knowledge; the old clairvoyant powers were once with them in the soul. Man was more united with spiritual beings; they revealed themselves in him. That expressed itself in certain people, who represented as it were decadent products of this older humanity, that they maintained a lower form of this connection with the spiritual outer world. Whereas the really clairvoyant people were more bound up with the entire universe through spiritual intuition and inspiration, the human beings who were in decadence, were lower human types, who in their decadence developed their ancient connection with the surrounding world. They were not independent; the I-ness or Ego-hood, Ego-nature, did not come out in them, but also, the old clairvoyant faculties were no longer at their corresponding height. Such human beings constantly appeared, and in them was shown the connection between certain physical human organs, and the so-called ancient clairvoyant organs. And now comes that truth which must sound so strange. What one calls the old clairvoyance, this shining of world secrets in the innermost, must come by some path or other into the soul. What shone in man must stream in; that means, we have to conceive that “streamings-in” (influxes) occur in people. The ancient human being did not perceive these streams, but when they took place and shone in him, he perceived them as his ancient inspirations. Certain streams thus flowed into man from out his environment. These were later transformed in him. These streams in ancient times were purely spiritual streams, were, for instance, perceptible to a clairvoyant as pure astral-etheric streams. But later, these pure spirit streams dried up, as it were, condensed to etheric-physical streams. And what arose thus? The hair arose in this way. The hair is a result of the ancient streams. The hair today on a human body was formerly spiritual stream in man, coming from outside into his inner being. Our hair is a dried-up astral-etheric stream. And such things are only preserved where—one might say—the old truths have remained, purely externally, in writing, through tradition. Therefore, in Hebrew, the word HAIR and the word LIGHT are designated by approximately the same signs, because one had a consciousness of the relationship between the astral in-streaming light, and the hair; as, in general, in old Hebraic writings, originally, purely in the words themselves, the greatest truths are contained.

Thus one can say: there is a progressive evolution of mankind. With those human beings, however, who retained the old faculties in decadent form, these streamings-in indeed transformed themselves, dried up, as it were, but no new faculties appeared instead. They were in an old way bound with the new, and yet again, not bound, because these streams were dried up. Such people were very hairy, while those who developed further were less hairy, because new powers appeared instead of those which later condensed to hair.

Science will only come again to these significant truths after a long time. In the Bible they stand. The Bible is far more learned than our modern science, still standing at the childish stage guarding its A.B.C. Just read the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob is he who has progressed a stage, who has developed the faculty of the later age, Esau has remained at an earlier stage. It is he who is the simpleton, as it were, compared with Jacob. As the sons are presented to Isaac, the mother has covered Jacob with false hair, so that Isaac confuses the younger son with Esau. We should thereby be shown that the old Hebrew people still had something in them as an inheritance from other civilisations which had to be stripped off. Esau is thrust out; through Jacob is implanted what should live on as external combination.

And just as that which had been retained in a form remaining behind was thrust out in Esau, so were the old clairvoyant powers, which came to expression as an atavistic remnant in what Joseph represents, thrust out by his brothers, towards Egypt. He had dreams, and could interpret the world through them; that is the faculty which should not develop in the mission of the Abrahamitic people. Therefore he is thrust out, and must go to Egypt.

So we thus see how a stream is worked out in the old Hebrew people, which is built on blood relationship through the generations, and out of which by stages that which remains over as relics is expelled. The old Hebrew has this as its own peculiar tendency, to make that which is inherited down through the generations into an ever more and more perfect instrument, so that when the whole generations have run their course, that body can be evolved from it which can furnish the instrument for him who is to be incarnated again. If the old Hebrew people could not receive revelations from within, they must receive them from outside. Even that which the other peoples received through direct inspiration, had to be received by the old Hebrew people through an external revelation. That means, the Jews had to go over to another people—led by Joseph—who had the old inspirations. And while Joseph was initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries, they attained through external means what they needed to know about the characteristics of the spiritual worlds. They even received the moral law from outside, not as something which shone to them from within. That was the mission of the old Hebrew people. Then, after they had assimilated what they had to absorb from outside, they withdrew with an externally acquired revelation—they returned back again to their Palestine.

And now, after this old Hebrew people had undergone all this, there should be shown how it gradually developed from generation to generation, so that finally the body which became the body of Jesus could be born from this people, whereby the old Hebrew stream flowed into Christianity.

Remember how we have discussed the development of tendencies in the case of single human beings. The life of the individual falls into periods of seven years. The first period extends from birth until the change of teeth, at the age of seven, and in this the physical body simply builds its forms. Then we have the second seven-yearly period to the age of puberty, in which the etheric body is active in the growth of form, in enlarging the forms. The forms are made definite till the age of seven, then the already definite forms merely enlarge, letting those tendencies prevail down in them. From 14 to 21, the astral body is especially predominant. And so we see in the twenty-first year the real “I” of man is first born, and becomes independent. Thus the life of the individual runs its course in certain periods, till the birth of the human “I” or Ego. Similarly, those germs or aptitudes must gradually develop in that people which as people had to provide a body for a most perfect Ego or “I.” In this case, what appears in man in the course of years, so develops here that it appears in the course of generations. A following generation must have developed other tendencies than a previous generation. Everything cannot develop all at once merely in one generation. To explain why this is so from occult bases would lead too far, but one can call to mind a quite ordinary phenomenon. Just remember that in heredity, certain qualities are not immediately inherited, but leap over one generation and it is the grandson who appears similar to the grandfather in inherited qualities. Thus it is in the inheritance of qualities in the successive generations of the Hebrew people. One generation had always to be leaped over. And so what corresponds in the single individual to one period of age, corresponds in the successive generations to two. We can therefore say: This people, like a great individual, must so develop from generation to generation, that what occurs in the case of the individual from birth to change of teeth, here requires 2 x 7 = 14 generations. Then a second period comes, again comprising 2 x 7 generations. This corresponds to the period between the change of teeth and puberty. Then a third period, again comprising 2 x 7 generations, corresponding to the age between 14 and 21, where the astral body is especially prominent. Then the “I” or Ego can be born. The “I” or Ego could be born in the Hebrew people after 3 (2 x 7) = 3 x 14 generations had elapsed. He who wanted to describe to us the body which was given as instrument to Zarathustra, had to show how, through 3 (2 x 7) generations, the seed which was given to Abraham developed, so that after 3 x 14 generations, the “I” could be born, just as in the individual, the “I” could be born in its threefold corporality after 3 x 7 years. The writer of the Matthew Gospel does this. He describes 3 X 14 generations, the generations from Abraham to David, those from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and those from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Jesus.

Thus from the depths of knowledge, out of the Matthew Gospel, we have pointed to the mission of the old Hebrew people, how gradually the forces were developed which made it possible for the most perfect Ego or “I” which Zarathustra had attained to be born in a body from this people.

And if we now see what the destinies were of this old Hebrew people, we find that the Captivity appeared to the entire people where, in the individual after the fourteenth year, preparation takes place for individual life, where that springs up which can be accomplished in life, and what man absorbs between the ages 14 and 21; the hopes of youth; that the Captivity was the time when, as it were, the astral body of the old Hebrew people came into consideration, where that was implanted through the last fourteen generations, which gives it its impulse. Therefore the old Hebrew people are led into the Babylonian Captivity—there, where, 600 years before our era, Zarathas or Nazarathos was then in his incarnation, at that time the teacher in the secret schools of the Babylonians. Those who were the most prominent leaders of the old Hebrew people then came into contact with the great teacher of ancient times, with Zarathas. He there became their teacher, united himself with them, they took up there the great impulse which so worked that in the last fourteen generations this people were prepared for the birth of Jesus.

Events then went on further, as you know. And then we see something noteworthy. We see a law observed in the spiritual sphere by the writer of the Matthew Gospel, which will be recognised more and more as a law significant for all life. This is the law, that whatever has happened earlier is repeated at a higher stage. Modern science has it already in a somewhat distorted form when it declares that what has been undergone at a lower stage throughout long epochs is repeated shortly in each single being. The writer of the Matthew Gospel shows us this in a magnificent way. He shows it by saying: The Ego of Zarathustra had to incarnate in a body which was gradually developed within the Abrahamitic people. Abraham proceeded from Ur in Chaldea, from the place where Babylonian civilisation started, and took his path through Asia Minor towards Palestine. His descendants were led farther south through the dreams of Joseph, towards Egypt, and after they had here received the Egyptian Impulse, returned to Canaan. That is the fate of the entire people. First, the whole people are led through Canaan, towards Egypt, and then back again to Canaan. What thus transpired as the fate of a people, had now shortly to be repeated. There, where the Ego is born for whom the vehicle had been thus prepared, after all had been developed that was laid down in Abraham, there this Ego again takes its starting point from Chaldea. In Chaldea, Zarathustra was the secret teacher in his last incarnation, his spirit was united with Chaldea. What path does the soul of Zarathustra take, when it will incarnate in Bethlehem? Zarathustra had remained united with those who had been initiated in the Chaldean secret schools, with the Magi. They called well to mind how they had heard from their teacher that he would reappear, that this soul who from the beginning was designated as Zarathustra—the golden star—would take his path at a definite point of time towards Bethlehem. And as the time came, they followed the path which this soul took, repeating the path of the old Hebrew people. As Abraham followed the path to Canaan, so that star took this path to Canaan: that means, the soul of Zarathustra; and the three Magi followed the star Zarathustra, and he led them to that place where he was born in that body destined for him from out the Abrahamitic people. Thus Zarathustra, the Ego of Zarathustra, was led along that path—repeating in spirit—which Abraham had traversed to Palestine. Then the old Hebrew people had had to seek the path to Egypt. It had been led over through the dreams of the elder Joseph. And now, that Ego which was born in the Bethlehemitic Jesus, was led through the dreams—again of a Joseph—led to Egypt, the same path which the Abrahamitic people had pursued through the dreams of the elder Joseph. This Ego of Zarathustra, repeating in Spirit, undergoes the whole destiny of the old Hebrew people in the body of Jesus. He goes to Egypt, and then again back to Palestine. Here we have the repetition in spirit which is undergone by the soul of the Ego of Zarathustra. And that is an image of the fate of the old Hebrew people.

In the Matthew Gospel, out of the knowledge of the law, we have that faithfully described, that what appears at a higher stage, is a repetition in short of what was there earlier. Oh, how deeply these gospels describe the event that stands at the beginning of our era, that is so mighty, that four writers have said: Each one of us can only describe from his standpoint this great event. Each of these four has described the one event according to his own limited power. As when we picture a being from four sides, we retain but one picture, and through the combination of mutually contradictory pictures know the total being, so has the writer of the Matthew Gospel described what he knew about the law of 3 (2 x 7), about the preparation of the body for the great Ego of Jesus through the mission of the old Hebrew people, according to these secrets, of which he was conscious just through his initiation. The writer of the Luke Gospel has described according to the initiation of which he was conscious, whereby he presented how in another way the Buddha stream flowed into Christianity, in order to flow on farther into it. And the other gospel writers have described from out of the presuppositions of other initiations. The event they describe is so great, that we must be thankful when we find it described from four sides, from the aspects of four initiations.

Today we have only been able to indicate the inflow of the Zarathustra stream, and the contribution of the old Hebrew people. Next time we will discuss something else, which has been transmitted as a contribution in order to stream further into Christianity at a newly-arisen stage. Only some details were mentioned today from the spirit of the origin of Christianity, to show how our knowledge of the world grows, our knowledge of man grows, if we follow the greatest event in humanity. An idea should be awakened of how deeply this event is to be taken, and how deep the gospels are, when we really understand how to read them.

I have already pointed out that one hears time and again an objection to the study of spiritual truths. This objection, incidentally, is immediately dismissed as arising from the extreme laziness of the human soul. It is the objection of those who say: I do not reject the idea that man, after passing through the gate of death, enters another, a spiritual world; but what this spiritual world is like, what the state of this spiritual world is, I will wait and see! Here on this earth one must attend to one's material duties, and then one will see what happens in another world when one is transported to that other world. It cannot be denied that this objection is very convenient. However, to examine it carefully is the duty of anyone who is interested in spiritual-scientific truths, because such examination can confirm their belief in the necessity of really dealing with spiritual-scientific truths. In order to lay this examination before you, I would like to say, let us today, from a certain point of view, once again visualize the relationships that exist between human life here and human life that flows between death and a new birth.

Let us be clear about the fact that man, while he walks through life here in the physical body, only really takes in part of what is connected with his life into ordinary consciousness, because things are constantly happening that are connected with our life, but which do not pass by our life so that we can bring them clearly and distinctly to our ordinary consciousness. Sometimes we become half aware of the facts, but not of their full significance for us in our everyday lives. Think about your day's work in the evening, and above all think about the places you have entered and the people you have encountered there. All of this has great significance for you, because your immediate surroundings are reflected in your soul. And of the many things that are reflected in the soul, very few come to our clear consciousness in everyday life. There is a great difference, after all, between, let us say, having been near the Stuttgart train station at nine o'clock this morning and having been out in the forest, because in both cases something quite different has been reflected in your soul; something quite different lives in your soul in both cases. We usually do not realize that this has a profound significance. Only from, I would say, quiet hints of life can we often deduce the meaning of such things. Take the following, for instance. You can see it – not in this case, of course, but in other cases – if you pay a little attention to life. Suppose you came here this evening. Someone in the first row would have reason to leave the room before I finish speaking; he gets up, moves down the aisle and leaves. Someone in the third row has seen him, but, at least I assume so, this person in the third row has listened carefully – which also happens, doesn't it – and he has only half let this personality, who has just left, pass by in his usual consciousness. He will be able to notice that he perhaps dreams very little of what I have spoken here. For if one could take a statistic on the subject, those of the honored listeners who dream a great deal about what has been said here would probably not be all that numerous. But you will easily be able to see – perhaps not from this example, but from a similar one – that you dream about the one who stood up and went out. That is to say, you will be able to observe in numerous cases in life that you draw on those things in your sleeping consciousness that fleetingly pass by your consciousness during the day.

This is why people know so little of what they have dreamt. For most of what is dreamt is of such a nature that it passes by fairly unnoticed during the day. Only the things that are clearly grasped by the consciousness are rarely dreamt of. Dreams only come when they are connected with certain sensations, certain feelings, which again are not clearly and distinctly brought to consciousness. And when one wakes up one remembers so little of the dreams, because in the previous life one paid little attention to what one dreamt. This is also connected with the limited ability to remember dreams. In short, what I want to say is this: countless things rush by in a person's life that only very fleetingly enter into consciousness, but that have a great significance for the human soul, even if they remain in the unconscious or subconscious. Everything that runs, as it were, between the lines of life has great significance at first, when the human being has passed through the gate of death.

We have often had to describe this time, which the human being first spends between death and a new birth, from the most diverse points of view. Thus one thing always blends into another, and only by choosing the most diverse points of view can one arrive at a certain completeness in this field. Everything that passes unnoticed by the ordinary consciousness is then revealed when the human being has passed through the gate of death. And I would call what the human being experiences first over a long period of time the unrolling of images. What the person goes through is essentially a reliving of experiences of the imaginative consciousness. A great, great number of images are unrolled over scenes from life that we have been very little aware of. And of that which we have become aware of here, that which has also been little touched by consciousness here is unrolled. The other, which was clear consciousness here, occurs more as memory after death, like memory images, like remembrance; but what has been little noticed here unrolls as in present images.

Today it is particularly important to me to point out that the first third of life between death and a new birth is essentially concerned with this unrolling of images, essentially with a life in imaginations. We can help these imaginations by establishing a connection between us, who have remained here, and those who, as karmically connected to us, have gone through the Gate of Death. Then comes the second third, in which this spiritual and soul life is more fully inspired. It is here that a person realizes the significance of the images he first experienced in the context of the whole world, and how these images connect him to the world. Everything a person experiences is significant in the context of the world. One must not believe that it is unimportant to have once met a person, whom one may have paid little attention to, to have been close to them. It is revealed in images, and what it means in the whole of world events comes to revelation in inspirations in the second third of life between death and a new birth.

In the last third, life is mainly one of intuitions. There the human being has to empathize with what is in his spiritual and mental environment. There the human being lives as if submerged with his consciousness in what is in his spiritual and mental environment. And it is precisely in this last third, through this submersion, that he prepares for the submersion in the physical body after birth or conception. The intuitions in the last third of life between death and a new birth are the introduction of that intuition, which is then of course subconscious or unconscious, which consists of the fact that the human being submerges into the body that is handed down to him in the hereditary stream of parents, grandparents and so on. And something remains for the person when he has now passed from the spiritual and soul world into the physical world. If you consider this, bear in mind that the human being actually lives through long periods in spiritual and soul intuitions, is accustomed to living in such, so he will still want to hold on to this habit when he has entered into the physical body. And indeed he does. For what then is the main endeavour of the soul during the first seven years of life until the change of teeth? You can look it up in the booklet 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science'. I have said: the desire to imitate. The child always tries to do what is being done in its surroundings; it does not start from its own intentions; it puts itself in the actions of those who live in its surroundings and imitates them. This is the echo of the intuitions in the last third of the life between death and a new birth. We are therefore born as imitative beings because we translate into physical life what we have done for a long time in a spiritual-soul way in the other world. And one understands how man grows into this physical life by turning one's gaze back to what man has become accustomed to doing in the spiritual world.

Here you see a thought from spiritual science presented to you that is of a kind that many will have to come in the coming centuries and millennia for human spiritual life. These thoughts will indeed have to change much, much from what has occupied people spiritually until now. Consider that it has become customary in recent centuries, when thinking about the question of immortality, to think mainly about what comes after death. One always thinks: Can man hold that which he develops in physical life beyond death? — This is important to people above all else. This question of immortality is certainly important, but it will take on a different complexion if we consider, I might say, the other half of the question of immortality, if we are not interested in what follows death and what emerges as a consequence of life here on earth but when one will ask: how does what we experience here in the physical body connect with what we have experienced before? For the life we have experienced before, our life here is the hereafter. It is mainly in this direction that thought will be received on this side. People will realize that they can only understand life on earth if they see it as a continuation of the spiritual life from which they have come. They will start to take an interest again in that life that preceded earthly life. It can be said that, with the exception of the last third of the 19th century, people were still somewhat interested in the question of immortality in spiritual life, but they were only interested in the question of immortality insofar as spiritual life in immortality is a continuation of earthly life. The philosophers did it that way, but these philosophers were basically, despite their claim to be doing unprejudiced science, in many respects miserable people who, while they believed they were doing unprejudiced science, did nothing more than continue the prejudices that arose from certain currents. Consider that at the time of Origen, the Church condemned the pre-existence of the soul, that it condemned Origen because he taught this pre-existence, so that the Church was in a certain dilemma: there was Origen, the greatest of the Church Fathers, and it could not be denied that Origen taught pre-existence. But that is forbidden in the church. So there was a great dilemma. Throughout the Middle Ages, people were accustomed not to teach about pre-existence. The professors of philosophy continued this well, and so did the writers of philosophy, but they believed that they were thinking without preconditions. They did the same in other questions, in questions for which I have already given examples here. Now it must be realized above all that the direction of thought, the direction of human contemplation, must undergo a serious change through spiritual science. This life on earth will only appear in its true value when one becomes conscious that it is a continuation of a spiritual life. And it can only be understood if it is grasped as such. Then, too, one will arrive at a more sound judgment on the other side of the question when one looks at it in this light. When one realizes more clearly that this life on earth has a significance for the life in the beyond, that man in the beyond strives to come here to earth to have this life on earth because he needs it, then one will ask about the value of this life on earth much more from just such a premise than one has done so far.

But one thing in particular will be able to point out to you how important it is to ask about the value of this earthly life. Two things are often not very clearly distinguished from each other, namely: Man thinks - and: Man has thoughts. But the two things are really very different from each other. Thinking is a power that man has, an activity; and this activity first leads to thoughts. Now, we bring the activity of thinking, this power that lives in thinking, into this earthly life from the time between death and a new birth. We apply this power of thinking to external perceptions through the senses and think about the surroundings that we have here. But these things in our surroundings have no significance for the time between death and a new birth, because there they are nothing. They are only here for the senses. Therefore, the thoughts we have here about the things that are spread out before our senses have no significance for life after death; but it does have a significance for life after death that we feed the power of thought at all, because this power of thought remains with us for the whole of life between death and a new birth. The thoughts that we accept from sensory perceptions are of no use to us after death. They only serve as clues to remember the self during the life between birth and death.

Imagine two people. One of them is not at all interested in what can be learned about life in the spiritual worlds through something like spiritual science. He only thinks about what the senses present and what ordinary science teaches; but that is nothing more than what the senses present. And he says: I will wait to see what the spiritual world is like before I penetrate it. From a certain point of view, they are, I might say, the less culpable in comparison with those who appeared in the 19th century and believed that they had to deny the existence of a spiritual world altogether, with all the power of science, according to the saying that the poet has such a person utter: “As surely as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist!” — It was from such a frame of mind, after all, that 19th-century atheism was sometimes born, out of such “thoughtful soul-searching”. But let us take a person who simply does not engage in forming thoughts about the spiritual worlds. That would be one person. The other person engages in forming thoughts about the spiritual world. These are different thoughts from those that one takes in through the senses. It cannot be denied that they are different thoughts. This is already evident from the fact that the thoughts through which a spiritual world is not perceived are, in the opinion of most people living today, the clever thoughts, the real thoughts; the thoughts that spiritual science describes are the crazy, the fantastic, the crazy thoughts, and so on.

But let us take these two people. What situation are they in when they have passed through the gate of death? The person who has not absorbed any thoughts about the spiritual worlds here, who has not allowed thoughts about the spiritual worlds to pass through his soul, is, as a being of soul, in the same situation after death as someone who has a physical body but has nothing to eat and must starve. For the thoughts we think here about the spiritual worlds are the nourishment for one of the most important powers that remain with us after death: for the power of thought. We have the power of thought just as we have the power of hunger here, but this power of hunger cannot be nourished at all between death and a new birth. Between death and a new birth we can have imagination, inspiration and intuition, but we cannot have thoughts as such. We have to acquire them here. We have to enter into the life between birth and death in order to acquire thoughts here. We live on these thoughts, which we have acquired here, the whole time between death and a new birth, and we starve for these thoughts if we do not have them. That is the difference. He who does not want to occupy himself with the spiritual worlds here on earth is doomed to become a spiritual starving person. And such a person, who is able to satisfy himself and thus live between death and a new birth, is the one I mentioned as the second one who occupies himself with thoughts such as we do here. If materialism were to become the only view held by people, then in the future, between death and a new birth, people would fall more and more prey to a spiritual famine. The result of this would be that they would enter the physical world stunted through the following incarnation. The spiritual world would wither away, and with the spiritual world the physical world would wither away in the future that humanity still has to go through during this earthly world. They have succeeded in making the saying “After us, the deluge” a certain attitude for unsuspecting humanity that does not know what is at stake. This saying, 'After us, the deluge', even if it is not done, lies at the bottom of the soul in a materialistic time. This saying has no meaning at all for those who know reality. For what humanity is doing at the present time, whether it wants to immerse souls in the spiritual worlds or not, is what lays the foundation for the future of development. The welfare of the Earth itself depends on mankind not giving up its thoughts about the spiritual worlds in the present. Those who live in the present should realize this more and more. For an enormous amount depends on the fact that the course of human development is understood spiritually.

We have tried to develop important concepts about the spiritual worlds, because ultimately the spiritual worlds do indeed extend into our physical world, and one cannot understand the physical world either without understanding the spiritual worlds. And we have developed the most diverse concepts. Now, a truly thinking person will come to realize that this spiritual-scientific thinking is particularly important for reality. You simply cannot understand the whole of reality if you only want to think scientifically, just as you cannot understand material existence if you only think scientifically and not spiritually. I will give you a very paradoxical and strange example of this.

I believe I emphasized here some time ago that about a year and a half ago a very significant thick book was published by an excellent contemporary natural scientist, Oscar Hertwig, a Haeckel student, “The Becoming of Organisms; a refutation of Darwin's theory of chance”. This is an excellent book that is right at the cutting edge of contemporary scientific research. And I have taken many opportunities recently to emphasize the significance and the leading ideas in it. For it is also a remarkable book from a cultural-historical point of view. You know that in 1869 Eduard von Hartmann appeared on the scene with his 'Philosophy of the Unconscious', at that time in the heyday of Darwinism, which had then found its materialistic interpretation. Eduard von Hartmann opposed it. Then the natural scientists cried out: Well, it is an amateur philosopher who talks about spirit and understands nothing about natural science! — The matter turned out as I have already described it several times. One day a book appeared about which even Haeckel's student Oskar Schmidt wrote: “There is someone who understands something about natural science. He gave Hartmann what for! We ourselves could not say it better; let him come to us, and we will welcome him as one of our own! — They have done a terrible job of advertising. A second edition became necessary. Then the author named himself: it was Eduard von Hartmann! That's when they stopped advertising it. It was high time that someone took a stand and showed people that those who speak of the spirit are no less intelligent than those who deny it. Eduard von Hartmann wrote several other works in which he pointed out the one-sidedness of Darwinism. He did not find much favor with it. But one can say: After calm, well-trained research, a man like Oscar Hertwig has come to think the way Eduard von Hartmann spoke as early as 1869. He even quotes him frequently in his work. And everything is structured in an exemplary way in this book, 'The Becoming of Organisms'. Here one can actually study a prime example of a matter that could grow out of the scientific method of the present day, and has grown out of it.

Now, a few weeks ago, the same man published a kind of sequel to this book: “In Defense of Social, Ethical and Political Darwinism.” It is hard to imagine a more stupid book than this one, which Oscar Hertwig allowed to follow his first epoch-making work. It is hard to imagine anything more inadequate, anything more tinny than this book. As you can see, in the field of our spiritual science, it is necessary to acquire a certain lack of authority, because if our dear friends, after I have praised the truly epoch-making book to the skies and will always do so, now buy the second book on the basis of authority and say to themselves, “So we have to see this as something great,” they will be very much mistaken. The purpose of spiritual science is to enable us to form judgments freely and to be ready in every direction and at every moment to face the phenomena that come our way. Even in the most esoteric spiritual-scientific endeavors, no credence in authority can be tolerated, otherwise the result will not be spiritual science but a caricature of it. What is the cause of what I have described? It arises from the fact that today one can be a great epoch-making natural scientist, that is, one can be in a position to develop everything concerning material events and their manifestations according to the methods of the 19th and 20th centuries; but as soon as one begins to reflect on what lies in the human sphere, what lives in man, how people live together socially, when they live together ethically and morally, when they want to develop politically, want to develop political ideas, at that moment, when one begins to think about those things in which the spiritual element plays a role, one can, despite being a brilliant natural scientist, be an absolutely stupid person, because natural science is of no use at all. And just such a literary example has emerged in our time to really substantiate this, which can be seen from spiritual science; to really present it in reality. For anyone reading this second book by Oscar Hertwig will notice that there is not a single thought about what relates to social, ethical or political life, as would be quite appropriate in the present, for the present is really not exactly rich in fruitful social, ethical and especially political ideas. But that also stems from the fact that purely scientific thinking has been completely overestimated. And here Oscar Hertwig has the best of intentions; he wants to move this scientific thinking away from social, ethical and political thinking. But since he has nothing at all about the latter, it is of no use for him to reject the former. This book contains the most curious intellectual somersaults. I will only point out one thing, always assuming that the first book I mentioned is an excellent one.

People do not notice it: Oscar Hertwig is an authority; our time does not believe in authority, but it falls for any authority that is officially presented to it. People are willing to be taught; some things do not even strike them. But in the second book, Oscar Hertwig wants to make it clear to people what has to be done to think scientifically. He can do it, but he does not understand what it is. After all, you can do it instinctively. The methods are great; you just need to be educated for it, you don't have to develop in your thoughts what you are doing. This is where Oscar Hertwig comes to the following strange conclusion. He talks about how one should actually conduct scientific research in order to recognize things in one's environment. He says: The great model for physical, chemical and biological thinking has been provided by astronomers, and it is important that people learn to think about physical, chemical and actual life phenomena in the same way that astronomers think about celestial phenomena. It is very suggestive to say: imitate the greatness of thinking in Kepler, in Copernicus, in Newton, in order to understand the phenomena that are around you! But just think about what is behind it! The phenomena of life, the physical, the chemical phenomena, the phenomena of life are all around us; the facts are very close to us and we encounter them all the time. And now we are to obtain science by directing ourselves to the facts that are as far removed as possible from us; thus, because we are as far removed as possible from the facts of celestial phenomena, we are to develop from them the knowledge of that which actually surrounds us. One cannot form a more insane thought than such a thing. But thousands upon thousands of people read past such madness and suspect nothing of the fact that such follies corrupt the whole thinking of the present time, that if it takes hold, it must make people more and more alienated from reality. And then one cannot see one's way into any social, ethical or political structure if one starts from such thinking and such sentences. It is one of the tasks of our spiritual science to see clearly through what is in the so-called spiritual life of the present day.

I said that we had to deal with pointing out the spiritual forces that do indeed extend into the ordinary physical world. And we have spoken again and again about the fact that the human being, with his life, stands in three currents of force, in the luciferic, in the ahrimanic and in the one that is actually appropriate for the development of humanity. I have often pointed out that one must not say: I avoid the Luciferic, I avoid the Ahrimanic – if one avoids it, one will only plunge into it all the more, but one must be clear about it, one must really study, get to know the human being's standing in these three currents. One must take the knowledge of Lucifer and Ahriman into life.

Now, much of the social and historical structure of humanity in the last centuries or millennia has been very much under Luciferic impulses that came from within man. One could cite many, many things that were under Luciferic impulses, but I will cite only one, in which everyone will immediately see the Luciferic.

Ambition and vanity play a major role in the way people position themselves on the various poles of their lives, the various points of view in life. Many a person would never have aspired to this or that position if the social structure had not been the cause of this vanity being stirred up in one direction or another. All this business about titles, ranks and orders is ultimately based on the Luciferic element. And just try to consider impartially how much of what people achieve in life is purely due to the fact that they aspired to these fishing rods of ambition, to these baits. Try to consider how people are placed, one above the other, one under the other; how social institutions take this ambition into account. Try to realize how this has built the social structure. In this field, Lucifer has played an extraordinarily important role.

Let us consider another phenomenon that is now beginning to be practiced and admired. And here, in the field of spiritual scientific work, is the place to consider such things in a proper and realistic way. If you pay attention to some of the various things that are now becoming popular in the present, you will find among them what are now called the “gifted examinations”. The purpose of these examinations is to single out the gifted from among the children and young people. There is a danger that these aptitude tests will lead to true idolatry. How are they done? You have trained psychologists who, although they understand nothing of the soul, understand psychology all the better; psychologists who are trained in the methods of the present and who are thus able to select the gifted from a series of young people or children, so that the right man can later be in the right place, of course. One baits now less, one believes, in the future with the ambition, with the vanity, but one makes gifted examinations. These gifted examinations refer to the speed of comprehension, to the memory. Senseless words are written down, and the one who can remember them faster has a better memory than the one who can remember them less quickly. Intelligence tests are made. A word, a second, a third word that have no connection are given, and then the students are asked to find a connection. So, for example, one writes: “robber” and “mirror” and says: Now think of something between robber and mirror. — One person now thinks: The robber sees himself in the mirror. The other thinks: I have a mirror in my room, a robber sneaks in and I see it in the mirror. The latter has thought more complicatedly and is therefore more gifted. Then the matter is made statistical and those who are most intelligent are selected; they are then taken as the right people to be placed in the right place.

You see, anyone who objects to this great achievement of the present day on the basis of the conditions that now prevail here is considered a very stupid fool who knows nothing about what it is all about.

Now, let us take a look at this whole matter. What exactly are we examining when we test people in this way? We are not examining anything that really has to do with their soul. We only have to consider one thing: that probably the most important people of the past, those who have achieved the greatest things, would have been considered untalented after such tests. Consider even Helmholtz, who is regarded as a celebrity by modern man; if he had been subjected to such a test of talent, he would certainly not have reached the position he later held. These tests of talent have nothing to do with the development of the soul abilities of the human individuality, but everything to do with the sum of the Ahrimanic forces within man. It is not the person who is tested, but the Ahrimanic forces within him. And so, just as one has previously reckoned with Luciferic forces, one now begins to count on Ahrimanic forces and to establish a social structure that is built purely on Ahrimanic forces. However, only those who really engage with spiritual scientific content and who want to see through the world spiritually will be able to see through such things. Because what I have told you now about the aptitude tests is presented by a large number of people and their journalistic followers as one of the most significant achievements of the present day, presented in such a way that the social structure of the future can be built on the basis of this examination. And the public, which does not believe in authority, this poor public, has no opportunity to reflect on what such a matter is actually about. It does not have the opportunity to form clear concepts about such a matter. But that is what matters.

If, after taking in some of the things we have on our minds today, you begin to form ideas about what needs to happen first for humanity, what needs to happen in terms of the spiritual development process, then you are asking the right questions. But then you will endeavor to grasp the human individualities in order to teach them what they should be interested in. You will not come to test the Ahrimanic abilities, because these Ahrimanic abilities will lead to humanity being treated entirely as a sum of machines. You only test the mind in the outer body. One tests the human being only to the extent that he is a machine when he is subjected to this aptitude test. And a social selection is created that only makes the best types of physical machines the leaders of humanity. Nowhere is there any reflection on what basically rests in the soul, and what can never come to the surface in such tests. But I do not blame anyone if they run after such things in an almost idolatrous way today, because someone who has not studied spiritual science at all can only do as they do and surrender to the judgment that it is the smartest thing to do in the present. But this gradually leads away from real human liveliness, from human reality. It leads into abstract areas, into that which is dead in human life and is dominated only by the spirituality of Ahriman. One must see through the full seriousness of such things, how people are drawn away from the real. And that is something that confronts one with particular intensity in the present: the drawing away of people from reality. For anyone who has no sense of spiritual reality will gradually lose their sense of ordinary external reality as well, the reality that surrounds them every day, if they are not forced by their profession or other things to pay attention to reality.

I will give you an example of this: something very cute happened the other day. An article by Fritz Mauthner, the critic of language, appeared in a very popular newspaper. In this article, Fritz Mauthner, who is an extraordinarily clever man, complains about a booklet that has appeared in the collection “From Nature and the Spiritual World” and that develops the astrological ideas that have emerged in a way that is entirely in line with current materialistic science – and in fact in the way a modern university professor does – as it is. At the end, the person in question develops the horoscope of Goethe and explains that it can be used to show how things went in Goethe's life. But actually, the good professor only makes fun of those who believe in horoscopes. He wants to show them as something that can be interpreted in different ways. Fritz Mauthner rants and raves through three columns of the “Berliner Tageblatt”. One could not understand why he was actually ranting. There was not the slightest reason to rant. He actually has the same opinion as the one who wrote the little book, both look at astrology from the same point of view. And very soon the Tageblatt also published a correction by the author, in which he says that he does not understand Mauthner. He did not explicitly say on every third line: I scold astrology —, but he actually has no more interest in astrology than Fritz Mauthner does; he fully agrees with him. The Berliner Tageblatt – newspapers are very clever – adds that it has no reason to take the author to task and accuse Fritz Mauthner of misunderstandings. Fritz Mauthner was in fact the theater critic of the Berliner Tageblatt for many years and now writes a kind of theater column for this newspaper.

For his part, Fritz Mauthner says that he also has nothing to say about this anti-criticism by the author. One was faced with the strange fact that two people actually agree with each other, but one lashes out at the other. Fritz Mauthner gets angry when he hears something about astrology, or when someone writes something about horoscopes. Otherwise it would be inconceivable that he would have written this article. He writes as though the other were the most terrible astrologer, who wanted to throw the validity of Goethe's horoscope in people's faces. So there you have an example of how two people fight each other, one voluntarily, Fritz Mauthner, the other out of necessity, because Fritz Mauthner attacked him first, two people between whom there is not the slightest difference. How can that be? Such a thing can only happen when two people have nothing to do with reality, which is itself narrowly defined, when both live out of something other than reality. The most glorious example of this is that people talk and talk today, and talk very cleverly – Fritz Mauthner is a very clever man – but there is nothing behind the talk. There is not the slightest reason to talk like that.

There you have an example of a completely logical construction of thoughts that have absolutely nothing to do with reality. This is what happens to thoughts that get out of the habit of having anything to do with spiritual reality, because then the thought gradually loses all its connections to reality. It is important to realize this. And that is also the terrible seriousness of the matter. For in the end it does not matter whether Fritz Mauthner and the Heidelberg professor are attacking each other and their words have no meaning at all because there is no reality behind them, or whether they are two politicians, one of whom speaks in America and the other in Europe, and who perhaps even speak in agreement, despite being totally different. If all people who talk like this are absolutely alien to reality, have nothing to do with what really lives in things, then this estrangement from reality will spread. It has spread. For the example I gave, of Fritz Mauthner and Professor Boll, is only a grotesque example. But it is everywhere present. That is how it is done today. And what does it lead to? It leads to conflict. It is relatively easy to be united when you deal with reality; but when you stand by reality, it leads to conflict. Little by little, people will realize how much of our catastrophic events are connected with this prevailing mood of the present, and what a serious thing it is. For just go out and ask the numerous readers of this newspaper, which is one of the most widely read in Germany, whether they even notice the grotesque and paradoxical aspects that are coming to light! People are oblivious to all of this. But it does not pass unnoticed in the events themselves; there it has its bitterly evil effects. For what is being done here is nothing less than an abuse of human intellectual power. Do you think that if these mental powers, which are used for nothing because they are alien to reality, were applied in the right way, then reality would be promoted, then they would be in the normal current; but as it is, they benefit Ahriman. It is alien to reality for the middle current, but it happens, it slips into a sphere, and that is what matters. That is the seriousness of the matter. It does not pass unnoticed, but slips into another sphere and creates facts. It creates facts that do not correspond to the true situation. Because, even on the surface, purely rationally, purely intellectually, one can imagine how that creates facts.

Our time does not believe in authority. People test everything and keep what is best! Nevertheless, it does happen that people believe in authority. A person like Fritz Mauthner has countless followers who believe his every word. They are naturally impressed by such an article. Think how many thoughts are stimulated by such an article. They are all drawn into the Ahrimanic sphere in which the article flows. The matter is unreal, and things are pushed into an unreality by it. That is what matters.

What one would like to do with such things, my dear friends, is to point out again and again the tremendous seriousness behind such considerations. Because it is true: What I have characterized in individual cases, you will encounter at every turn today. We are in the time when we only do the right thing if we decide to see clearly, without prejudice, to face life impartially. That is our task. And that is precisely what spiritual science is meant to lead to, by building the bridge between the human inner life and reality in the right way. For in this respect, people live in the most terrible fogs. One cannot begin to describe what arises when one delves into this, how people live in this respect today, in dense fog. It must be so, for people must learn to rely on themselves. People must learn to create clarity through themselves, not to get clarity through authority. This must become one of the best, one of the most important achievements of spiritual studies for the individual human soul, to gain a free, clear, unbiased judgment about what life around them offers; to break the habit that basically dominates all of humanity today: to be asleep to events. People oversleep what is right in front of them. And to shroud them in a fog is precisely the endeavor of those who come with one-sided, all kinds of monistic or “scientifically based” — as they say — ideas, but who are nothing more than materialists. For they claim, indeed assert, that they are building the bridge to reality. They lead away from reality. Tell Oscar Hertwig that he is looking at things in an unrealistic way, he will laugh at you and cannot see that he is doing so. But as a spiritual scientist, you must be somewhat shocked when you read that the closest facts of life are to be considered according to the pattern of celestial phenomena, where the facts are as far away as possible. To go through life like this, paying attention to what we experience not in books but right under our noses from morning till night – not when we are among anthroposophists, of course – offers all kinds of things that we have to pay attention to without prejudice today. For humanity is at a significant turning point. And what I have said is not a criticism of the time, but only an emphasis of what is necessary by saying: This is how it is. It is good that it has come to this, because it calls on people to stand on their own two feet and become independent. The Deity did not set itself the task of leading people through evolution as spiritually and mentally dependent automatons, and so it had to let them come to the present situation. It is wise and good, but it must also be recognized in the right way and acted upon accordingly.

To let this attitude emerge from the deepest impulses of our being as the innermost stimulus of our strength for life, that must become one of the results of our spiritual-scientific occupation. Then we may not found a voluptuous, comfortable revelry in unworldly ideas, which is so good when one wants to oversleep life; but we found that genuine worship of life, which leads the divine-spiritual forces, which are the basis of all reality, through the most important instrument for this earth

instrument to the realization of this divine-spiritual in this earthly life.

More about this next time.

[ 1 ] We shall now describe the state of man before his division into male and female. At that time the body consisted of a soft malleable mass. The will had a much greater power over this mass than later. When man separated from his parent entity he appeared as a truly articulated organism, but as an incomplete one. The further development of the organs took place outside the parent entity. Much of what later matured inside the mother organism was at that time brought to completion outside of it by a force which was akin to our will power. In order to bring about such an external maturation the care of the parent being was necessary. Man brought certain organs into the world which he later cast off. Others, which were quite incomplete at his first appearance, developed more fully. The whole process had something which can be compared with the emergence from an egg-form and the casting off of an eggshell, but here one must not think of a firm eggshell.

[ 2 ] The body of man was warm-blooded. This must be stated explicitly, for in even earlier times it was different, as will be shown later. The maturation which took place outside the mother organism occurred under the influence of an increased warmth which also was supplied from the outside. But one must by no means think that the egg-man—as he will be called for the sake of brevity—was brooded. The conditions of heat and fire on the earth of that time were different from those of later times. By means of his powers man could confine fire, or respectively, heat, to a certain space. He could, so to speak, contract, (concentrate) heat. He was thus in a position to supply the young organism with the warmth which it needed for its maturation.

[ 3 ] The most highly developed organs of man at that time were the organs of motion. The sense organs of today were as yet quite undeveloped. The most advanced among them were the organs of hearing and of perception of cold and hot, the sense of touch; the perception of light lagged far behind. Man came into the world with the senses of hearing and touch; the perception of light developed somewhat later.

[ 4 ] Everything which is said here applies to the last periods before the division into sexes. This division took place slowly and gradually. Long before its actual occurrence, human beings were already developing in such a way that one individual would be born with more male, another with more female characteristics. Each human being however also possessed the opposite sexual characteristics, so that self-impregnation was possible. But the latter could not always take place, because it depended on the influences of external conditions in certain seasons. With respect to many things and to a great extent, man was generally dependent on such outer conditions. Therefore he had to regulate all his institutions in accordance with such external conditions, for example, in accordance with the course of the sun and the moon. But his regulation did not take place consciously in the modern sense, but was accomplished in a manner which one must call instinctive. With this we already indicate the soul life of man of that time.

[ 5 ] This soul life cannot be described as a true inner life. Physical and soul activities and qualities were not yet strictly separated. The outer life of nature was still experienced by the soul. Each single disturbance in the environment acted powerfully on the sense of hearing especially. Every disturbance of the air, every movement was “heard.” In their movements wind and water spoke an “eloquent language” to man. In this manner a perception of the mysterious activity of nature penetrated into him. This activity reverberated in his soul. His own activity was an echo of these impressions. He transformed the perceptions of sound into his own activity. He lived among such tonal movements and expressed them by his will. In this way he was impelled to all his daily labors.

He was influenced in a somewhat lesser degree by the influences which act upon the touch. But they also played an important role. He “felt” the environment in his body and acted accordingly. From such influences upon the touch he could tell when and how he had to work. He knew from them where he should rest. In them he recognized and avoided dangers which threatened his life. In accordance with these influences he regulated his food intake.

[ 6 ] The remainder of the soul life took its course in a manner quite different from that of later periods. In the soul lived images of external objects, not conceptions of them. For instance, when man entered a warmer space from a colder one, a certain colored image arose in his soul. But this colored image had nothing to do with any external object. It originated in an inner force which was akin to the will. Such images continuously filled the soul. One can compare this only with the flowing dream impressions of man. At that time the images were not completely irregular, but proceeded according to law. Therefore, in relation to this stage of mankind, one should speak of an image consciousness rather than of a dream consciousness. For the most part, colored images filled this consciousness. But these were not the only kind. Thus man wandered through the world, and through his hearing and touch participated in the events of this world: but in his soul life this world was mirrored in images which were very unlike what existed in the external world. Joy and sorrow were associated with the images of the soul to a much lesser degree than is the case today with the ideas of men which reflect their perceptions of the external world. It is true that one image awakened happiness, another displeasure, one hate, another love; but these feelings had a much paler character.

On the other hand, strong feelings were aroused by something else. At that time man was much more active than later. Everything in his environment as well as the images in his soul, stimulated him to activity, to movement. When his activity could proceed without hindrance, he experienced pleasure, but when this activity was hindered in any way, he felt displeasure and discomfort. It was the absence or presence of hindrances to his will which determined the content of his sensations, his joy and his pain. This joy, or this pain were again released in his soul in a world of living images. Light, clear, beautiful images lived in him when he could be completely free in his actions; dark, misshapen images arose in his soul when his movements were hindered.

[ 7 ] Until now the average man has been described. Among those who had developed into a kind of superhuman beings, (cf. page 96) soul life was different. Their soul life did not have this instinctive character. Through their senses of hearing and touch they perceived deeper mysteries of nature, which they could interpret consciously. In the rushing of the wind, in the rustling of the trees, the laws, the wisdom of nature were unveiled to them. The images in their souls did not merely represent reflections of the external world, but were likenesses of the spiritual powers of the world. They did not perceive sensory objects, but spiritual entities. For example, the average man experienced fear, and an ugly, dark image arose in his soul. By means of such images the superhuman being received information and revelation about the spiritual entities of the world. The processes of nature did not appear to him as dependent on lifeless natural laws, as they do to the scientist of today, but rather as the actions of spiritual beings. External reality did not yet exist, for there were no external senses. But spiritual reality was accessible to the higher beings. The spirit shone into them as the sun shines into the physical eye of man today. In these beings, cognition was what one may call intuitive knowledge in the fullest sense of the word. For them there was no combining and speculating, but an immediate perception of the activity of spiritual beings. Therefore, these superhuman individuals could receive communications from the spiritual world directly into their will. They consciously directed the other men. They received their mission from the world of spirits and acted accordingly.

[ 8 ] When the time came in which the sexes separated, these beings considered it their task to act upon the new life in accordance with their mission. The regulation of sexual life emanated from them. Everything which relates to the reproduction of mankind originated with them. In this they acted quite consciously, but the other men could only feel this influence as an instinct implanted in them. Sexual love was implanted in man by immediate transference of thought. At first all its manifestations were of the noblest character. Everything in this area which has taken on an ugly character comes from later times, when men became more independent and when they corrupted an originally pure impulse. In these older times there was no satisfaction of the sexual impulse for its own sake. Then, everything was a sacrificial service for the continuation of human existence. Reproduction was regarded as a sacred matter, as a service which man owes to the world. Sacrificial priests were the directors and regulators in this field.

[ 9 ] Of a different kind were the influences of the half superhuman beings (cf. page 96/97). The latter were not developed to the point of being able to receive the revelations of the spiritual world in an entirely pure form. Along with these impressions of the spiritual world, the effects of the sensible earth also arose among the images of their souls. The truly superhuman beings received no impressions of joy and pain through the external world. They were wholly given over to the revelations of the spiritual powers. Wisdom flowed to them as light does to sensory beings; their will was directed toward nothing but acting in accordance with this wisdom. In this acting lay their highest joy. Wisdom, will, and activity constituted their nature. This was different among the half superhuman entities. They felt the impulse to receive impressions from the outside, and with the satisfaction of this impulse they connected joy, with its frustration, displeasure. Through this they differed from the superhuman entities. To these entities, external impressions were nothing but confirmations of spiritual revelations They could look out into the world without receiving anything more than a reflection of what they had already received from the spirit. The half-superhuman beings learned something new, and therefore they could become leaders of men when in human souls mere images changed into likenesses and conceptions of external objects. This happened when a portion of the previous reproductive energy of man turned inward, at the time when entities with brains were developed. With the brain man also received the capacity to transform external sensory impressions into conceptions.

[ 10 ] It must therefore be said that by half-superhuman beings man was brought to the point of directing his inner nature toward the sensuous external world. He was not permitted to open the images of his soul directly to pure spiritual influences. The capacity of perpetuating the existence of his kind was implanted in him as an instinctive impulse by superhuman beings. Spiritually, he would at first have had to continue a sort of dream existence if the half-superhuman beings had not intervened. Through their influence the images of his soul were directed toward the sensuous, external world. He became a being which was conscious of itself in the world of the senses. Thereby it came about that man could consciously direct his actions in accordance with his perceptions of the world of the senses. Before this he had acted from a kind of instinct. He had been under the spell of his external environment and of the powers of higher individualities, which acted on him. Now he began to follow the impulses and enticements of his conceptions. Therewith free choice became possible for man. This was the beginning of “good and evil.”

[ 11 ] Before we continue in this direction, something will be said concerning the environment of man on earth. In addition to man there existed animals, which, for their kind, were at the same stage of development as he. According to current ideas one would include them among the reptiles. Apart from them, lower forms of animal life existed. Between man and the animals there was an essential difference. Because of his still malleable body, man could live only in those regions of the earth which had not yet passed over into the most solid material form. And in these regions animal organisms which had a similarly plastic body lived with him. But in other regions lived animals which already had dense bodies and also had developed separate sexedness and the senses. Where they had come from, will be explained later. These animals could not develop further because their bodies had taken on this denser materiality too soon. Some species of these became extinct, others have perpetuated their kind to the point of contemporary forms. Man could attain higher forms because he remained in the regions which corresponded to his state at that time. Thereby his body remained so pliant and soft that he could develop the organs which were to be fructified by the spirit. With this development his external body had reached the point where it could pass over into denser materiality and become a protective envelope for the more delicate spiritual organs.

Not all human bodies, however, had reached this point. There were few advanced ones. These were first animated by spirit. Others were not animated. If the spirit had penetrated into them it could have developed only in a defective manner because of the as yet incomplete inner organs. Therefore, at first these human beings were compelled to develop further without spirit. A third kind had reached the point where weak spiritual impulses could act in them. They stood between the two other kinds. Their mental activity remained dull. They had to be led by higher spiritual powers. All possible transitions existed between these three kinds. Further development was now possible only in that a portion of the human beings attained higher forms at the expense of the others. First, the completely mindless ones had to be abandoned. A mingling with them for the purpose of reproduction would have pulled the more highly developed down to their level. Everything which had been given a mind was therefore separated from them. Thereby the latter descended more and more to the level of animalism. Thus, alongside man there developed manlike animals. Man left a portion of his brothers behind on his road in order that he himself might ascend higher. This process had by no means come to an end. Among the men with a dull mental life those who stood somewhat higher could advance only if they were raised to an association with higher ones, and separated themselves from those less endowed with spirit. Only thus could they develop bodies which would be fit to receive the full human spirit. After a certain time the physical development had come to a kind of stopping-point, in that everything which lay above a certain boundary remained human. Meanwhile, the conditions of life on earth had changed in such a way that a further thrusting down would no longer produce animal-like creatures, but such as were no longer capable of living. That which had been thrust down into the animal world has either become extinct or survives in the different higher animals. Therefore, one must consider these animals as beings which had to stop at an earlier stage of human development. They have not retained the form which they had at the time of their separation, however, but have gone from a higher to a lower level. Thus the apes are men of a past epoch who have regressed. As man was once less perfect than he is at present, they were once more perfect than they are now.

That which has remained in the field of the human, has gone through a similar process, but within these human limits. Many savage tribes must be considered to be the degenerated descendants of human forms which were once more highly developed. They did not sink to the level of animalism, but only to that of savagery.

[ 12 ] The immortal part of man is the spirit. It has been shown when the spirit entered the body. Before this, the spirit belonged to other regions. It could only associate itself with the body when the latter had attained a certain level of development. Only when one understands completely how this association came about, can one recognize the significance of birth and death, and can understand the nature of the eternal spirit.

A description of the constitution of man before the division into male and female sexes must now be given. The body consisted then of a soft, plastic mass. Over it the will-power was far more potent than was the case with mankind subsequently. On his separation from the parent being, man appeared, it is true, as an organism with members, but incomplete. His organs continued their further development apart from the parent body. Much of that which at a later period ripened within the maternal organism was then brought to perfection by an external force akin to our will-power. The parent's fostering care was necessary to promote such a ripening from without. Man brought with him into the world certain organs which he afterwards discarded. Others, still quite imperfect at his first appearance, completed their development. The whole process permits of a comparison with liberation from an egg-form and the casting off of an outer covering; but we must here not think of a hard and egg-like shell.

Man's body was warm-blooded. This must be distinctly stated, for in former times it was otherwise, as will afterwards be shown. The process of maturing apart from the mother-entity was accomplished under the influence of increased warmth, conveyed in like manner from without. But by no means must we imagine a hatching-out of the egg-shaped man—so named for the sake of brevity. The conditions of warmth and fire on the earth were different then from those of later times. By means of his own force a man could constrain and confine within a certain space fire or warmth. In short, he could concentrate heat. He was thus in a position to supply warmth to the young creature that required it for his development.

The organs of motion were at that time man's most highly developed organs. The sense-organs of to-day were then quite unevolved. The most advanced were the organ of hearing and the organs for the perception of cold and heat (the sense of feeling); still far behind was the perception of light. Man was born with the senses of hearing and of touch, and then, somewhat later, the light-perception was evolved.

All that is stated here refers to the latest period before the separation of the sexes. The latter proceeded slowly and gradually. For a long time before its actual appearance, mankind began to develop in such a way that one individual was born with more of the masculine, the other with more of the feminine character. Nevertheless, the characteristics of the opposite sex were present in every individual, so that spontaneous generation was possible, though not at all times, for it was dependent upon the influences of external conditions at certain seasons of the year. In diverse matters mankind as a whole depended to a large extent on such external circumstances. For that reason he had to regulate all his undertakings in accordance with such outer conditions; in accordance, for example, with the course of sun and moon. This regulation did not, however, take place consciously, in the present sense of the term, but was carried out in a manner which must rather be called instinctive, a term indicating the mental life of the man of that time.

This mental life cannot be described as an actual inner life. Bodily and mental activities and qualities were not as yet rigidly separated from one another. The outer life of Nature was still experienced by the soul. It was above all on the sense of hearing that every single vibration from without made a powerful impression. Every quiver in the air, every movement in his surroundings was “heard.” The wind and the water expressed in their motions what to man was an “eloquent language.” It was a perception of the mysterious weaving and working in Nature which thus penetrated man. And this weaving and working resounded again in his soul. His activity was an echo of these influences. He transformed the perception of sound into his own activity. He lived amid those surgings of sound, and brought them into expression by means of his own will. In like manner was he impelled to accomplish all his daily work. To a somewhat less degree, indeed, he was affected by the energy playing upon his feelings. Nevertheless these too acted an important part. The surroundings were sensed by him within his own body and he acted accordingly. By the activities of his feelings he knew when and how he ought to work. By these he knew where to settle, or recognised the dangers threatening his life, and so avoided them. He regulated the taking of sustenance accordingly.

Altogether different from that of later times was the course taken by the rest of his mental life. Pictures lived in his soul, but not as representations of external things. When, for example, the man moved from a colder into a warmer place, there arose in his soul a definite colour-picture, but this colour-picture had nothing to do with any external object. It sprang from an inner force akin to the will. Pictures like these continually filled the soul. The whole can only be compared with the rising and falling dream-visions of man. Only at that time the pictures were not unregulated, but in conformity with laws; and for that reason we must not speak, at this stage of humanity, of a dream-consciousness, but rather of a picture-consciousness. In the main it was colour-pictures with which this consciousness was filled, but these were not the only kind. Thus man wandered through the world, experiencing its events by means of his senses of hearing and feeling, but in his inner life this world was reflected in pictures, very unlike those existing in the outer world. Pleasure and pain were bound up with these soul-pictures in a much smaller degree than is the case with man's ideas to-day, which reflect his perceptions in the world outside. Doubtless one picture caused him pleasure, another disgust; the one hatred, and the other love; but these sensations bore a much fainter character. On the other hand strong feelings were produced by something else. Man was then much more agile, much more active than later. Everything in his surroundings, as well as the pictures in his soul, stirred him to activity, to movement. Now when his activity, unhindered, had free play, he experienced a sensation of well-being; when, however, this activity was checked in any direction, he was overcome by unhappiness and discomfort. The absence or presence of opposition to his will determined the content of his life of feeling, his pleasure and his pain. And this pleasure or this pain discharged itself again in his own soul as a living world of pictures. Clear, bright, beautiful pictures lived within him when he was able to expand unhindered; gloomy and misshapen were those which appeared in his soul when his movements were hampered.

So far the average man has been described. In the case of those who had developed into a kind of superhuman state, the inner life was different. With them the soul-life was not of this instinctive character. What they perceived through their senses of hearing and of feeling were Nature's deeper secrets, and these they could consciously interpret. In the roaring of the wind, in the rustling of the trees, the laws and the wisdom of Nature were disclosed; and in their soul-pictures these were not mere reflections of an outer world, but images of the spiritual powers in the world. It was not the things of sense which they perceived, but spiritual intelligences. If the average man, for example, experienced a sensation of fear, a hideous sinister picture would arise in his soul. The superhuman being received by means of such pictures information, revelation from the spiritual beings of the world. The processes of Nature did not appear to him as they do to the naturalist of to-day, dependent on lifeless natural laws, but rather as the deeds of spiritual beings. The outer reality did not as yet exist, for there were no outer senses, but to the higher beings the inner reality revealed itself. The spirit poured its rays into them as the sunlight streams into the physical eye of the man of to-day. In these beings was knowledge in its fullest sense, that which is called intuitive knowledge. There was no such thing as combining and speculating among them, but a direct contemplation of the working of spiritual beings. These superhuman individualities could thus absorb directly, into their wills, communications coming from the spiritual world. Consciously they led the others. They received their mission from the spiritual world and acted in accordance with it.

Now when the time arrived at which the sexes separated, these beings naturally considered it their task to influence the new life in conformity with their mission. The regulation of sexual life originated with them. All arrangements which had to do with the generation of mankind had their source in them. In this they acted with perfect consciousness, but the other human beings were sensible of the impulse only as an instinct implanted in them. Sexual love was implanted in man by direct thought-transference; and all its expressions were at first of the noblest kind. Everything in this domain which has taken on an ugly character dates from a later period, when man had become more independent, and when he had sullied a desire originally pure. In these early times there was no such thing as a satisfaction of sexual desire for its own sake. Everything then was a service of sacrifice for the continuance of human existence. Generation was regarded as a sacred thing, as a service which man owed to the world, and sacrificial priests were the leaders and rulers in this domain.

Of another kind were the influences of the semi-superhuman beings. The latter were not developed to the stage at which they could receive the revelations of the spiritual world in all their purity. In their soul-pictures there arose besides the impressions of the spiritual world the activities also of the world of sense. Those who were in the fullest sense superhuman beings had no sensation of either pleasure or pain from the external world. They abandoned themselves entirely to the revelations of the spiritual powers. Wisdom flowed into them as light flows into the creatures of sense. Their will was directed towards nothing else but to action in accordance with this wisdom, and in action of this kind lay their highest pleasure. Wisdom, Will, and Activity composed their very being. It was otherwise with the semi-superhuman beings. They felt the desire to receive impressions from without, and connected pleasure with the satisfaction of this desire, disappointment with its lack. They were thus distinguishable from the superhuman beings. For the latter, impressions from without were nothing more than confirmation of spiritual revelations. They might behold the outer world and receive nothing more than a reflection of that which they had already received through the spirit. The semi-superhuman beings experienced something new to them, and on that account they were able to be the leaders of mankind, when the latter began to change the mere pictures in the soul into images, into representations of outer objects. This happened when a part of the earlier human generative force turned inwards and when beings possessing a brain were evolved. For with the brain man also developed the capacity to change external sense-impressions into mind-conceptions. It must be said, therefore, that man was impelled by semi-superhuman beings to turn his soul towards the external world of sense. It was, indeed, denied him to expose his own soul-pictures directly to pure spiritual influences. The ability to generate his kind was implanted in him as an instinctive impulse by the superhuman beings. Mentally he would have had to lead a sort of dream-existence at first, had not the semi-superhuman beings interfered. Swayed by them, his soul-pictures were directed to the world outside. He became a being self-conscious in the world of sense. And thus man achieved the ability to guide his actions consciously and according to his perceptions in the world of sense. Once he had acted from a kind of instinct, under the sway of his external surroundings and the energizing forces playing upon him from higher individualities. Now he began to follow the urgings, the allurements, of his own conceptions. And with this the free will of mankind appeared in the world. That was the beginning of “Good and Evil.”

Before advancing further in this direction something must be said about man's environment on the earth. Side by side with man there existed animals as well, which according to their kind were at the same stage of development as he was. In accordance with our present conceptions they would be counted as reptiles. Besides these there were lower forms of the animal world. Now there was an essential difference between man and the animals. On account of his still plastic body, man could only live in those regions of the earth which had not as yet reached the densest material form, and in these regions animals possessing a like plastic body lived with him. In other regions, however, animals lived which had already dense bodies and which had also already developed unisexuality and their sense organs. Whence they came will be shown later. They could develop no farther because their bodies had taken on the denser matter too soon. Some species among them have disappeared, some have developed further after their kind into the present forms. Man was able to reach higher forms because he remained in those regions which at that time suited his structure. On that account his body remained so flexible and soft that he was able to single out of himself those organs which were capable of fructification by the mind. His external body had then advanced so far that it could densify and become a protecting sheath for the finer mental organs. But all human bodies were not so far developed. Those that were so advanced were few. These were first of all vivified by the mind. Others were not vivified. Had the mind entered the latter as well, it would only have been able partially to evolve, because of the imperfect inner organs. And so these human personalities had for the time being to continue their development as a kind of mindless creature. A third kind had proceeded so far that feeble mental impulses could make themselves felt. These stood between the other two kinds. Their mental activity remained dull. They had to be led by higher mental powers. Between these three kinds were all possible grades of transition. Further development was now only possible if one part of mankind should educate itself more highly at the cost of another part. First of all, the absolutely mindless had to be sacrificed. An intermingling with them for the purpose of propagation would only have dragged the more advanced down to their level. And so all who had received the mind principle were singled out from among them. Therefore they fell more and more to the level of animality. Thus, side by side with mankind, animals resembling man evolved themselves further.

Man left, as it were, a portion of his brothers behind him on the path, so that he might himself mount higher. This process was, however, by no means at an end here. Those men also of dull mentality, who stood rather higher, could only advance further by being drawn into association with higher beings and by separating themselves from the less mentally gifted. Only by these means could they develop bodies afterwards suited for the reception of the entire human intelligence. Not until after the lapse of a certain time had physical evolution advanced so far that, in this direction, a sort of pause set in, during which all lying beyond a fixed limit belonged to the human domain. The conditions of life on the earth had meantime so changed that a further rejection would have resulted in the production, not of animal-like beings, but of such as were not even fit to live. But what was thrust down into a state of animality has either died out or lives on in the various higher animals. In such therefore we must recognize creatures which had to remain behind, at an earlier stage of human development. Only they have not retained the same form which they had at the time of their separation, but have degenerated from a higher to a lower type. Thus monkeys are retrograde human beings of a bygone age. Just as man was at one time less perfect than he is to-day, so were these at one time more perfect than at present. And that which remained within the domain of man has undergone a like process, within its own limits. In many a savage tribe we may see the degraded descendants of human forms which were at one time more exalted. These have not sunk to the level of the brute, but only to that of the savage.

That which in man is eternal is the mind. It has been shown at what period the mind entered the body. Before that time the mind belonged to other regions. It could not unite itself with the body till the latter had attained a certain stage of development. Only when there is a perfect comprehension of the way in which this union took place can the meaning of birth and death be understood, or the character of the everlasting mind become known.

The woodland meadow, as in Scene 6. Joseph Keane, Dame Keane, their daughter Bertha; afterwards, Countryfolk, later the Monk; finally Keane's foster-daughter Cecilia and Thomas.

Bertha:
Dear mother, I so long to hear the tale
Cecilia often spake of years ago.
Thou dost know all those fairy-tales to tell
Which father brings back with him from the knights
When he comes home, and which with greatest joy
So many friends are always glad to hear.

Keane:
The soul can find real treasure in those tales.
The gifts which on the spirit they confer
Decay not with the body in the grave,
But bear their fruits in later lives on earth.
Darkly, as through a glass, we glimpse their truth;
And from such darkened sight, our souls can win
Knowledge to serve our needs in daily life.
If only folk could realize the store
Of precious gifts our knights have to bestow
Cecilia and Thomas have, alas,
Deaf ears at present for such things as these;
Since they draw wisdom from another source.

Bertha:
To-day I fain would listen to that tale
Which tells about the Evil and the Good.

Dame Keane:
Right gladly will I tell it thee; attend.
Once on a time there lived a man who spent
Much time in puzzling over cosmic truths.
That which tormented his poor brain the most
Was, how to learn of Evil's origin;
And to that question he could not reply.
The world was made by God, so he would say,
And God can only have in him the Good.
How then doth Evil spring from out the Good?
Time and again he puzzled over this,
But could not find the answer that he sought.
Now it befell that on a certain day
This seeker on his travels passed a tree
That was engaged in converse with an axe.
Unto the tree the axe did speak these words:
‘That which thou canst not do I can achieve,
I can fell thee; but thou canst not fell me.’
Unto the vain axe thus the tree replied:
‘'Twas but a year ago a man did cleave
The very wood of which thine haft is made
Out of my body with another axe.’
And when the man had listened to these words
A thought was straightway born within his soul
Which he could not set clearly down in words,
But which completely answered his demand:
How Evil could originate from Good.

Keane:
Think on this story, daughter, and thou'lt see,
How contemplating nature's mysteries
May form fresh knowledge in a human head.
I know how many things I can make clear
Unto myself by spinning out in thought
The tales by which the knights enlighten us.

Bertha:
I know I am a simple little thing,
Without ability to understand
The learned words which clever people use
In setting forth the science they profess.
I have no taste for matters of that kind.
Whenever Thomas tells us of his work
I nearly fall asleep. But I could spend
Unnumbered hours in listening to the tales
Which father brings back home on his return
From visiting the castle, and wherewith
He often weaves a story of his own
As he recounts them to us hour on hour.

(Exeunt.)

(After an interval, the Country folk come across the meadow.)

First Countryman:
My uncle yesterday came home again.
He dwelt a long time in Bohemia,
And earned an honest living in the mines.
Full many a bit of news he hath to tell
Picked up by him upon his journeyings;
Excitement and unrest are everywhere;
Attacks are made upon the Spirit-Knights.
Our local brotherhood cannot escape;
Already preparations have been made
And ere long will this castle be besieged.

Second Countryman:
I hope 'twill not be long 'ere they attack.
Many amongst us will most certainly
Gladly enlist among the fighting-men;
I mean to be among the first myself.

First Countrywoman:
Thou wilt but hurry headlong to thy doom!
How can a man be such a witless fool!
Hast thou forgot how strongly fortified
The castle is? The battle will be grim.

Second Countrywoman:
It is no business of the countryfolk
To mix with things they do not understand.
Yet there are many hereabouts to-day
Who do naught else but go from place to place
And fan the embers of revolt and strife.
Things have already come to such a pass
That sick folk have to cry in vain for aid.
The good man who in former days was wont
To help so many in sore need, can now
No more pass out beyond the castle gates,
So cruelly have folk belaboured him.

Third Countrywoman:
Of course! For many people were enraged
On hearing from what source the sickness came
That broke out, all at once, among our cows.
The Jew brought this upon them by his spells.
He only seems to make sick people well
In order, by the use of hellish arts,
Better to serve the ends of evil powers.

Third Countryman:
This empty prattle about heresy
Little availed. Truth is, our countryfolk
Had what they needed. Nought else came of it
Save that with dark mysterious sayings they beguiled
The idle hour; till, with cunning skill
A clever judge of human frailty
Devised this silly tale about the Jew,
How he had laid a spell upon our stock—
And then indeed the storm. began to rise.

Fourth Countryman:
I think that every one of you might know
What wars do mean, with all their misery.
Have not our fathers told us all that they
Must needs endure, when all the countryside
Was overrun by bands of soldiery?

Fourth Countrywoman:
I always said that it would come to pass:
Their lordships' rule must shortly fade away.
Already hath a dream revealed to me
How we can be of service to the troops
When they arrive to carry out the siege,
And take good care of all their creature needs.

Fifth Countryman:
If dreams to-day are still to be believed,
That is a matter we need not discuss.
The knights have tried to make us cleverer
Than were our fathers. Now they have to learn
How much our cleverness hath been increased.
Our fathers let them in; in our turn we.
Shall drive them out. I know the secret tracks
That yield an entrance to the fortalice.
I used to work within it until rage,
Drove me away; now will I show the knights
How we can make their science serve our ends.

Fifth Countrywoman:
He surely hath no good thought in his heart;
I trembled as I listened to his words.

Sixth Countryman:
In spirit-vision I have lately seen
A traitor leading hostile soldiery
By secret ways into the castle's keep.

Sixth Countrywoman:
Such visions are destructive, I should say.
No one who thinks as Christians ought to think
But is aware that honesty alone,
Not treason, can from evil set us free.

Sixth Countryman:
I let folk talk, and help as best I can.
How often do we hear a thing called wrong
By those who lack the courage in themselves
To do that very thing. Let's go our ways;
I see the father coming down the road;
We will not interrupt his train of thought.
I found no difficulty up till now
In understanding everything he taught;
But in the sermon which he preached to-day
He said much that one could not understand.

(The Countryfolk go away towards the forest.)

(After an interval the Monk comes along the meadow path.)

Monk:
It must be that a soul is led astray
In striving to pursue her natural course.
The weakness of my heart alone allowed
Such visions to appear before mine eyes
As those which I beheld within those walls.
That they must Show themselves to me in strife
Is proof enough how little yet in me
The psychic forces work in harmony.
Therefore will I address myself anew
To kindle in myself those potent words
Which bring me light from out the Spirit-heights.
That man alone prefers another road,
Whom personal illusions have made blind.
The soul can only triumph over lies
By proving herself worthy of the grace
Which Spirit-light, outpoured from founts of love,
In words of wisdom doth reveal to her.
I know that I shall find the greatest strength
Which can throw light on what the Fathers taught,
When from the gloom of self's imaginings
With lowly heart submissive I can flee.

(Exit.)

(After an interval there appear on the meadow Cecilia and Thomas.)

Cecilia:
Dear brother, when in fervent ecstasy
Of silent prayer my soul did bow herself
Unto the Fountain of the World, and yearn
Whole-heartedly to be made one therewith,
A light before my spirit would appear—
With gentle warmth and radiancy aglow;
This then transformed itself into a man
Who looked into my face with tender eyes,
And spoke to me. These were the vision's words:
‘Human delusion left thee once forlorn,
And now thou art upborne by human love
Wait therefore until longing finds a way
To bring the seeker safely to thy side.’
Thus spake this human figure oft to me
Nor could I fathom what the words might mean;
And yet a dim foreboding made me glad,
That some time they should be fulfilled for me.
And then, beloved brother, thou didst come,
And when I first set eyes upon thy face,
I felt my senses leave me; for thou vast
That human figure's very counterpart.

Thomas:
Dream and foreboding told thee but the truth,
Indeed 'twas longing guided me to thee.

Cecilia:
And when thou didst request me as thy wife
I thought the Spirit had ordained it so.

Thomas:
That in good truth the Spirit's purpose was
To re-unite us, clearly may be seen,
Although we read it not aright at first.
As wife and helpmeet, sent me from above,
So didst thou seem to me, when first we met.
And then my long-lost sister did I find.

Cecilia:
And henceforth nothing shall divide us twain.

Thomas:
Yet many obstacles between us rise.
Thy foster-parents by close ties are bound
Unto the brotherhood which I must spurn.

Cecilia:
They are incarnate love and kindness both;
And loyal friendship will they give to thee.

Thomas:
My creed will separate me from their love.

Cecilia:
Through me you will find out the way to them.

Thomas:
Keane is a kindly man, but he is stubborn;
He never will see aught but darkness there
Where I perceive the very fount of light.
In riper years it was first granted me
To turn my steps toward this light of truth,
Since all I learned of it in childhood's days
Upon my spirit made but little mark;
Whilst later on, my every thought was bent
On scientific knowledge as a means
To gain a livelihood. When I came here
At last I found the teacher and the guide
Who had the power to liberate my soul.
The teaching he path let me listen to
Doth bear the very stamp of truth itself.
Such is his speech that heart and head alike
Must yield themselves as captives to his words,
So full at once of gentleness and good.
I took the greatest trouble heretofore
To understand the other spirit type
And found it could but unto error lead.
Since it clings only to those spirit-powers
Which may be faithful guides in earthly ways
But cannot lift one up to higher worlds.
Row shall I therefore ever find the way
Into the hearts of people who believe
That from this error all salvation springs?

Cecilia:
I hear thy words, dear brother, and they seem
The product of no peaceful frame of mind.
Yet 'tis a peaceful scene of former days
Which they have reawakened in my soul.
'Twas one Good Friday, many years ago,
I saw the scene of which I speak to thee.
It happened that upon that day the man
Who wore my brother's features, said to me:
‘From source divine hath sprung the human soul
It can in death dive down to nature's depths;
In time it will set spirit free from death.’
Not until afterwards was I aware
That these words are the motto of our knights.

Thomas:
Alas! my sister, that thy lips should speak
Those evil words, which our opponents take
As revelation of the highest truth.

Cecilia:
I have at heart no sympathy at all
With outward acts committed by the knights
I truly serve the creed that nourished thee.
But never could I make myself believe
That men who guide the footsteps of the soul
By such instruction toward so high a goal
Walk not themselves the path that Christ hath trod.
The Spirit's pupil am I, staunch and true,
And I confess that it is my belief
That on that day, my brother's spirit strove
To speak of aims that lead the soul to peace.

Thomas:
The powers of destiny have not ordained
Peace for the soul, it seems, for thee and me;
They take our father from us that same hour
That sees him once again restored to us.

Cecilia:
My faculties are clouded o'er with pain
When of our father thus I hear thee speak.
Thy heart would draw thee to his side in love,
And yet thou tremblest at the very thought
Of union with him whilst he is alive.
Thou followest our leader in good faith,
Yet canst not hear the messages of love
Which his commands so tenderly convey.
A dark enigma faceth me; I see
The goodness of thy heart, and thy strong faith,
And yet must shudder at the deep abyss
That yawns so terribly between them.
And did not hope live on to comfort me,
And tell me love is never overcome,
I should lack courage to endure this pain.

Thomas:
Dear sister, thou hast yet to learn the power
Of thought, once it hath gripped a human soul.
This is no case of son opposing sire;
But one thought from another turns away.
Thought is the sovereign whom my soul obeys
Did I refuse her homage I should be
In very truth my spirit's murderer.

Curtain; Thomas and Cecilia still standing in the meadow

(This closes the vision into the fourteenth century. The following is the sequel of the events described in the first five scenes.)

Hilary's office. Fittings not very modern. He is a manufacturer of sawn woodwork.

Secretary:
And e'en our good friends in St. George's Town
Declare that they too are dissatisfied.

Manager:
What? even they; it is deplorable.
The self-same reasons too; 'tis plain to see
With what regret and pain our friends announce
That they can deal no more with Hilary.

Secretary:
Complaints of our unpunctuality
And of the value of our goods compared
With those produced by our competitors
Reach us by post; and on my business trips
Our clients meet me with the same old tale.
The good name of this house is vanishing,
By Hilary's forefathers handed down
To us intact that we might heighten it.
And men begin to think that Hilary
Is swayed by dreamers and strange fantasies,
And, thus obsessed, no longer can bestow
The earnest care which he was wont to give
To all the operations of the firm,
Whose products were world-famous and unique.
So many as were our admirers then,
So great is now the tale of those who blame.

Manager:
It is notorious that Hilary
Long since hath let himself be led astray
By seekers after some strange spirit gifts.
To such pursuits he ever was inclined
But formerly he kept them separate
From business and its workaday routine.

(Enter Hilary.)

(To the Secretary):
It seems advisable for me to speak
Alone with our employer for a while.

(Exit Secretary.)

Anxiety it is that bids me seek
An interview and earnest speech with thee.

Hilary:
Why then does my adviser feel concerned?

Manager:
Things happen constantly which bring to light
A serious diminution in demand
For what we manufacture; nor do we
Produce as large an output as we should.
There is besides an increase of complaints
About the lower standard of our work,
And other houses step in front of us.
So too our well-known promptness kath declined
As many clients truthfully attest.
Ere long the best friends that remain to us
No more will be content with Hilary.

Hilary:
Long have I been full well aware of this
And yet indeed it leaves me unconcerned.
But none the less I feel an urgent need
To talk things over with thee; thou hast helped
Not only as the servant of my house,
But also as my dear and trusted friend.
And so I shall speak plainly to thee now
Of matters at which hitherto I've hinted.
Whoever wills to introduce new things
Must be content to let the old things die.
Henceforth the business will be carried on
In different ways from those it knew before.
Production, that but stays in straitest bounds
And without care doth offer up its fruits
Upon the market of our earthly life
Regardless of the uses they may find,
Doth seem so trivial and of little worth,
Since I have come to know the noble form
Work can assume when shaped by spirit-men.
From this time forth Thomasius shall be
Directing artist in the workshops here,
Which I shall build for him close to our works.
So will the product made by our machines
Be moulded by his will in artist-forms
And thus supply for daily human need
The useful with the exquisite combined;
Art and production shall become one whole,
And daily life by taste be beautified.
So will I add to these dead forms of sense,—
For thus do I regard our output now,—
A soul, whereby they may be justified.

Manager (after long reflection):
The plan to fabricate such wonder-wares
Suits not the spirit of our present age.
The aim of all production now must be
Complete perfection in some narrow groove.
The powers which work impersonally, and pour
The part into the whole in active streams,
Confer unthinkingly upon each link
A worth that is by wisdom not bestowed.
And were this obstacle not in thy path
Yet would thy purpose none the less be vain.
That thou shouldst find a man to realize
The plan thou hast so charmingly conceived
Passeth belief, at least it passeth mine.

Hilary:
Thou knowest, friend, I do not dream vain dreams.
How should I aim at such a lofty goal
Had not kind fate already brought to me
The man to realize what I propose?
I am amazed that thine eyes cannot see
That Strader is, in fact, this very man.
And I who, knowing this man's inner self,
And my own duty to humanity,
Conceive one of my duties to be this;
To find a field of work for such a man,—
A dreamer is no proper name for him.

Manager (surprised):
Am I to look on Strader as this man?
In his case hath it not been manifest
How easily deluded mortals are
Who lack the power to know realities?
That his contrivance owes to spirit-light
Its origin doth not admit of doubt.
And if it can sometime be perfected
Those benefits will doubtless pour therefrom
Which Strader thought he had already won.
But a mere model it will long remain
Seeing those forces are still undisclosed
Whose power alone will give reality.
I am distressed to find that thou dost hope
Good will result from giving up thy plant
Unto a man who came to grief himself
With his own carefully contrived machine.
'Tis true it led his spirit up to heights
Which ever will entice the souls of men,
But which will only then be scaled by him
When he hath made the rightful powers his own.

Hilary:
That thou must praise the spirit of this man
And yet seek'st cause to overthrow his work
Doth prove most clearly that his worth is great.
The fault, thou sayest, did not lie in him,
That failure rather than success was his.
Among us therefore he will surely find
His proper place; for here there will not be
External hindrances to thwart his plans.

Manager:
And if, despite what I have just now said,
I were to strive within myself and try
To tune my reason to thy mode of thought,
Still one more point compels me to object.
Who will in future value this thy work?
Or show such comprehension of thine aims
As to make use of what thou mayst have made?
Thy property will all be swallowed up
Before thy business hath been well begun,
And then it can no more be carried on.

Hilary:
I willingly admit my plans would show
Themselves imperfect, if amongst mankind
True comprehension were not first aroused
For this new kind and style of handicraft.
What Strader and Thomasius create
Must be perfected in the Sanctuary
Which I shall build for spirit knowledge here.
What Benedictus, what Capesius
And what Maria yonder shall impart
Will show to man the path that he should tread
And make him feel the need to penetrate
His human senses with the spirit's light.

Manager:
And so thou wouldst endow a little clique
To live self-centred, from the world apart,
And shut thyself from all true human life.
Thou fain wouldst banish selfishness on earth
Yet wilt thou cherish it in thy retreat.

Hilary:
A dreamer, it would seem, thou thinkest me,
Who thoughtlessly denies experience
That life hath brought him. Thus should I appear
Unto myself if, for one moment's space,
I held this view thou hast about success.
The cause that I hold dear may fail indeed,
Yet even if, despised by all mankind
It crumbles into dust and disappears,
Yet was it once conceived by human souls
And set up as a pattern on this earth.
In spirit it will work its way in life
Although it stay not in the world of sense.
It will contribute part of that great power
Which in the end will make it come to pass
That earthly deeds are wed to spirit aims;
This in the spirit-wisdom is foretold.

Manager:
I am thy servant and have had my say
As duty and conviction bade me speak;
Yet now the attitude thou hast assumed
Gives me the right to speak as friend to friend.
In work together with thee I have felt
Myself impelled for many a year to seek
A personal knowledge of the things to which
Thou giv'st thyself with such self-sacrifice;
My only guides have been the written words
Wherein the spirit-wisdom is revealed.—
And though the worlds are hidden from my gaze
To which those writings had directed me,
Yet in imagination I can feel
The mental state of men whose simple trust
Leads them to seek such spirit-verities.
I have found confirmation in myself
Of what the experts in this lore describe,
As being the possession of such souls
As feel themselves at home in spirit realms.
The all-important thing, it seems to me,
Is that such souls, despite their utmost care,
Cannot divide illusions from the Truth
When they come down from out the spirit heights
As come they must, back into earthly life.
Then from the spirit world, so newly won,
Visions descend upon them which prevent
Their seeing clearly in the world of sense,
And, thus misled, their judgment goes astray
In things pertaining to this life on earth.

Hilary:
What thou wouldst raise as hindrance to my work
Doth but confirm my purpose; thou hast proved
That in thyself I now have one friend more
To stand beside me in my search for truth.
How could I have conjectured up till now
Thy knowledge of the nature of those souls
Who fain would come and join me in my task?
Thou know'st. the perils ever threat'ning them,
So will their actions make it clear to thee
That they know paths where they are kept from harm.
Soon thou wilt doubtless know that this is so,
And I shall find henceforth as in the past
In thee a counsellor, who doth not fail.

Manager:
I cannot lend my strength to fashion deeds
Whose processes I do not understand.
Those men whom thou didst trust still seem to me
Misled by the illusion I have named:
And others too, who listen to their words,
Will victims to that same illusion fall
Which doth o'erpower all thought that knows its goal.
My help and counsel evermore shall be
Thine to command as long as thou dost need
Acts based upon experience on earth;
But this new work of thine is not for me.

Hilary:
By thy refusal thou dost jeopardize
A work designed to further spirit-aims.
For I am hampered lacking thine advice.
Consider how imperious is the call
Of duty when fate designs to make a sign,
And such a sign I cannot but behold
In these men being here at our behest.

Manager:
The longer thou dost speak in such a strain
More clearly dost thou prove thyself to me,
The unconscious victim of illusion's spell.
Thy purpose is to serve humanity,
But in reality thou wilt but serve
The group which, backed by thee, will have the means
To carry on awhile its spirit-dream.
Soon shall we here behold activities
Ordained no doubt by spirit for these souls,
But which will prove a mirage to ourselves
And must destroy the harvest of our work.

Hilary:
If thou wilt not befriend me with thine aid
Drear doth the future stretch before my soul.

(Enter Strader, left.)

Dear Strader, I have long expected thee.
As things are now it seems advisable
To spend the present time in serious talk
And later on, decide what we shall do.
My dear old friend kath just confessed to me
That he can not approve what we have planned.
So let us now hear counsel from the man
Who promises his spirit to our work.
Much now depends upon how at this time
Men recognize each other in their souls,
Who each to each seem like a separate world
And yet united could accomplish much.

Strader:
And so the loyal friend of Hilary
Will not join with us in the hopeful work
Which our friend's wisdom bath made possible?
Yet can our plan alone be carried out
If his proved skill in life be wisely joined
In compact with the aims of future days.

Manager:
Not only will I hold myself aloof,
But I would also make clear to my friend,
That this design kath neither aim nor sense.

Strader:
I do not wonder thou should'st hold that view
Of any plan in which I am concerned.
I saw a great inception come to grief
Because to realise this true discovery
The fuller forces still are hid to-day.
'Tis known I drew from spirit-light the thought,
Which, though proved true, yet had no life on earth.
This fact doth witness 'gainst my power to judge
And also kills belief that spirit hides
The source of true creation on the earth.
And 'twill be very difficult to prove
That such experience bath giv'n me power
Not to fall victim for the second time.
I had to err this once that now I might
With greater safety reach the land of truth.
Yet 'tis but natural men should doubt my word.
Thy spirit outlook most especially
Must find our wisdom promise little gain.
I hear thee praised for that keen sympathy
Which goes out from thee to all spirit-life,
And for the time and strength thou givest it.
But it is also said that thou wouldst keep
Thy work on earth severely separate
From spirit-striving, which with its own powers
Would work creatively in thy soul-life.
To this pursuit thou wouldst devote alone
Those hours which earthly labour doth not claim.
The aim, however, of the spirit-tide
Where I see clear life's evolution writ,
Is to join spirit-work for spirit-ends
To earthly labours in the world of sense.

Manager:
So long as spirit but to spirit gives
All it can do in free creative might,
It raiseth souls in human dignity
And gives them reason in their life on earth.
But when it seeks to live out its own self
And over others' selves to domineer
It straightway Both draw nigh the realm in which
Illusion often can endanger truth.
This knowledge unto which I have attained
By personal effort in the spirit lore
Doth make me act as I do act to-day;
It is not personal preference, as thou
Misled by what is said of me, wouldst think.

Strader:
An error 'tis in spirit-knowledge then
That makes thee hostile to the views I hold.
Through this will difficulties multiply.
No doubt 'tis easy for the spirit-seer
To work in partnership with other men
Who have already let themselves be taught
By life and nature what existence means.
But when ideas which claim that they do spring
From spirit sources join reluctantly
With others flowing from the self-same source,
One can but seldom hope for harmony.

(After a period of quiet meditation.)

Yet that which must will surely come to pass.
Renewed examination of my plans ...
Perhaps may make thee change the views, to which
On first consideration thou dost cling.

Curtain whilst all three are sunk in reflection

Following on from the reflections of the Fifth Gospel, today we want to lead our soul to the effectiveness of the Christ-Spirit on human development, as it took place in the spiritual worlds before the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must remember the fact of the two Jesus-children: the Solomon-like child, in whom the Zarathustra-ego lived, and the Nathan-like child. We must look at the Nathan-like child and ask ourselves: what kind of being was this child, in whom the Zarathustra-ego later lived?

To understand this being, we must go far back in the evolution of the earth and of man. This being, which was active in the Nathanic Jesus-child, had entered into physical embodiment for the first time in Jesus of Bethlehem. Before that it had taken part in the evolution of mankind from the spiritual world, but had never lived in a physical human body. It had lived through the times when the human shells were created, lived through the Saturn period, in which the germ of the physical body was laid, the sun and moon period, when the etheric and astral bodies were formed, and also lived through the smaller stages that repeated the great periods of time. But when the human ego descended into the three sheaths in the Lemurian period, this being had remained in the spiritual worlds as it were as a part of the divine human being and had not taken part in the development of the ego in the three sheaths and its seduction through the Luciferic-Ahrimanic influence. This part of the divine human being, this spiritual being, which remained in the spiritual worlds, descended into a physical body for the first time as the Nathanian boy Jesus in order to allow the Christ to permeate it. The baptism of St. John represents the permeation of Jesus by the Christ-Spirit.

But this was not the first time that it had allowed itself to be permeated by the Christ. While it lived as a spiritual being in the spiritual worlds, it had already been able to allow itself to be permeated repeatedly by the Spirit of the Sun. In preparation for the Christ event in the physical body, something similar had taken place beforehand in the spiritual worlds and had an effect on human evolution.

Let us look back to the Lemurian period when man united with his sheaths, and let us see how the human being would have formed if only the cosmic forces with which he was then in contact had had an effect on man. At that time, the twelve cosmic forces that act on man threatened to be thrown into disorder by demonic beings. As a result, man would have had to develop quite differently from what he has become today. The senses of man, which were developing at that time, would have become overly sensitive under the effect of the forces that were about to fall into disorder. Today, man is able to perceive light and all other perceptions calmly. Under the effect of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic impact, the life of the senses would have had to trigger the strongest desires and impulses. If, for example, the human being had seen a red color – and this is how the sun's rays would have had to have worked – the desiring soul would have had to flee in burning pain, and upon perceiving blue, it would have had to overcome itself in agony, consumed by itself. The soul would have had to suffer terribly with every sensory perception, hunted by animal lust and desire for scorching pain and agony.

Then the tortured humanity's cry of pain reached the spiritual being. It drove it to the sun spirit, so that it could be imbued by the Christ. In this way the inner strength of the sense perception was mitigated, and the being was able to resist the strongest temptation of Lucifer and Ahriman. By moderating the excessive effect of the forces on the senses, it transformed the life of perception into a moderate passive one.

And let us go further back into Atlantean times. A new danger loomed over people: the Luciferic-Ahrimanic influence threatened the functions and organs of human life. If, for example, a dish had been placed before a person, animal greed would have awakened to devour it. His soul would have been entirely greed. Breathing, inhaling and exhaling, would have been particularly sensitive. Bad air would have filled the human being with shuddering disgust. Everything related to the functions of nutrition and life triggered a tremendous agitation of sympathy and antipathy, driving the soul from devouring greed to repulsive disgust.

And again it was that spiritual being that averted this danger for man. A second time it allowed itself to be permeated with the Christ-spirit and thereby saved the life forces of man, which would otherwise have been thrown into disarray.

And at the end of the Atlantean era, a third danger arose for man through the Luciferic-Ahrimanic influence. There was a threat that the human soul forces, thinking, feeling and willing, would fall into disorder, into disharmony with each other, that the three forces could no longer resonate properly together in the human soul. Glowing with passion, man would have followed every impulse, or, filled with fear and hatred, would have fled, without reason being able to regulate the forces. How did the spiritual being bring help? The spiritual being had to submerge itself in the human soul, which was filled with passion, had to become passion itself, had to become a dragon, in order to transform the soul forces and to allow the Christ-spirit to shine through a third time.

We find this spiritual event mirrored in the myths of all peoples, in the myth of Saint George, the archangel Michael, conquering the dragon. In the post-Atlantean cultures we see a consciousness alive of the Christ's influence in the spiritual worlds on the process of becoming human through that spiritual being. In the Zarathustra cult, we encounter the high sun-being, and like an image of this, the service of Apollo appears in Greek consciousness. The temple of Apollo stands at the Castalian Spring, and it is to this that the Greeks, well prepared, journey to seek Apollo's counsel. Python, who rests over the vapors that rise from the crevice and entwine Mount Parnassus like a snake, is defeated by Apollo, and in his place stands the priestess Pythia, through whose mouth Apollo reveals his wisdom to the Greeks. From spring to fall, Apollo dwells in his place, then he moves north to the land of the Hyperboreans. Apollo must move north as the spirit of the sun, while the physical sun moves south. And we find Apollo associated with music, the playing of the lyre. It represents the expression of the harmony of the three human soul powers. And it is said of a famous man with ears that were too large, King Midas, that Apollo caused him to grow the ears of an ass as punishment for his having decided the musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas in favor of Apollo, because he preferred Marsyas's flute to Apollo's playing of the strings.

Three times, therefore, before the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, the Christ had connected himself with humanity from the spiritual worlds, by threefold penetration of that spirit being who was later to become the Nathanian Jesus-child : first, to regulate the senses in the Lemurian period; secondly, to regulate the life forces at the beginning of the Atlantean period; thirdly, to regulate the soul forces at the end of the Atlantean period. Only then did the Mystery of Golgotha take place for the fourth time, in order to regulate the I in its relationship to the world.

The danger for the human ego, into which it was led by the temptations of Lucifer and Ahriman, was sensed in the Egyptian priestly centers in the Greco-Latin period. They sensed the approach of the ego and sought to wrestle with the forces that sought to bring it into disorder. In many places in the temples, the following ceremonies were observed, often repeated: the priest formed a hideous, shapeless creature, a crocodile, spat on it, threw it to the ground and burned it. Other priests told the people: Re, the sun god, moves in the sky from east to west. In the west, he grows pale and falls, because he has to fight demonic beings.

The powers of the self were felt to be pushed out. It comes to us in two forms. We see the appearance of Sibylline activity in the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. in all the southern European countries. In this activity there lived that which showed that the I can develop. But the Sibylline element was connected with the elemental powers of the earth, which work in the subconscious of the soul and force their way out in a passionate way. The prophecy of the Jewish people is contrasted with this sibylline being. The prophets want to repress all sibylline nature in their souls and only listen to the revelation that opens up to the powers of the ego, which are conscious. Michelangelo depicts the prophets in contemplative absorption and, in contrast to them, the sibyls associated with the elemental forces of the earth, with wind, fire and air.

Without the Mystery of Golgotha, the Sibylline element would have triumphed over the conscious powers of the I, would have pushed the I forces back. The I would have been lost to the evolution of mankind. We see the Christ impulse at work in the course of humanity as a force, even without human consciousness having taken it up, as a force that shapes cultures, that shapes the history of the European peoples, that determines the shaping of Europe. October 28, 312 AD is the defeat of Maxentius by Constantine. Maxentius consults the Sibyls and is given the answer: “If you march with your army outside the gates of Rome, you will defeat Rome's greatest enemy.” Maxentius then has a dream, and he follows the Sibylline oracle and dream. He marches outside Rome, against all reason, the advice and all the plans of his generals. Constantine also dreams: He sees himself carrying the banner of Christ and conquering his opponent, who is four times stronger than he is. Contrary to all human reason, the battle takes place, and Constantine wins, carrying the cross in front of his army.

We can present the historical course of humanity from 800 BC to the present day. In the centuries before Christ, we see the profound Greek wisdom rising to its highest point. In it, humanity consumes the last inherited powers of the gods. Then, at point zero, the Mystery of Golgotha enters and has an effect on humanity. In the time after the Mystery of Golgotha, the stimulating forces of the Christ Impulse worked in various ways, emanating from different planes of the spiritual worlds.

To summarize, we can first grasp the time of the first eight centuries after Christ. We saw how human reason fails in the face of the Christ impulse (gnosis), but how it is effective as a fact in human events (Maxentius and Constantine). In the first eight centuries, the power from the highest spiritual worlds, from the upper Devachan, was at work. We see a transition, a conclusion of this period in the work of Scotus Erigena around 850. In his system of thought, the Christ impulse still works like a force wave from the highest spiritual world into the physical one.

Then, from 800 to 1600, the impulse from the lower Devachan into the physical world takes effect. People seek to bring the Christ impulse home to their souls through various forms of belief. But thought proves to be unsuitable and the efforts fruitless. Neither the Crusades nor the attempts to prove the existence of God can establish an inwardly living connection.

At the transition to the next epoch stands the Maid of Orleans. The impulses of Christ were revealed to her soul from the spiritual worlds, in whose name she intervenes in the shaping of human history.

The power that asserts itself in man directly from the higher spiritual realms is increasingly being lost. The forces are growing ever weaker; from 1600 to the present day, the impulse has only worked from the astral world, the soul world. That is why theology is becoming more and more erudite and abstract. In place of the cosmic divine being, the Christ, it sets the “simple man from Nazareth.” Yet our time would have been much more advanced in materialism, much more imbued with the anti-Christian moment, had it not been for the special way in which the forces of the Christ, working in from the astral world, asserted themselves: In the 15th and 16th centuries, strange stories emerged everywhere and spread throughout the whole of Western Europe. In the most diverse places, in all countries of Europe, men appeared with calloused feet, wearing poor clothing, and with long flowing hair, and told of how they had been present at the Mystery of Golgotha, and had seen the Christ walking on earth. But when He passed by their house, they had not shown Him reverence, and had insulted Him. That is why, from that time on, they have had to wander ceaselessly, without rest or respite, telling, as penance, what they once experienced. (Eternal Jew.) They told all this as if from memory. They were welcomed everywhere, received by bishops and prelates. They lived in a glimpse of the Akasha Chronicle and could not but live their whole life in this way and bear witness to the Christ event. Their other consciousness was clouded, but through the impulses from the astral world they could arrive at this vision. In this way people were saved from the encroachment of antichristianity, saved from the worst materialism.

Then, from 2400 onwards, the epoch will come when the forces for understanding Christ will come from the earth alone, when the Christ will work on people from the physical plane. But the harbingers of what will be essential after 2400 are already reaching into our time: the Christ will reveal Himself on the physical plane in an ethereal form. Thus we see eight hundred years of history unrolling in connection with impulses from the spiritual worlds. In my book “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen des 19. Jahrhunderts” (World and Life Views of the 19th Century), as expanded in the new edition as “Die Rätsel der Philosophie” (The Riddles of Philosophy), one can follow the development of human consciousness in the same periodic steps.

The history of human thought shows us that, if the forces necessary for the future understanding of Christ are to be present, thought itself must take on a different form, and thinking activity must undergo a transformation. Today we see that the life of thought is placed between two points of view, and man suffers from this “being squeezed in between” and cannot find the transition from one point of view to the other. On the one hand, there is Haeckel, who, accepting only outer perception, has created a picture of the world that cannot, however, recognize the reality of thought. And on the other side stands Fichte, who, starting from thought as a spiritual reality - the weaving and living of thought in truth is the active spirit - builds up a world picture of thought, but cannot recognize time as reality. What thought needs is to be allowed to become living reality.

It is important to bring thoughts to life, just as a plant seed is brought to life. Seeds can be sown, harvested and then used for food. In doing so, they stray from their true purpose, which is to sprout new plants from the seed. Thus, man has collected the seeds of thought in the barns of natural science and philosophy, heaped them up and allowed them to dry out. The seed of a plant must, by its very nature, be sunk into the environment that gives it life if it is to sprout anew. So it is important to sink Hegel's seeds of thought into the soil of spiritual science, where they can grow into fruitful life, into the spiritual faculties of imagination, inspiration and intuition. In place of the categorical imperative, the I will activate the “moral imagination” out of the power of awakened thinking. But then it will also be possible to understand the coming Christ impulse out of the forces of the earth. This is the connection between the world of thought in the “Philosophy of Freedom” and the higher powers of knowledge that arise in our soul, through the paths that spiritual science points out.

In harmony with the coming Christ event, I had to speak to you today about the vitalization of thinking for future spiritual knowledge.

Yesterday we endeavored to explain man's being in so far as the three bodies and the nucleus of his being are concerned. Let us now consider man's ascent into the supersensible worlds. For this purpose we must cast a glance into what we call the three worlds and only when we have described the characteristics of these three worlds will it be possible to discuss the nature of the other members of man's being.

The first world is the physical world which we perceive through our senses: it is the one which man inhabits. We then have a second world, the astral world, and the third one, the spiritual world or Devachan. Deva means God in Chan means field or habitation. Devachan therefore means the spirit of God. In so far as man is a spiritual being, he participates in the spiritual world. The physical world need not be described, for it is clearly known to everybody. I will try to speak of the astral and devachanic worlds by keeping as far as possible to the descriptive form.

The first thing which we should bear in mind is that the outer worlds are not to be found in other places, but we are surrounded by them the same way in which we are surrounded by the physical world and they permeate the physical world. After death, man consequently does not travel to other places, but he simply changes his way of looking at things, his consciousness changes. When we die or become initiated, the same thing happens as in the case of a blind-person who suddenly acquires the power of sight; he too will not be transferred into another world, but he simply acquired a new sense. After death, we are not surrounded by a new, completely different world, but the senses for the perception of the physical world are eliminated and we perceive instead things which escaped our notice before, which had remained concealed to us until then.

Let us now consider the astral world: It is the world in which we live every night and to begin with also after death. If we no longer open our senses to the physical world, the senses of the astral world disclose themselves. When we become clairvoyant, we first live in the astral world and perceive what has been described as the etheric body and the astral body.

The astral world greatly differs from the physical world. Those who enter it, face a confusing mass of phenomena. What they first perceive, is so different from what they were used to seeing, that they must first grow accustomed to the sight. They will read things wrongly if they begin to read them as in the physical world. For in the astral world everything appears as a mirrored picture, upside down, or in the reverse order. In the astral world the number 365 would be 563. Especially in the beginning, this is very confusing. In the physical world, when dealing with circumstances connected with time, we reckon everything from the beginning to the end. In the astral world it is the very opposite. In the astral world, a human life, for example, is not traced from birth to death, but from the last moment of life backwards. Here in the physical world first see the egg and then the chicken that slips out of it; but in the astral world we first see the chicken and then the egg.

The most important thing to be borne in mind is however that in the astral world all the images of our moral qualities, such as pleasure and displeasure, pain and joy, hatred and love, appear as if they were rushing towards us. A clairvoyant sees as if they were rushing towards him. To an unexperienced person this is very confusing. He may see all kinds of animal-forms, even terrible human forms, and so forth, rushing towards him. There are people who tell us of such experiences. They are really to be pitied, when through some illness they attain such an abnormal vision of the astral world. But when we begin to meditate in a serious way, when we school ourselves, then the clairvoyant power develops in a normal, regular way, and then we know what is taking place in the astral world. But when people obtain an abnormal, irregular vision of the astral world through some illness of the brain or some other cause, they perceive terrible shapes rushing towards them and throwing themselves upon them. In reality these shapes are their own passions which go out from them and appear as a reflected mirror-image in the astral world. Then everything appears to be rushing towards them, because in the astral world everything is reversed and they cannot read its phenomena. Everything appears in the form of pictures and images. A bursting rage, for example, may appear in the form of a tiger that attacks them. This is how all these wild shape should be explained. Every lust, every passion, becomes a demon. And an untrained person is unable to cope with them and thinks that they are illusions, fantasies. Yet this is not true, for what he sees, is an image, a mirrored picture.

Why must some people pass through such experiences to-day? The cause for this must be sought in our materialistic age. Let us look back into the 13th or 14th century and picture to ourselves a German town of that time. There everything was formed out of the sense of beauty of that time. Each house, each lock, each key had its own characteristic quality: everything had its special character and was formed with love. Those who formed these objects were inspired by a feeling which still exercises an influence upon us even to-day. In the present time it is quite different. In a modern city the things we see no longer appeal to our feeling, nothing touches us; at the most the things in shop-windows, for example books, etc. may attract our attention. Nothing sacred, nothing having a religious character is now spread out before us in the external world. In the past, there were few books, but in those few books one could find something for the soul. But think of all the things that people read to-day: sensational things which excite the senses. ...

Although the soul no longer receives anything from outside, it nevertheless bears deep within it the yearning for religious things; this feeling lies deeply buried within it. Of course, this does not imply that we should long for the things which existed in the Middle Ages! The religious yearning may suddenly break out in people who no longer hear anything of the higher worlds, so that it appears as a religious passion in a mirrored picture, as indicated above. For everything which exists in the physical world as a so-called true reality, appears in the astral world in the form of a picture. In the astral world you do not perceive pain or joy in an immediate, direct way, but pain is perceived as a shape in dark colors, whereas joy appears as a kind shape in a light yellow color. Little by little you will have learnt to understand these images. There is nothing arbitrary or uncertain, for he was perceive that pain or joy of a certain kind always appears as pictures of certain time. The pupil therefore gradually learns to read on the astral plane and he learns to recognize the different pictures. Lightly-colored pictures always indicate something connected with the sympathetic side of life wereas darkly colored pictures always indicate things connected with the antipathetic side. Essential thing in the astral world is imaginative vision. Goethe, who undoubtedly had the astral power of vision very beautifully characterizes this quality of the astral world at the end of his “Faust”: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis”. (Everything transient is but a symbol.)

But the astral world does not only contain the mirrored pictures of the physical world; it also contains beings that we can never learn to know on the physical plane. Man's spirit descended as far as the physical world and clothed itself, so to speak, in flesh. But on the astral plane we also come across Beings that never clothed themselves in flesh. They continually hover to and fro among physical shapes, but they remain invisible to the ordinary power vision. But they are not inventions nor fairy-tale characters: Anyone who can look into the astral world may perceive them.

There are other beings besides, that surround man: namely his own thoughts. Just imagine the influence of a thought. For example, we first have in our soul the thought: “This man is a bad fellow.” In the astral world this thought takes on shape; each thought that goes out from us, takes on shape in the astral world. Upon the astral plane, thoughts are realities. Each thought which we set into the world takes on astral substance, even as the child in the mother's womb takes on physical substance. Whenever we have a thought, it clothes itself with natural substance and condenses itself into certain forms. There are Beings to whom man's thoughts offer a welcome occasion to incarnate themselves, to form themselves an astral body; these Beings have a real lust to materialize themselves astrally.

This important fact indicates our responsibility in life. Imagine a room where men sit around enjoying their evening-pint of beer or wine. What are their thoughts? They talk for the sake of talking, thoughts are quite worthless. For a clairvoyant, such a room is afterwards very strangely populated. The enjoyment of talking for the sake of gossiping, talk which is not born out of the intention of transmitting noble thoughts to others, affords certain very evil Beings occasion to incorporate themselves, and these Beings then do all manner of horrible things, just because they incorporate in such great numbers.

In occultism we say: Upon the physical plane a lie is a lie, but upon the astral plane it is a murder. Matters namely stand as follows: Whenever you relate something, you produced the corresponding thought-form; but also the fact which you relate rays out a thought-form. If your thought-form corresponds with it and agrees with it, then the two forms flow together upon the astral plane and strengthen each other. You thus strengthen the life of the being you are talking about. But in the case of an untruth the thought-form streaming out of your words does not correspond with that which goes out from the thing itself; the forms collide and destroy each other. An untruth, a lie, does have a life-destroying, killing effect on them. To speak of morality in the occult meaning, does not mean to preach morality, but to establish it by facts pertaining to the higher worlds. Schopenhauer rightly said: It is easy to preach morals, but is difficult to establish morals.

Man has a short sojourn in the astral world when he is asleep. What takes place with him when he is asleep? His physical and etheric body remain upon the bed, while his astral body and his Ego go out. A clairvoyant sees that at night the astral body is very active. During the day, man consumes his physical forces in work, etc. He grows tired, his forces must be restored. This is the work done by the astral body during the night. But what does he do during the day? He perceives the physical world. When he is asleep, the astral body goes out of the etheric and physical body and then we see and hear nothing—for we have perceptions through the astral body. Our eyes and ears, all our sense-organs, are merely instruments used by the astral body when it has perceptions. The astral body transforms all the vibrations of the air, etc. into sensations of sound. But in the night the astral body no longer needs to do this work; it can then produce new forces for the physical body and above all for the etheric body. In order to do this work of restoring the balance, it must go out of physical body. When we dream a lot, this work is so to speak, interrupted. Restless dreams are therefore bad for our health.

What changes take place in person during sleep when he gradually becomes clairvoyant? The night changes completely for such a person. Ordinary people lose consciousness when they fall asleep and regain it when they wake up; but they are unable to perceive what takes place astrally, because they do not have the organs enabling them to see this. But for a clairvoyant, the night is quite different. He does not lose consciousness like ordinary people. An untrained person experiences the astral world chaotically, in the form of dreams. But a trained person sees the astral world in regular forms. At first these will be transient realities surging up and down, but arising in a regular way.

Let us suppose a person falls asleep and sees a reddish-brown shape rising up before him, with a human face, but a distorted one, which gradually begins to resemble that of a friend. The dreamer wakes up and asks himself? What can this mean?—My friend—he thinks—is in New York, and he looks upon his draem as an illusion. After a time, he hears that his friend has been in great danger, that he passed unscathed through some accident. He investigates matters and discovers that the impression that night came at the very moment when his friend was in danger. This event had stood before his soul in the form of a picture.

Such experiences mark the beginning of clairvoyance; the regular forms that become more and more frequent and this new world takes on a more and more definite shape. To a clairvoyant a man's inner life is not concealed. When you acquire clairvoyance, you can see a person's aura, the image of his soul-life, which hovers around him. The souls of men lie open before your eyes. Even as you see the complexion and the hand of a person, you then see before you the pictures of his soul-life.

So far, I only spoke of pictures, of images. Do only images surge up and down? Is the astral world dumb? Indeed, at first it is dumb for the clairvoyant. The astral world is to begin with, silent. The time comes when these pictures begin to resound; voices from the spiritual world can be heard. Pythagoras spoke of the music of the spheres; this was not a fantastic invention, for the orbit of a star becomes a sound to a clairvoyant. Goethe also knew this. In “Faust” he says:

“Die Sonne ton't nach alter Weiss
in Bruders, haren Wettgesang,
und ihre vergescriebne Reise
vollendst sie mit Donnergang ...”

The sun resounds according to an old measure (or: in an accustomed way)
In the singing-match of the brother-spheres,
and its prescribed journey
it ends with thunder-step ,,,

and further

“Tönend wird für Geistesahren
schon der neue Tag geboren ...”

“To spiritual ears is born
resounding the new day ...”

Of course, learned men say that Goethe meant this symbolically. But after a certain development, the clairvoyant begins to hear sounds. Goethe spoke of the Sun's spiritual being. And when the men of ancient times designated the stars, the names which they gave them were intended for the Spirits of the Planets. The sun that we see, is but the physical body of the sun and Goethe knew quite well that there exists a Spirit of the Sun.

When a clairvoyant hears sounds after certain time, he is later on able to hear the “Inner Word”. The gift of hearing the “Inner Word” is called Inspiration, even as the gift of perceiving images in the Astral world is called Imagination. Imagination therefore enables one to see, whereas Inspiration enables one to hear. When Jakob Böhme and Paracelsus spoke of Imagination, they meant this gift.

In this meeting we can also say that the religious documents are inspired. Those who wrote them were inspired, that is to say, they were initiates who possessed the Inner Word. When a person develops the power of vision, the astral world opens out to him; the inner power of hearing discloses the Devachanic world, the spiritual world.