The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the last lecture I spoke to you of the way in which man is subject during his life to that which, from the natural scientific point of view, we are accustomed to call heredity. I spoke further of how man is subject to the influences of the outer world, to adaptation to environment; how everything which is bound up with heredity is connected with the Ahrimanic sphere, while that which, in the widest sense, is comprised in adaptation to the external world is connected with the Luciferic realm. I told you also how in the cosmos, i.e., within the spiritual substance which lies at the foundation of the cosmos care has been taken that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences should play their part in the right way in human life. We shall add certain things today to what has been said, keeping in mind, at the same time what was explained in the first of these lectures.

We have seen how memory, everything in the nature of memory, fashions man within as regards the soul. In reality, far more than we think we are fashioned as soul-beings by our memories. The way in which our experiences have become memories has really fashioned our souls; we are a result of our memory-life more than we think, and he who can exercise even a little self-observation, so far as to enter into the life of memory will see what a great part the impressions of childhood play throughout the entire earthly life. The manner in which our childhood was spent, which indeed plays no great part in conscious life, the time, for instance, during which we learned to speak and walk, during which we received our first, the inherited teeth, the impressions received during all these periods of development play a great part in the human soul-life throughout the entire life on earth. Many things which rise up inwardly as thoughts which are connected with memories—and everything we grasp in thought that is not caused by external impressions is connected with memories—everything which arises in this way making us inwardly joyful or causing us inner pain (these are generally delicate shades of pleasure and pain which accompany our thoughts when they arise freely) all the life of memory within us is carried out by our astral body when we pass over into the condition of sleep. If now with Imaginative vision we can behold man in sleep as a psychic spiritual being the matter presents itself in the following way. Picture to yourselves during sleep the etheric and physical bodies remaining within the human skin while the astral body is outside (the ego we will consider later). We can then observe the astral body, really consisting in memories. We can also see how these memories which live in the astral body outside of man whirl around in and out of each other. Experiences which lie far asunder in time and in regard to space also are brought together, while some things are left out of certain experiences altogether. In this way the whole memory-life is transformed during sleep. If man dreams it is just because this transformed life of memory appears before his consciousness, and in the constitution of the dream he can inwardly perceive that whirling in and out, inwardly perceive that which, observed from outside can be seen by Imaginative clairvoyance.

But something else presents itself; that which from falling asleep until waking up figures in this way as memories, that which forms the chief content of the human astral soul-life unites during sleep with the forces which lie behind the phenomena of nature. We can therefore say: All that lives as astral body in these memories forms a union with the forces that lie behind the minerals, actually in the inner being of the minerals, in the inner being of the plant forces, and the forces which lie behind the clouds, and so on.

To one who can perceive this truth it is really terrible, I must say, when people say that behind the phenomena of nature there are only material atoms. Not with material atoms do our memories unite during sleep, but with that which really lies behind the phenomena of nature, with the spiritually active forces. It is with these that our memories unite during sleep. Our memories rest in them during sleep.

Thus we can really say: During sleep our soul with its memories dives down into the inner being of nature, and you are saying nothing untrue, nothing unreal if you utter the following: “When I fall asleep I consign my memories to the powers which rule spiritually in the crystal, in plants, in all the phenomena of nature.” You may go for a walk and see by the wayside yellow flowers, blue flowers, green grass and shining promising ears of corn and you can say: “When I pass you by in the daytime I see you from outside, but when I sleep I sink my memories into your spiritual being. You take up what I have transformed during life from experiences into memories. You take up these memories of mine when I go to sleep.” It is perhaps the most beautiful of all feeling for nature to have with the rose-bush not only an external relationship but to be able also to say: “I love the rose-bush especially because the rose-bush has this peculiarity (bear in mind that space plays no part in these things; no matter how far the rose may be removed from us in space we find our way to it in sleep)—the rose-bush has this peculiarity, that it receives the earliest memories of our childhood.” That is the reason why people love roses so much, only they are not aware of it; but they love roses because they are the recipients of the very first memories of childhood.

When we were children other people loved us and often made us smile. We have forgotten it but it forms part of our life of feeling; and the rose-bush absorbs into its own being while we are asleep at night the memories which we have ourselves forgotten. Man is far more united than he realizes with the outer world of nature, that is, with the spirit which rules in the external world. These memories of the first years of childhood are especially remarkable with reference to human sleep, because in reality, during those years and during the years extending to the change of teeth—that means to about the seventh year of life—the soul-element alone is taken up during sleep. As regards human beings it is the case that the spiritual inner part of nature takes into itself of our childhood only the soul part. Other things also of course hold good. The soul-element which we develop during our early childhood (for instance if we were childishly cruel) remains also in us but this is taken up by the thistle. This is said by way of comparison, but nevertheless it actually points to a significant reality. That which is not taken up from the child into the inner part of nature will be immediately evident from what follows.

In the first seven years of life everything has been inherited that is of a bodily nature. The first teeth are entirely inherited; everything of a material nature which we have within us in the first seven years of life is essentially inherited. But after about seven years all the material substance is thrown off; it falls away and is formed anew. Man remains as a form, as a spiritual form, his material part he gradually throws off. After seven or eight years everything that was in his body seven or eight years before has gone. It is a fact that when we have reached the age of nine years our whole human being has been renewed. We then build it in accordance with our external impressions.

As a matter of fact it is extremely important, especially for the child in the first periods of life, that it should be in a position to build its new body—now no longer the inherited body but a body developed out of its inner being—according to good impressions from its environment, and in a healthy adaptation to its environment. Whereas the body which a child has when it comes into the world depends on whether the inherited impulses it has received are good or bad, the later body which it bears from the seventh to fourteenth year depends very much on the impressions it receives from its environment.

Every seven years we build our body anew, but it is our ego that builds it anew. Although the ego is not yet born as regards the outer world in a child of seven years (as you know it is only born later), yet it is working already, for naturally it is bound up with the body, and it is the ego which is building therein. It develops those things of which we have already spoken; it builds up that which appears as the physiognomy, the gestures, the external material revelation of the soul and spirit in man. It is a fact that a human being who has an active interest in the world, who is interested in many things, and because of his active interest in them ponders over them and inwardly digests them, reveals in a material way in the external expression of his countenance and in his gestures what he has been interested in and absorbed. On the face of the human being who has an intensely active interest in the outer world, who inwardly works upon the fruits of this interest in external things one will see in each wrinkle later in life how he formed these himself, and one will be able to read much in his countenance, for the ego is expressed in the gestures and in the physiognomy. A man who goes through the world bored or without interest in the outer world remains throughout his whole life with an unchanged countenance; finer experiences are not imprinted in the physiognomy and gestures. In many a face we may read a whole biography; in many others we cannot read much more than the fact that he was once a child—which is nothing very special.

The fact that man in this way through the changing of his substance every seven or eight years shapes his own outer appearance signifies a great deal. This work of man on his own external appearance, in physiognomy and gesture, is also something which he carries in sleep into the inner being of nature. If one then looks at a man with imaginative clairvoyance and observes the ego outside him as it is during sleep one sees that it really consists in physiognomy and gesture. With those human beings who express much of their inner being in their countenance we find a radiating and shining ego. Now this resulting gesture and physiognomy unites itself also with forces in the inner being of nature. If we have been friendly and kind nature is inclined, as soon as this kindliness has become a facial expression, shown in the countenance, to take this up during our sleep into its own being. Nature takes up our memories into her forces and our gesture-formation into her very essence, into the nature-beings.

Man is so intimately connected with external nature that what he experiences in his inner being as memories is of enormous significance to external nature, as is also the way in which he expresses his inner soul-life in his physiognomy and gestures, for that lives on further in the inner being of nature.

I have often mentioned a saying of Goethe, which was really a criticism of a remark by Haller. Haller said: “Into the inner being of nature no created spirit can enter. Fortunate is the man to whom she reveals even her external husk.” To this, Goethe replied: “You pedant! We are everywhere in the inner being of nature. Nothing is within her, nothing is outside her; that which is within is without, and that which is without is within. Only ask yourself which you are, whether the kernel or the husk.” Goethe says that he heard this remark in the sixties and secretly cursed it; for he felt (naturally he did not then know Spiritual Science) that when one whom he could only regard as a pedant said: “Into the inner being of nature no created spirit can enter,” he knows nothing of the fact that man, simply because he is a being of memories, and a being of physiognomy and gesture is continually entering into the inner being of nature. We are not beings who only stand at the door of nature and knock in vain. Just through that which is our innermost being do we stand in most intimate communion with the inner being of nature.

Because the young child, up to his seventh year, has a body which is entirely inherited, nothing of his ego, of his physiognomy and gesture pass over into the inner being of nature. Only at the change of teeth do we begin to develop our real being. Therefore only after the change of teeth do we gradually become ripe to think about nature. Before that time more important thoughts arise in the child, thoughts which have not much to do with nature, and are so full of charm just for that reason.

The best way to approach a child is to make poetry in its presence, to represent the stars as the eyes of heaven, for example, when things we speak of to the child are as far as possible from external physical reality.

Only from the change of teeth onwards does the child grow in such a way that his thoughts can coincide with the thoughts of nature; fundamentally the whole life from the age of seven to fourteen is such that the child grows in an inward direction, and he then carries his memories outside his soul into nature, as also his gestures and physiognomy, and this then continues throughout his whole life. As regards any relationship with the inner being of nature we, as single human individuals, are only born at the change of teeth. For this reason those beings whom I have designated as elementary spirits, the gnomes and undines, listen so eagerly when man relates something of his child life up to the seventh year, because, as far as these spirits of nature are concerned man is only born at the change of teeth. The change of teeth to them is an extremely interesting phenomenon. Previous to this age man is to the gnomes and undines a being “on the other side,” and it is for them something of an enigma that man appears at this age having already reached a certain perfection! It would be extraordinarily inspiring for pedagogical or educational phantasy if a man, having imbibed spiritual knowledge, could really transpose himself into these dialogues with the nature-spirits, and enter into the soul of the spirits of nature in order to obtain their views concerning what he is able to tell them about children; for in this very way the most beautiful fairy-tales arise. When, in ancient times fairy-tales were so wonderfully apt and rich in content, this is because the poets who composed them could converse with gnomes and undines, could tell them something and not merely hear something from them.

These nature-spirits are often very egoistic, they become silent also if one does not tell them something of that concerning which they are curious. Their favourite stories are about the deeds of babies. In return, one may hear many things from them which can then be woven into the form of fairy-tales.

Thus, for the practical spiritual life that which today appears highly fantastic to us may become extremely important. It is the case that these dialogues with the spirits of nature, on account of the conditions I have mentioned, may be extremely instructive to both sides.

On the other hand, what I have said may in a sense naturally cause anxiety, because while he is asleep man continually creates pictures of his innermost being. Behind the phenomena of nature, behind the flowers of the field, and extending right up into the etheric world there exist reproductions of our memories, both good and useless memories; for the earth is simply teeming with what lives in human souls, and in reality human life is very intimately connected with such things.

We find therefore first of all the spirits of nature, those beings into whom we penetrate with our world of gesture; but we also find the world of the Angels, Archangels and Archai, and grow also into these Beings. We enter into them. We plunge into the deeds of the Angels through our memories. We enter into the living beings of the angelic world through what we have imprinted in ourselves as physiognomy and gesture. This penetration which takes place in sleep is such that we can say: When we pass over livingly into nature the process is that the further we go out in a direct line the more do we come into the regions of the Angels and Archangels and the Archai. We come into the sphere of the third Hierarchy. And when in sleep we dive down with our memories and our gestures as into a flowing sea of weaving beings of Angels, Archangels and Archai, then from one side there comes another stream of spiritual beings, the second Hierarchy, Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. If we wish to express in the outer world that which we have just described, we must say: This stream flows in such a way that the course of the sun by day from east to west marks the way the second Hierarchy crosses the third Hierarchy. The third Hierarchy, the Angels, Archangels and Archai, are as if floating up and down “offering one another the golden buckets.” In this presentation we have the second Hierarchy going with the sun, as it were, from east to west. This is not apparent, because here the Copernican world-conception does not hold good, but this stream actually does go from east to west, following the course of the sun during the day.

Thus we see—i.e., if we have the ability to see—how man during sleep grows into the third Hierarchy; but this third Hierarchy is continually being graciously permeated from one side by the second Hierarchy. Thus this second Hierarchy also makes itself felt in the life of our soul.

I pointed out in the last lecture but one the significance of transposing oneself vividly again into the experiences of one's youth. In this connection you can get a very impressive feeling if you take up the Mystery Plays, and there read, perhaps now with greater understanding than was formerly the case, what is represented there in regard to the appearance of the Youth of Johannes. It is indeed the case that man can vivify his own inner nature and make it intensely perceptible to himself if he goes back actively over his youth. I told you how he might take up old school-books from which he might perhaps have learned something (or perhaps not!). He immerses himself in what he learnt, or did not learn. It makes no difference whether one learned anything or not; the point is that one should immerse oneself intensely in what one formerly went through with it. For in this way one may have personal experiences. For instance, it was of immense significance to me personally, a few years ago, to transpose myself into such a situation belonging to my own youth. I then needed to intensify the forces of spiritual understanding. The following events occurred to me quite accidentally when I was just eleven years of age. I was given a school-book. The first thing that happened to it was that I carelessly upset the ink-pot on it and thereby damaged two pages, so that I could no longer read them. That was an event of many years ago, but I have often lived through this event again, this school-book with the damaged pages, with all that I experienced thereby; for this book had to be replaced by a poor family. It was something dreadful, all that one could experience through this school-book, with its gigantic ink smudges. As I said, it is not a question of having behaved well in connection with the circumstance which one recalls; it is rather a question of having experienced them with intensity. If you attempt this with all inner intensity you will also experience something else. You will experience in a true vision a scene which you have inwardly lived through and evoked in the soul. When night has come and everything is dark around you and you are by yourself you will experience the situation as if spread out in space, which you had previously experienced in time. Suppose, for instance, that you evoke before your soul a scene which you once experienced, let us say, at 11 o'clock. Afterwards you went to a place where you sat with and amongst other human beings. You sat down and other people sat around you. Here you have recalled something which you experienced inwardly. What was then around you externally now meets you entirely as a spatial vision. One only needs to look for such connections and then quite important discoveries can be made. Let us say for instance, that when you are seventeen years of age you had your midday meal in a pension where the guests were continually changing. Call up inwardly in your soul one such scene which you experienced. Recall it vividly. Then in the night you find yourself sitting down at the table. Around you people are sitting, people whom you did not often see, because in this pension they continually came and went. In one face you recognize, “That is something I experienced at that time.” External space is added to the soul-experience, when you make your memories active in this way.

This means in reality that you are living with this stream which flows from east to west; because gradually you feel more and more strongly: There in the spiritual world which you enter in sleep your life does not merely consist in being merged with the spiritual, but in this spiritual there transpires something which was reflected externally at the time you sat around the pension table with these human beings. You have forgotten it long ago but it is still there. You behold, it as you can behold those things which can often be seen inscribed in the Akashic Record. The moment you have this before you, you have identified yourself with this stream flowing from east to west, the stream of the second Hierarchy. In this stream of the second Hierarchy something lives which is outwardly reflected by day.

Now days vary in the course of the whole year. In Spring a day is longer, in Autumn shorter; in summer it is longest, in winter shortest. The day is subject to change throughout the year. That is caused by a stream which flows from west to east, counter to the stream from east to west; and that is the stream of the first Hierarchy, of the Seraphim, the Cherubim and the Thrones. Observe therefore how the day changes in the course of the year. If you pass on from the day to the year then you come in contact with what meets you during sleep as the opposite stream. As a matter of fact it is the case that we go forth in sleep into the spiritual world in a direct line, not in the direction which goes from west to east, nor in the direction which goes from east to west.

If we realize this, then, as I have told you, when we vividly recall some memory we must place spatial winter before our souls.

This is also the case when we become conscious of our will. When we become conscious of our will, that is what enters into our gestures and our physiognomy.

That which I am now saying should have a certain significance especially for eurhythmists, although, naturally there is not any intention in Eurhythmy of bringing to expression what I am now about to say. It is a fact that when a man really fashions his external appearance more and more from out of his inner being, when his ego is expressed more and more in his physiognomy and gestures, he not only receives an impression from the day to pass over from vivid inner experiences of memory to the vision of spatial external things. He experiences over again what he learnt, let us say at the age of seventeen, and sees the people with whom he sat in that pension. He sees them in picture-form, as in the Akashic Record. That is Day experience. But one can also experience the year. This is done by paying attention to the way in which the will works in us, and observing that it is relatively easy to bring the will to expression when we are really warm, whereas it is difficult to let the will stream through the body if we are very cold. Anyone who can experience in this way the relation between the will and the fact of being warm or cold will gradually be able to speak of a winter-will and a summer-will.

We find that the best expression of this will comes from the seasons. Let us observe, for example, the will that carries our thoughts out into the cosmos. They escape, as it were, out of the finger-tips, and we feel that it is easy to develop the will.

If we stand before a tree, something at the top of the tree may give us particular pleasure; and if the will becomes warm in us our thoughts are carried to the top of the tree. Indeed they often go even to the stars, if in summer nights we feel endowed with this warm will.

On the other hand, if the will has cooled within us it is as though all our thoughts were carried in our heads, as if they could not penetrate into the arms or legs; everything goes into the head. The head carries this coldness of the will, and if the coldness does not become so severe as to produce a frosty feeling the head becomes warm through its own inner reaction and then develops thoughts.

Thus we can say: summer-will leads us out into the expanses of the universe. Summer-will, warm will carries our thoughts in all directions. Winter-will carries them into our head. We can thus learn to differentiate our will, and then we shall feel that the will which carries us out everywhere into the cosmos is related to the course of summer; while the will which carries the thoughts into our head we feel to be related to the winter. Through the will we come to experience the year in the same way as we formerly did the day.

There is a possibility of feeling as a reality the words which I am now going to write on the board. If a man experiences winter in his human will he can perceive it in such a way that he says:—

O, Cosmic Pictures!
Ye float down to me
From cosmic distances,
Ye strive to reach me,
Ye penetrate into
The thinking forces
Of my head.

These words are not a mere abstraction; for if a man feels his own will united with nature, he can, at the approach of winter feel as if from out of space his own experiences are borne towards him, experiences which he himself had first given to nature. He can perceive on the waves of these words his own experiences which have already passed over into nature.

That is the feeling of the winter-will; but man can also feel the summer-will which expands our thoughts out into the universe:—

Ye creative Soul-forces of my head
Ye fill out mine own being.
Ye press out of my being
Into universal space,
And unite me
With world-creative powers.

That means, the thoughts which are first experienced in the head pass over into the whole body. They first fill the body and then press out of the body again. These words express the nature of the summer-will, the will in us which is related to the summer. We may also say: “I have called up from my inner being the active memory of something experienced long ago; the day with its night confronts me with it in supplementing it with the external perception of space; and that corresponds to the stream from east to west.” We may also say: “In us winter-will changes into summer-will, and summer-will into winter-will.” We are no longer related to the day with its interchange of light and darkness. We are related to the year through our will, and thereby are identified with the stream flowing from west to east, the stream of the first Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and the Thrones.

As we go on we shall see how man is hindered or helped through heredity or external adaptation to environment with reference to this relationship with the inner being of nature; for what I have explained to you today relates to the way in which man, if he is hindered as little as possible by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, can grow in this way with his thought and will into the inner being of nature, and is received by the time-forces, the day-forces and the year-forces,—the third Hierarchy, the second Hierarchy and the first Hierarchy. But the Ahrimanic forces as they appear in heredity and the Luciferic forces as they appear in adaptation to environment have an essential influence on all this. This great question shall occupy us in the next lecture.

As I propose to follow up the theme of our lecture yesterday,¹ I would remind you of the three figures whose outstanding importance has lasted from the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries right on into our own times, namely, Giordano Bruno, Lord Bacon of Verulam and Jacob Boehme. We feel how they wrestled within themselves to understand man, to know something of the being of man, but yet were unable to attain their goal. In the time in which they lived, ancient knowledge of the being of man had been lost and the genuine strivings of the most eminent minds of the day were unable to lead to a new knowledge.

It was said that out of the strange and incoherent utterances of Jacob Boehme there resounds a kind of longing to know the universe in man and man in the universe. Out of the sum-total of his knowledge of the universe and of the being of man something glimmers which, to deeper insight, seems to point to man in pre-earthly existence, to man before he descends to earthly life. And yet we find in Jacob Boehme’s works no clear definition or description of man as a pre-earthly being.

I expressed this more or less as follows. I said that Jacob Boehme describes in halting words the being of pre-earthly man but the man he places before us would have had to die as a being of soul-and-spirit in the spiritual world before he could have come down to the earth. Jacob Boehme describes a rudiment only of pre-earthly man. And so he is incapable of understanding the reality of the universe in man and man in the universe.

If we then consider Giordano Bruno—semi-poet and semi-scientist—we find in him a knowledge of the universe which he expresses in pictures of great majesty. He too tries to fit man into his place within this majestic picture of the universe and he too is trying to recognise the universe in man and man in the universe. But he does not actually reach this knowledge. Giordano Bruno’s imagery is full of beauty and grandeur. On the one side it soars into infinitudes and on the other into depths of the human soul, but it all remains indefinite, even nebulous. Everything that Giordano Bruno says reveals a striving to describe the man of the present in the universe of space and the nature of the spatial universe itself.

And so while Jacob Boehme harks back ineffectually to pre-earthly man, Giordano Bruno gives us a blurred picture of man as he lives on earth in connection with space and with the cosmos too. The picture is not sufficiently clear to indicate real insight into that relation of man to the cosmos which would open up a vista of pre-earthly and post-earthly man.

If we then turn to Lord Bacon of Verulam, we find that he, in reality, no longer has any traditional ideas of the being of man. Of the old insight into human nature which had survived from ancient clairvoyant perception and from the Mysteries, there is no trace in him whatever.

Bacon, however, looks out into the world that is perceptible to the senses and assigns to human intelligence the task of combining the phenomena and objects of this world of sense-existence, of discovering the laws by which they are governed. He thus transfers the perception of the human soul into that world in which the soul is immersed during sleep, but there he only arrives at pictures of nature other than human nature. These pictures, if they are regarded as Bacon regarded them merely from the logical and abstract point of view, merely place the external aspect of human nature before us. If they are inwardly experienced, however, they gradually become vision of man’s existence after death, for a true clairvoyant perception of man’s being after death is to be obtained through this very medium of a real knowledge of nature. Thus Bacon too, at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is one of those who strive to recognise man in the universe and the universe in man.

But even his powers were inadequate for he did not intensify the pictures into a new experience. Indeed he could not do so, because the old reality was no longer living in the experiences of the soul. Bacon stands as it were at the threshold of the knowledge of life after death but does not actually attain to this knowledge.

We can therefore say: Jacob Boehme still shows signs of possessing a knowledge of pre-earthly man—a knowledge drawn from ancient tradition, but inadequate. Giordano Bruno embarks upon a description of the universe which might have led him to a knowledge of earthly man as he stands there with his life of soul on the one side and his cosmic background on the other. But Giordano Bruno fails to give an adequate description either of the cosmos or of the life of soul which, as presented by him, shrinks into an animated ‘monad.’

Bacon indicates the lines along which natural science must evolve, how it must seek with the powers of free human cognition for the spark of the Spiritual within the merely material. He points to this free activity of human knowledge, but it has no content. Had it been imbued with content Bacon would have been pointing to post-earthly man. But this he cannot do. His knowledge too remains inadequate.

All the living knowledge which in earlier epochs of human evolution it had been possible to create from the inner being, had by that time been lost. Man remained empty when he looked into his inner being with the object of finding knowledge of the universe. He had really ‘lost’ himself, together with his inner life of knowledge, and what remained to him was the vista of the outer world, of outer nature, of that which is not man. Jacob Boehme had gleaned from the Folk-Wisdom something like the following: In the human being there are three principles—salt, mercury, sulphur, as he calls them. These words have, however, an entirely different significance in his language from the significance attaching to them in modern chemistry. Indeed if we try to connect the conceptions of modern chemistry with Jacob Boehme’s magnificent, albeit stammering utterances, his words are entirely devoid of meaning. They were used, of course, by Boehme with a different meaning.

What did these expressions—salt, mercury, sulphur—still mean in the Folk-Wisdom from which Jacob Boehme derived his ideas? When Boehme spoke of the working of the salt, the mercury or the sulphur in man, he was speaking of something absolutely real and concrete. When man to-day speaks of himself, of his soul-nature, he gives voice to abstract ideas which have no real content. Jacob Boehme gathered together, as it were, the last vestiges of knowledge filled with concrete reality. Outer nature lay there perceptible to the senses, comprehensible to human reason. In this outer nature man learnt to see the existence of processes and phenomena and then in the succeeding centuries proceeded to build up an idea of the make-up of man from what he had been able to observe in nature. That is to say, understanding of the being of man was based on what was perceived to be outside man and in seeking thus to understand human nature by way of these external media, a conception of man's body too was built up without any knowledge as to whether this conception was in accordance with his true being or not.

By synthesising the processes which are to be observed in the outer, sense-perceptible world and applying them to the inner processes which take place within the limits of man’s skin, a kind of human spectre is evolved, never the real being of man. In this human spectre the faculties of thinking, feeling and willing also come into consideration, but they remain abstractions, shadowy thought-pictures filled with so-called inner experiences which are, in reality, mere reflections of processes in outer nature. At the time of Bacon there was no longer the slightest inkling of the way in which the being of spirit-and-soul penetrates into the bodily nature, and traditions which had been handed on from the old clairvoyant knowledge were not understood.

Now what has Spiritual Science to say to this? When in the first place we study the bodily nature of man, we have to do with processes connected with the senses, with nutrition, and also with those in which nutrition and sense-perception coincide. When man eats, he absorbs nutriment; he takes into himself the external substances of nature but at the same time he tastes them, so that a sense-perception is intermingled with a process which is continued from nature outside, on into man himself.

Think for a moment of the process of nutrition being accompanied by the perception of taste. We find that while the sense of taste is stimulated and the process of nutrition is set in operation, the outer substances are dissolved in the fluids and juices within the human organism. The outer substances which the plants absorb from lifeless nature are all, to begin with, given form. That which exists on earth without form, in lifeless nature, is really cloven asunder. Crystals are at the basis of all substances. And those substances which we do not find in crystallised form, but formless, in dust and the like, are really crystallisations which have been shattered. Out of crystallised, lifeless nature the plant draws its substances and builds them up into that form which is peculiar to its own nature. From this again the animal derives its nourishment. So that we may say: Out there in nature, everything has its form, its configuration. When man takes in these forms, he dissolves them. This is one form of the process which goes on in man’s organism. The forms, as they exist in outer nature, are dissolved. They are transmuted into the organic fluids.

But when the substances have been absorbed and transmuted into fluid, forms which were first dissolved begin to build up again. When we eat salt, it is first dissolved by means of the fluids in the organism, but we then give it form again. When we eat substances drawn from plants, they are dissolved and then inwardly reformed, not, this time, in the bodily fluids, but in the etheric body.

And now think of what happened in ancient times, when, for example, a man ate salt. It was dissolved and re-formed in his etheric body but he was able to perceive the whole process inwardly. He had an inner thought-experience of the formative process undergone by the salt. When he ate salt, the salt was dissolved and the salt-cube was there in his etheric body. From this he knew: salt has the shape of a cube. And so, as man experienced his being inwardly, he also experienced nature within himself. The cosmic thoughts became his thoughts. What he experienced as imaginations, as dreamlike imaginations, were forms which revealed themselves in his etheric body. They were cosmic forms, cosmic configurations.

But the age dawned when this faculty to experience in the etheric body these processes of dissolution and reconstruction was lost to man. He was obliged more and more to turn to external nature. It was no longer an inner experience to him that salt is cubic in form. He was obliged to investigate outer nature to find out the true configuration of salt.

In this way man’s attention was diverted entirely to the outer world. The radical change to this condition wherein men no longer experienced cosmic thoughts through inner perception of the etheric body, had been taking place since the beginning of the fifteenth century and had reached a certain climax at the time of Giordano Bruno, Jacob Boehme and Bacon of Verulam.

Jacob Boehme, however, had still been able to gather up those crumbs of Folk-Wisdom which told him: Man dissolves everything he assimilates from the outer world of matter. It is a process like salt being dissolved in water. Man bears this water within himself, in his vital fluids. All substances, in so far as they are foodstuffs, are salt. This salt dissolves. In the salts, the cosmic thoughts are expressed on earth. And man again gives form to these cosmic thoughts in his etheric body. This is the ‘salt-process.’

Jacob Boehme expressed in halting language that which in olden times was an inner experience. But if Anthroposophy did not shed light upon what Jacob Boehme says, we should never be able to interpret his stammering utterances. We should read into them all kinds of dark, mystical meanings. Jacob Boehme connected the thinking—the process by which the world presents itself to man in pictures—with the salt-process, that is to say, with the dissolving and re-forming process undergone by substance within the organism of man. Such was his ‘salt-process.’

It is often pathetic, although at the same time it shows up the conceit of some people, to see how they read Jacob Boehme and whenever they come across the word ‘salt,’ pretend to understand it, whereas in reality they understand nothing at all. They come along with their heads in the air saying that they have studied Jacob Boehme and find in him a profound wisdom. But there is no trace of this wisdom in the interpretations they bring forward. Were it not an evidence of conceit it would be quite pathetic to hear such people talk about matters of which Boehme himself had only a glimmering understanding from the Folk-Wisdom which he then voiced in halting words.

These things indicate the existence of an altogether different wisdom and science in olden times, a wisdom which was experienced through inner perception of the processes taking their course in the etheric body—processes which revealed themselves to man as the ever-recurring cosmic thoughts. The world constructed from the thoughts which are embodied in the crystal-formations of the earth, to which man gives form in his etheric body and consciously experiences - such was the ancient knowledge which disappeared in the course of time.

If we were able to transfer ourselves into one of the old Mystery-sanctuaries and listen spiritually to the description which an Initiate would give of the universe, it would have been something like the following: All through the universe the cosmic thoughts are weaving; the Logos is working. The crystal-formations of the earth are the embodiments of the single parts of the cosmic Word. Now the sense of taste is only one of the many senses. The processes of hearing and of sight can be dealt with in a similar way though in their case the working of the salts in etheric form must be thought of in a more outward sense. Man receives through his senses that which is embodied in the salts and re-forms it in his etheric body, experiences it within himself. Cosmic thoughts repeat themselves in the thoughts of men. The universe is recognised in man and man in the universe. With concrete and unerring intuition the Initiates of olden times were able to describe this out of their visionary, dream-like knowledge of the universe and of man.

During the course of the Middle Ages this wisdom was gradually superseded by a merely logical form of knowledge which, though of great significance, became, nevertheless, entirely academic and on the other side had trickled away into Folk-Wisdom. What was once sublime wisdom, relating both to the cosmos and to man had degenerated into sayings used by simple folk who by that time understood little of their meaning but who still felt that some great value was contained in them. It was among such people that Jacob Boehme lived. He absorbed this Folk-Wisdom and by his own genius revived it within him. He was more articulate than those among whom he lived but even he could do no more than express it in halting language.

In Giordano Bruno there was a feeling that man must learn to understand the universe, must get to know his own nature, but his faculties did not enable him to say anything so definite as: ‘Out there are the cosmic thoughts, a universal Word which enshrines itself in the crystal; man takes into himself these cosmic thoughts when, knowingly and deliberately, he dissolves the salts and gives them new form in his etheric body.’ It is so, indeed: from the concrete thoughts of the world of myriad forms, from the innermost thoughts of man, there arises an etheric world as rich in its varied forms as the world outside us.

Just think of it: This wealth of thought in regard to the cosmos and to man shrinks, in Giordano Bruno, into generalisations about the cosmos. It hovers into infinitudes but is nevertheless abstract. And that which lives in man as the world re-formed, shrinks into a picture of the animate monad—in reality, nothing but an extended point.

What I have described to you was real knowledge among the sages of old; it was their science. But in addition to the fact that these ancient sages of the Mysteries were able, by their own dream-veiled vision, to evolve this knowledge, they were able to have actual intercourse with the spiritual Beings of the cosmos. Just as here on earth a man enters into conscious relationship with other human beings, so did these ancient sages enter into relation with spiritual Beings. And from these spiritual Beings they learned something else, namely that what man has formed in his etheric body—by virtue of which he is inwardly another cosmos, a microcosm, an etheric rebirth of the macrocosm—what he thus possesses as an inner cosmos, he can in the element of air, by the process of breathing, again gradually obliterate.

And so in those ancient times man knew that within him the universe is reborn in varied forms; he experienced an inner world. Out of his inner vital fluids the whole universe arose as an etheric structure. That was ancient clairvoyance. Man experienced a real process, an actual happening. And in modern man the process is there just the same, only he cannot inwardly experience it.

Now those spiritual Beings with whom the ancient sages could have real intercourse did not enlighten them only in regard to the vital fluids from which this micro-cosmic universe was born but also in regard to the life-giving air, to the air which man takes in with his breath and which then spreads through his whole organism. This air which spreads itself over the whole of the microcosm, renders the shapes therein indistinct. The wonderful etheric universe in miniature begins, directly the breath contacts it, to become indefinite, That which formerly consisted of a myriad forms, is unified, because the ‘astral’ man lives in the airy element, just as the etheric man lives in the fluids. The astral being of man lives in this airy element and by the breaking up of the etheric thoughts, by the metamorphosis of etheric thoughts into a force, the will is born from the working of the ‘astral man’ in the ‘air man.’ And together with the will there arise the forces of growth which are connected with the will.

This knowledge again expressed a great deal more than is suggested nowadays by the abstract word ‘will.’ It is a concrete process. The astral lays hold of the airy element and spreads over that which is etheric and fluidic. And thereby a real process is set up which appears in outer nature at a different stage, when something is burnt. This process was conceived by the ancients as the sulphur-process. And from the sulphur-process there unfolded that which was then experienced in the soul as will.

In olden times men did not use the abstract word think to express something that arose in the mind as a picture. When a real knower spoke about ‘thinking’ he spoke of the salt-process just described. Nor did he speak in an abstract way of the ‘will’ but of the astral forces laying hold of the airy element in man, of the sulphur-process from which the will is born. Willing was a process of concrete reality and it was said that the adjustment between the two—for they are opposite processes—was brought about by the mercury-process, by that which is fluid and yet has form, which swings to and fro from the etheric nature to the astral nature, from the fluidic to the aeriform. The abstract ideas which were gradually evolved by Scholasticism and have since been adopted by modern science, did not exist for the thinkers of olden times. If they had been confronted with our concepts of thinking, feeling and willing they would have felt rather like frogs in a vessel from which all the air has been pumped. This is how our abstract concepts would have appeared to the thinkers of old. They would, have said: It is not possible for the soul to live or breathe with concepts like this. For the thinkers of old never spoke of a purely abstract will-process, of a purely abstract thought-process, but of a salt-process, of a sulphur-process, and they meant thereby, something that on the one hand is of the nature of soul-and-spirit and on the other of a material-etheric nature. To them, this was a unity and they perceived how the soul works everywhere in the bodily organism.

The writings of the Middle Ages which date back to the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries still showed traces of this ancient faculty of perception and of a knowledge that was at the same time inner experience. This kind of knowledge had faded away at the time of Giordano Bruno, Jacob Boehme and Bacon of Verulam. Ideas had become abstract; man was obliged to look, not into his own being but out into nature. I have told you that our concepts to-day would have made the wise men of old feel like frogs exhausted by lack of air. We, however, find it possible to exist with such ideas. The majority of people when they speak of thinking, feeling and willing, consider them at most mirror-pictures of external nature which appear in man. But precisely in our age it is possible to attain to what in olden times was not possible. Man lost the spontaneous, inner activity which gives birth to knowledge. In the interval which has elapsed since the fifteenth century, man has lost the capacity to discover anything when he merely looks into his inner being. He therefore looks out into nature and evolves his abstract concepts. None the less it is possible so to intensify these concepts that they can again be filled with content because they can be experienced. We are, of course, only at the very beginning of this phase of development, and anthroposophical Spiritual Science tries to be such a beginning.

All the processes I have described above—the salt process, the sulphur-process—are nowhere to be found in this form in external nature; they are processes which can only be known by man as taking place in his image being. In outer nature there transpires something which is related to these processes as the processes in a corpse are related to those in a living man. The salt- and sulphur-processes spoken of by modern chemistry are those which the old Folk-Wisdom living in Jacob Boehm conceived as taking place within a corpse. Such processes are dead, whereas they were once filled with inner life. And as he observed them in their living state, man saw a new world—a world which is not the world surrounding him on earth.

The ancients, then, were able with the help of their inwardly experienced knowledge, to see that which is not of the earth, which belongs to a different world. The moment we really understand these salt-and sulphur-processes we see the pre-earthly life of man. For earthly life differs from the pre-earthly life precisely in this: the sulphur- and salt-processes are dead in the external world of sense; in pre-earthly existence they are living. What we perceive with our senses between birth and death, is dead. The real salt- and sulphur-processes are living when we experience them as they are in pre-earthly existence. In other words, understanding of these processes of which Jacob Boehme speaks in halting words, is a vision of pre-earthly existence. That Jacob Boehme does not speak of pre-earthly existence is due to the fact that he did not really understand it and could only express it in faltering words.

This faculty of man to look back into pre-earthly existence has been lost—lost together with that union with the spiritual Beings who help us to see in the sulphur-process the reality of post-earthly existence. The whole attitude of the human soul has entirely changed. And Giordano Bruno, Jacob Boehme and Lord Bacon of Verulam lived precisely at the time of this change.

In the last lecture I drew your attention to the fact that of the way man felt himself placed in the universe in earlier times not the faintest notion remains to-day. Consequently no great importance is attached to information which dates back beyond comparatively recent times.

Here in Dornach we have given many performances of the play of the Three Kings. This story of the visit of the Three Kings to the Child Jesus is also given in the old German song of the “Heliand.” You are aware that it dates back to a comparatively early period of the Middle Ages and that it originated in Central Europe. There is something remarkable here. It is obvious that something else is connected with this visit of the Three Kings from the East. These Kings relate that they have come from regions where conditions were very different from what they now find (i.e., at the beginning of our era). They tell us that they are the descendants of ancestors who were possessed of a wisdom incomparably greater than any contemporary wisdom. They speak of an ancestor far back in time—an ancestor who was able to hold converse with his God. And when he came to die, this ancestor assembled all his family and told them of what his God had revealed to him, namely, that in the course of time a World-King would appear whose coming would be heralded by a star.

When search is made for an indication of this ancestor, we find—and even literature points to this—that he is Balaam, mentioned in the fourth book of Moses in the Old Testament. These three Holy Kings from the East, therefore, are referring to Balaam, the son of Beor, of whom it is related in the fourth Book of Moses that he held converse with his God and that he regulated his whole earthly life in accordance with that converse.

In short, when we examine the facts, they tell us that at the time when this old German poem originated, a consciousness still existed of ages when men had intercourse with the Gods. A very real conception of this still remained, with men. Again here, we have an indication of something which the contemplation of history revealed to these people and which proves to us that we have passed from those olden times when men felt themselves placed in a living universe, into a Philistine age. For our civilisation is really a Philistine civilisation. Even those who believe that they have grown out of it are by no means so opposed to Philistinism that they would find it possible to accept such traditions as that of Balaam being the ancestor of the Three Kings. Such people have by no means grown beyond Philistinism. The most that could be said of them is that they are ‘Bohemians!’

These things indicate what a mighty change has taken place in the attitude of the human soul. Centuries ago it was known that with their dreamy clairvoyant faculties men were able to observe the actual working of such processes as the sulphur-process and the salt-process. And because of this they were able to see into the pre-earthly state of existence.

Certain people who did not desire the upward progress, but rather the retrogression of humanity, but who were nevertheless initiated in a certain sense, saw in advance that human beings would lose this capacity; that a time would come when nothing would be known any longer about pre-existence. And so they laid it down as a dogma that there is no pre-existent life, that man’s soul is created together with his physical body. The fact of pre-existence was shrouded in the darkness of dogma. That was the first step downwards of what had once been knowledge of man’s place in the universe. It was a step downwards into ignorance for it is not possible to understand man if one part of his existence is obliterated, especially so important a part as his pre-existent life.

Now Jacob Boehme, Giordano Bruno and Lord Bacon of Verulam lived at a time when this insight into pre-existent life had faded away. And moreover the age had not yet dawned when the inner experiencing of knowledge was to give place to a spiritual perception of external nature, whereby man, who can no longer find himself in his inner being, finds himself again in nature outside. For a long time there had been Initiates who wished to lead mankind on the downward path. Such Initiates did not desire that the new faculty of insight—which was exactly the reverse of the old clairvoyance—should make headway. And they tried by means of dogma to replace the new form of knowledge by mere faith and belief in the life after death. And so, in Giordano Bruno's time, dogmatic decrees had wiped out the possibility of knowledge of pre-existent life and of life after death. Giordano Bruno stood there wrestling—wrestling more forcibly than Jacob Boehme and much more forcibly than Lord Bacon. Giordano Bruno stood there among the men of his time, unable to transmute the Dominican wisdom that lived in him into a true conception of the universe. And he expressed in poetic language the somewhat indefinite views which he was able to evolve.

But the knowledge which Giordano Bruno possessed in so nebulous a form must give birth to a definite and precise understanding of man in the universe and the universe in man, not by means of a recrudescence of inner clairvoyance but by means of new clairvoyant faculties acquired by free spiritual activity.

With these words I have indicated what must take place in the evolution of mankind. And in our day humanity is faced with the fact that the will to attain this higher knowledge is violently opposed and hated by numbers of people. This too is apparent in events of which history tells. And when we understand these events we also understand why it is that bitter opposition arises to anthroposophical conceptions of the world.

• 1. Published in Anthroposophy, Christmas, 1930.

[ 1 ] In this description, we shall take man as our point of departure. As he lives on the earth, man at present consists of the physical body, the ether or life body, the astral body and the “I.” This fourfold human nature has in itself the dispositions for a higher development. The “I” by its own initiative transforms the “lower” bodies, and thereby incorporates into them higher parts of human nature. The ennobling and purifying of the astral body by the “I” causes the development of the “spirit self” (Manas), the transformation of the ether or life body creates the life spirit (Buddhi), and the transformation of the physical body creates the true “spirit man” (Atma). The transformation of the astral body is in full progress in the present period of the development of the earth; the conscious transformation of the ether body and of the physical body belongs to later times; at present it has begun only among the initiates—those trained in the science of the spirit and their pupils.

This threefold transformation of man is a conscious one; it was preceded by one more or less unconscious during the previous development of the earth. It is in this unconscious transformation of astral body, ether body, and physical body that one must seek the origin of the sentient soul, of the intellectual soul, and of the consciousness soul.

[ 2 ] One must now make clear to oneself which one of the three bodies of man (the physical, the ether, and the astral body) is in its way most perfect. One can easily be tempted to consider the physical body as the lowest and therefore as the least perfect. However, in this, one would be in error. It is true that the astral body and the ether body will attain a high degree of perfection in the future, but at present the physical body is more perfect in its way than are they in theirs. Only because man has this physical body in common with the lowest natural realm on earth, the mineral realm, is it possible for the error we have mentioned to arise. For man has the ether body in common with the higher plant realm, and the astral body with the animal realm.

Now it is true that the physical body of man is composed of the same substances and forces which exist in the wider mineral realm, but the manner in which these substances and forces interact in the human body is the expression of wisdom and perfection in the structure. One will soon convince himself of the truth of this statement if he undertakes to study this structure not merely with the dry intellect but with his whole feeling soul. One can take any part of the human physical body as the subject for this contemplation, for instance the highest part of the upper thigh bone. This is not an amorphous massing of substance, but rather is joined together in the most artful manner, out of diminutive beams which run in different directions. No modern engineering skill could fit a bridge or something similar together with such wisdom. Today such things are still beyond the reach of the most perfect human wisdom. The bone is constructed in this wise fashion so that, through the arrangement of the small beams, the necessary carrying capacity for the support of the human torso can be attained with the least amount of substance. The least amount of matter is used in order to achieve the greatest possible effect in terms of force. In face of such a “masterwork of natural architecture,” one can only become lost in admiration. No less can one admire the miraculous structure of the human brain or heart, or of the totality of the human physical body. One should compare with it the degree of perfection which for example the astral body has attained at the present stage of development of mankind. The astral body is a carrier of pleasure and distaste, of the passions, impulses and desires and so forth. But what attacks this astral body perpetrates against the wise arrangement of the physical body! A large part of the stimulants which man consumes are poisons for the heart. From this it can be seen that the activity which produces the physical structure of the heart proceeds in a wiser manner than the activity of the astral body, which even runs counter to this wisdom. It is true that in future the astral body will advance to higher wisdom; at present, however, it is not as perfect in its way as is the physical body. Something similar could be shown to be true for the ether body, and also for the “I,” that being which, from moment to moment, must struggle gropingly toward wisdom through error and illusion.

[ 3 ] If one compares the levels of perfection of the parts of the human being, one will easily discover that at present the physical body is in its way the most perfect, that the ether body is less perfect, the astral body still less, and that in its way the least perfect part of man at present is the “I.” This is due to the fact that in the course of the planetary development of the human dwelling-place the physical body of man has been worked on the longest. What man today carries as his physical body has lived through all the developmental stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and earth, up to the present stage of the latter. All the forces of these planetary bodies have successively worked on this body, so that gradually it has been able to attain its present degree of perfection. It is thus the oldest part of the present-day human entity.

The ether body, as it now appears in man, did not exist at all during the Saturn period. It was only added during the Sun development. Hence the forces of four planetary bodies have not worked on it as on the physical body, but only those of three, namely, of Sun, Moon, and earth. Therefore only in a future period of development can it become as perfect in its way as is the physical body at present. The astral body joined the physical body and the ether body only during the Moon period, and the “I” did so only during the earth period.

[ 4 ] One must represent to oneself that the physical human body attained a certain stage of its development on Saturn, and that this development was carried forward on the Sun in such a way that from that time on the physical body could become the carrier of an ether body. On Saturn this physical body had attained a point where it was an extremely complex mechanism, which however had nothing in it of life. The complicatedness of its structure finally caused it to disintegrate. For this complicatedness had reached such a degree that this physical body could no longer maintain itself by means of the merely mineral forces which were acting in it. It was through this collapse of the human bodies that the decline of Saturn was brought about.

Of the present natural realms, namely the mineral realm, the plant realm, the animal realm, and the human realm, Saturn had only the last-named. What one knows today as animals, plants, and minerals did not yet exist on Saturn. Of the present four natural realms, there existed on this heavenly body only man in his physical body, and this physical body was in fact a kind of complicated mineral. The other realms came into existence because not all beings could attain full development on the successive heavenly bodies. Thus only a part of the human bodies developed on Saturn attained the full Saturn goal. Those human bodies which did attain this goal were awakened, so to speak, to a new existence in their old form during the Sun period, and this form was permeated with the ether body. They thereby developed to a higher level of perfection. They became a kind of plant men. That portion of the human bodies however which had not been able to attain the full goal of development on Saturn had to continue during the Sun period what they had previously not completed, but under considerably more unfavorable conditions than those which existed for this development on Saturn. They therefore fell behind the portion which had attained the full goal on Saturn. Thus on the Sun another natural realm came into being in addition to the human realm.

[ 5 ] It would be erroneous to believe that all the organs in the present-day human body already began to be developed on Saturn. This is not the case. Rather it is particularly the sensory organs in the human body which have their origin in this ancient time. It is the first rudiments of eyes, ears and so forth which have such an early origin, rudiments which formed on Saturn in somewhat the same way that “lifeless crystals” now form on earth; the corresponding organs then attained their present form by again and again transforming themselves in the direction of greater perfection in each of the succeeding planetary periods. On Saturn they were physical instruments, and nothing else. On the Sun they were transformed, because an ether or life body permeated them. They were thereby brought into the life process. They became animated physical instruments. To them were added those parts of the human physical body which cannot develop at all except under the influence of an ether body: the organs of growth, of nourishment, and of reproduction. Of course the first rudiments of these organs, as they developed on the Sun, again do not resemble in perfection the form which they have at present.

The highest organs which the human body at that time acquired through the interaction of physical body and ether body were those which at present have developed into the glands. The physical human body on the Sun is thus a system of glands, on which sensory organs of a corresponding level of development are impressed.

The development continued on the Moon. To the physical body and the ether body is added the astral body. Thereby the first rudiment of a nervous system is integrated into the glandular sensory body. One can see that the physical human body becomes more and more complicated in the successive planetary development periods. On the Moon it is composed of nerves, glands, and senses. The senses have behind them a two-fold process of transformation and perfection, while the nerves are at their first stage. If one looks at the Moon man as a whole, he consists of three parts: a physical body, an ether body, and an astral body. The physical body is tripartite; its partition is the result of the work of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon forces. The ether body is only bipartite. It has in itself only the effect of the work of Sun and Moon, and the astral body is still unipartite. Only the Moon forces have worked on it.

Through the absorption of the astral body on the Moon, man has become capable of a life of sensation, of a certain inwardness. Within his astral body he can form images of what takes place in his environment. These images in a certain respect are to be compared with the dream images of present-day human consciousness, but they are more vivid and colorful, and, most important, they relate to events in the outside world, while present-day dream images are mere echoes of daily life or are otherwise unclear mirrorings of inner or outer events. The images of the Moon consciousness corresponded completely to whatever they were related to externally. Assume for instance that a Moon man as he has just been characterized, consisting of physical body, ether body, and astral body, had approached another Moon being. It is true that he could not have perceived the latter as a spatial object, for this has become possible only in the earth consciousness of man; but within his astral body would have arisen an image which in its color and shape would have quite exactly expressed whether the other being was well or ill disposed toward this Moon man, whether it would be useful or dangerous to him. As a result, the Moon man could regulate his behavior entirely in accordance with the images which arose in his image consciousness, These images were a complete means of orientation for him. The physical instrument which the astral body needed in order to enter into relation with the lower natural realms was the nervous system, integrated into the physical body.

[ 6 ] In order that the transformation of man described here could occur during the Moon period, the assistance of a great universal event was needed. The integration of the astral body and the related development of a nervous system in the physical body was only made possible by the fact that what had previously been one body, the Sun, split into two—into Sun and Moon. The former advanced to the state of a fixed star, the latter remained a planet—which the Sun also had been—and began to circle around the Sun, from which it had split off. Through this a significant transformation took place in everything which lived on Sun and Moon. Here for the moment we shall follow this process of transformation only insofar as it concerns the life of the Moon. Man, consisting of physical body and astral body, had remained united with the Moon when it split off from the Sun. He thereby entered into entirely new conditions of existence. For the Moon took with it only a part of the forces contained in the Sun, and this part now acted on man from his own heavenly body; the Sun had retained the other part of the forces within itself. This latter part is now sent from the outside to the Moon and hence also to its inhabitant, man. If the previous relationship had remained in existence, if all the Sun forces had continued to reach man from his own scene of activity, that inner life which shows itself in the arising of the images of the astral body could not have developed. The Sun force continued its activity on the physical body and ether body from the outside; it had already acted on both of these previously. But it liberated a portion of these two bodies for influences which emanated from the Moon, the heavenly body newly created by a splitting-off. Thus, on the Moon man was under a two-fold influence, that of the Sun and that of the Moon. It is to be ascribed to the influence of the Moon that out of the physical and the ether body there developed those parts which permitted the imprinting of the astral body. An astral body can only create images when the Sun forces reach it from outside rather than from its own planet. The Moon influences transformed the sensory rudiments and the glandular organs in such a way that a nervous system could be integrated into them; and the sun influences brought it about that the images for which this nervous system was the instrument corresponded to the external Moon events in the manner described above.

[ 7 ] The development could only progress to a certain point in this manner. Had this point been over-stepped, the Moon man would have become hardened in his inner life of images, and thereby he would have lost all connection with the Sun. When the time had come, the Sun again absorbed the Moon, so that again for some time both were one body. The union lasted until man was far enough advanced so that his hardening, which would have had to take place on the Moon, could be prevented by a new stage of development. When this had occurred a new separation took place, but this time the Moon took Sun forces along with itself which previously it had not received. Through this it came about that another separation took place after some time. What had last split off from the Sun was a heavenly body which contained all the forces and beings at present living on earth and moon. Thus the earth still contained within itself the moon which now circles around it. If the latter had remained within it, it could never have become the scene of any human development, including the present one. The forces of the present moon first had to be cast off, and man had to remain on the thus purified earthly scene and continue his development there. In this way three heavenly bodies developed out of the old Sun. The forces of two of these heavenly bodies, the new sun and the new moon, are sent to the earth and hence to its inhabitant from the outside.

Through this progress in the development of the heavenly bodies it became possible that into the tripartite human nature, as it still had been on the Moon, the fourth part, the “I,” integrated itself. This integration was connected with a perfecting of the physical body, the ether body, and the astral body. The perfecting of the physical body consisted in that the system of the heart was incorporated in it as the preparer of warm blood. Of course, now the sensory system, the glandular system, and the nervous system had to be transformed in such a way that in the human organism they would be compatible with the newly added system of the warm blood. The sensory organs were so transformed that out of the mere image consciousness of the old Moon the object consciousness could develop, which makes possible the perception of external objects, and which man at present possesses from the time he awakes in the morning until he falls asleep in the evening. On the old Moon the senses were not yet open to the outside; the images of consciousness arose from within, and just this opening of the senses to the external is the achievement of the earth development.

[ 8 ] It has been stated above that not all of the human bodies formed on Saturn attained the goal which was set for them there, and that on the Sun, alongside the human realm in its form of that time, a second natural realm developed. One must realize that at each of the subsequent stages of development, on Sun, Moon, and earth, there were always beings which fell short of their goals and that through this the lower natural realms came into existence. The animal realm, which is closest to man, had already fallen behind on Saturn, but partially made up the development under unfavorable conditions on Sun and Moon, so that while on the earth it was not as far advanced as man, in part it still had the capacity to receive warm blood as he did. For warm blood existed in none of the natural realms before the period of earth. The present-day cold-blooded (or variably warm) animals and certain plants came into existence because certain beings of the lower Sun realm again fell short of the stage which the other beings of this realm attained. The present-day mineral realm came into existence last, in fact only during the earth period.

[ 9 ] The fourfold man of earth receives from sun and moon the influences of those forces which have remained connected with these heavenly bodies. From the sun those forces reach him which further progress, growth, and becoming; from the moon come the hardening, forming forces. If man stood only under the influence of the sun he would dissolve in an immeasurably rapid process of growth It is for this reason that formerly, after an appropriate time, he had to leave the Sun and to receive a retarding of his over-rapid progress on the split-off old Moon. But if then he had remained permanently connected with the latter, this retarding of his growth would have hardened him in a rigid form. Therefore he advanced to the development of earth, within which the two influences counterbalance each other in an appropriate way. At the same time the point is reached where something higher—the soul—is integrated as an inner entity within the quadripartite human being.

[ 10 ] In its form, in its activities, movements and so forth, the physical body is the expression and the effect of what takes place in the other parts, in the ether body, the astral body, and the “I.” In the descriptions from the “Akasha Chronicle” which we have given up to this point, it has become apparent how, in the course of development, these other parts of the human entity gradually intervened in the formation of the physical body. During the Saturn development none of these other parts was as yet associated with the physical human body. But the first beginning of its development was made in that time However, one must not think that the forces which later acted on the physical body from the ether body, the astral body, and the “I” did not already act on it during the Saturn period. They were already acting at that time, but in a certain sense from the outside, not from within. The other parts had not yet been formed, had not yet been united with the physical human body as individual entities; but the forces which were later united in them acted as it were from the environment—the atmosphere—of Saturn and formed the first beginning of this body. This beginning was then transformed on the Sun because a part of those forces now formed the separate human ether body, and now acted on the physical body no longer merely from the outside, but from the inside. The same thing occurred on the Moon with respect to the astral body. On the earth the physical body was transformed for the fourth time by becoming the dwelling place of the “I,” which now works within it.

[ 11 ] One can see that, to the eye of the scientist of the spirit, the physical body is not something fixed, something permanent in its form and manner of acting. It is undergoing a constant process of transformation. And such a transformation is also taking place in the current earth period of the body's development. One can only understand human life if one is in a position to form a conception of this transformation.

[ 12 ] A consideration of the human organs from the point of view of the science of the spirit shows that these are at very different stages of development. There are organs in the human body which, in their present form, are in a descending, others which are in an ascending development. In future, the former will lose their importance for man more and more. The time of the flowering of their functions is behind them; they will become atrophied and finally disappear from the human body.

Other organs are in an ascending development; they contain much which now is only present in a germinal state, as it were: in future they will develop into more perfect forms with a higher function. Among the former organs belong, for instance, those which serve for reproduction, for the bringing into existence of like beings. In future their function will pass to other organs and they themselves will sink into insignificance. There will come a time when they will be present on the human body in an atrophied condition, and one will then have to regard them only as evidences of the preceding development of man.

[ 13 ] Other organs, as for instance the heart and neighboring formations, are at the beginning of their development in a certain respect. What now lies in them in a germinal state will reach its full flower only in the future. For in the conception of the science of the spirit, the heart and its relation to the so-called circulation of the blood are seen as something quite different from what contemporary physiology, which in this respect is completely dependent on mechanistic-materialistic concepts, sees in them. In so doing, this science of the spirit succeeds in casting light on facts which are well-known to contemporary science, but for which with the means at its disposal, the latter cannot give anything like a satisfactory explanation. Anatomy shows that in their structure the muscles of the human body are of two kinds. There are those whose smallest parts are smooth bands, and those whose smallest parts show a regular transverse striation. Now the smooth muscles in general are those which in their movements are independent of human volition. For instance, the smooth muscles of the intestine push the food pulp along in regular movements, upon which the human volition has no influence. Those muscles which are found in the iris of the eye are also smooth. These muscles bring about the movements through which the pupil of the eye is enlarged when the latter is exposed to a small amount of light, and contracted when much light flows into the eye. These movements too are independent of human volition. On the other hand, those muscles are striated which mediate movements under the influence of human volition, for example, the muscles by which the arms and legs are moved. The heart, which after all is also a muscle, constitutes an exception to this general condition. In the present period of human development, the heart is not subject to volition in its movements, yet it is a “transversely striated” muscle. The science of the spirit indicates the reason for this. The heart will not always remain as it is now. In the future it will have a quite different form and a changed function. It is on the way to becoming a voluntary muscle. In the future it will execute movements which will be the effects of the inner soul impulses of man. It already shows what significance it will have in the future, when the movements of the heart will be as much an expression of the human will as the lifting of the hand or the advancing of the foot are today.

This conception of the heart is connected with a comprehensive insight of the science of the spirit into the relation of the heart to the so-called circulation of the blood. The mechanical-materialistic doctrine of life sees in the heart a kind of pumping mechanism which drives the blood through the body in a regular manner. Here the heart is the cause of the movement of the blood. The insight of the science of the spirit shows something quite different. For this insight, the pulsing of the blood, its whole inner mobility, are the expression and the effect of the processes of the soul. The soul is the cause of the behavior of the blood. Turning pale through feelings of fear, blushing under the influence of sensations of shame, are coarse effects of processes of the soul in the blood. But everything which takes place in the blood is only the expression of what takes place in the life of the soul. However, the connection between the pulsation of the blood and the impulses of the soul is a deeply mysterious one. The movements of the heart are not the cause, but the consequence of the pulsation of the blood.

In the future, through voluntary movements, the heart will carry what takes place in the human soul into the external world.

[ 14 ] Other organs which are in a similarly ascending development are the organs of respiration in their function as instruments of speech. At present by their means man can transform his thoughts into air waves. He thereby impresses upon the external world what he experiences within himself.

He transforms his inner experiences into air waves. This wave motion of the air is a rendering of what takes place within him. In the future he will in this way give external form to more and more of his inner being. The final result in this direction will be that through his speech organs which have arrived at the height of their perfection, he will produce his own kind. Thus the speech organs at present contain within themselves the future organs of reproduction in a germinal state. The fact that mutation (change of voice) occurs in the male individual at the time of puberty is a consequence of the mysterious connection between the instruments of speech and reproduction.

[ 15 ] The entire human physical body can be considered in this way from the point of view of the science of the Spirit. It was only intended to give a few examples here. In the science of the spirit, both an anatomy and a physiology exist. The anatomy and physiology of the present will have to let themselves be fertilized by the anatomy and physiology of the science of the spirit in a not very distant future, and will even transform themselves completely into the latter.

[ 16 ] In this area it becomes especially apparent that results such as those given above must not be built on mere inferences, on speculations such as conclusions by analogy, but must only proceed from the true research of the science of the spirit. This must necessarily be emphasized, for it happens only too easily that once they have gained some insights, zealous adherents of the science of the spirit continue to spin their ideas in empty air. It is no miracle when only phantasms are produced in this way, and, in fact, they do abound in these areas of research.

One could, for instance, proceed to draw the following conclusion from the description given above: Because the human organs of reproduction in their present form will in the future be the first to lose their importance, they therefore were the first to receive it in the past, hence they are in a sense the oldest organs of the human body. Just the contrast of this is true. They were the last to receive their present form and will be the first to lose it again.

The following presents itself to spiritual scientific research. On the Sun, the physical human body had in a certain respect moved up to the level of plant existence. At that time it was permeated only by an ether body. On the Moon it took on the character of the animal body, because it was permeated by the astral body. But not all organs participated in this transformation into the animal character. A number of parts remained on the plant level. On the earth, after the integration of the “I,” when the human body elevated itself to its present form, a number of parts still bore a decided plant character. But one must not imagine that these organs looked exactly like our present-day plants. The organs of reproduction belong among these organs. They still exhibited a plant character at the beginning of the earth development. This was known to the wisdom of the old Mysteries. The older art which has retained so much of the traditions of the Mysteries, represents hermaphrodites with plant-leaf like organs of reproduction. These are precursors of man which still had the old kind of reproductive organs (which were double-sexed). For example, this can be seen clearly in a hermaphrodite figure in the Capitoline Collection in Rome. When one looks into these matters one will also understand for instance the true reason for the presence of the fig leaf on Eve. One will accept true explanations for many old representations, while contemporary interpretations are, after all, only the result of a thinking which is not carried to its conclusion. We shall only remark in passing that the hermaphrodite figure mentioned above shows still other plant appendages. When it was made, the tradition still existed that in a very remote past certain human organs changed from a plant to an animal character.

[ 18 ] All these changes of the human body are only the expression of the forces of transformation which lie in the ether body, the astral body, and the “I.” The transformations of the physical human body accompany the acts of the higher parts of man. One can therefore understand the structure and the activity of this human body only if one absorbs oneself in the “Akasha Chronicle,” which shows how the higher changes of the more spiritual and mental parts of man take place. Everything physical and material finds its explanation through the spiritual. Light is shed even on the future of the physical if one studies the spiritual.

[ 1 ] An ancient term—‘Occult Science’—is applied to the contents of this book. The term is likely to evoke the most contrary feelings among the people of our time. To many it will be downright repugnant, calling forth derision, a supercilious smile, even contempt. A way of thought—they will opine—which thus described itself, must surely rest on idle dreams, and the mere arbitrary play of fancy. Its claim to be a science can only be a blind, behind which is the wish to revive all manner of superstitions, justly eschewed by those who are familiar with the scientific spirit, the quest of genuine knowledge. Others are differently affected. They feel that what is signified by this term will bring them something unattainable in any other way, something to which they are drawn—according to their disposition—by a deep inner longing for knowledge or a refined curiosity of soul. Between these two sharply divergent opinions there are a multitude of intermediate views, implying conditional rejection or acceptance of the diverse things which people think of when they hear the term ‘Occult Science.’

For some people, undeniably, it has a magic ring because it bids fair to satisfy their craving for information, inaccessible by straightforward methods, about something ‘beyond our ken’—something mysterious, nay perhaps vague and confused. Or there are those who do not want to meet the deepest longings of the soul with anything that is capable of being clearly known. In their conviction, beyond what is knowable there must be something more in the world that eludes our knowledge. It is a strange contradiction, which they fail to notice. Precisely where the deepest yearning for knowledge is concerned, they would set aside clear knowledge and want to cherish what is incapable of discovery by natural and sound research. Whoever speaks of ‘Occult Science’ will do well to bear in mind the likelihood of misunderstandings due to the efforts of such champions, who in reality desire, not a true science but the reverse.

[ 2 ] The contents of this book are addressed to readers who will not let their openness of mind be impaired because, for a variety of reasons, a word tends to awaken prejudices. Of knowledge claiming to be ‘occult’ in the sense of secret—accessible only to a few, by special favor or good fortune—there will be no mention here. The reader will do justice to our use of the term ‘Occult Science’ if he considers what Goethe had in mind when he spoke of the ‘manifest secrets’ in the phenomena of Nature. Whatever remains ‘secret,’ that is to say unmanifest in these phenomena when we apprehend them only with the outer senses and with the intellect that is bound to the outer senses, will here be treated as the subject-matter of a supersensible way of knowledge.¹

Needless to say, for anyone who will admit as science only what is manifest to the senses and to the intellect that serves them, what is here named ‘Occult Science’ can be no science. Such a man, however, if willing to understand his own position, should candidly admit that his categorical rejection of any kind of ‘Occult Science’ springs not from reasoned insight but from an ipse dixit, due to his own individual feeling. To see that it is so, he need only reflect how sciences arise and what is their significance in human life. How a pursuit comes to be a science cannot in the nature of the case be ascertained from the subject-matter to which it is devoted, but only by recognizing the mode of action of the human soul while engaged in scientific endeavor. What is the attitude and activity of the soul in the elaboration of a science?—this is the thing we must observe. If one is used to apply this mode of activity only where sense-data are concerned, one easily slides into the idea that sense-data are the essential factor. One misses the real point, which is that a certain inner attitude of the human soul has been applied to the revelations of the senses. For we can go beyond the self-imposed limitation. Apart from the special case to which it is here applied, we can envisage the character of scientific activity as such. Such is the underlying idea when in this book the knowledge of non-sensible World-contents is spoken of as ‘scientific.’ The human mind here sets to work at these World-contents, as in the other case it does at the World-contents given to Natural Science. Occult Science seeks to free the scientific method and spirit of research, which in its own domain holds fast to the sequence and relationship of sense-perceptible events, from this restricted application, while maintaining the same essential attitude and mode of thought. Thus it would speak of the non-sensible in the same spirit in which Natural Science speaks of the sensible. While Natural Science, in the employment of scientific thought and method of research, stops short within the sense-perceptible, Occult Science would like to regard the work of the human soul on Nature as a form of self-education, and apply the faculties, thus educated in the soul, to the realms of the non-sensible. Such is its method and procedure. It does not speak of sense-phenomena as such, but of the non-sensible World-contents in the same mood as does the natural scientist of those accessible to sense-perception. It preserves the essential bearing which the soul maintains in scientific procedure—i.e. the very element whereby alone our knowledge of Nature becomes a science. Hence it may justly call itself a science.

[ 3 ] Whoever ponders on the significance of Natural Science in human life will find that its significance is by no means exhausted in the acquisition of so much detailed knowledge about Nature. The detailed items of knowledge can, in effect, only lead to an experience of what the human soul is not. The soul is living, not in the finished propositions about Nature, but in the process of scientific knowledge concerning Nature. In working upon Nature, the soul experiences her own conscious life and being, and what is livingly acquired in this activity is something more than so much information about Nature. It is an evolution of the Self that is experienced in building up our scientific knowledge of Nature. It is this gain in self-development which Occult Science seeks to activate in realms that lie beyond mere Nature. Far from misjudging Natural Science, the occultist thus values it even more than does the scientist himself. He knows that he can found no science without the integrity of thought with which Natural Science is imbued. And what is more, he knows that this integrity, once gained by really penetrating into the spirit of natural-scientific thinking, can by the requisite inner strength be maintained for other realms of being.

[ 4 ] One thing, admittedly, can make one hesitate at this point. In contemplating Nature the soul is guided by the object of her study in a far higher degree than in the contemplation of non-sensible World-contents. The purely inner incentive whereby the essence of the scientific way of thought is maintained, must be far stronger in the latter case. Many people—unconsciously—imagine that it can only be maintained by holding to the leading-strings of natural phenomena. Hence they incline to decide ex cathedra that as soon as these leading-strings are left behind, the scientific endeavor of the mind and soul will needs be groping in the dark. Such people have never consciously faced the question: What is the essence of scientific procedure? They usually base their judgment on the inevitable aberrations which occur when scientific thinking has not been adequately strengthened by working at the phenomena of Nature, and the soul nevertheless sets out to contemplate the non-sensible or super-sensible domains of the World. Needless to say, much unscientific talk concerning these World-contents arises in this way. The reason is, however, not that the subject must in the nature of the case be outside the pale of science; it is only that in the given instance there has not been adequate self-discipline through the scientific study of Nature.

[ 5 ] With due regard to what has just been said, those who would speak of Occult Science must indeed have a watchful eye for all the vagaries that arise when the ‘manifest secrets’ of the World are treated in an unscientific spirit. It would however be unfruitful if we were to deal with all these aberrations at the very outset of our exposition. In prejudiced minds, no doubt these aberrations bring discredit on any form of research into Occult Science. Their very existence—and they are only too numerous—is taken to justify the conclusion that the whole effort is fallacious. Yet as a rule the rejection of Occult Science by scientists or scientifically minded critics is only due, in the last resort, to the aforesaid, ex cathedra decision. The reference to aberrations is but a pretext, howsoever unconscious. Lengthy initial argument with such opponents will therefore not be very fruitful. After all, they can observe with perfect justice that on the face of it there is no telling whether in seeing how others are caught up in error we ourselves are standing on the requisite firm ground. Therefore the claimant to Occult Science can do no other than simply bring forward what he has to say. Others alone can judge if he is right—though it must be added, only those others who will refrain from ex cathedra pronouncements and enter with open mind into the tenor of his communications about the ‘manifest secrets’ of the World. It will then be for him to show how what he brings forward is related to the existing achievements of life and knowledge. He must meet possible objections and point out where the external, sense-perceptible realities of life confirm his statements. Nor should he ever speak or write in such terms as to rely on eloquence or on the arts of persuasion rather than on the pure content of his descriptions.

[ 6 ] One often hears it objected that works on Occult Science do not prove what they adduce; they merely make their statements and declare: ‘This is what Occult Science teaches.’ It would be a misunderstanding to think that anything put forward in these pages was intended in this spirit. Our purpose is different; it is to encourage what is developed in the human soul through the knowledge of Nature to go on evolving, as indeed it can do by its own inherent power. We then point out that through this evolution the soul will encounter supersensible realities. The premise is that every reader, able to adopt this course, is bound to meet with these realities. There is however an important difference, the moment we enter the spiritual-scientific realm, as compared with natural-scientific study. In Natural Science the facts lie spread out before us within the sense-perceptible world. The scientist who describes them regards his own activity of mind and soul as something that recedes into the background over against the given sequence and relationship of the pure facts of the sense world. The spiritual scientist, on the other hand, puts the activity of the soul into the foreground and cannot but do so, for the reader will only reach the facts when by appropriate methods he makes this activity of soul his own. In Natural Science, the facts—however little understood—are there for man's perception even without the soul's activity. Not so the facts of Spiritual Science. They only enter the realm of man's perception by dint of the soul's activity. Thus the exponent of Spiritual Science has to presume that the reader is looking for the facts together with him. This will determine the character of his descriptions. He will narrate the discovery of the facts; and yet the style of his narration will be dominated not by any idiosyncrasies of his own but by the purely scientific spirit, trained and developed through Natural Science. Hence he will also be obliged to speak of the means and methods whereby man rises to a contemplation of the non-sensible—that is to say, the super-sensible.

Anyone who really enters into the descriptions of Occult Science will presently perceive that in the process he acquires ideas and concepts he did not have before. He begins to have quite unexpected thoughts concerning what he formerly imagined to be the essence of a ‘proof.’ In natural-scientific thinking it is different. Here, the activity which is applied to the proof in natural-scientific thinking, already lies inherent in the seeking for the facts. One cannot even find the facts without the path towards them carrying its own inherent proof. Anyone who really goes along this path will in so doing have experienced the proof, and nothing more can be achieved by any added proof from outside. Failure to recognize this essential feature of Occult Science gives rise to numerous misunderstandings.

[ 7 ] All Occult Science must spring from two thoughts—thoughts which can take root in every human being. For the occult scientist in our sense of the word, they express facts which every man can experience if he makes use of the proper means. Admittedly, for many people, even these thoughts will appear as statements highly questionable, or even liable to direct refutation.

[ 8 ] The two thoughts are as follows. First, that there is behind the visible an invisible world, hidden to begin with from the senses and from the kind of thinking that is fettered to the senses. And secondly, that by the due development of forces slumbering within him it is possible for man to penetrate into the hidden world.

[ 9 ] There is no such world, says one. The world man perceives with his senses is the one and only world, and the riddles it presents are soluble within its own domain. However far mankind may be as yet from the ability to answer all the problems, sensory observation and the science founded on it will in due time provide the answers.

[ 10 ] No, says another, it cannot be said that there is no hidden world behind the visible; our human faculties of knowledge, however, cannot reach it. They are beset with insurmountable limitations. Let the longing for religious faith have recourse to such a world; genuine science, based on the ascertainable facts, can have no dealings with it.

[ 11 ] There is still a third party, who deem it presumption for man to want to penetrate with his own active cognition into a region with regard to which he should resign the claim to knowledge and modestly content himself with faith. Those who adhere to this idea feel it wrong for weak humanity to want to press forward into a world which should belong to the religious life alone.

[ 12 ] And then again it is argued that a universally accepted knowledge of the facts of the sense-world is possible; here there is common ground for all men. As to the super-sensible, on the other hand, it can only be a question of the individual's personal opinion; it is fallacious to allege any universally valid certainty upon these matters.

[ 13 ] Others put forward many other viewpoints.

[ 14 ] Yet it is possible to realize quite clearly that the contemplation of the visible world places riddles before man which can never be solved out of the facts of this world alone, even when scientific knowledge has advanced to the very utmost. The visible facts, by their very nature, distinctly indicate a hidden world. The man who does not see this, closes his eyes to the riddles which spring to view on every hand out of the facts of the sense-world. He does not want to see certain facts and problems; therefore he believes that all questions can be answered by the sense-perceptible facts alone. The questions he is willing to admit are indeed answerable by these facts, concerning which he is persuaded that they will all be discovered in course of time. We may concede this without controversy. But how should anyone who asks no further questions, except answers to them? He who aspires to a science of the occult says no more than that for him these further questions are spontaneously there. Why should they not be recognized as a perfectly legitimate expression of the human soul? Science can not be forced into a strait-jacket by forbidding man to put questions freely.

[ 15 ] To those who opine that there are limits to human knowledge which man cannot transcend and which compel him to stop short of an invisible world, the answer is: No doubt, with the mode of knowledge they have in mind, man will never penetrate into an unseen world. If one considers this to be the only mode of knowledge they have in mind, man will never penetrate into an unseen world. If one considers this to be the only mode of knowledge, one cannot but come to the conclusion that the human being is denied access to a higher world—if such a world exists. And yet, supposing it to be possible to evolve another mode of cognition, the latter may after all lead into a supersensible world. If such a mode of knowledge is ruled out, then indeed one arrives at a point of view from which any discussion of a supersensible world must appear meaningless. Yet for an open mind the only possible reason for this opinion is that the one who holds it is unacquainted with the other form of knowledge. No man can judge of a thing which from the very outset he declares to be unknown to him. Unbiased thinking must admit that a man should speak of what he knows, and refrain from making pronouncements on what he does not know. Sound thinking can only admit a man's right to communicate what he has really experienced; no man can claim the right to declare impossible what he does not know or does not want to know. We cannot deny a man's right not to concern himself with the supersensible; but he can never have the right to declare himself competent to judge, not only of what is known or knowable to himself, but of what he alleges to be unknowable to ‘Man’ in general!

[ 16 ] As to those who think it presumption for man to penetrate into the supersensible, the occult scientist will ask them to reflect, what is man can? Is it not then a betrayal of faculties granted to man if he lets them lie waste instead of evolving and making good use of them?

[ 17 ] Lastly, the one who thinks that any views about the supersensible can only be a matter of personal feeling and opinion, denies the common and uniting element in all human beings. It is quite true that each of us can only gain insight into these things through his own efforts, but it is equally true that all those who do, provided they go far enough, reach no divergent views but come to the identical insight. Divergencies exist only so long as men try to approach the highest truths by arbitrary ways, instead of by a pathway that is scientifically sure. Once again it must be unreservedly admitted that he alone who is prepared to enter open-mindedly into the essence of the occult-scientific method will come to recognize its rightness.

[ 18 ] The path to Occult Science can be found in due time by every man who perceives—or even only divines or surmises—in the manifest the presence of a hidden aspect. Aware that his powers of knowledge are capable of evolution, he will begin to feel that the hidden can become manifest to him. Once he is led to it by such experiences of the soul, Occult Science will open out to him the prospect not only of discovering the answer to many questions prompted by his thirst for knowledge, but the further prospect that he himself will be able to outgrow whatever may be hindering or weakening his life. For in a higher sense it does denote enfeeblement of life—even a kind of death to the soul—when a man feels himself compelled to turn away from the supersensible or to deny it. It may even lead him to despair when he loses hope that the hidden will ever be made manifest. This death and this despair—manifold in the forms they can assume—are at the same time inner opponents of man's striving towards Spiritual Science. They make themselves felt when his inner strength begins to wane. If he is then to have any strength for life, it has to be brought to him from outside. He perceives the objects and events which confront his outer senses; he analyses and dissects them with his intellect. They give him joy or pain; they impel him to such actions as lie within his scope. For a while he may go on in this way; sooner or later however, he will inevitably reach a point where he begins to die an inner death. Sooner or later, what the outer world can give him in this way becomes exhausted. This is not mere assertion of any one man's personal experience; it derives from an open-minded contemplation of all human life. It is the hidden world, latent in the depths of things, which preserves us from this exhaustion And when the power of fathoming the depths, so as to draw forth from thence ever new strength for life, is waning in man, the outer aspect too will in the end cease to sustain him.

[ 19 ] Nor does this only concern the individual's personal weal or woe. More than any other thing, the study of true Occult Science gives us the ever-growing certainty that from a higher point of view the weal and woe of the individual is bound up with that of all the world. Here is a path whereby man reaches the insight that he does harm to the whole world and to all other beings if he fails in the right development of own powers. When a man renders his life waste and void by losing his connection with the supersensible, he not only destroys within himself something of which the death may ultimately lead him to despair; by his own weakness he becomes a hindrance to the evolution of the entire world in which he lives.

[ 20 ] Now it is quite possible for man to deceive himself. He can give himself up to the belief that there is no hidden side to things; that that which meets his outer senses and his intellect is all-inclusive. This delusion however is only possible on the surface of consciousness, not in the depths. Our feeling-life, our aspirations and desires, do not partake in the illusory belief. In one way or another they will always crave for the hidden side; when it is taken from them, they drive the human being into doubt and bewilderment, even into despair, as we have seen. A way of knowledge which brings the hidden to revelation is apt to overcome all hopelessness, perplexity and despair—in short, all that weakens human life on Earth and incapacitates it from contributing its service to the cosmic whole.

[ 21 ] One of the fairest fruits of the pursuit of Spiritual Science is that it lends strength and firmness to life, instead of merely satisfying a man's craving for knowledge. Inexhaustible is the fountain head form which it draws, giving man strength for work and confidence in life. No man who has once truly found his way to this source will ever go away unstrengthened, however often he may have recourse to it.

[ 22 ] There are those who will have nothing to do with Spiritual Science because they think there is something unhealthy even in what has just been said. As to the surface, the outward aspect of life, they are not altogether wrong. They do not want any neglect of the ‘realities’ of lie, as they see them. They see it as a weakness when man turns away from these realities and seeks salvation in a hidden world, which for them is equivalent to a world of mere dreams and fancies. If in the quest of Spiritual Science we are not to succumb to morbidity and weakness, we must admit the partial justice of such objectives. They rest on a sound enough judgment, but one which only leads to a half-truth instead of to the whole truth, inasmuch as it stops short at the surface and fails to penetrate into the depths. If the striving for supersensible knowledge were such as to weaken life and turn man away from reality, objections of this kind would assuredly be strong enough to undermine it.

[ 23 ] Here too, however, Occult Science would not be taking the right path by seeking to defend itself, in the everyday sense of the word, as against such opinions. Here too it can only try to express—recognizably to any open mind—its own inherent value, making it felt how it can enhance the strength and energy of life for those who devote themselves to it. For the true quest of Spiritual Science will never make a man a dreamer or an escapist from the world; rather will it fortify him from those deeper founts of lie from which as a being of soul and spirit he himself proceeds.

[ 24 ] There are yet other hindrances to understanding which for some people bar the way to the pursuit of Occult Science. To mention one: it is true in principle that the reader will find in the expositions of Occult Science a description of experiences of soul which, if he follows them, can lead him towards the supersensible realities. In practice, however, this is an ultimate ideal. The reader must first receive as simple communication a wealth of supersensible discoveries which he cannot yet experience for himself. It cannot be done otherwise, and will be so in this book. The author will be describing what he believes himself to know about the being of man, including what man undergoes in birth and death and in the body-free condition in the spiritual world; also about the evolution of the Earth and of mankind. It might then seem as though he were putting forward all these alleged items of knowledge as dogmas, which the reader was being asked to accept on the writer's authority. But it is not so. For in reality, whatever can be known of the supersensible world, lives—as a living content of soul—in the spiritual investigator who expounds it, and as the reader finds his way into this living content it kindles in his soul the impulses leading towards the supersensible realities in question. The way we live in reading the descriptions of Spiritual Science is quite different from what it is when reading communications about sense-perceptible events. We simply read about the latter; but when we read communications of supersensible realities in the right way, we ourselves are entering into a stream of spiritual life and being. In receiving the results of research, we are receiving at the same time our own inner path towards these results. True, to begin with, the reader will often fail to notice that this is so. For he is far too apt to conceive the entry into the spiritual world on the analogy of sensory experience. Therefore what he experiences of this world in reading of it will seem to him like ‘mere thoughts’ and nothing more. Yet in the true receiving of it even in the form of thoughts, man is already within the spiritual world; it only remains for him to become aware that he has been experiencing in all reality what he imagined himself to be receiving as the mere communication of thoughts.

The true character of the experience will be made fully clear to him when he proceeds to carry out in practice what is described in the later portions of this book, namely the ‘path’ leading to supersensible knowledge. It might easily be imagined that the reverse was the right order—the pathway should first be described. But it is not so. One who, without first turning his attention to some of the essential facts of the supersensible world, merely does ‘exercises’ with the idea of gaining entrance there, will find in it a vague and confusing chaos. Man finds his way into the world—to begin with, as it were, naively—by learning to understand its essential features. Then he can gain a clear idea of how—leaving this ‘naïve’ stage behind him—he will himself attain, in full consciousness, to the experiences which have been related to him. Anyone who really enters into Occult Science will become convinced that this and this alone is the reliable way to supersensible knowledge. As to the opinion that information about the supersensible world might influence the reader by way of ‘suggestion’ or mere dogma, he will perceive that this is quite unfounded. The contents of supersensible knowledge are experienced in a form of inner life which excludes anything in the nature of suggestion and leaves no other possibility than to impart the knowledge to one's fellow-man in the same way as any other kind of truth would be imparted, appealing only to his wide-awake and thoughtful judgment. And if, to begin with, the one who hears or reads the description does not notice how he himself is living in the spiritual world, the reason lies not in any passive or thoughtless receiving of the information, but I the delicate and unwonted nature of the experience.

Therefore by studying the communications given in the first part of this book, one is enabled in the first place to share in the knowledge of the supersensible world; thereafter, by the practical application of the procedures indicated in the second part, one can gain independent knowledge in that world.

[ 25 ] A scientific man, entering into the spirit of this book, will find no essential contradiction between his form of science, built as it is upon the facts of the sense-perceptible world, and the way the supersensible world is here investigated. Every scientist makes use of instruments and methods. He prepares his instruments by working upon the things which ‘Nature’ gives him. The supersensible form of knowing also makes use of an instrument, only that here the instrument is Man himself. This instrument too must first be prepared—prepared for the purposes of a higher kind of research. The faculties and forces with which the human instrument has been endowed by ‘Nature’ without man's active cooperation must be transformed into higher ones. Thus can man make of himself the instrument of research—research into the supersensible world.

• 1. Critics of earlier editions of this book have objected that the expression Occult Science is a contradiction in terms, since in the nature of the case a science cannot be kept ‘occult’ or ‘secret.’ (The German for ‘Occult Science’—Geheimwissenschaft—begins with the adjective geheim, the ordinary word for ‘secret.’ The criticism would be just if this were the intention, but it is not so. When we say ‘Natural Science’ we do not mean a science that is ‘natural’ to everyone—as it were, a natural endowment. No more does the author think of Occult Science as a science that is ‘occult’ or ‘secret.’ It is the science of what—to the ordinary methods of cognition—is present but unmanifest in the phenomena of the world. Occult Science is a science concerning the occult—or, to use Goethe's words again, concerning the ‘manifest secret.’ It has no secret to conceal from anyone who is prepared to seek for occult knowledge by the appropriate methods.

The Michael period into which the world has entered ever since the last third of the 19th century, and into which human beings will have to enter with increasing consciousness, is very different from former periods of Michael. For in the earthly evolution of mankind different ones among the seven great Archangel Spirits enter from time to time into the life of man. Thus, after given periods of time a certain guidance of the world—such as the guidance of Gabriel or Uriel, Raphael or Michael,—is repeated. Our own period is, however, essentially different from the preceding period of Michael. This is due to the fact that man stands in quite another relation to the spiritual world since the first third of the 15th century than he ever did before. This new relation to the spiritual world also determines a peculiar relation to the Spirit guiding the destinies of mankind, whom we may call by the ancient name of Michael.

Recently I have been speaking to you again of the Rosicrucian movement. Rosicrucianism, I remarked, has indeed led to charlatanry in many quarters. Most of the so-called “Rosicrucianism” that has been transmitted to mankind is charlatanry. Nevertheless, as I have explained on former occasions, there did exist an individuality whom we may describe by the name of Christian Rosenkreutz. This individuality is, in a sense, the type and standard: he reveals the way in which an enlightened spirit—a man of spiritual knowledge—could enter into relation with the spiritual world at the dawn of the new phase of humanity.

To Christian Rosenkreutz it was vouchsafed to ask many questions, deeply significant riddles of existence, and in quite a new way when compared to the earlier experiences of mankind. You see, my dear friends, while Rosicrucianism was arising, directing the mind of man with “Faustian” striving—as it was afterwards described—towards the spiritual world, an abstract naturalistic Science was arising on the other hand. The bearers of this modern stream of spiritual life—men like Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Copernicus or Kepler, worthy as they are of fullest recognition—were quite differently situated from the Rosicrucians, who wanted to foster, not a merely formal or abstract, but a true knowledge of things. The Rosicrucians perceived in their own human life and being how utterly the time had changed, and with it the whole relation of the Gods to mankind.

We may describe it as follows. Quite distinctly until the 4th century A.D., and in a rudimentary way even until the 12th and 13th century, man was able to draw forth from himself real knowledge about the spiritual world. In doing the exercises which belonged to the old Mysteries, he could draw forth from himself the secrets of existence. For the humanity of olden times it really was so: the Initiates drew forth what they had to say to mankind, from the depths of their souls to the surface of their thought—their world of ideas. They had the consciousness that they were drawing forth their knowledge from the inner being of the human soul. The exercises they underwent were intended, as you know, to stir the human heart to its depths,—so to inform the human heart and mind with experiences which man does not undergo in the ordinary round of life. There-by the secrets of the world of the Gods were, so to speak, drawn forth from the depths, from the inner being of man.

Man, however, cannot see the secrets he draws out of himself while in the very act of doing so. True, in the old instinctive clairvoyance man did behold the secrets of the world; he saw them in Imagination; he heard and perceived them in Inspiration; he united himself with them in Intuition. These things, however, are impossible so long as man merely stands there alone,—just as little as it is possible for me to draw a triangle without a board. The triangle I draw on the board portrays to me what I bear in a purely spiritual way within me. The triangle as a whole,—all the laws of the triangle are in me; but I draw the triangle on the board, thereby bringing home to myself what is really there within me. So it is when we make external diagrams. But when it is a question of deriving real knowledge out of the being of man, after the manner of the ancient Mysteries, this knowledge too must, in a certain sense, be written somewhere. Every such knowledge, in effect, to be seen in the spirit, must be inscribed in that which has been called from time immemorial “the astral light,”—i.e., in the fine substantiality of the Akasha. Everything must be written there, and man must be able to develop this faculty of writing in the astral light.

This faculty has depended on many and varied things in the course of human evolution. Not to speak, for the moment, of pristine ages, I will leave on one side the first Post-Atlantean epoch, the ancient Indian. At that time it was somewhat different. Let me begin with the ancient Persian epoch, as described in my Outline of Occult Science. There was an instinctive clairvoyance, knowledge of the divine-spiritual world. This knowledge could be written in the astral light so that man himself could behold it, inasmuch as the earth, the solid earth, afforded resistance. The writing itself is done, needless to say, with the spiritual organs, but these organs also require a basis of resistance. The things that are thus seen in the spirit are not inscribed, of course, on the earth itself; they are written in the astral light. But the earth acts as a ground of resistance. In the old Persian epoch the seers could feel the resistance of the earth; and hence the perceptions they drew forth from their inner being grew into actual visions.

In the next, the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, all the knowledge that the Initiates drew forth from their souls was able to be written in the astral light by virtue of the fluid element. You must conceive it rightly. The Initiate of the old Persian epoch looked to the solid earth. Wherever there were plants or stones, the astral light reflected back to him his inner vision. The Initiate of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch looked into the sea, into the river, or into the falling rain, the rising mist. When he looked into the river or the sea, he saw the lasting secrets. Those secrets, on the other hand, which relate to the transient—to the creation of the Gods in transient things—he beheld in the downpouring rain or the ascending mist. You must familiarise yourself with the idea. The ancients had not the prosaic, matter-of-fact way of seeing the mist and rain which is ours to-day. Rain and mist said very much to them—revealed to them the secrets of the Gods.

Then in the Graeco-Latin period, the visions were there like a Fata Morgana in the air. The Greek saw his Zeus, his gods, in the astral light; but he had the feeling that the astral light only reflected the gods to him under the proper conditions. Hence he assigned his gods to special places,—places where the air could offer the proper resistance to the inscriptions in the astral light. And so it remained until the 4th century A.D. Even among the first Fathers of the Christian Church, and notably the old Greek Fathers, there were many (as you may even prove from their writings) who saw this Fata Morgana of their own spiritual visions through the resistance of the air in the astral light. Thus they had clear knowledge of the fact that out of Man the Logos, the Divine Word, revealed Himself through Nature. But in the course of time this knowledge faded and grew feeble. Echoes of it still continued in a few specially gifted persons, even until the 12th or 13th century. But when the age of abstract knowledge came—when men were only dependent on the logical sequence of ideas and the results of sense-observation—then neither earth nor water nor air afforded resistance to the astral light, but only the element of the warmth-ether. It is unknown, of course, to those who are completely wrapped up in their abstract thoughts that these abstract thoughts are also written in the astral light. They are written there indeed; but in this process the element of the warmth-ether is the sole resistance.

The following is now the case. Remember once more that in the ancient Persian epoch men had the solid earth as a resistance so as to behold their entries in the astral light. What is thus contained in the astral light—all that, for which the solid earth is the resistance—rays on and out, but only as far as the sphere of the Moon. Farther it cannot go. Thence it rays back again. Thus it remains, so to speak, with the Earth. We behold the secrets reflected by virtue of the earth; they remain because of the pressure of the lunar sphere.

Now let us consider the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. The water on the Earth reflects. What is thus reflected goes as far as the Saturn-sphere, which presses once again. Thereby the possibility is given for man to remain with his visions on the Earth. And if we go on into the Graeco-Latin period—even into the 12th or 13th century—we find the visions inscribed in the astral light by virtue of the air. This time it goes to the very end of the cosmic sphere and thence returns. It is the most fleeting of all; yet still it is such that man remains united with his visions. The Initiates of all these epochs could say to themselves every time: Such spiritual vision as we have had—through earth or water or air—it is there. But when the most modern time arrived, only the element of the warmth-ether was left to offer resistance. And the element of the warmth-ether carries all that is written in it out into the cosmic realms, right out of space into the spiritual worlds. It is no longer there.

It is so indeed. Take the most pedantic of modern professors with his ideas. (He must at least have ideas. You would first have to make sure of it in the individual case; modern professors seldom have ideas!) But if he has ideas, then they are entered through the warmth-ether in the astral light. Now the warmth-ether is transient and fleeting; all things become merged and fused in it at once, and go out into cosmic distances.

Such a man as Christian Rosenkreutz knew that the Initiates of olden times had lived with their visions. They had confirmed what they beheld through knowing that it was there, reflected somewhere in the heavens—be it in the moon-sphere or in the planetary sphere, or at the end of the Universe—it was reflected. But now, nothing at all was reflected. For the immediate, wide-awake vision of man, nothing at all was reflected. Now men could find ideas about Nature; the Copernican cosmology could arise, all manner of ideas could be formed, but they were scattered in the warmth-ether, out into cosmic space.

So then it came about that Christian Rosenkreutz, by inspiration of a higher Spirit, found a way to perceive the reflected radiation after all, in spite of the fact that it was only a reflection by the warmth-ether. It was brought about as follows. Other conditions of consciousness—dim, subconscious and sleep-like—were called into play; conditions in which man is even normally outside his body. Then it became perceptible that that which is discovered with modern abstract ideas is after all inscribed, although not in space, but in the spiritual world. This, therefore, was the peculiar outcome for the Rosicrucian Movement: the Rosicrucians, as it were in a transition stage, made themselves acquainted with all that could be discovered about Nature in this epoch. They received it into themselves and assimilated it as only man can assimilate it. They enhanced into true Wisdom what for the others was only Science. Holding it in their souls, they tried to pass over into sleep in highest purity and after intimate meditations. Then the divine spiritual worlds—no longer the spatial end of the universe, but the divine spiritual worlds—brought back to them in a spiritually real language what had been conceived at first in abstract ideas.

In Rosicrucian schools not only was the Copernican cosmology taught, but in special states of consciousness its ideas came back in the form I explained here during the last few days. It was the Rosicrucians, above all, who realised that that which man receives in modern knowledge must first be carried forth, so to speak, and offered to the Gods, that the Gods may translate it into their language and give it back again to men.

The possibility has remained until this present. It is so indeed, my dear friends. If you are touched by the Rosicrucian principle as here intended, study the system of Haeckel, with all its materialism; study it, and at the same time permeate yourselves with the methods of cognition indicated in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, Take what you learn in Haeckel's Anthropogenesis: on the Ancestors of Man. In that form it may very likely repel you. Learn it nevertheless; learn all that can be learned about it by outer Natural Science, and carry it towards the Gods; then you will get what is related about evolution in my Occult Science.

Such is the connection between the feeble, shadowy knowledge which man can acquire here with his physical body, and that which the Gods can give him, if with the proper spirit he duly prepares himself by the learning of this knowledge. But man must first bring towards them what he can learn here on the Earth, for in truth the times have changed.

Moreover, another thing has happened. Let a man strive as he will to-day; he can no longer draw anything forth from himself as the old Initiates did. The soul no longer gives anything forth in the way it did for the old Initiates. It all becomes impure—filled with instincts, as is evident in the case of spiritualist mediums, and in other morbid or pathological conditions. All that arises merely from within, becomes impure. The time of such creation from within is past; it was past already in the 12th or 13th century. What happened can be expressed approximately as follows: The Initiates of the old Persian epoch wrote very much in the astral light with the help of the resistance of the earth. When the first Initiate of the old Persian epoch appeared, the whole of the astral light, destined for man, was like an unwritten slate. I shall speak later of the old Indian epoch. To-day I shall only go back to the ancient Persian epoch. All Nature: all the elements—solid, liquid, airy and warmth-like—were an unwritten slate.

Now the Initiates of the old Persian epoch wrote on this slate as much as could be written by virtue of the resistance of the earth. There, to begin with, the secrets destined to come to man from the Gods were written in the astral light. To a certain degree the tablet was inscribed; yet judged by another standard it was empty. So the Initiates of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch were able to continue the writing in their way; for they gained their visions by the resistance of the water. Another part of the tablet was inscribed.

Then came the Greek Initiates; they inscribed the third portion of the tablet. Now the tablet of Nature is fully inscribed; it was quite fully inscribed by the 13th or 14th century. Then human beings began to write in the warmth-ether; that, however, scatters and dissolves away in the vast expanse. For a time—until the 19th century—men wrote in the warmth-ether; they had no inkling that their experiences also stood written in the astral light. But now, my dear friends, the time has come when men must see that not out of themselves, in the old sense, can they find the secrets of the world, but only by so preparing themselves in heart and mind that they can read what is written on the tablet which is now full of writing. This we must prepare to do to-day. We must make ourselves ripe for this—no longer to draw forth from ourselves like the old Initiates, but to be able to read in the astral light all that is written there. If we do so, precisely what we gain from the warmth-ether will work as an inspiration. The Gods come to meet us, and bring to us in its reality what we have acquired by our own efforts here on Earth. And what we thus receive from the warmth-ether reacts in turn on all that stands written on the tablet by virtue of the air and water and earth.

Thus the Natural Science of to-day is actually the true basis for spiritual seership. Learn first by Natural Science to know the properties of air, water and earth. Attain the corresponding inner faculties. Then, as you gaze into the airy, into the watery, into the earthy element, the astral light will stream forth. It does not stream forth like a vague mist or cloud; but so that we can read in it the secrets of world-existence and of human life.

What, then, do we read? We—the humanity of to-day—read what we ourselves have written in it. For what does it mean to say that the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians wrote in the astral light? It was we ourselves who wrote it in our former lives on Earth.

You see, my dear friends: just as our inner memory of the common things that we experience in earthly life preserves them for us, so too the astral light preserves for us what we have written in it. It is the astral light which spreads around us, as a fully written tablet with respect to the secrets which we ourselves have inscribed. There we must read, if we wish to find the secrets once more. It is a kind of evolution-memory which must arise in mankind. A consciousness must gradually arise that there is such an evolution-memory, and that in relation to former epochs of culture the humanity of to-day must read in the astral light, just as we, at a later age, read in our own youth through ordinary memory. This must come into the consciousness of men. In this sense I have held the lectures this Christmas-time, so that you could see that the point is to draw forth from the astral light the secrets that we need to-day. The old initiation was directed mainly to the subjective life; the new initiation concentrates on the objective,—that is the great difference. For all that was subjective is written in the outer world. All that the Gods have secreted into man, . . . what they secreted in his sentient body, came out into the old Persian epoch; what they secreted in his sentient soul, came out in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch; what they secreted in his intellectual or mind-soul came out during the Grecian epoch. The spiritual soul which we are now to evolve is independent, brings forth nothing more out of itself; it stands over against what is already there. As human beings we must find our humanity again in the astral light.

That is the peculiarity of the Rosicrucian movement: in a time of transition it had to content itself with entering into certain dream-like conditions, and, as it were, dreaming the higher truth of that which Science discovers here—in a dry, matter-of-fact way—out of the Nature around us.

And this is the peculiarity since the beginning of the Michael epoch, since the end of the 1870's, the last third of the 19th century:—The same thing that was attained in the way above-described in the time of the old Rosicrucians, can now be attained in a conscious way. To-day, therefore, we can say: We no longer need that other condition which was half-conscious. What we need is a state of enhanced consciousness. Then, with the knowledge of Nature which we acquire, we can press into the higher world; and the Nature-knowledge we have acquired emerges and comes towards us from that higher world. We read again what has been written in the astral light; and as we do so, it emerges and comes to meet us in spiritual reality. We carry up into a spiritual world the knowledge of Nature here attained, or again, the creations of naturalistic art, or the religious sentiments working naturalistically in the soul. (Even religion has become naturalistic nowadays). And as we carry all this upward—if we develop the necessary faculties—we do indeed encounter Michael.

So we may say: the old Rosicrucian movement is characterised by the fact that its most illumined spirits had an intense longing to meet Michael; but they could only do so as in dream. Since the end of the last third of the nineteenth century, men can meet Michael in the spirit, in a fully conscious way.

Michael, however, is a peculiar being: Michael is a being who reveals nothing if we do not bring him something from our diligent spiritual work on Earth. Michael is a silent Spirit—silent and taciturn. The other ruling Archangels are talkative Spirits—in a spiritual sense, of course; but Michael is taciturn. He is a Spirit who speaks very little. At most he will give sparing indications, for what we learn from Michael is not really the word, but—if I may so express it—the look, the power, the direction of his gaze.

This is because Michael concerns himself most of all with that which men create out of the Spirit. He lives with the consequences of all that men have created. The other Spirits live more with the causes; Michael lives with the consequences. The other Spirits kindle in man the impulses for that which he shall do. Michael will be the true spiritual hero of Freedom; he lets men do, and he then takes what becomes of human deeds, receives it and carries it on and out into the cosmos, to continue in the cosmos what men themselves cannot yet do with it.

Other beings of the Hierarchy of Archangeloi give us the feeling that from them come the impulses to do this or that. In a greater or lesser degree, the impulses come from them. Michael is the Spirit from whom no impulses come, to begin with; for his characteristic period of rulership is that which is now coming, when things are to arise out of human freedom. But when man does things out of spiritual activity or inner freedom, consciously or unconsciously kindled by the reading of the astral light, then Michael carries the human earthly deed out into the cosmos; so that it becomes cosmic deed. Michael cares for the results; the other Spirits care more for the causes.

However, Michael is not only a silent, taciturn Spirit. Michael meets man with a very clear gesture of repulsion for many things in which the human being of to-day still lives on Earth. For example, all knowledge that arises in the life of men or animals or plants, tending to lay stress on the inherited characteristics—on all that is inherited in physical nature—is such that we feel Michael constantly repelling it, driving it away with deprecation. He means to show that such knowledge cannot help man at all for the Spiritual World. Only what man discovers in the human and animal and plant kingdoms independently of the purely hereditary nature, can be carried up before Michael. Then we receive, not the eloquent gesture of deprecation, but the look of approval which tells us that it is a thought righteously conceived in face of the cosmic guidance. For this is what we learn increasingly to strive for: as it were to meditate, so as to strike through to the astral light, to see the secrets of existence, and then to come before Michael and receive his approving look which tells us: That is just, that is right before the cosmic guidance.

So it is with Michael. He also sternly rejects all separating elements, such as the human languages. So long as we only clothe our knowledge in these languages, and do not carry it right up into the thoughts, we cannot come near Michael. Therefore, to-day in the spiritual world there is much significant battle. For on the one hand the Michael impulse has entered the evolution of humanity. The Michael impulse is there. But on the other hand, in the evolution of humanity there is much that will not receive this impulse of Michael but wants to reject it. Among the things that would fain reject the impulse of Michael to-day are the feelings of nationality. They flared up in the nineteenth century and became strong in the twentieth—stronger and stronger. By the principle of nationality many things have been ordered, or rather, disordered in the most recent times. For they have in fact been disordered.

All this is in terrible opposition to the Michael principle; all this contains Ahrimanic forces which strive against the in-pouring and throbbing of the Michael-force into the earthly life of man. So then we see this battle of the up-ward-attacking Ahrimanic spirits who would like to carry upward what comes through the inherited impulses of nationality—which Michael sternly rejects and repels.

Truly to-day there is the most vivid spiritual conflict in this direction. For this is the state of affairs over a great portion of mankind. Thoughts are not there at all; men only think in words, and to think in words is no way to Michael. We only come to Michael when we get through the words to real inner experiences of the spirit—when we do not hang on the words, but arrive at real inner experiences of the spirit.

This is the very essence, the secret of modern Initiation: to get beyond the words to a living experience of the spiritual. It is nothing contrary to a feeling for the beauty of language. Precisely when we no longer think in language, we begin to feel it; we begin to have it streaming in us and out from us as an element of feeling. That, however, is a thing to which the man of to-day must first aspire. Perhaps, to begin with, he cannot attain it in his actual speech, but through his writing. For in respect of writing, too, it must be said: To-day men do not have the writing but the writing has them. What does it mean, ‘the writing has them’? It means that in our wrist, in our hand, we have a certain train of writing. We write mechanically, out of the hand. This is a thing that fetters man. He only becomes unfettered when he writes as he paints or draws—when every letter beside the next becomes a thing that is painted or drawn ... Then there is no longer what is ordinarily called ‘a handwriting.’ Man draws the form of the letter. His relation to the letter is objective; he sees it before him—that is the essential thing.

For this reason, strange as it may sound, in certain Rosicrucian schools learning-to-write was prohibited until the fourteenth or fifteenth year of age; so that the form, the mechanism which comes to expression in writing, did not enter the human organism. Man only approached the form of the letter when his spiritual vision was developed. Then it was so arranged that simultaneously with his learning of the conventional letters, needed for human intercourse, he had to learn others—specifically Rosicrucian letters—which are regarded nowadays as a secret script. They were not intended as such; the idea was that for an A one should learn at the same time another sign: O. For then one did not hold fast to the one sign but got free of it. Then one felt the real A as something higher than the mere sign of A or O. Otherwise, the mere letter A would be identified with that which comes forth from the human being, soaring and hovering as the living sound of A.

With Rosicrucianism many things found their way into the people. For it was one of their fundamental principles: from the small circles in which they were united, the Rosicrucians went out into the world, as I have already told you, generally working as doctors. But at the same time, while they were doctors, they spread knowledge of many things in the wide circles into which they came. Moreover, with such knowledge, certain moods and feelings were spread. We find them everywhere, wherever the Rosicrucian stream has left its traces. Sometimes they even assume grotesque forms. For instance, out of such moods and feelings of soul, men came to regard the whole of this modern relationship to writing—and, a fortiori, to printing—a black art. For in truth, nothing hinders one more from reading in the astral light than ordinary writing. This artificial fixing hinders one very much from reading in the astral light. One must always first overcome this writing when one wants to read in the astral light.

At this point two things come together, one of which I mentioned a short while ago. In the production of spiritual knowledge man must always be present with full inner activity. I confessed that I have many note-books in which I write or put down the results I come to. I generally do not look at them again. Only, by calling into activity not only the head but the whole man, these perceptions which do indeed take hold of the entire man come forth. He who does so, gradually accustoms himself not to care so much for what he sees physically, what is already fixed; but to remain in the activity, in order not to spoil his faculty of seeing in the astral light. It is good to practise this reticence. As far as possible, when fixing things in ordinary writing, one should adhere not to the writing as such, but draw in the letters after one's pleasure (for then it is really as though you were painting, it is an art). Or again, one does not reflect upon what one writes down. Thereby one acquires the faculty not to spoil the impressions in the astral light.

If we are obliged to relate ourselves to writing in the modern way, we mar our spiritual progress. For this reason, in our Waldorf School educational method, great care is taken that the human being does not go so far in writing as in the ordinary educational methods of to-day. Care is taken to enable him to remain within the spiritual, for that is necessary.

Thus the world must come to receive the principle of Initiation as such, once more, among the principles of civilisation. Only in this way will it come about: man, here on the Earth, will gather in his soul something with which he can go before Michael, so as to meet with Michael's approving gaze, which says: “That is just before the Universe.” Then the will is strengthened and made firm, and the human being is incorporated in the spiritual progress of the Universe. Hence man himself becomes a co-operator in that which is about to be instilled into the evolution of mankind on Earth by Michael—beginning now in this present epoch of Michael.

Many, many things must be taken into account if man wishes rightly to cross that abyss of which I spoke yesterday, where in truth a Guardian is standing. We shall show in the next lectures how this abyss was opened out in the 1840's, and how, under the influence of such knowledge as I have set forth once more to-day, man, looking back to this abyss, can relate himself to this same Guardian.

I shall very briefly draw attention once more to what I presented to you here yesterday, because today I shall have further things to add that relate to the human being. What I had to say to you yesterday was as follows: We first turned our attention to the three faculties of the human soul that are more devoted to knowledge. We pointed out that there are essentially three cognitive faculties in the human soul: first, what is the faculty of memory, then what is intelligence, and finally what is sensory activity. Now I drew your attention to the fact that these three soul faculties can only be understood by looking at their development. In order to understand memory, which is relatively one of the more recent abilities of the human being, we must turn our gaze back to times when the Earth was not yet what it is today, when the Earth was undergoing its development as the Moon, which preceded the Earth. So that the first rudiments of what has now become our faculty of memory are to be sought in the ancient lunar period and there appeared, not as memory, but as the dream-like imagination that pervades the human being, which I have often described in other contexts. What was dream-like imagination in the ancient moon period in the beings from which man developed has become the faculty of memory in the earth period. This memory, as I have already mentioned, is more closely interwoven with the physical body than are the other cognitive faculties of the soul. Intelligence is less closely interwoven with the physical body. It is more detached from it, as I described yesterday. But to discover its first rudiments, one must go further back than the old moon time; one must go back to the old sun time and then find the first rudiment of what is present in us today as intelligence in dormant inspiration. As for that which is most divorced from our physical nature, as I explained yesterday, one must go back furthest, although one is least inclined to believe this from the materialistic point of view of our time: for sensory activity, one must go back to the old Saturn time. And one finds as the first origin of this sensory activity, both beings, from which man was later formed, a dull intuition.

Furthermore, we have seen that by carrying these three soul abilities within us, we are at the same time the hosts for beings of higher hierarchies in the organization that underlies these soul abilities. So that through the organization of our sensory activity, we are the hosts of the archai, the spirits of time. They live in our humanity. Through that which we have in us as intelligence, insofar as this intelligence is bound to the mirroring apparatus in us, which reflects back to us our concepts, our ideas, but which come from the spiritual world, and thus brings them to our consciousness, we are the hosts of the archangeloi. And through that which works in our organization and mediates our memory, we are the hosts of the angeloi. Thus we are related to the past through our cognitive abilities, and we are related to the beings of higher hierarchies through our cognitive abilities.

According to an old custom, these three abilities of man are called the upper abilities. And if I am to sketch the human being schematically for you, if I am to present the image of the human being to you as in a diagram, then I would have to draw the following as this diagram of the human being. I would have to start by drawing the faculty of sensory activity. I will try to do it like this, by making a white background (see drawing, hatched in white). I would first have to draw the sensory activity schematically in the human organization, and to get the right proportions, I would have to draw it like this (blue). The main sensory activity is, of course, developed in the head. Although the whole person is imbued with sensory activity, I would first like to draw the main sensory organization here (blue).

If I wanted to draw in the intelligence, I would have to draw it in the following way to make it visible: sensory activity more outward (blue); the intelligence (green) has its mirroring apparatus more in the brain. Deeper down, what underlies memory is already very much connected to the physical organization. In reality, memory (red) is connected to the lowest nervous organisms and to the rest of the organism. I could then create transitions between sensory activity and intelligence by drawing this (indigo) here as a transition. You know that we also have concepts and ideas that are, so to speak, of a descriptive nature. While I have to draw the sensory activity as such in blue, I would have to draw an indigo here as a transition. For the more abstract concepts I would have to draw green, and for that which is in us as memory-based concepts, I would have to draw yellow as a transition from green to red through orange. In this way, I would have to draw the human being in its organization in relation to the ability to perceive, going from the outside in. In the succession of these colors, if you imagine the organization of eyes and ears with blue nuances and that the activity of the senses passes over into the intelligence, the indigo towards the green, lightening through the yellow to the red towards the memory, you get a kind of scheme that, however, very strongly reflects the reality of what the human soul's cognitive abilities or cognitive abilities are.

Now, in human nature, everything plays together in a mess. That is what makes it so difficult for the materialistically thinking person, that in human nature everything plays together in a mess. You can't neatly separate one thing from another in space. In human nature, too, it is not so clearly defined, but if one wants to draw schematically, one can still get a relatively clear picture of all sorts of things. Thus, one can indeed see that the ability to remember is related to the ability to think through their inner properties in the same way that the color red relates to the color green; and just as green relates to blue, so does intelligence relate to the activity of the senses. Now, however, we have other abilities in the human soul, abilities that are more or less bound to physical corporeality in the strictest sense in us as earth people. Feeling belongs to these first. While memory, intelligence and sensory activity are bound to the awakening consciousness in stages, feeling is already something very 'dreamlike' in the human being. I have often explained this. While memory is something that developed in the distant past on the old moon, intelligence on the sun, sensory activity on Saturn, feeling, as we have it today, belongs to the human being on earth. It is essentially something that is bound to the human earthly organization. What we as terrestrial human beings received as an organization actually made us sentient beings in the first place. But just as memory is something that has gone beyond its first disposition and has come to a higher level of development on Earth, and if one has enough of a supersensible vision to recognize that memory is, so to speak, an old human ability, one recognizes that feeling is only present in its disposition. If we look at what the human being calls feeling today with the necessary understanding, we can see that in the future it will develop into something quite, quite different. Just as if, as an observer during the old moon time, we had looked at dreaming imagination and said to ourselves: This will later become the memory of man. In the same way, when we look at feeling today, we must say, understandingly: When the earth will no longer be, but something else will have come out of it, when the earth will have become the future Jupiter, then feeling will have become what it can become. Today, feeling in man is still only embryonic, something that exists as a germ. What it can become will only arise out of feeling. Thus, in feeling, we carry within us something that relates to what it becomes on Jupiter, just as a child in the womb relates to the human being born into the world. Our feeling is embryonic, and it will only later, during the Jupiter period, become that which will flourish as a complete, fully conscious imagination.

Another soul faculty that is tied to our organization is desire. This desire is still much more embryonic than feeling. Everything in our world of desire will only become what it is now germinating towards during the future Venusian age. Today our desires are very closely bound up with our physical organization. They will become detached. Just as our intelligence was bound during the old sun time to the physical organization of the sun, as I have described it in my “Occult Science in Outline”, so is the world of desires of man today bound to the physical organization. It will appear detached from the physical organization during the future Venus period, and it will then appear as fully conscious inspiration.

Among our soul abilities, the will is most embryonic. In the future, the will is called upon to become something very powerful, something cosmic, through which the human being will belong to the whole cosmos in the future, will be an individual being and yet will live out his individual impulses as a fact of the world. But this will only be during the volcanic age, when the will will be fully conscious intuition.

Upper abilities

Lower abilities: Social World

Thus, through our feelings, desires and will, we once again belong to the future. These abilities lie within us in that they prepare the human being for his future being. But here too we stand in a relationship with the world in which these abilities of the human being have their relationships to the environment. Just as, in relation to the spiritual environment, memory, intelligence and sensory activity are related to the angels, archangels and archai, so feeling, desire and will are related to the physical environment, but in such a way that our feeling is related to the world that surrounds us that during our time on earth it gradually consumes the mineral world. All that is the mineral world around us will disappear at the end of the earth's time, and the forces that will consume the mineral world from the human being are the forces of feeling. So we must assume a special relationship between feeling and the mineral kingdom (see diagram). We must assume a special relationship between desire and the plant kingdom. Just as there will be no mineral kingdom on Jupiter, which, as the future planet, will be the next embodiment of our Earth, because during its time on Earth feeling will have consumed the mineral kingdom, so during the Venus period there will no longer be a plant kingdom because human desire during the Jupiter period will have consumed this plant kingdom, and human will during the Venus period will have consumed the animal kingdom. And when the time of Vulcan comes, the future incarnation of Vulcan on our Earth will no longer contain the three kingdoms, but only that part of the present kingdoms that will have become of the human kingdom.

In response to what I have just told you, people may come from the present and say: I am not very interested in what I once was with my memory, with my intelligence and with my sense of being on the good old Saturn and the Sun and the Moon; I am pleased with my existence as an earth dweller, what do I care about what the things that I no longer know anything about went through on earlier planetary embodiments of our Earth? I am not interested in that! And I am certainly not interested in what will become of my feelings, which interest me very much now, on Jupiter or even on distant Venus, what will become of my desires there. These desires drive me now, but I am not yet interested in Lady Venus, because she is not present, and I am only interested in present ladies. And so, right, only with the will in such a distant, distant future!

Certainly, many people in the present feel this way, and culture is very, very much in favor of oversleeping everything that wants to assert this knowledge from the present, that they would not want to wake up to these insights. But human development will not be guided into the future without having such insights. For it is profoundly true that in the human organism, in the physical, in the soul, in the spiritual organism, everything works in confusion; but one must also be able to distinguish the things. Just as the higher abilities could be schematically recorded, from sensory activity to memory, so I can now draw in the lower abilities that are specifically formed on earth (see drawing on page 213). I must then do this in the following way: a somewhat deeper red (unfortunately I do not have the differences here) would correspond to our feeling. But this feeling extends into the intelligence, into the sensory activities everywhere, and also through the memory. I would then have to draw an actual red-violet when I draw the activity of desire. And if I wanted to draw the will as it is today, I would have to draw a blue-green. So that man is a dual being, an upper man (circle at the top), who is essentially a knower, and a lower man (circle at the bottom), who is essentially a desirer, feeling and willing regarded as the two poles of desire.

Now, in the earthly human being, what is the lower human being actually works its way into the upper human being, both the wanting and the desiring and the feeling work into the upper human being (arrow pointing up T). In other words, our sensory activity is such that we have in it everything that has gradually emerged from the dull intuition of ancient Saturn. But if we were to carry within us, through our eyes and ears, only that which comes from the dull intuition of ancient Saturn, we would be very dry beings. We would perceive the outer world as if through senses that worked automatically. We would think soberly and dryly about this outer world, and we would remember what we have experienced without warmth. That we experience what we have experienced as our own affair, that we do not merely look into our experiences with indifference and remember them, looking at our personal life like the individual stones of a kaleidoscope, is what makes our remembered thoughts, our intelligent being, our sensory perceptions, our feelings, desires and wills arise. When we look at things externally, we like them. We like them through our desire, through our feeling or through our will. When we think, we do not just think soberly and dryly, but we bring a certain enthusiasm into our ideas. We would not bring this into it if we only had what the sun has given us as intellectual power; we have this in our thinking because the earth has endowed us with will, desire and feeling, even if these are now embryonic. The same applies to the ability to remember. Those abilities that are called the lower abilities, because they are more closely connected with the body, always play a part in our higher soul abilities. Let us hold on to that for the time being. The lower soul faculties of will, desire and feeling shine through and glow in our higher soul faculties, which would place us in the world like dried-out intestines if they were only what they have become through Saturn, Sun and Moon, and we become warm, feeling human beings, even when we think. There are, however, a great many people today who strive for objectivity by throwing feeling and desire out of their intelligence; but this is either merely an illusion, if people believe that they can throw out the lower soul faculties from the activity of the senses, the intelligence and memory, or if they really throw them out – to a certain extent one can only do that – but then one becomes one's own lower self! It is only possible to a certain extent to expel the lower soul faculties from the higher ones. One can expel them, for example, by stepping onto the lectern and expounding to the foxes and other, later students all kinds of sciences. One can expel the lower, actually earthly soul faculties from the intellect. But one cannot expel them completely. If, after spending the day in philosophy, you do not enjoy your midday meal, then your intelligence is permeated by real desires and feelings, and you grumble about what your housewife has prepared, and in particular, your sense activity of taste, smell and so on. Thus, sometimes, the dry philistine exists in man, who has thrown out the lower soul faculties from his upper soul faculties, and the person who is quite capable of enthusiasm when something is over-peppered or over-salted or even burnt or otherwise not properly cooked in some way!

Our lower soul abilities must interact with our higher soul abilities. But there is actually a wave of development in humanity, precisely since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantic period, since the middle of the 15th century, to make the activity of the senses, the intelligence, purer and ever purer, and later this will also come in relation to memory. This has not yet been affected. The aim is to liberate these faculties, indeed, the aim is that not only the characteristics I have just mentioned in the dry philistine - which only arises because this dry philistine is in fact more affected by what human nature in general does after all. But the physical part of the human being will dry up altogether, as I have already explained in an earlier observation, and will be less and less able to warm and illuminate the higher soul faculties. They will then actually become that dried-up part if they are not filled by what can come from spiritual revelation.

Indeed, we have to fertilize sensory activity, intelligence and memory in the following stages of the earth's development with what is revealed from the spiritual world, because the actual earthly gift that comes for these higher abilities as volition, desire and feeling gradually dries up. We do not merely want to disparage the stuffy philistine, as we have just done, but at the same time we want to admit that he is a pioneer of the drying up of our higher soul abilities in the future, that he already feels in his body what will affect all of humanity; only today he still rarely feels the necessity that this must be replaced by spiritual revelation. It must be replaced by spiritual revelation. Man, accustomed as he has been to experiencing the upward streaming (arrow up) of volition, desire and feeling in memory, intelligence and sense activity, must experience the revelations of the spiritual world through spiritual knowledge ( down arrow, top right), so that his sensory activity, his intelligence, his memory can be filled with that with which they are no longer filled, as our physical body withers more and more in the decadence of the earth.

Let us first of all realize that we are heading for a time when everything that man perceives through sense experience, through intelligence, through memory, must receive spiritual revelation within him so that human culture can progress. Let us now turn to the lower human faculties, which today are only present in embryonic form. These lower human faculties are those that primarily bring us into relationship with our environment. Even inwardly, they are related to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms that make up our environment. By feeling, we feel about the things in our environment; by desiring, we desire the things in our environment; by willing, we directly intervene in the active nature of our environment. We are completely immersed in our environment. And what, we ask, comes of what becomes of the feelings, desires and will of the people who live together on earth?

If you take a spiritual look at everything that is called the social world, you will see that it is entirely the result of the will, desires and feelings of the people living together. And what we experience as human beings through our feelings, what people desire from each other and from nature, and what is done out of will, that is actually the outer world. By desiring, we belong to the social order much more than we realize. We are made into desiring beings by our position in the social world, and our will intervenes everywhere in the social world in such a way that what happens in the social world happens through our will. Therefore, in what we call the social order of life, what people feel, desire and will lives an independent life. Today's Social Democratic Party says: what lives outside is the result of an economy, of economic forces, and how they develop. No, what lives outside is the objectification of the feelings, desires and will of people living together in society. That which first arises in man as feeling creates conditions that then determine the social life of man; likewise desire and even more so will. But everything in human nature is connected. The colors are drawn down there, which correspond to feeling, desire and will. The intelligent properties, the sensory activity, the actual intelligence, the memory work downwards and work out into the social world through our will (arrow down, going to the right).

If, in fact, man increasingly dries up with regard to his physical organization in the direction of the future, then little would be able to flow from the bodily organization into the social order, and sensory experience, intelligence and the individual human memory thoughts would flow into the social world without first passing through feeling, desire and will. In other words: If it were to develop in accordance with the mere organization of the earth, so that our bodily organization dries up and only sensory activity, intelligence, memory remain for us, and these are not fertilized by the spirit either, then a dry intelligence, a merely external sensory perception and merely selfish memories of the individual human beings would want to dominate social life. This would give rise, in ever further development, to what is now beginning in Russia. In Russia, a social order is now beginning to take shape in Leninism and Trotskyism that stems solely from sensory experience, intelligence and the few memories of an egotistical nature of the individual human beings. One does not yet realize that this order in Eastern Europe strives to be a purely rationalistic order, an order that is to be formed only from the cognitive abilities of man on earth, as he has emerged from the Saturn, Sun and Moon man, that everything that can be taken from the spiritual world is to be consciously excluded.

The feeling that teaches one to what degree of rigidity human civilization is coming, so that man will only be a walking machine, that feeling that teaches one what would become of the world if dictators like Lenin and Trotsky were left to take care of it, that feeling must come from such an understanding of the nature of human nature as we have presented to our souls during these two days. From such a realization one sees that it is simply a necessity of human nature that the upper faculties of the soul should be enlightened and warmed by spiritual revelation, lest what intelligence and sense activity and memory would become if they did not fertilize themselves with the spiritual world should flow out into social life. Man must learn to feel what holds him together with all earthly existence, and he must learn to feel, out of spiritual knowledge, what is preparing in the East and what threatens to consume all of Asia in an ever faster and faster development. Man must learn to feel this as the great and terrible disease of present-day civilization, which must be cured. And it can only be cured if it can be diagnosed in the right way.

Practising spiritual science today means seeking out the healing process of the diseased civilization. This should be felt by a sufficiently large number of people, and it should be felt very deeply and thoroughly. Without spiritual science one will not feel this. And now all the leading events are taking place without any sense of what one is actually doing. The Versailles Treaty was nothing other than the instilling of a poison of civilization, a toxic substance that must make humanity even sicker than it was before. For everything that is created without knowledge of the future conditions of life on earth is a disease-causing substance for developing humanity.

We are accustomed to accepting such things as true, spoken from the heart, from the intuitive sense. Here they are not said from such a source. Here they are derived from the knowledge of the nature of human nature. And here it can be shown that the spiritual life of human beings, of which memory, intelligence and sensory activity are the bearers, cannot continue to exist without being fertilized from the spiritual world. This is not admitted today. But why is it not admitted? It is not admitted for a historical reason. Since the middle of the 15th century, more and more of those entities have emerged that are today perceived as the actual bearers of civilization, the modern states. But these modern states can only be in the future that which - I have explained this in another context here - relates to the life of the human being between birth and death. They must not interfere in anything that relates to the spiritual world between people. In the future, people must be able to let the spiritual world into their memory, their intelligence and their sensory activity as individuals. They can only do this as individuals, only as individuals. In the future, individuals must become mediators between heaven and earth, between the spiritual and physical worlds. And people today rightly feel this, although they have almost the wrong feelings in the way they feel it, but they still feel it as something improper when currents that should only flow into individual human beings flow into so-called public state affairs. When the Russian Czar and the Russian Czarina availed themselves of the inner experiences of a Rasputin for their governmental acts, people were right to fear it, because revelations from the spiritual world may only play into the spiritual life, they may not play into the life of the state. Only that which has become our healthy reason through spiritual revelations may play a part in it. Now, Rasputin did not go as far as healthy reason, even if he did go as far as revelation.

On the other hand, in social life outside of it, only that which is connected with the lower abilities of human beings, with the abilities that develop on earth, with desires, feelings, and will, can find expression. These develop in dealings from person to person; and they develop in dealings not with abstract humanity as a whole, but only with circles that are connected by interests, by their particularly constituted desires, by their particularly constituted feelings or by the will that they must develop.

This, however, justifies the necessity for a threefold structure of public affairs. In the future, the state, which must not allow direct spiritual life to enter into its affairs at all, will not be allowed to extend to spiritual life. Spiritual life will have to have its own independent administration because it cannot progress if it does not receive spiritual revelations. A healthy State must renounce spiritual revelations. If it interferes in spiritual matters, it is only to make things as difficult as possible. The spiritual life must be separated and made independent. But the economic life cannot be connected with the life of the state either, because this economic life must be closely rooted in the communities of interests of the individual people bound together in circles of interest, in the feeling, desire and will as it develops in the associations, in the narrower communities.

In short, just as the physicist understands the complex phenomena of physical nature from the simple experiences he makes, so today one must understand from human nature with its higher abilities: memory, intelligence and sensory perceptions, its lower abilities: will, desire and feeling - that which has to happen in the development of humanity. And anyone who today, with social willpower drawn from a strong but empty self-confidence and with the tone that is called the chest tone of conviction in many people today, presents himself and develops social ideas is like someone who stands in front of a telegraph installation, has no idea about electricity and magnetism, these simple facts, and now, out of his lack of knowledge, explains a telegraph installation. The people who talk about sociology today usually talk from a spirit like that — no matter how learned it may sound to many people — like someone who has never heard of the nature of electricity and looks at a Morse code system in a telegraph station and says: “There are just tiny little riders in there, you can't see them, they ride to the other station, you just can't see any of that.” And he explains it all very neatly. This is how Marxism explains social facts, this is how our university sociologists explain social facts. Reality only emerges when one recognizes human nature. But human nature can only be recognized from within the whole cosmic order. Because memory is connected with the extraterrestrial, intelligence is connected with the extraterrestrial, sensory activity is connected with the extraterrestrial. Feeling is something that will only become what it is supposed to be after the earth no longer exists; desire and will in an even more distant future. Just as one must know the simple fact of the thermodynamics of the organism in order to be a physicist, the simple fact of acoustics, so too, in order to have a say today, and as many people as possible must have a say with regard to social facts, one must delve into the simple, elementary connections between the human being and the world, because that which is socially grounded is carried by the human being into the social order. But here, in his own being, man brings in the whole universe. That is why it is also bad for those chatterboxes who, from all sorts of old traditions, talk about man being a microcosm, a small world compared to the macrocosm, and who stick to these abstractions. Only he who knows that there were once ancestors of man as moon people who had fantastic imaginations has a real right to speak of macrocosm and microcosm. The moon has passed away, the earth has come into being. Human memory has arisen out of that which is no longer there, but which once was there. This has no earthly origin. Only the human ego and its expression, the present physical human body with its form, have an earthly origin. One must grasp this in concrete terms, otherwise one has no right to call it anything but a microcosm.

My dear friends, the decadent civilization can only be saved if it is finally realized that man must be spoken of as a cosmic being from the institutions in which philosophy is taught today as a mere sum of expressed abstractions. What has become of humanity through abstraction, through mere abstraction, appears only in symptoms in such philosophies as those of the American William James, the Englishman Spencer, the Frenchman Bergson or the German, Königsberg Kant. These abstractions conceal from humanity what it is. But the living knowledge of the spiritual, which is to be striven for through spiritual science, can bring man to self-knowledge.

More on this tomorrow.

We need only recall the fact that the physical and etheric aspects of the human being, as he stands before us today, are denser forms of the astral. Man was previously a purely astral being before he became an etheric being and then a physical being. In truth, all the denser substances, that is, the etheric substance and the physical substance, are differentiated out of the astral substance, just as ice is differentiated out of water. Just as water condenses and becomes ice, so the astral substance becomes 'condensed into etheric and then into physical substance. In the time when man was still a being like you are today, when you sleep, where you are outside your physical and etheric body, the forces that shaped his astral substance were pure powers of sensation and imagination. The astral substance works quite differently from the etheric or physical substance. The astral substance is in perpetual motion. Every passion, every instinct, every desire is immediately realized in the astral substance, so that in the next moment it is of a completely different form, if it is the expression of a different passion. Today, the mental no longer has such an easy effect on the dense physical body of man. Nevertheless, the mental and the emotional still have an effect on the physical body of man. You only have to observe that when a person is frightened or afraid of something, they turn pale. This means that the entire blood mass is moving differently in the body than in a normal state. It pushes the blood mass from the outside inwards. Or take the blush of shame, where the blood is driven from the inside to the periphery, outwards. These are only slight effects that the soul still has on the body today. But if you consider long periods of time, you will find much more significant effects of the soul and the mind on the body. If you could follow the human forms through the millennia, you would see that the shape, the whole physiognomy, everything about the human being changes. This happens in such a way that the soul and spiritual processes are there first. Man has certain ideas, and as he forms his ideas, so in the course of millennia his physical form and physiognomy are formed, even if this is not immediately noticeable to an external biological observer. Everything is formed from the inside out. Our external materialistic science is still far from understanding how these effects relate to each other over the course of millennia. But they are there.

To make it clear to us what such connections are like, let us just recall the first appearance of Gothic architecture, where certain processes in the development of humanity were expressed for the first time in Gothic architectural forms. Those people who devoted themselves to prayer in rooms built in the Gothic style experienced the thoughts that were the inspiration for the Gothic buildings. These thoughts, which were active in the souls of men, formed the souls, the inner powers of man, right into the etheric body; they reshaped the powers of man. And after centuries, as a consequence of these impressions received by the senses, and the ideas formed after these sensory impressions, that mystical movement emerged, which we find in Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler and others. In what they devised, we have the after-effects of what their ancestors had received as impressions from Gothic buildings. And those higher individualities who lead humanity in its development consciously guide this process of human development. They consciously look ahead into the centuries and millennia, and at a certain time humanity is given what is to develop these or those qualities. Thus we see how, here in the course of a few centuries, by looking at the external forms of Gothic architecture, the pointed arch style, that mysticism striving towards heaven is expressed in Meister Eckhart, Tauler and so on. If we were to consider millennia instead of centuries, we would see how even the human body forms according to the thoughts and feelings and ideas that people had millennia ago; and the great leaders of humanity give people the right ideas at the right time in their development, so that even the human form is transformed.

Now let us imagine ourselves in the period of transition from the Atlantic to the post-Atlantic period. We know that our ancestors, indeed our very souls, lived in other bodies, in ancient Atlantis. In the last days of Atlantis, this continent, especially the northern parts, was largely covered by masses of fog, and everything that lived on the earth, on this continent, was shrouded in dense fog. And if we go back even further, we come across times when there were not only masses of fog, but where our air circle is today, there were masses of water trickling down. The first Atlantean man was even more of a water creature. It was only gradually during the Atlantean period that he transformed into an air being. At that time, man had a completely different distribution of his etheric and physical bodies. Today, the etheric body and the physical body are distributed in such a way that they are almost the same in shape and size in the upper parts. This is by no means the case with other beings. If you were to look at a horse's etheric body, you would see the horse's etheric head shining out far above its physical head. In humans, too, the etheric body of the head used to extend far beyond the physical head, and it was only towards the end of the Atlantean period that the two parts merged. A point that is now within the head used to be outside it, and only gradually was it drawn in. These two points drew closer and closer together, and in the last third of the Atlantean epoch they coincided. That was the time when the pre-Semitic race descended from the northeast of Atlantis, from the area of present-day Ireland. At that time, man acquired the ability through which the two points coincided and came to overlap. Due to the etheric body of his head being outside, the Atlantean man had a kind of misty clairvoyance. He could not calculate or count, nor develop any kind of logic of thought. This is only a result of the post-Atlantean time. But they had a kind of primitive clairvoyance because they were much more out of their heads than in them with the ether part of the head. At that time, when this ether part of the head was outside the physical head, the thoughts and feelings of the astral body also had a much greater influence on this part of the ether body and thus on the formation of the physical body. That which first lived in the astral body as feelings, sensations and thoughts continued as a process of movement in the etheric body and shaped the physical body into its present form.

Where did the present length, width and height of the physical body actually come from? It is an effect of what was first present in the astral body and in the etheric body. First there were thoughts, images, sensations and so on. You will be able to understand this better if you remember the process that occurs immediately after physical death; the physical body is first left by the etheric body and then by the astral body. During sleep, only the ego and the astral body go away, while the etheric body and the physical body remain in bed. Death differs from sleep in that the etheric body also leaves with the astral body and the ego. A peculiar phenomenon occurs, something that could be described as a sensation, but which is linked to a certain idea. The person feels as if he were growing, as if he were expanding in all directions; he takes on dimensions in all directions. This expansion of the etheric body, which it takes on immediately after death, this seeing of the etheric body in large dimensions, is a very important concept. In the ancient Atlantean man, this idea had to be awakened when the etheric body was not yet as closely connected to the physical body as it is today. The fact that it was awakened, that man was introduced to the magnitude that he feels today when he grows after death, is how the cause, the thought form, was formed to bring the physical body into the form that it has today. When, in those days, when the physical body and etheric body were still more separated, man was presented with these forms, these measurements, it stimulated the physical body to take on the form it has today. And these forms were suggested by those who are the leaders of human evolution. In the various flood legends, especially in the biblical flood legend, there are traces of precise details. If you imagine the human being surrounded by the forms that his etheric body must have in order for the form of the physical body to be formed in the right way, then you have the size of Noah's Ark. Why does the Bible state that Noah's Ark was 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high and 300 cubits long? Because these are the proportions that a person needs in the transition from the Atlantic to the post-Atlantic period in order to form the right thought form, which is the cause that the body of the post-Atlantic person was formed in the right way in length, height and width. In Noah's Ark you have a symbol for the proportions of your present body. These proportions are effects of those thought forms which Noah experienced and which he had built into the ark in such a way that by looking at them the world of thought was created according to which the organism of the post-Atlantean man was to be built. Mankind was educated through effective symbols. Today you carry within you the proportions of Noah's Ark in the dimensions of your physical body. When a person stretches out their hands upwards, the dimensions of Noah's Ark are contained within the dimensions of the human body.

Thus man has passed from the Atlantean era into the post-Atlantean era. In the sixth cultural epoch, the epoch that will follow our own, the human body will be shaped quite differently again. Today, too, people must experience the thought forms that can provide the basis for the human body to take on the right proportions in the next cultural epoch; this must be demonstrated to people. Today man is formed according to the measurements of 50 : 30 : 300. In the future he will be formed quite differently. How is the thought-form given to man today, through which the future form of man will be formed in the next race? It has already been said that this is given in the measurements of Solomon's Temple. The measurements of Solomon's Temple are a profound symbol of the entire organization of the form of man as he will be in the next, the sixth race.

All the things that are effective in humanity happen from within, not from without. What is thought and feeling in any one period is external form in the following period. And the individualities that guide the development of humanity must implant the thought forms into humanity many millennia in advance, which are to become external physical reality afterwards. There you have the function of thought forms, which are stimulated by such symbolic images as Noah's Ark, the Temple of Solomon, and the four apocalyptic figures of man, lion, bull and eagle. They have a very real significance. We have thus already said something about the images that guide the human being when he devotes himself to them. Yesterday we also mentioned images in the four forms of man, lion, bull, and eagle; and today we are talking about images. Images lead the human being to an interest in the world that directly borders his own.

When we ascend to an even higher world, we no longer deal with mere images, but with the inner relationships of things, with what is called the sound of the spheres, the music of the spheres, the world of sounds. When we travel through the astral plane, we essentially have a world of images that are the archetypes of our things here. The higher we ascend, the more we enter into a world of sounds and tones. You must not imagine, however, that the world of sounds is a world of sounds in the external sense. You do not hear the devachan world with the outer ear. You cannot compare the essence of the sounding spiritual world with our physical sounds, which are only an external manifestation of the devachanic world of sound. The spiritual tones are substances of the devachanic world, of the spiritual world, which begins where the world of images passes into the world of sounds. These worlds are thoroughly interwoven. Here, around the physical world, is both the astral and the devachanic world; one permeates the other. It is the same as if you were to lead someone born blind into this illuminated room; the colors and the burning candles are around him, but he cannot perceive them; only when he acquires sight through a successful operation can he also perceive what has been around him all along. Likewise, the astral and spiritual worlds around us are only perceived when the senses are opened to them; then it is also perceived that these worlds do not border on each other, but penetrate each other. One can perceive everything that is in one world in the other worlds.

What spiritual music is in the Devachan world is reflected in the astral world and expressed through numbers and figures. What is called Pythagorean music of the spheres is usually taken as an image by abstract philosophers. But it is a true, genuine reality. The sound of the spheres is there, and the one who trains his hearing - the expression is not quite correct, but we have to use it - in order to perceive in the higher worlds, perceives not only the images and colors of the astral world around him, but also the sounds and harmonies of the spiritual world. Just as the things around us on the physical plane are revelations of the astral world, so they are also revelations of the spiritual world, which express themselves through the mediation of the astral in the physical. The spiritual world expresses itself in all our physical things, and the more uplifting and meaningful the sensual things are, the clearer, more beautiful, more magnificent they also show themselves as expressions of the spiritual world. If we take an insignificant thing of our physical plane, it is usually very difficult to trace it back to its spiritual archetype. On the other hand, when we look at more significant, uplifting things in the physical world, the spiritual archetypes reveal themselves with great beauty. For example, we have given an expression of the spiritual world in the interaction of the planets of our planetary system. What is present in our planetary system in the most diverse forms can be traced back to what is called the harmony of the spheres for those who can recognize these things. The movements of our planets are such that he who is able to perceive this in the spiritual world 'hears' the mutual relationships of the movements of our planets. For example, from the point of view of higher worlds, Saturn moves 2 1/2 times faster than Jupiter. This movement of Saturn is perceived in the spiritual world as a correspondingly higher tone, “with spiritual ears,” as Goethe puts it.

Let us visualize the relative speeds of the planets in our solar system. If you take the speed of Saturn's movement in relation to Jupiter, then Saturn moves 2 1/2 times as fast as Jupiter, that is, at a ratio of 2 1/2: 1, and the speed of Jupiter's movement in relation to Mars is 5 : 1. For the spiritual ear, the movement of Jupiter in relation to the movement of Mars is therefore perceived as a much higher tone. If you take the speed of the movements of the Sun, Mercury and Venus, which is approximately the same, this stands in relation to the movement of Mars at 2:1, so it is just twice as fast. If you take the movement of the Sun, Mercury and Venus in relation to the Moon, this ratio is 12:1, so the speed is twelve times as great. From a spiritual point of view, if you consider the movement of all the stars visible to us in relation to their background, the starry sky advances by one degree in one century. And the speed of Saturn's movement in relation to the starry sky is 1200:1.

We therefore have

Saturn: Jupiter = 2½ : 1
Jupiter : Mars = 5 : 1
Sun, Mercury, Venus: Mars = 2 : 1
Sun, Mercury, Venus: Moon = 12 : 1
Saturn: Starry sky = 1200 : 1

These ratios are expressed for spiritual perception through tones that can be perceived in the spiritual world by the spiritual ears. These are the real backgrounds of what is called “music of the spheres”. These numbers actually indicate harmonies that really exist in the spiritual world. So you see, just as the clairvoyant sees images and colors in the astral world, so the clairaudient hears the spiritual harmonies of things in the spiritual or Devachan world. For the one whose spiritual ear is trained for it, everything that manifests itself here in the physical world has tones as a spiritual background. Thus, for the occultist, the four elements of earth, water, air and fire produce different tone relationships that are quite beyond the perception of the ordinary person. The initiates have recreated tone relationships in the physical world that they could hear from the spiritual background of earth, water, air and fire. And the result of these tone vibrations has been captured in the original tuning of a musical instrument, the lyre. The lyre's string vibrations correspond to the notes that the initiates recognized as the four elements. The bass

string corresponds to the Earth
the D string to Water
the A string to Air
the G string to Fire.

In this way we would be able to understand much if we could go back to times long past, and we could then see how many things in culture that today are taken for granted by man have been developed out of observations in the spiritual world. The physical tones of the lyre are modeled on what first existed spiritually as the relationship of the four elements to one another.

The fundamental idea underlying this is that everything that happens in man, in the microcosm, should be modeled on what lives in the macrocosm. When everything in the microcosm resonates with the macrocosmic spiritual events, then the world and man are in harmony; and because there is no disharmony, man can truly connect with the evolution of the world and feel at one with it. But when man leaves this harmony, when he does not join the world-sounds, then his outer condition also becomes disharmonious, and it becomes impossible for him to go on with the course of the world.

All this should give us an idea of how the symbols were created out of the higher worlds, which are real facts in these higher worlds. Many of the things in our culture are symbols, symbols to be realized, through which it is ensured that the human being can be prepared to develop in the future on the physical plane that which is only on the higher planes today. It is the course of evolution that everything that is in the higher worlds today descends into the physical world. Since man is called upon to help create the outer world, he must descend with his thoughts into the physical world. He forms the world around him, and he also forms what is in his own physical being. Through Theosophy, man must develop a feeling for the fact that everything he does, feels and thinks in one time continues to have an effect in another time, in the future. When man builds temples, works of beauty, or when he creates statesmanship for the social coexistence of people, these are all things that have significance for the future. What man builds today with the help of natural forces, he forms the natural products of the future. When man builds a Gothic cathedral, for example, he assembles it according to mineral laws. It is true that the substance, the materiality, the bricks and stones, of which the cathedral is composed, will disintegrate. But the fact that the form once existed is not meaningless. The form that was imprinted on the matter by human beings remains, it is incorporated into the etheric and astral body of the earth and develops as a force with the earth. And when the earth has passed through the present stage of development and the pralaya and reappears as Jupiter, this form will grow out of the earth as a kind of plant being. We are building the works of art and beauty today, we are not building the works of wisdom in vain on our earth. We are shaping them so that they will later merge with the earth as natural products. And just as we build cathedrals and houses today whose forms are lasting, which combine with the earth and will emerge again in the future as a kind of plant, so too have our present-day plants and crystals been shaped by what our predecessors built in the pre-world, by the gods and spirits that preceded us. Everything that man incorporates into the earth from the point of view of knowledge, wisdom and beauty and of true social life, everything that he brings into the outer world in the form of symbols, even if he only forms them in his thoughts, becomes a great, joyful, progressive force for the further development of the earth; they will be real forces and forms of the future. Our machines and factories, however, everything we make to serve external utility, the principle of utility, will be a harmful element in the next embodiment of our earth. If we imprint symbols on matter that are expressions of higher worlds, they will have a progressive effect; our machines and factories, on the other hand, which only serve external utility, will have a kind of demonic, corrupting effect in the next incarnation of our earth. Thus we ourselves shape our good forces and also the demonic forces for the next age of humanity.

Today, in the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch, we are most deeply immersed in matter and creating the worst demonic forces for the next epoch. Where we transform the ancient and sacred into physical and mechanical things, we are working down into the physical plane. What man fashions in this way will become the underworld. It must be clearly understood that the evil powers of the earth's evolution must also be integrated. At the time when they must be overcome, man will have to expend a tremendous amount of energy to transform evil and demonic forces back into good. But his strength will grow as a result, because evil is there to steel the strength of man by overcoming it. All evil must in turn be transformed into good, and it is providentially designed to develop strong, energetic effects in man, much higher than if he never had to transform evil into good.

All the things we think up in the physical world with our minds have a spiritual background, and we can see these things in the spiritual world. I would now like to give an example of how something that is conceived on the physical plane expresses itself in the spiritual as a figure: the Caduceus, the rod of Mercury.

Our present consciousness is the so-called bright day-consciousness, where we perceive through the senses and combine through the mind. This day-consciousness has only developed to its present level. It was preceded by another consciousness, a dream-like pictorial consciousness. At the beginning of the Atlantean period, man still perceived the world and its spiritual and soul entities clairvoyantly in astral and etheric images. Today's dream is still a last remnant of this atavistic pictorial consciousness. Let us draw a picture of this. First we have the bright day consciousness. This was preceded by consciousness, which today only plants have, which we can call sleep consciousness in humans. Then there is an even duller consciousness, as our physical minerals have it today; we can call it a deep trance consciousness. (During these explanations, the following was written on the blackboard, from bottom to top: day consciousness, image consciousness, sleep consciousness, deep trance consciousness. See drawing next page.) We can connect these four consciousnesses with a line (drawn as a straight line from top to bottom). However, man does not develop in this way. If man were to develop in the same way as the straight line, he would start from a deep-trance consciousness, then descend to the sleep consciousness, then to the image consciousness and finally to today's day consciousness. But it is not that simple for man; instead, he has to go through various transitional stages. Man had a consciousness of deep trance on the first earth embodiment that we can trace, on Saturn; there he developed this consciousness to various degrees. We draw it here in such a way that we let consciousness develop in this line. Man separates himself from the straight line and reconnects with it on the sun, where he undergoes the sleep consciousness, then continues as this spiral line shows to reach the image consciousness on the moon. And today, after various transformations, man stands at the level of bright day consciousness. Man now retains this clear day consciousness for all subsequent periods, and consciously acquires for himself the states of consciousness which he had in a dull form on earlier levels. In this way he consciously acquires for himself the pictorial consciousness again on the Jupiter condition of the earth; this will enable him to perceive again soul-life around him. This development takes place, however, in such a way that his clear day-consciousness is not weakened or dulled, but that on Jupiter he will have the image consciousness in addition to his day-consciousness. One could say: the day-consciousness brightens up into the image consciousness (see drawing: broken line). Then he will again have the sleep consciousness that he had on the sun when the earth was in its Venus state; this will enable him to look deeply into the beings, as today only the initiate can do. The initiate goes the straight way; he develops in a straight line, whereas the normal development of man is a winding one. And then, ascending, man also regains on Vulcan the first consciousness, the consciousness of trance, while retaining all the other states of consciousness. Thus man undergoes an evolution in a descending and one in an ascending line. You can see this line recurring again and again. This path of descent and ascent is a real line that has found expression in the Caduceus, in the staff of Mercury.

[The following section is only incompletely reproduced in all the lecture notes.] Thus we see how the symbols that we obtain in this way are deeply rooted in the whole essence of our world process. And a line like the Caduceus also has an educational significance for people when they devote themselves to this figure in meditation. No one can memorize this figure without it having a profound educational effect on them. The seer brought this line out of the spiritual worlds to give people something that would make them future seers. What one must develop when meditating on this line are certain sensations. At first you feel a dull darkness. You stare into the darkness, and gradually it begins to brighten and take on a violet color, then indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and now back, with a certain reflection of the evolution taking place, until you have risen again to violet. As you follow this shaded line, your feelings will change from the quality of the color nuances to moral feelings. If you do not perceive this line merely as a chalk or pencil line, but, by looking into the black, try to imagine the dark before your soul, and at the violet imagine the devotion, and so on through the other colors, blue, green, yellow, orange, then call the joyful before your soul with the red, then your soul will go through a whole gamut of sensations, which are first color sensations and then become moral sensations. By reflecting the form of the staff of Mercury in sensations, something is incorporated into the soul that enables it to develop the higher organs. Through the real symbol, it is transformed so that it can receive the higher organs within itself.

Just as the influence of outer light once magically transformed indifferent organs into eyes, so too does devotion to the symbols of the spiritual world magically transform the organs for the spiritual world. It is quite impossible to say: I still cannot see what is to arise there. That would be just as if the person who had not yet had eyes had said: I do not want to let the light work on me. We must first be taught what can lead to the development of the inner organs, then we can perceive the secrets of the spiritual world around us.

Yesterday I tried to take a kind of century-long view by describing to you how, especially in the western European regions, people entered into social bonds that were connected with the class on the one hand and with professional life on the other, and we saw how these connections, these socializations, were based on the spiritual. Yes, we even had to penetrate to the astral and to the ego-being of man, so that we could study the two opposing professional associations, the “Dévorants” and the “Gavots”. And the peculiarity of these associations, which, as I said, belong more to the western regions of Europe and in which more recent civilization has developed mainly in the west, the essence of these associations is that man, with all his soul, feels at home in such a community and that the various identifying marks, the symbols of which I have spoken to you, the legends, have some connection with working life, even though they have a thoroughly spiritual background.

Just as I described this life for Western European countries a century ago, it would be impossible to describe the life of Central European regions, for example. Therefore, it must be understandable that when George Sand wanted to write a novel in which she addressed certain social problems, she chose this socialization as a backdrop. It can certainly be said that Goethe also strove for something similar with his “Wilhelm Meister”. He wanted to describe how the human being is connected with humanity and with the spiritual and professional life of humanity, how the individual human being develops out of humanity. Goethe attempted this in his “Wilhelm Meister”. There is no doubt that if it had been a reality for him, he would also have chosen such craftsmen's associations as George Sand. He did not do it because it was simply not possible in the circles to which Goethe belonged by virtue of his education.

That is the peculiar thing: in Central Europe, ever since the advent of what I have often referred to as intellectualism, that is, since the 15th century, human problems have been understood quite differently than in the West. Yesterday I had to describe to you how the individual craftsman makes his way through France, how he gets himself admitted to such a, one could almost say secret, society in some city, how he gets his identifying marks there, how he, when he now begins his journeyman's travels, finds a similar branch of his association in some other city: he makes himself known, he is admitted within this branch of his association. As already mentioned, this was still the case in 1823. And these associations then had a profound influence on the life of the corresponding class.

One could not describe this for Central Europe. For Central Europe, one would have to say that, since the beginning of this newer time, that is, since the 15th century, there has always been an aspiration in people to cultivate individuality, the human self. There was not such an intense connection between the individual human being and his occupation or social class as in the West. Therefore it was the case that people took their occupation, one might say, sine ira, in a more external way. They did not grow together with their occupation in this way, they did not connect their spiritual life with their occupation.

The terms and symbols were taken from the main occupations in the West. This was not the case in Central Europe. It was rather the case that the spiritual life was more separate from the occupation, and also more separate from the class. Of course, one was also part of a class of people, but when one turned to the spiritual life, this spiritual life was more set apart, both from the occupation and from the class of people. Therefore, if one wanted to devote oneself to spirituality, one lived more in such a way that one completely freed oneself in one's thoughts from one's occupational life. And therefore, in Central Europe, those branches of spirituality were particularly cultivated which had nothing to do with professional life, nothing with class life.

Man's relationship to the world was understood without regard to nation, without regard to any national context. Man as such stood in the foreground. And then, if the individual, let us say, the craftsman, wanted to devote himself to a spiritual life, he did so as an individual human being. He thought more about the tasks of life as an individual human being. At the beginning of the 19th century, he had little more of such a spiritual life from some social connections than I described yesterday. Therefore, the spiritual stimuli in Central Europe developed in a completely different way,

The individual craftsman who had a particular urge, who, to use the southern German expression, became a Sinnierer – the wonderful word Sinnierer is present – who therefore thought a lot, he became acquainted with the remnants of of the old alchemy remained in the way of knowledge, which therefore has nothing to do with any class, with any nationality or with any profession; he familiarized himself with what remained of the old astrology. And what he absorbed in this way, he carried with him like a treasure that was important and valuable to his fellow human beings. He wandered from place to place a lot. There were always only a few people, and they had no identifying marks, they had come just as a human being. At first they had strange names for such a person. These names arose in the time when it was all topsy-turvy with the views of ancient and newer times; and those who stood out from the people were not immediately accepted. Such thinkers were considered eccentrics. They were called “spur knights” when they appeared like that. And such a man first had to gain his reputation by having something to say to the people and by coming together with them. Since no permanent connections had been formed, he had to gain his reputation only when the opportunity arose, with the people with whom he came together and who wanted to know something from him. And by asserting what he had devised, he gained a certain influence. And long before one of them came, there was already talk in an unspecific way that one should come.

At first it seemed strange to people, but later, when he left the place, they thought long and hard about what such a thinker had said, such an especially clever one, who had so much knowledge in his head that you couldn't even begin to grasp that a human head could be so big that it could contain everything he had in his head.

So the whole way in which the spiritual life was handled in the human dimension was different. And that is why it had to come about that in western countries education remained much more popular, much more broad-based, because it was related to professional and class life. In Central Europe, on the other hand, there was a gradual emergence of this abyss between the educated and the masses, who could no longer keep up. Now, this is often connected with the deep tragedy of Central European life, this abyss between those who, under the demands of modern times, summarized what remained of ancient wisdom - be it alchemical or astrological - and from this point of view looked deeper into human life, and those who only stopped at the subordinate concepts of religious life.

These were the conditions Goethe faced. So that Goethe could not have described in his “Wilhelm Meister” as, for example, George Sand did in the novel “Le compagnon du tour de France”. Goethe described the individual human being, the individual human individuality, their relationship to the upper worlds, their relationship to the lower worlds. In France, we encountered, as it were, the effectiveness of the astral in the Dévorants, the effectiveness of the ego in the Gavots, which came through in the furnishings. Within Central Europe, there was a search for how man is connected to heaven on the one hand and to the earth on the other.

In a beautiful way, Goethe has – but, I would say, very much in the educational sublimation, carried into the strongly abstract – that which, basically, within Central Europe, in terms of human and human wisdom that has been lived in Central Europe since the 15th century, brought into the two figures that appear in his “Wilhelm Meister”: on the one hand, Makarie and, on the other, the metal-sensing woman.

Then this remarkable figure appears in Goethe's “Wilhelm Meister”, Makarie, a mature female personality who, due to her sickly, pathological nature, has little more in common with earthly life, who, so to speak, has completely detached herself from earthly life, who rarely moves within the earthly confines, and is revered by all those around her, by all family members in the narrower and broader sense, and who, by becoming independent of the earthly, develops a remarkable cosmic life. And this cosmic life, which Goethe describes as if Makarie lived with the peculiarities of the stars, not with the peculiarities of the earth, leads to the fact that, so to speak, all physical world observation disappears from the spirit, from the soul of Makarie, and she is completely devoted to the cosmic laws. But the more she surrenders to cosmic laws, the more the earthly laws of nature cease to have any meaning for her, and the more the laws of nature are transformed into cosmic moral laws. She becomes a moral authority for all who meet her. And she does not represent a morality based on commandments, not just any morality borrowed from this or that source, but a morality that appears to a person when he is free from the earthly, but still has it, as if it were revealed by the stars themselves in their course. And what Makarie proclaims for her surroundings in this way, through her star-gazing, is interpreted by her friend, the astronomer, who now becomes the seer's student in the cosmic realms.

Goethe only portrayed in a subtly sublimated way in a higher social class what you have to vividly imagine was still happening everywhere in the first third of the 19th century. For example, you have to imagine that during this time there were still families, albeit scattered, who had family members, female family members, who simply were no longer able to move around on earth after a certain age , who became bedridden, whose skin turned white and transparent, showing interesting blue veins running to the surface of their bodies through the white, transparent skin, who rarely spoke. But when they spoke, everyone in the vicinity listened carefully to what was said, because then these female personalities proved to be the kind of seers that Goethe only typified in his Makarie. And after all, in the first third of the 19th century, you can find circles of legends everywhere in Central Europe. They tell the story: such a seeress lies in such and such a place; she has spoken this or that from her prophetic gift. — And such things were carried far and wide. And they were carried with the poetry that was possible in the social order of humanity when there were no newspapers, for the newspapers have contributed enormously to the destruction of spiritual life.

So Goethe has such a figure appear in his Makarie. And now, at a certain point in the “Wanderjahre”, this Makarie is opposed by the metal-feeler. Her friend is Montanus. The metal-feeler also feels what is going on inside the earth, that is, I would say, the very spiritual of earthly nature. She can speak of the secrets of the metals of the earth, she can speak of how the individual metals affect people. And Montanus interprets what happens with the metal feeler in the same way that the astronomer interprets what is revealed through Makarie.

Thus Goethe juxtaposes the cosmic seer with this metal-sensing woman, who reveals the secrets of the earth through her special organization - again, a somewhat pathological organization. Goethe shows that he does not seek what makes man capable, what enables man to carry out his deeds on earth, either from those who live on one side of the cosmos or from those who live on the other side, inside the earth. He seeks that which makes man capable of earthly life, where man is unaware of either ability in his state of consciousness, where they unconsciously take effect, but where, as in the balance beam, there is a balance between the two.

Goethe does not know what is at the root of this. But he senses, from his own adherence to an old education, how these two extremes of life and of spirit interact and actually make a human being a true human being, not when one or the other is in effect, but when both disappear with their own character, but work together and bring about a balance in human nature.

Today, when we can speak from the point of view of anthroposophy, we can say: first of all, we have the upper human being, the nerve-sense human being; then we have the middle human being, the rhythmic human being; and finally we have the lower human being, the metabolic-limb human being. If the upper human being predominates in a person, and if this does not balance out with the lower human being, then, as a result of a morbid development, as in the case of Makarie, the entire metabolic-limb human being has fallen into a kind of torpor, a torpor that which does not yet take life, but which makes man incapable of moving in the earthly space, then the event in the head predominates in such a personality, then man becomes a cosmic seer. If, as in the case of the metal-sensitive person, the nerve-sense organization recedes and the metabolic-limb system develops particularly significantly, then the person lives primarily with the earthly, with the forces and effects of the metals of the earth, the minerals of the earth. And in the middle of the human being is the balance.

This is how Goethe actually wanted to imply at this point in his social novel “Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years” how the human was sought in Central Europe, how the human being was structured on the one hand according to the cosmos, on the other hand according to the earthly, and how the right humanity consists in the balance between the two.

Much thought was given to this balance between astrology at the top and alchemy at the bottom. And when individual figures such as Paracelsus or Faust emerged, wandering from place to place, surprising people with what they knew of these secrets through their contemplations, people pricked up their ears to hear what man could know about man. But when individual significant personalities emerged, they were not the only ones. There were little Paracelsuses, little Fausts everywhere, who just did not travel so far, who had a smaller territory. And what is being explored again today in the secrets of dowsing was something that was quite common in those days. It happened not only once that something like the following occurred.

There came such a thinker to some place and impressed the people there with what he had to say about the upper and lower worlds. And when he had impressed the people mightily, when they began to believe unconditionally in his authority, then they said at last: But Master, now you must still do something for us. You know, we need a well, and you have to tell us where the well should be built. So the man who had come as a contemplator to the villages went around with the people in the area, and in some places he stopped, went on again, stopped again, but then he finally stopped in a place where he said: “There it is! There we have it!” – That's where the well was built.

These things are not recorded in history, and they extend into the first third of the 19th century, when they became increasingly rare and scarce. But these things are real. And that is something that has been particularly cultivated in the lower classes of the people, which, so to speak, constituted the spiritual life here. The spiritual life was definitely in these things because one had the innermost urge to grasp the human as such, I would say, not only symbolically but even cosmically. One asked here less: How does man, through his class, through his occupation, relate to the outside world? That was asserted even in the times of the guild system, when people wanted to appear in public with their insignia, when they wanted to make processions and the like, but that didn't really have the same deep spiritual significance as in the West. By contrast, here, this life, stripped of the external, had its great spiritual significance.

I would like to say: In the West, the aim was to understand humanity in terms of the external forces of living together. In Central Europe, it was the human being within his skin who also wanted to experience what he experienced socially as a human being. That is what drove Central European intellectual life to a certain height, so that it could not become popular as it did in the West. And this is also what at the same time brought about the deep spiritual tragedy of Central Europe. And we are already living in a time when these things should become conscious in the broadest circles, when people in the broadest circles should wake up to these things. For it is only to be hoped that our civilization, which has become chaotic, can in turn receive new impulses, that new life forces can be supplied to it, if one can grasp the real connection with historical life in this way.

In Central Europe, people were already descending to the earth. This is particularly evident in Goethe, who wanted to strike a balance between the upper and lower human beings, juxtaposing the two extremes, the metal-sensing and the cosmic-seeing. On the one hand, people wanted to see man as a doer on the earth; but on the other hand, they wanted to look up into the region of the cosmic, and they wanted to look down into the region of the earthly, the telluric, in order to recognize man as an earthling. These are the differentiations that modern civilization has brought up from its foundations.

That is why something like Schiller's 'Aesthetic Letters', which I have mentioned several times, could only be written in Central Europe. In these letters, man is seen purely as a human being, detached from nationality, and is to be understood only as a human being. And basically it was self-evident that part of the problem - even if neither Goethe nor the period that followed provided the solutions for it - was how to get people to understand this universal humanity in the modern way.

That is why a large part of Goethe's “Wilhelm Meister” novel is the so-called pedagogical province. The education of the human being becomes a problem: a problem for which the time had not yet come at that time, for which the time has only come today, when one can search for anthroposophical knowledge of man.

In the West, I would say, people had already gone beyond the human skin. They groped their way: How do you connect with another person? How do you reveal yourself to another person? How do you take his hand? How do you speak so that he recognizes you? The signs, gestures and words that later appeared in a somewhat luxurious way in the Masonic societies were something that was practiced in the West as something vitally active until the end of the first third of the 19th century. In Central Europe, people did not have as much of an appreciation for such special symbolism, but they did have a great sense of wanting to get behind the mystery of the human being in general.

It is interesting to compare this with Eastern Europe. There, not only until the end of the first third of the 19th century, but until a much later time, people came from their inner being, I would say, not to their skin. In a certain sense, he remained in a state of soul that did not completely lift him out of the divine, did not advance him to the point of becoming human. Therefore, I would like to say: While in the West the attitude has arisen that the world is the world - at most one has to think about social utopias - the world is the world, one has to live in it, one has to have social institutions in order to live in it, or one has to regard those who are already there as if they were quite wonderful to live in – while it was the case in the West, it was the case in Central Europe that one actually demanded: Man must first become human, he must first work his way to humanity, then he will find the earth. – In the East, one was convinced: Both ideals are actually wrong. The moment man thinks of working his way up to becoming a human being, he is on the wrong track, because in so doing he actually leaves Paradise. And man should always be able to see the piece of earth on which he lives as a paradise, otherwise life becomes impossible. One must go back more to what is unconsciously within man, and not go out too strongly into life.

For this reason, although there has always been a certain tolerance in Eastern Europe towards the West and towards Central Europe, out of a certain good nature and also out of philanthropy, there are nevertheless regions where either the outer humanity of the West or the individual human individuality of Central Europe has been reckoned with, and these regions have been regarded, so to speak, as a departure from the divine human being. And when, for example, the tendency arose in the East to acquire Western views, we see that because man does not want to come out of himself, we see, as is the case with the best, a tolerance, a toleration, but no inner engagement with the rest of the world. The Russian, if he is a real Russian, does not go as far as his skin; he remains deeper within himself. It is already far too earthly to go as far as his skin; one must remain more within.

You see, that was a mood of the soul that still occurred to a great extent in Dostoyevsky. And so it is interesting, after all, to hear what Dostoyevsky, one of those who are above all representative of Eastern European life, says to people in the West.

In the latest issue of the journal “Wissen und Leben” (Knowledge and Life), which has now been published, where letters that Dostoyevsky wrote to Apollon Maikov in 1868 are printed, you can read it. But such letters could have been written if traveling had already become so common in the first third of the 19th century.

I may have to apologize to some of the people sitting here for my reading out some parts of Dostoyevsky's letter, but it is Dostoyevsky who says it, not me, and I am of course far from wanting to say anything other than letting Dostoyevsky speak. Dostoyevsky therefore feels stranded in Geneva; and the Westerners of Geneva and those who live nearby will have to excuse me if I read just a few passages from a letter from Dostoyevsky from 1868 as a way of characterizing them.

"In Geneva, we suffered most from material discomfort and cold. If only you knew how stupid, dull, insignificant and wild this people is! It is not enough to visit the country as a tourist. No, try living here for a change! But I cannot even give you a brief account of my impressions now; there are far too many of them. Bourgeois life in this republic has reached a dead end. In the government and throughout Switzerland, there is nothing but parties, incessant disputes, pauperism, and a frightening mediocrity in everything. The local worker is not worth the little finger of ours: it is laughable to look at and listen to him. The morals are wild; oh, if you only knew what is considered good and bad here. Low education: what drunkenness, what thievery, what petty swindling that has become the law in trade. There are, however, some good traits that place them immeasurably above the Germans.

Now I must apologize again on the other side!

“In Germany I was most amazed at the stupidity of the people; they are extremely stupid, they are incommensurably stupid. Even Nikolai Nikolaevich Strachov, a man of great intellect, does not want to see the truth in our country: he said, ‘The Germans are clever, they invented gunpowder.’ But that is how their lives turned out!”

So he doesn't count the fact that they invented gunpowder as something that would reduce their incommensurable stupidity. Now:

”... In Switzerland there are still enough forests, and there are incomparably more of them in the mountains than in the other countries of Europe, although they are decreasing terribly from year to year. Now imagine: for five months of the year there is terrible cold here, and on top of that the Bisen. And for three months here it is almost the same winter as with us. Everyone shivers from the cold, never taking off their flannel and cotton (and they don't have any steam baths, so you can imagine the dirt they are used to). They don't have winter clothes, they walk around in almost the same clothes as in summer (but flannel alone is not enough for such a winter), and they lack the sense to improve their homes even a little! What good is a fireplace that burns coal or wood, even if they keep it burning all day long? But keeping it burning all day costs 2 francs a day. So much forest is needlessly destroyed, but they get no warmth from it. What do you think? If only they had double windows, then you could live with the fireplaces! I'm not saying that they should install stoves. Then they could save the entire forest. In 25 years there will be no forest left. They really live like savages! They can take some of it. In my room, with the terrible heating, it is only +5 degrees R&aumur (5 degrees heat). I sat in my coat in this cold, waiting for money, moving things around and thinking about a plan for a novel - is that nice? They say that in Florence this year there were temperatures as low as -10 degrees. In Montpellier, there was a cold snap of 15 degrees Reaumur. Here in Geneva, the temperature didn't drop below -8 degrees, but it doesn't matter if the water in the rooms freezes. Recently I changed apartments and now I have nice rooms; one is always cold, but the other is warm, and in this warm room I always have +10 or +11 degrees of heat, so you can still live.” And so on and so on.

So you see: the Central and Western Europeans do not exactly come off very well in this description by one of the most outstanding Russians. And that must be attributed to the fact that a going out even to the skin of the human being is not present there. There is still the closedness in itself, and therefore the non-adaptation to the environment, but rather, I would say, the demand that everything be as one is oneself.

As I said, from a certain contemporary historical point of view, it is quite interesting to take a look at this recently published passage from the letters. That is why I have chosen this one and not, for example, one from the first third of the 19th century for this century-long consideration. Because in Russia things only emerged with such clarity later on; but they have always been there, woven into the fabric of life. And one also characterizes the time of a century ago when one considers these statements about a time that has already changed somewhat. Yes, even things that one can probably be quite astonished about in the West can be found there. If you take Western or Central European descriptions, then the following letter, which is from the same time - March 1, 1868, will be interesting to you. You will see from it that you can look at the things of the world from different points of view.

“I have formed the following opinion about our courts (based on everything I have read): the moral character of our judges” - namely the judges in Russia - “and, above all, of our jury is infinitely higher than in Europe; they regard criminals as Christians. Even the Russian traitors living abroad admit it. But one thing does not yet seem to be established: I believe that in this humane relationship to the criminals, there is still much that has been created by books, much that is liberal and not independent. This sometimes happens. Besides, I can be terribly wrong from a distance. But our basic nature is infinitely higher in this respect than that of Europe.” And so on.

So you see, the view of the courts here is also given from a different point of view than you often hear it given in Western Europe.

I would like two things to emerge from yesterday's and today's reflections: Firstly, that it is absurd to believe that today's standards can somehow be applied to living conditions even a century ago, but that one must actually look lovingly at past conditions if one wants to come to a valid judgment that takes reality into account. But even with those people who live at the same time, it is important to acquire a certain broad-mindedness of judgment. That is what we have to find today. We have to find a way to refrain from these national points of view in order to actually find a point of view of a citizen of the world.

But then it is the case that this can only come from a deeper knowledge of the human being. This deeper knowledge of the human being is something that the world could not penetrate as long as the world did not seek anthroposophy. And one might say: If you look at what was available in Europe a century ago, you can see that there was a yearning for knowledge of the human being. But with what was known about nature at the time, it was not yet possible to arrive at a knowledge of the human being in the modern sense. Then, in the second half of the nineteenth century, natural science flooded everything. And now we have to seek again what was longed for a hundred years ago, what the best in Europe longed for, and what was only temporarily submerged.

This alone will provide humanity with the strength that can somehow lead to an ascent of culture in the face of decline. It is dismal that so little history and so little geography in the sense mentioned yesterday is cultivated, that things have taken on such an external form. The point is to really seek the spirit in history, in history and across the earth in a geographical sense. History and geography in particular must undergo a spiritual metamorphosis. This is necessary.

This is something that the Goethean province of education did not yet have in “Wilhelm Meister”, but it is what the figures who appear there long for. And much of this yearning of that time must break into civilization today. Men must awaken to what was then the special yearning of their dreams, so that the dreams of that time may now, through the power of spiritual insight, become reality. For this reality is what men need for their civilization.

Recently, many members of the Anthroposophical Society, especially those with a scientific background, have come to believe that a discussion should take place between what is given in Anthroposophy as world knowledge and what is given today as scientific world knowledge based on the assumptions of the second half of the 19th century. Yes, it is believed that if one, as it were, accommodates science in a certain way, responds to it as much as possible, this could result in something extraordinarily favorable for anthroposophy.

It is precisely because scientific activity has entered the Anthroposophical Society, which in other respects is to be welcomed as an extremely gratifying fact, that an extraordinary number of errors have arisen with regard to the point mentioned.

We must not forget that in the course of the 19th century, under the influence of what was gradually called and is still called science, general human knowledge has taken on a character in relation to which anthroposophical knowledge of the world is quite different. One must assume that anyone who has grown into present-day scientific life with their habitual way of thinking will find it impossible to switch to the anthroposophical view without further ado. Therefore, one must be aware that no kind of approval of the anthroposophical view of the world can come from this side in the near future.

Those people who either have not grown into today's scientific work with their habitual way of thinking or who, as young people, grow into it and then out of it again, will be the ones who will mainly recognize the validity of anthroposophical world knowledge.

To bring a little life into what I have just said, I would like to speak today about an initial perspective on the path of Anthroposophy through the world. I would like to structure these three lectures somewhat aphoristically so that friends who have come from far away can take as much with them as possible. I would like to tie in with all kinds of phenomena in the life of civilization today, but in the main I would like to seek the content for these lectures in purely anthroposophical discussions.

We know what the facts are that a person experiences when they pass through the gate of death. Today, in order to present the physical perspective of anthroposophy to our souls, so to speak, we will first consider only the very first period of life after passing through the gate of death. It has often been mentioned how, throughout their entire life on earth, human beings have such a close connection between their physical body and their etheric body or formative forces that this connection is maintained throughout their entire life on earth.

When a person interrupts the ordinary state of consciousness during their life on earth through the state of sleep and dreams, they carry the astral body and the ego out of the physical and formative forces. These, in turn, are so closely connected that they do not separate. Thus, in the course of a normal twenty-four-hour day, the separation that occurs in the course of a normal day is such that the physical body and the etheric or formative body on the one hand and the ego and the astral body on the other hand separate, while each side forms a closely knit whole.

When a person now passes through the gate of death, it is different. Then it happens that the physical body is discarded first and that for a very short time a connection is established between the I, the astral body and the etheric body, which was not present during life on earth. This connection gives the first experiences that a person goes through after death, which only last for days. What are these experiences?

They consist of the person, as if melting away from himself, seeing everything that he has taken in through his senses and also through the mind, which combines the perceptions of the senses, during his life on earth.

During our life on earth, we become accustomed to seeing colored things and processes that shine in colors in our view when we look out into the world. But we also retain the impressions of colors in our memory, albeit in a weakened form. We carry them with us through our memory. It is the same with the impressions of the other senses. And if we are honest in self-observation, then we say to ourselves: Actually, when we sit in the quiet chamber and let our memories, that is, our inner selves, play, what we experience from our inner selves is composed of the shadowy images of external impressions. In our ordinary consciousness, we live either in the immediate, vivid impressions of the external world or in the shadowy memories of it. We will talk tomorrow about what we have beyond that. Today we only want to call to mind very strongly that during our whole life on earth this consciousness is filled with colors and color processes that spread over things, with sounds, with sensations of warmth and cold, in short, with the impressions that we receive through the senses, and with their shadowy afterimages in the inner life of the soul, as one might also say, in memory. Let us consider this as a kind of starting point.

Everything we experience melts away when we pass through the portal of death. Within a few days, so to speak, everything that fills our soul from birth to death has dissolved into the greater cosmos. This can be called: The etheric body or formative forces of the human being separate from the I and the astral body, after first entering into a connection with them that did not previously exist in earthly life.

Now let us imagine more precisely what this experience is like. I will make a schematic drawing for this purpose. Let us assume that the physical body of the human being is characterized by this schematic drawing; the etheric or formative body is characterized by this schematic drawing (shaded in yellow). We only experience what I have characterized as this, this interrelated structure of physical and etheric bodies, when we are stuck inside after waking up. So we actually always experience it from the inside. And to help us recall this as accurately as possible, I would like to design the drawing in the following way. I will indicate green for the part of the etheric body that seems inward. The physical body is discarded at death anyway, so we need not consider it at this point. And I will indicate what is directed outwards from the etheric body with this red line.

I just said that we only experience this structure of the etheric body from the inside after waking up; so, in a sense, we only experience what shines inward in the green. We do not experience what shines outward in the red.

When we have passed through the gate of death and enter into a certain connection with the etheric body with our ego and our astral body, this connection happens in the following way. You must now imagine that the whole etheric body turns like a glove when you turn all the finger linings inside out, as you would normally do with the skin, turning the inside out. So that I now have to draw what is colored red on the outside in the earthly state as the inner part, and what is colored green on the inside, I have to draw green on the outside. The entire etheric body turns in on itself. But this turning around is connected with an immeasurably rapid enlargement of the etheric body. It grows, it becomes gigantic, it expands immeasurably far into the universe, so that I would now have to make the drawing something like this (large green board 8 circles).

And whereas we used to be in there with our ego and our astral body, we are now (red circle) facing the etheric body that expands into the cosmic, but we look at it from its other side. That which we previously carried with us without meaning, the red on the outside, is now turned inwards. What was previously turned inwards and what alone has meaning for us during our life on earth is now turned outwards, no longer of any concern to us, and disperses into the universe. But in this green – of course presented schematically – is contained everything that we have had within us during our life on earth as a colored, sounding, and so on world.

As green, so to speak, goes through the etheric body turning to the other side, we lose it completely and we get a very different world as an impression. We must not imagine that we can still have the same world that we had during our life on earth after death. This world goes away. To imagine, for example, that after death we could experience, for my sake, in a different edition, the content of earthly life, that is quite wrong, that does not correspond to the facts. What we experience through the turning of the etheric or formative body is indeed of a gigantic size compared to the content of earthly life, but it is something quite different. We experience the whole of our earthly education through the fact that the outside is now turned inwards, in powerful impressions that are different from the sensory impressions. We do not experience the blush of the rose, but we experience how we have formed the blush of the rose within us as an idea. That is where it begins to be not as calm as it is in physical life. There, in earthly life, the roses are so beautifully arranged in a rose garden, and each one gives peace, and one feels suspended in the peace. Now the rose garden becomes something completely different, now the rose garden becomes an event in time. And as we gradually let our gaze wander from one rose to the next, as we formed the image of the first rose, the second, the third rose and so on within us, this, as in a living becoming, in a lightning-fast rippling and weaving, one rose after the other arises, but not as roses, but as images that unfold, this now emerges as our inner life as if in a sea of events. And so we are confronted with something we have not seen during our life on earth: the becoming of this earthly life, the gradual development of this earthly life. We know how our soul has become from childhood on. That which we have left completely unnoticed during our earthly life is now playing out in us. It is as if we had stepped out of ourselves, had become a second person and were watching how we gradually formed the simple ideas of childhood, the more complicated ones of later years, and so on. We see the emergence of all this earthly life from its inner side. We see how this earthly life, this earthly existence, is formed from hour to hour. Yes, we gain the impression that this whole earthly life is actually formed from the cosmos. For everything we perceive grows into the immeasurable, into the cosmic, and by growing into it, we become clear about the fact that what has been formed in us in earthly life is also formed from the cosmos.

And now we are gradually getting a valid idea of what it is like to live this human life on earth. Let us take as our starting point what is more or less believed today with regard to this life on earth. Man eats, and in doing so he takes the substances that are outside into his own organism. This is an undeniable fact. He also changes these substances. He changes them in his mouth, and then all the more so in the rest of his organism. What is absorbed goes into the whole organism, really goes into the whole organism. Science will still come and say: But we are also constantly losing substances to the outside. We need only think of how you cut your nails and your hair if you are not yet bald. You can see from the dandruff and so on how the human being loses matter, loses substance. And it is common knowledge today that in this way, by constantly losing matter, the human being completely rebuilds itself over the course of about seven years.

So that, if I want to put it drastically, everything sitting here on the chairs, in terms of the material, was scattered all over the world eight or nine years ago. Let me put it this way: what is sitting here on these chairs could only have gathered over the last seven to eight years. If what was in all of you more than seven or eight years ago were still sitting here in muscle tissue and so on – you are already older, so you will have regenerated several times – you would not all be sitting here.

So, of what you carried as your muscle meat, blood and other things at home or elsewhere seven or eight years ago, nothing is sitting there; you have gradually cut it off, shed it and so on.

But if science is now materialistically oriented, then how does it answer? It says something like this: During these last seven years we have all been eating. That which we have eaten now is here, and that which we ate earlier is no longer here. For example, each of you sitting here has a heart, doesn't he? Now, the physical matter of this heart, so science tells you, has renewed itself in the last seven to eight years. So you definitely have a new heart compared to your condition nine years ago, let's say. Yes, you could say something like that, if you think in terms of the present.

But it is not so. This idea exists only because people do not know what I have just explained to you, do not include it at all in the realm of their scientific observation and thinking. They know nothing of that reversal of the ether or formative forces of the body, of what shows us, after we have passed through the gate of death, how the whole being has actually come into being bit by bit. Because if one knows this, then one is also able to look into the human organism quite differently. And only then does one learn to recognize the truth.

One can believe that the cabbage, potatoes, other vegetables, cherries, plums and so on that one has enjoyed over the past few years have gradually accumulated this heart matter. But it has not. Essentially – listen to me when I say this – the heart you carry within you has not much to do with the material you have taken in over the last seven to eight years. Rather, the heart you carry within you today has essentially arisen in a very mysterious way out of the ether of the cosmos, which you have drawn together into the density of the heart over the last seven to eight years. So it is not that your heart has been renewed out of physical matter of the last seven to eight years, but it has been renewed out of the cosmos. You have renewed your heart and your other organs out of the ether. You have actually made yourself into a new person over the past few years, not from the earth, but from the cosmos. This can be seen from the effects of the etheric body after death, how it has worked during the whole of life on earth, that we have always regenerated ourselves from the cosmos.

Now your materialistic conscience – after all, everyone has to have one of those – will say: But we did eat. We did absorb external matter, and internal processes took place as a result.

Yes, but these internal processes have less to do with your actual, deeper nature than you might think.

Now we can even state a fact that may seem somewhat grotesque to today's thinking: You are all sitting there now; what you have renewed in yourselves over the past seven to eight years did not live in the cabbage and on the potato fields, but lived out in the universe in the sun, moon and stars, coming down from there, and you formed yourselves anew out of the universe. In doing so, we have pointed out an error that simply has to arise from today's thinking. They seek only the relationships of human regeneration to physical earth matter, but not to ether. And the consequence of this is that once one has become accustomed to the ideas presented in current physiology, one cannot help but regard everything that is given from the anthroposophical point of view as a kind of fantasy. Therefore, we must be clear about how fruitless discussions are today, how only by mastering both fields, contemporary science and anthroposophy, can we shed light on them from both sides, but how we must not give ourselves over to the hope – because if we give ourselves over to this hope, it is actually to the detriment of anthroposophy! - that those who are accustomed to materialistic ideas can be drawn over to it so easily by a discussion. One must have very clear and precise ideas about this. Then one will realize that, first of all, the whole way in which one appropriates anthroposophy must be appropriated by people before they can even enter into this anthroposophical way of looking at and knowing things.

I said that essentially we actually regenerate our new human being from the cosmos. We do not find the substances in the cosmos that we then find in the heart, of course not, because there they are so thin that they cannot be detected by physical means on earth. There they are ethereal. But what appears as dense heart matter at a certain age has only just condensed from the cosmic ether. So what is there today was all still out in the heavens, in the stars, nine or ten years ago, and what has remained, what has pushed its way in from the matter that should actually have formed out of the ether, that is what causes illness. When we carry physical matter that is too old within us, then that is one cause of illness. And deep insights into the nature of disease are gained when one knows how matter, instead of being expelled, persists; for all matter that is taken up as physical earth matter is actually doomed to be expelled again. If it persists in the organism, then it becomes the cause of disease.

You can also see from this how this really real knowledge, which we can only gain by having an insight into what occurs in us as first experiences shortly after we have completely discarded the physical body, plays a practical role. So after death, everything that we have had in the way of sense impressions and the mind's processing of sense impressions melts away from us. We look at the world quite differently. Minerals, plants, and animals, as we previously looked at them, are not there at all. How people become, that is there.

We have passed through the gateway of death. We have thereby resigned from the scene of the earth. We have stepped onto the scene of the cosmos: Another world surrounds us. It is as if we had stepped out of a small chamber of earthly existence into the majestically vast chamber of the cosmos, and we feel spread out over the cosmos, would truly not fit into the small earthly chamber. So we have entered the scene of the cosmos. And on this scene of the cosmos we must now remain until we descend again to our earthly existence, only that we now enter into contact with completely new worlds, with worlds whose essence belongs to the higher hierarchies.

This consideration, which one gains so directly in connection with man, must, however, be extended to the whole of nature. And I would like to characterize to you what has to happen there in the following way.

Let us assume, for example, that we have gone back a very long time in evolution, in the evolution of the earth. We would encounter very different living creatures and very different events on earth. You know that there have been periods of time when giant animals of a lower kind lived that no longer exist today. The entire species has died out and is no longer present. The paleontologist and geologist search for individual remains in the formations of the earth. Let us assume that I would draw schematically this very old development, where, for example, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, these strange beasts, would have lived here on earth. Yes, these creatures were not formed out of physical earthly matter, they were formed out of the cosmos, out of ether. And when the time approached when these creatures gradually died out, the entire etheric matter remained, if I may put it that way. (See drawing: yellow.) Now there were no more creatures. But all the etheric matter from which these creatures had formed remained behind, just as our etheric body remains behind. And this etheric matter was the cause that in later times, after this etheric formation had passed through the cosmos, other beings formed in earthly existence. Of these, in turn, the etheric remained behind. From these, other entities formed. And finally, the world of animals emerged as it exists today.

So if you have three consecutive periods here, first period, second period, third period, you have, let's say, consecutive animal forms. But for the following one to always arise from the previous one, a passage through the cosmos with the help of the ether is necessary, just as a passage through the cosmos between two earth lives is necessary for man. And if we finally have entities here (see drawing: red), then that can in turn pass into the ether, and there, formed out of the ether in a certain period, the human being can appear. But the influence has always happened in a roundabout way through the cosmos.

Now comes the purely materialistic observer. He sees all this, and now he believes that one thing has arisen out of the other. Certainly, on earth it also follows; but an etheric activity, a cosmic activity lies in between.

In the 19th century, it became common practice to look only at what follows on the earth, but not at what cosmic activity is beyond the earthly. Therefore, the consideration remained: ultimately man, before that simpler forms, still simpler forms and so on. This is what we can obtain as the development of organisms through natural science, which does not involve the etheric. This natural science could obtain nothing other than what it did obtain. If one admits its presuppositions, that one should not get involved in the ethereal, one poses the question in such a way that one should only consider that which belongs to earthly existence; yes, then there is no other choice than to present the physical evolutionary current. Darwinists have done this, Haeckel has done this, and to demand more as earth science or even to want to polemicize against what has come about as earth science is nonsense. Because only when one adds the knowledge of the ethereal world can that arise which belongs to it. So you see, there is no point in direct polemic; but if someone wants to remain on the ground of natural science, he can. And to the other, who speaks of some other principles of formation in what is on earth, he can always say: Yes, that has no significance at all. That is not there, he will say, when he has become accustomed to the merely earthly way of looking at things.

If one wants to speak differently, then one must first acquire knowledge of the ethereal world. So for a valid, reasonable polemic against today's science, the only thing left to do is to say: In your field, o naturalist, you are quite right, nothing else can come of it, we do not deny that, we fully admit that. But if you want to talk to us about what we mean, well, then you must first familiarize yourself with the elementary processes in the cosmic ether, then we can talk to each other. Otherwise you are not grounded in reality if you do not start from these things.

You see, a member sitting here has written a little book on botany from a spiritual scientific point of view. A very disparaging review of it appeared recently in a local paper. Well, what can one say about that! I said: Imagine you were the botanist who wrote this review, you had never heard of anthroposophy and this second edition of your little book came to your notice. It is only natural that you would write just like him! The fact that you do not do so, but on the contrary have written the little book yourself, is the very reason why you have taken up anthroposophy in the first place. You only have to put yourself in the other person's shoes for once, and then you can write all these opposing things yourself. But you see, if you want a person who has once put himself in one direction with all his habits of thought to be different, if you want him to be an anthroposophist, it seems to me almost like someone who has had a blonde daughter suddenly wants a black one. It doesn't work like that. What man has become through today's science is not something that can be changed in the twinkling of an eye. You have to think realistically.

The period that followed the mid-19th century gave the whole state of mind a very specific character. I will give you an example of this from a completely different angle.

You know that there is something today called analytical psychology, psychoanalysis. I have often said here that psychoanalysis produces some beautiful things; but, first of all, it arises from an incomplete, amateurish knowledge of human physiology, so it is amateurishness. Then it arises from an amateurish knowledge of the human soul, of human psychology. That is also amateurism. And because one usually follows the other, the things multiply, and psychoanalysis is actually amateurism squared. - If you multiply d by d, you get d?. But it does have an effect, even if only in an amateurish way, if it is pursued further. And one can also understand that this thing could gradually emerge from inadequate physiology and psychology. But it does rub off on people's minds, this way of thinking does rub off!

Today we have an enormous literature about it. You could fill a large library with psychoanalytic literature. People argue terribly in it, so that if you go into the polemics, it is sometimes quite interesting. Well, this psychoanalysis has also been mentioned here from time to time. One can really fill a library with what has been written about it. But if so much is written in this field, then there must be a lot of study in it, at least on the surface. This colors the state of mind of people.

Now there is something very peculiar. You see, in 1841, there was already a psychoanalytic literature in Central Europe. But it consisted of only fourteen lines. They read: “In our modern overcrowded consciousness, we throw many things around that we cannot develop because we lack the time. They remain in us in the form of tasks that we could work on. They are, to quote Tieck, unborn souls that, yearning for existence, hover in the background of our own soul as if in a limbo."

You see, in these fourteen lines - if you make the lines longer, there is even less - the principle of the whole of psychoanalysis is contained. At that time, it was called “unborn souls” that live in the background of the soul in a limbo, struggling for existence. Now it is called “hidden provinces in the depths of the soul,” “soul provinces,” and so on. In those days, however, it was considered such an insignificant thing that it was noted in a few lines. Today our civilization has come to write entire libraries about it. But everything essential, everything fundamental, is contained in those fourteen lines. But in those days, when it was all contained in just fourteen lines, the libraries were filled with different books than they are filled with today, and people who wanted to learn took in different material.

If today, as a young student, you somehow study psychology and are supposed to write a dissertation, you can't avoid psychoanalysis. You have to study it. Yes, it rubs off on the soul. In 1841, the essential was expressed in these fourteen lines. It was not considered something so important that could have such a tremendous significance for human thought. And so it has been with many things.

It means something tremendous, whether we look at any field of facts or whether we do not look. In those days, in 1841, people slept through psychoanalysis. This thought, which I read to you in the fourteen lines, only emerged in a single person, in Karl Rosenkranz. He dreamt about it once. Dreams pass quickly and do not have much influence on life. But people filled their waking hours with other things. Today, on the other hand, much is missed because one has to be awake for psychoanalysis and similar things.

This matter really needs to be looked at carefully, then it will be possible to say where to start in order to bring anthroposophy to bear in the world. In any case, polemics are not the answer. Polemics are almost like someone lying in a room and snoring terribly, and cannot be woken up at all, and someone else is watching, and now the person watching is trying hard to make the snorer, who is sleeping through everything, understand

what the other is saying. He cannot understand him. Nor is it possible for two fields of spiritual life to communicate with each other if each sleeps for the other's field and only watches for his own.

Now there will still be many who sleep for anthroposophy. They will not wake up so quickly for anthroposophy. But one would like the anthroposophists to wake up for the others, so that they know why anthroposophy is the all-embracing one, not only out of their blind faith but out of a real insight into the quality of the other and also encompasses what the others consider to be the only one, and how anthroposophy broadens the horizon because it goes beyond those areas that the others consider to be merely within a narrow horizon.

In this way I have presented one of the perspectives, the perspective that arises when we ask about the details of what surrounds us as the earth world and what melts away after death. It is the physical perspective. In order to be understood, it leads us into that which is immediately adjacent to it, into the etheric.

Later, we will look at the soul perspective, how the human being awakens to the soul perspective, and then conclude with a consideration of the spiritual perspective of anthroposophy. These will be the three perspectives of anthroposophy.

[ 1 ] Among the manifold currents in the spiritual life of humanity there is one which we may call the overcoming of the concept of purpose in spheres to which it does not apply. Adaptation to purpose is a special kind of sequence of phenomena. Such adaptation is genuinely real only when, in contrast to the relation of cause and effect in which the antecedent event determines the subsequent, the subsequent event determines the antecedent. This applies, first of all, only to human actions. Man performs actions which he first represents to himself, and he allows himself to be determined to action by this representation. The consequent, i.e., the action, influences by means of the representation ¹ the antecedent, i.e., the human agent. For the connection to have purposive character this detour through the representation is absolutely necessary.

[ 2 ] In the process which we can analyse into cause and effect, we must distinguish percept from concept. The percept of the cause precedes the percept of the effect. Cause and effect would simply stand side by side in our consciousness, if we were not able to connect them with one another through their corresponding concepts. The percept of the effect must always be consequent upon the percept of the cause. If the effect is to have a real influence upon the cause, it can do so only by means of the conceptual factor. For the perceptual factor of the effect simply does not exist prior to the perceptual factor of the cause. Whoever maintains that the flower is the purpose of the root, i.e., that the former influences the latter, can make good this assertion only concerning that factor in the flower which his thinking establishes in it. The perceptual factor of the flower is not yet in existence at the time when the root originates.

In order to have a purposive connection, it is not only necessary to have an ideal connection of consequent and antecedent according to law, but the concept (law) of the effect must really, i.e., by means of a perceptible process, influence the cause. Such a perceptible. influence of a concept upon something else is, however, to be observed only in human actions. Hence this is the only sphere in which the concept of purpose is applicable. The naive consciousness, which regards as real only what is perceptible, attempts, as we have repeatedly pointed out, to introduce perceptible elements even where only ideal factors can actually be found. In sequences of perceptible events it looks for perceptible connections, or, failing to find them, it imports them by a dream-like fantasy. The concept of purpose, valid for subjective actions, is very convenient for inventing such imaginary connections. The naive man knows how he produces events, and consequently concludes that nature proceeds likewise. In the connections of nature which are purely ideal he finds, not only invisible forces, but also invisible real purposes. Man makes his tools to suit his purposes. On the same principle, so the Naive Realist imagines, the Creator constructs all organisms. It is but slowly that this mistaken concept of purpose is being driven out of the sciences. In philosophy, even at the present day, it still does a good deal of mischief. Philosophers still ask such questions as: What is the extra-mundane purpose of the world? What is the extra-human destination (and, consequently, purpose) of man, etc.?

[ 3 ] Monism rejects the concept of purpose in every sphere, with the sole exception of human action. It looks for laws of nature, but not for purposes of nature. Purposes of nature, no less than imperceptible forces (p. 93), are arbitrary assumptions. But even life-purposes which man does not set up for himself are, from the standpoint of Monism, illegitimate assumptions. Nothing is purposive except what man has made so, for only the realization of an Idea originates anything purposive. But an Idea becomes effective, in the realistic sense, only in man. Hence human life has no other purpose and destination than the one which man gives to it. If the question be asked: What is man's task in life? Monism has but one answer: The task which he gives to himself. I have no predestined mission in the world; my mission, at any one moment, is that which I choose for myself. I do not enter upon life's voyage with a fixed route mapped out for me.

[ 4 ] Ideas are purposively realized only by human beings. Consequently, it is illegitimate to speak of the embodiment of Ideas by history. All such statements as “history is the evolution of man towards freedom,” or “the realization of the moral world-order,” etc., are, from a Monistic point of view, untenable.

[ 5 ] The supporters of the concept of purpose believe that, in surrendering it, they are forced to surrender also all order and unity in the world. Listen, for example, to Robert Hamerling (Atomistik des Willens, vol. ii, p. 201): “As long as there are instincts in nature, so long is it foolish to deny purposes in nature. [ 6 ] Just as the structure of a limb of the human body is not determined and conditioned by an Idea of this limb, floating somewhere in mid-air, but by its connection with the more inclusive whole, the body, to which the limb belongs, so the structure of every natural object, be it plant, animal, or man, is not determined and conditioned by an Idea of it floating in mid-air, but by the formative principle of the more inclusive whole of nature which unfolds and organizes itself in a purposive manner.” And on p. 191 of the same volume we read “Teleology maintains only that, in spite of the thousand misfits and miseries of this natural life there is a high degree of purpose and plan unmistakable in the formations and developments of nature—a purposiveness, however, which is realized only within the limits of natural laws, and which does not tend to the production of some fantastic fairy-land, in which life would not be confronted by death, growth by decay, with all the more or less unpleasant, but quite unavoidable, intermediary stages between them. [ 7 ] When the critics of Teleology oppose a laboriously collected rubbish-heap of partial or complete, imaginary or real, maladaptations to a world full of wonders of purpose, such as nature exhibits in all her domains, then I consider this just as amusing—”

[ 8 ] What is here meant by purposiveness? Nothing but the consonance of percepts within a whole. But, since all percepts are based upon laws (Ideas) which we discover by means of thinking, it follows that the coherence according to plan of the members of a perceptual whole is nothing more than the ideal coherence of the members of the ideal whole which is contained in this perceptual whole. To say that an animal or a man is not determined by an Idea floating in mid-air is a misleading way of putting it, and the view which the critic attacks loses its apparent absurdity as soon as the phrase is put right. An animal certainly is not determined by an Idea floating in mid-air, but it is determined by an Idea inborn in it and constituting the law of its being. It is just because the Idea is not external to the natural object, but is operative in it as its very essence, that we cannot speak here of purposiveness. Those who deny that natural beings are determined from without (and it does not matter, in this context, whether it be by an Idea floating in mid-air or existing outside the being, in the mind of a creator of the world) are the very men who ought to admit that such a being is not determined by purpose and plan from without, but by cause and law from within. A machine is produced in accordance with a purpose, if I establish a connection between its parts which is not given in nature. The purposive character of the combinations which I effect consists just in this, that I embody my Idea of the working of the machine in the machine itself. In this way the machine comes into existence as an object of perception linked with a corresponding Idea. The natural objects are beings of this kind. Whoever calls a thing purposive because its form. is in accordance with plan or law may, if he so please, call natural objects also purposive, provided only that he does not confuse this kind of purposiveness with that which belongs to a subjective human action. In order to have a purpose, it is absolutely necessary that the effective cause should be a concept, more precisely the concept of the effect. But in nature we can nowhere point to concepts operating as causes. The concept is never anything but the ideal nexus of cause and effect. Causes occur in nature only in the form of percepts.

[ 9 ] Dualism may talk of cosmic and natural purposes. Wherever for our perception there is a nexus of cause and effect according to law, there the Dualist is free to assume that we have but the copy of a nexus in which the absolute Cosmic Being has realized its purposes. For Monism, all ground for assuming purposes in the world and in nature drops away with the rejection of an absolute Cosmic Being, whose existence can never be directly experienced and is only hypothetically inferred.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 10 ] No one who, with an open mind, has followed the preceding argument, will come to the conclusion that the author, in rejecting the concept of purpose for extra-human facts, intended to side with those thinkers who reject this concept in order to be able to regard first, everything outside human action and, next, human action itself, as a purely natural process. Against such misunderstanding the author should be protected by the fact that the process of thinking is in this book represented as a purely spiritual process. The reason for rejecting the concept of purpose even for the spiritual world, so far as it lies outside human action, is that in this world there is revealed something higher than a purpose such as is realized in human life. And when we characterize as erroneous the attempt to conceive the destination of mankind as purposive according to the pattern of human purposiveness, we mean that the individual sets purposes before himself, and that the result of the total activity of humanity is composed of these individual purposes. This result is something higher than its component parts, the purposes of individual men.

• 1. See Translator's Preface