The Rudolf Steiner Archive

For his present life on Earth man is beholden partly to the external world, including in the wider sense not only the several kingdoms of Nature immediately around him but also the influences coming from the stars and the cosmic expanse. But this is only one part of the world to which he is beholden for his present earthly life. He is beholden above all to his previous lives on Earth, the results and effects of which he brings with him inwardly. As you know from anthroposophical literature, man is a fourfold being. Every time he goes to sleep his astral body and ‘I’ separate from his physical and etheric bodies. Of these members only the physical and etheric bodies owe their character and composition to the external world lying visibly—or also, as etheric world, invisibly—around man. On the other hand, everything that he bears within him in his astral body and Ego in his present earthly existence, he owes entirely to what he experienced in the past, in earlier lives on Earth.

In the outer physical world there are two portals, two gates, through which the life of man, taken in its entirety, reaches out beyond this world. We will begin to-day by considering this cosmic aspect and conclude with a study very directly concerned with human life. For inhabitants of the Earth, these two gates are the Moon and the Sun.

The fact is that modern science knows very little indeed about the heavenly bodies—actually only what can be determined by calculation or observed by means of instruments. Just think what an inhabitant of Mars would know about the Earth if, from Mars or from some other star, he were to acquire his knowledge by employing the same methods as those employed by the inhabitants of the Earth! He would know no more than that the Earth is a luminous body radiating into cosmic space the light it reflects from the Sun. He might form all kinds of hypotheses, just as men do about Mars—as to whether beings do or do not exist on the Earth. But an inhabitant of the Earth knows that beings of his own rank and beings of other kingdoms share his dwelling-place; and those whose knowledge is derived from the inner, spiritual destinies of earthly humanity, will be able to reach a deeper understanding of the significance of the other heavenly bodies, for example, of the Sun and the Moon.

Let us think about what may be said of this physical, psychic and spiritual aspect of Moon existence. I must here remind you of many things to be found in the book Occult Science—an Outline, and in several of the printed lecture-courses. From this literature you know that the Moon was once united with the Earth. It is accepted by orthodox modern science, at any rate by its most important representatives, that the physical Moon once separated from the Earth and, if I may put it so, chose its own position in cosmic space.

But Spiritual Science discloses that not only did the physical Moon separate from the Earth but that certain Beings went with it, Beings who had once inhabited the Earth together with men. They were of a much higher spiritual rank than man in his physical embodiment; but they were in close intercourse with men, although this intercourse was altogether different from the relationships between human beings to-day.

Anyone who devotes even cursory study to the early history of the Earth and its spiritual achievements will feel deep reverence for the different civilisations. Certainly, our forefathers—that is to say, we ourselves in earlier incarnations—were not as ‘clever’ in the modern sense as we imagine ourselves to be to-day, but in point of fact they knew a great deal more. Knowledge, after all, is not acquired through cleverness only. Cleverness comes from intellect, and intellect is only one of the human faculties, although nowadays it is prized, especially by science, more highly than all the others. Yet when we see how the world has developed in a moral and social respect in this enlightened twentieth century, there is really no cause to be so very proud of our intellectual culture—which has come into being only in the course of time. Even if with no other aid than external history we go back and consider, for example, what originates from the ancient East, we cannot but feel great reverence. The same may apply even to certain achievements of so-called ‘uncivilised’ peoples, but we will think now only of ancient India and Persia, of the wonderful wisdom contained in the Vedas, in Vedanta or Yoga philosophy. If we let these things work upon us, not superficially but with all their deep intensity we shall feel an ever-increasing reverence for what past ages created—not through cleverness as we know it, but in a quite different way.

Spiritual Science makes it clear that what has been preserved in documentary records is only the residue of a wonderful, primeval wisdom of mankind. It was expressed in a much more poetic, artistic language than is used for our modern knowledge, but it was nevertheless wonderful wisdom, imparted to men by Beings at a stage of evolution far higher than that of humanity on Earth. Intellectual thinking takes place, after all, through the instrumentality of the physical body, and these Beings had no physical body. This accounts for the fact that they conveyed their primordial wisdom to mankind in an essentially poetic, artistic form.

These Beings did not remain with the Earth; the majority of them to-day actually inhabit the Moon in the heavens. What modern science can discover has to do only with the external properties of the Moon. The Moon is in truth the home of lofty spiritual Beings whose task once was to inspire earthly humanity with the primeval wisdom. They then withdrew to establish this Moon colony in the Cosmos. It is clear from what I have said about these Beings who now inhabit the Moon that our own human past is connected with them. In earlier lives we were their terrestrial companions. And our connection with them is immediately evident if we look beyond what external knowledge and external life can give to man. When we contemplate all the factors by which our existence is determined, which are not, however, dependent upon our intellect but transcend the intellect and are related to our deeper nature, we realise that these Moon Beings, although they no longer have their habitation on the Earth, are still deeply and inwardly connected with our very existence. For before descending to the Earth and receiving a physical body from our forefathers, we were in the spiritual world, in pre-earthly life; and there, even to-day, we are in close contact with these Beings who were our companions in Earth existence long ages ago. When we come down from the spiritual worlds into earthly existence, we pass through the Moon sphere, through the Moon existence. Once upon a time, when these Moon Beings were on the Earth, they had a profound effect upon mankind, and it is still so to-day, inasmuch as they impress into the descending Ego and astral body what is then carried over into the physical body on Earth.

Nobody can himself decide to be a man of talent, or a genius, or even a good man. Yet there are men of talent and genius and some who are innately good. These are qualities which the intellect cannot produce; they are connected with man's inmost nature, a great part of which comes with him when he passes from pre-earthly existence through birth into earthly life. To impress into his Ego and astral body what then makes its way into his nerves and blood as genius or talent or the will to do good or evil—this is the task of the Moon Beings during the time when in a man's pre-earthly existence he is passing through the Moon sphere. It is not only when, in poetic mood, lovers go walking in the moonlight that the Moon has an effect upon what is living and weaving in the deeper part of man's nature below the level of consciousness; this Moon influence is active in everything that rises from a level below that of the conscious intellect and makes man what he really is in earthly life. And so to-day these Moon Beings are still connected with our past, inasmuch as it is they who after our earlier incarnations give us in pre-earthly existence the stamp of individuality.

If we look back over our life to the point where it runs out beyond the earthly realm into the spiritual, whence our particular faculties, our temperament, our inmost, essential character, are derived, we find in the Moon the one gate which leads from the physical into the spiritual world. It is the gate through which the past makes its way into our life and gives us individuality.

The other gate is the Sun. We do not owe our individuality to the Sun. The Sun shines alike on the good and on the evil, on men of genius and on fools. As far as earthly life is concerned the Sun has no direct connection with our individuality. In one instance only has the Sun established connection with earthly individuality and this was possible because at a certain point of time in the Earth's evolution, a sublime Sun Being, the Christ, did not remain on the Sun but came down from the Sun to the Earth and became a Being of the Earth in the body of a man, thus uniting His own cosmic destiny with the destiny of earthly humanity. The other Sun Beings who remained in the Sun sphere have no access to the single human individuality but only to what is common to all mankind. Something of this remained in the Christ and is an infinite blessing for earthly humanity: what had remained in Him was and is that His power knows no differentiation among men. Christ is not the Christ of this or that nation, of this or that rank or class. He is the Christ for all men, without distinction of class, race or nation. Nor is He the Christ of particular individualities, inasmuch as His help is available alike to the genius and the fool. The Christ Impulse has access to the individuality of man, but to become effective it must take effect in the inmost depths of human nature. It is not the forces of the intellect but the deepest forces of the heart and soul which can receive the Christ Impulse; but once received this Impulse works not for the benefit of the individual-human but of the universal-human. This is because Christ is a Sun Being.

Looking back into the past we feel ourselves connected with the Moon existence and realise that we bear within us something not derived from the present but from the cosmic past—not merely from the earthly past. In our present Earth existence we unite this fragment of the past with the present. We do not, in the ordinary way, pay much attention to what is contained in this fragment of the past; but in point of fact we should not be of much account as human beings if it were not there within us. What we acquire at the time of descending from pre-earthly into earthly existence has something automatic about it—the automatic element in our physical and etheric bodies. What makes us into particular human individuals is inwardly connected with our past and thus with the Moon existence. But just as we are connected with the past through our Moon existence, so are we connected with our future through the Sun existence. We were ready for the Moon forces, especially in relation to the Beings who have withdrawn to the Moon, even in earlier times; for the Sun which works to-day as an impulse in the sphere of the universal-human only, we shall not be ready until a very distant future, when evolution has reached a much more advanced stage. The Sun to-day can reach only to our external being; not until distant future ages will it be able to reach our individuality, the inmost core of our being. When the Earth is no longer Earth, when it has passed into quite another metamorphosis, then and then only shall we be ready for the Sun existence. Man is so proud of his intellect—but the intellect in present humanity is purely a product of the Earth, since it is tied to the brain, and the brain—despite current belief—is the most physical structure in the human organism.

The Sun is perpetually wresting us away from this bondage to the earthly, for the Sun does not in reality work upon our brain ... if it did, we should produce much cleverer thoughts! From the physical aspect the Sun's influence is exerted on the heart, and what streams out from the heart is Sun-activity. Through the brain men are essentially egotistic, through the heart they become free from egoism and rise to the level of the universal-human. Thus through the Sun we are more than we should be if we were left to our own resources in our present Earth existence. Let me put it like this: if we can really find our way to the Christ, He enables us, because He is a Sun Being, to be more than we could otherwise be.

The Sun stands in the heavens personifying the future, whereas the Moon personifies the past. The Sun is the other gate into the spiritual world, the gate leading to the future. Just as we are impelled into earthly existence by the Moon Beings and Moon forces, so, through death, we are impelled out of it by the Sun forces. These Sun forces are connected with that part of our nature of which we are not yet master, which the gods have given us so that we may not wilt in earthly life but reach out beyond our own limitations. And so Moon and Sun are in truth the two gates in the universe into the spiritual life. The Moon is inhabited by Beings with whom we were once connected in the way I have indicated. The Sun is inhabited by Beings with whom—with the exception of the Christ—we shall be united only in our future cosmic existence. The Christ will lead us to those who were once His companions on the Sun. But this, as far as man is concerned, belongs to the future.

We have said that the influences of the Moon work upon us from the spiritual world; the same is true of the influences working from the Sun upon our physical and etheric bodies. Think, for example, of the temperaments. There are forces in the temperaments which play into the physical body, but more particularly into the etheric body. This is regulated by the interplay of Sun and Moon. A man with a strong vein of melancholy in his temperament is strongly influenced by the Moon. Similarly, a man with a markedly sanguine vein in his temperament is strongly influenced by the Sun. A man in whom the quality of Sun and Moon are in balance and neutralised, will be a phlegmatic type. When the physical element as such plays into a man and comes to expression in the life of soul, as in the temperaments, the Sun and Moon forces are in play in the whole of his being. But to begin with, man is aware of these forces only when they confront him in their external, physical manifestation, when the Moon—and similarly the Sun—announces its presence through the orb that is outwardly visible. Yet forces far transcending the physical are taking effect; we must always speak of the Sun and Moon as spiritual realities. And that is easy enough to realise.

Think of a human body. This body to-day no longer has within it the same substances as it had ten years ago. You are perpetually casting off these physical substances and replacing them by new. What endures is the spiritual form of man, the configuration of inner forces. Suppose you had been sitting in this room ten years ago; you do not bring with you now the flesh and blood that were within you then as material substance. The physical is involved in a perpetual stream from within outwards; it is being cast off all the time. Although this is a known fact it is not always remembered. It is a fact in the Cosmos too. People think that the Moon which shines down upon the Earth to-day is the same Moon which shone upon Caesar or Alcibiades or Buddha. Spiritually, yes, it is the same Moon, but not in respect of physical substance. As for the Sun, the physicists and astrophysicists calculate how long it will be before it disintegrates in cosmic space. They know that it will disintegrate but they reckon in terms of millions of years. The same kind of results would be obtained if such calculations were applied to the human being. The calculations are absolutely correct and cannot be faulted—only they are not true! They are dead correct, but just think of this—if you examined a human heart today, then five days later and then again after a further five days, you could calculate from the minute changes what it was like three hundred years ago and what it will be like three hundred years hence. In the same way geology can calculate what the Earth looked like twenty million years ago and what it will look like twenty million years hence. The calculations may be perfectly correct, but the Earth was not in existence twenty million years ago and will not be in existence twenty million years from now. The calculations themselves are correct but they are not true! Not even for the shortest periods does the Cosmos differ from man in this respect. Although mineral substances last essentially longer in that form than the configuration of substance in living bodies, yet even the purely physical part of mineral substances is transient. As I have said, the Moon in the sky to-day is in its physical composition no longer the same Moon which shone upon Caesar or Alcibiades or the Emperor Augustus, for its substance has changed, just as the substance of a man's physical body has changed. What endures out there in the Cosmos is the spiritual element, just as in the case of a human being what endures from birth to death is the spiritual entity, not the physical substance.

We shall therefore only be viewing the world rightly when we say of man that what endures between birth and death is his soul; what endures out yonder in the celestial bodies is a multiplicity of Beings. And when speaking of Moon and Sun we ought to be conscious that if we are to speak truly we must speak of Beings of the Moon and Beings of the Sun. The Beings of the Moon are connected with our past; the Beings of the Sun will be connected with our future, but even now they work into our present existence.

A sound basis for the study of human karma and destiny can be established only when man is given his real place within the Cosmos.

Try as we will, we can never alter the past. For this reason, in the Moon forces as they work into and lay hold of our human nature there is an element of immutable necessity. Everything that comes to us from the Moon has this character. In whatever comes from the Sun and points to the future, there is something in which our will, our freedom, can be a factor. So that we can say: when man again apprehends the Divine in the Cosmos, and instead of vague, sentimental generalisations is able to speak with precision and definition about the Divine as revealed in the several heavenly bodies, a special kind of language will take shape within him when he contemplates the heavenly bodies with heart-knowledge and true human understanding.

Now suppose a human being were standing in front of us and looking at his hands or his arms, his head, his chest, his legs, his feet, we were to ask in each case, ‘what is that?,’ and were told in reply, ‘that is something human.’ When no distinctions are made but everything is labelled with the generalisation ‘human,’ we are without bearings or direction. The same is true if we gaze out into the Cosmos, contemplate the Sun and Moon and the stars and speak of the Divine as a generalisation. We must acquire a definite, concretely real view of the Divine. And this we do when we recognise, for example, the deep connection of the Moon with our own past, indeed with the past of the whole Earth. Then, when we look at the Moon in the heavens, we can say: “Thou cosmic offspring of Necessity, when I contemplate that within me over which my will has no sway, I feel inwardly united with thee.” Our knowledge of the Moon then becomes feeling, for we realise that every experience arising perceptibly out of inner necessity is connected with the Moon.

If in the same way we contemplate the inmost nature of the Sun, not merely making calculations or observing it through instruments, we shall feel its kinship with everything that lives in us as freedom, with everything that we ourselves can achieve for the benefit of the future.

Such experiences would enable us to find a link with the instinctive wisdom of primeval humanity. For we cannot rightly understand what radiates with such poetic beauty from ancient civilisations unless we can still feel, when we gaze at the Moon, that there we are glimpsing the past with its element of necessity and when we gaze at the Sun that there we are glimpsing the freedom belonging to the future.

Necessity and freedom interweave in our destiny. In terms of the terrestrial and human we speak of Necessity and Freedom; in terms of the heavenly and cosmic we speak of Moon existence and Sun existence.

Now let us try to discover how the forces of the Sun and Moon work in the web of our destiny. We meet some human being. As a rule the fact that we have met him is enough in itself; we accept life as it comes without being very observant or giving it much thought. But deeper scrutiny of individual human life reveals that when two persons meet, their paths have been guided in a remarkable way. Think of two individuals, one aged twenty-five and the other aged twenty, who meet; they can look back over the course of their lives hitherto and it will be evident to each of them that every single happening in the life of the one, say the twenty-year-old, had impelled him from quite a different part of the world to this meeting, at this particular place, with the other. The same will be true of the twenty-five-year-old. In the forming of destiny very much depends upon the fact that human beings, starting from different parts of the world, meet as though guided by an iron necessity directly to the meeting-point. No thought is given to the wonders that can be revealed by studies of this kind but human life is infinitely enriched by insight into such situations and impoverished without it. If we begin to think about our relationship to some human being whom we seem to have met quite by accident, we shall have to say to ourselves that we had been looking for him, seeking for him, ever since we were born into this earthly existence ... and as a matter of fact, even before then. But I do not want to go into that at the moment. We need only remind ourselves that we should not have come across this individual if at some earlier point in earthly life we had taken only a slightly different direction to the left or to the right and had not gone the way we did. As I said, people do not give any thought to these matters. But it is sheer arrogance to believe that something to which one pays no attention is non-existent. It is a fact and will eventually reveal itself to observation. There is, however, a significant difference between what takes place before the actual meeting of two individuals and what takes place from that moment onwards. Before they met in earthly life, they had influenced each other without having any knowledge of the other's existence. After the meeting the mutual influence continues, but now they know each other. And this again is the beginning of something extremely significant.

Naturally, we also meet many individuals in life for whom we have not been seeking. I will not say that we meet a great many people of whom we might think that it would have been better not to have done so! I am not suggesting any such thing ... but at all events we do meet many individuals of whom we cannot say that we have deliberately set out to find them.

If what I have now been saying is viewed in the light of Spiritual Science, it becomes clear that what has been in operation between two human beings before they actually meet in earthly life is determined by the Moon, whereas everything that takes place between them after their meeting is determined by the Sun. Hence what occurs between two human beings before they become acquainted can only be regarded as the outcome of iron necessity and what happens afterwards as the expression of freedom, of mutually free relationship and behaviour. It is indeed true that when we get to know a human being our soul subconsciously looks back and forward: back to the spiritual Moon, forward to the spiritual Sun. And with this is connected the weaving of our karma, our destiny.

Very few people today have faculties for perceiving these things. But it is precisely because these faculties are beginning to develop that so much in our age is in a state of ferment. The faculties are already present in numbers of human beings, only they are unaware of it and ascribe the effects to all kinds of other causes. In reality these faculties of perception are striving to function so that when human beings become acquainted with one another they may realise how much is due to iron necessity, to the forces of the Moon, and how their relationship will go forward in the light of the Sun, in the light of freedom. To experience destiny in this way is itself part of the cosmic destiny of humanity today and on into the future. When we meet a human being in the world we can distinguish quite clearly between two kinds of relationship. In the case of one individual the relationship proceeds from the will, in the case of another, it proceeds more or less from the intellect, or even from the aesthetic sense.

Think of the subtle differences in the relationships between human beings even in childhood or youth. We may love an individual or perhaps we hate him. If our feelings do not reach this intensity, we shall feel sympathy or antipathy; our feelings in this case do not go very deep—we just pass him by or let him pass us by. It cannot be denied that this was how we felt about most of our teachers at school; and we should count ourselves fortunate if it was not so.

But a quite different kind of relationship is possible, even in childhood. It is when we are so inwardly affected by what we see a person do, that we say: we must do it too! The relationship between us makes us choose him as a hero, as one we must follow on the path to Olympus. In short, some human beings have an effect upon our intellect, or at best upon our aesthetic sympathy or antipathy; and others have a direct effect upon our will.

Or think of the other side of life. External circumstances may bring us into very close contact with certain individuals—yet we simply cannot dream about them. We may meet others only once, yet we never seem to be free of them, we are always dreaming about them. If a more intimate association is not vouchsafed to us in this present earthly life, this will have to be reserved for other incarnations. However that may be, our relationship to a human being is deeper if, as soon as we meet him, we begin to dream about him.

There is also a sort of waking dreaming, which in the case of most people to-day lacks clear definition. But as you know, there are also initiated human beings who experience life very differently. If we meet an individual who makes an impression upon our will, he will also have an effect upon our ‘inner speech:’ he will not only speak when he is face to face with us; he will also speak out of us. If we are initiated into the secret of cosmic existence we shall know that there is a double relationship between individuals when they meet: we may meet one person to whom we shall listen, and then go on our way; we need never listen to him any more. Others we may meet to whom we shall listen, but when we go away from them they still seem to be speaking—but out of our own inner being: they are there and they really do seem to speak in this way.

What happens in the case of an Initiate is as I have just described: he actually carries within him, in the very quality of his voice, those who have made this impression on him. In those who are not initiated this also takes place, but only in the realm of feeling; it is there all the same, but subconsciously. Let us suppose that we meet an individual and then come across other people who know him as well and will remark what a splendid fellow he is. This means that they have thought about the man and have formed a judgement based on the intellect. But we do not call everyone we meet a splendid fellow or a cad, as the case may be; there are individuals who have an effect upon our will—which as I have said, leads a kind of sleeping existence within us during our waking life. The effect is that we feel we simply must follow or oppose them. In one who is not initiated, these individuals, even if they do not speak within him, live in his will. What then exactly is the difference between these two kinds of relationship?

When we meet other human beings who have no effect upon our will, but of whom we do no more than form a judgement, then there is no strong karmic connection between us; we have had little to do with them in earlier earthly lives. Individuals who affect our very will, so that they seem to be always with us, whose form is so strongly impressed upon us that they are always in our thoughts, so that we dream of them even in our waking life—these are the individuals with whom we have had a great deal to do in our past earthly lives, with whom we are as it were cosmically connected through the gate of the Moon; whereas in our present life we are connected through the Sun with everything that lives in us without any element of the necessity belonging to Moon existence.

Thus is destiny woven. On the one side man has his isolated ‘head-existence’ which has considerable independence. Even physically this head-existence raises itself all the time above the general conditions of man's cosmic existence, and in the following way—the brain weighs on average 1,500 grammes, and with this weight it would crush all the underlying blood vessels. Just think of it—a weight of 1,500 grammes pressing on those delicate blood vessels! But this does not happen. Why not? Simply because the brain is embedded in the cerebral fluid. If you have learnt any physics, you will know that a body in water loses as much of its weight as the weight of the volume of water it displaces—this is the so-called principle of Archimedes. The actual weight of the brain is therefore about 20 grammes, because the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. Hence the brain in the body presses with a weight of only 20 grammes—certainly not with its actual weight of 1,500 grammes. The brain is isolated and has its own existence.

As we go about the world, the brain is like a man sitting in his motor-car. The man himself does not move; the car moves and he sits still. And our brain as the bearer of intellect has an isolated existence. That is why the intellect is so independent of our individuality. If each of us had our own separate and distinct intellect this would augur badly for any mutual understanding! We are able to understand one another only because we all possess the same principle of intellect, although naturally there are differences of degree. But intellect is a universal principle. Human beings can understand one another through the intellect which is independent of their individual qualities. Whatever appears in human destiny as something belonging to the immediate Present—such as the meeting of two people—works upon the intellect and impulses of feeling associated with the intellect. In these cases we speak of someone as a ‘splendid fellow’ in whom we have no further interest than that he has had an effect upon our intellect. Everything that is not part of our karma has an effect upon the intellect; everything that is part of our karma and links us with other human beings as a result of experiences once shared with the individuals we now meet—all this works through those depths of human nature which lie in the will. And so it is true that the will is working even before we actually meet a human being with whom we are karmically connected. The will is not always illumined by the intellect. Just think how much in the working of the will is shrouded in darkness! The karma which leads two human beings together is shrouded in the deepest obscurity of all; they become dimly aware that karma is working from the way in which their wills are involved. The moment they come face to face the intellect begins to work; and what is then woven by the intellect can become the basis for future karma. But in essentials—not wholly, but in essentials—it would be true to say that for two human beings who are karmically connected, their karma has worked itself out when the meeting has taken place. Only what they may do after that as a continuation of what lives in the unconscious—that and that alone becomes part of the stream of future karma. But a great deal is then woven into their destiny which has an effect only on the intellect and its sympathies and antipathies. Past and Future, Moon existence and Sun existence are here intermingled. The thread of karma that reaches into the past is interwoven with the thread that reaches into the future.

We can actually gaze into cosmic existence. For if we watch the Sun rising in the morning and look at the Moon at night, we can glimpse in their mutual relationships a picture of how Necessity and Freedom are interwoven in our own destiny. And if, with a concrete idea of the mingling of Necessity and Freedom in human destiny, we again contemplate the Sun and the Moon, they will begin to unveil their spirituality to us. Then we shall not speak like the unwitting physicists who when they look at the Moon merely say that it reflects the light of the Sun ... but when we see this light of the Moon which is the same as the light of the Sun, we shall rather speak of the weaving of cosmic destiny.

Thus contemplation of our own human destiny leads to a conception of cosmic destiny. Then and only then are we able in the real sense to knit our human existence with cosmic existence. Man must learn to feel himself a living member of the Cosmos. Just as a finger is a finger only while it is actually part of a human body—if it is amputated it is no longer really a finger—so man himself has real being only inasmuch as he is part of the Cosmos. But man is arrogant, and the finger would probably be humbler if it had the same kind of consciousness. ... Yet perhaps it would no longer be humble if it could at any moment tear itself free and move around the body... although it would have to remain in the sphere of a human being in order to remain a finger at all! And man, as earthly man, must remain in the Earth-sphere if he is to be man. He is a quite different being, he is a being of eternity when he is outside the Earth-sphere, either in pre-earthly or post-earthly existence. But again, we can gain knowledge of these spheres of existence only when we recognise that we ourselves are members of the Universe. This recognition will never be achieved by fanciful speculation about our connection with the Universe, but only when, as we have tried to do to-day, we learn gradually to feel its concrete reality. Then we feel that our destiny is in very truth an image of the world of stars, of the Sun-nature and the Moon-nature. We learn to look out into the Universe and read the scroll of our human life from the life of the great Universe. Again, we learn to look into our own soul and to understand the world through it. For nobody understands the Moon who does not understand the element of Necessity in human destiny; nobody understands the Sun who does not understand the element of Freedom in human nature. Such are the interconnections of Necessity and Freedom.

At the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum we tried to give the impulses which would help us to make these facts of true esoteric perception still more effective in the years to come. And I hope that our Members will become more and more conscious of what took place at Christmas. I would like particularly to draw your attention to the fact that every Member can now receive the News Sheet. Through this News Sheet and many other developments in the Anthroposophical Society, the whole Society should in future be able to share in that quickening life which can flow from Anthroposophy. The isolation which has hitherto existed between the Groups must as far as possible come to an end. The Anthroposophical Society can become a real whole only when those who are members of a Group in New Zealand know what is going on in a Group in Berne, and members of a Berne Group know what is going on in New Zealand or New York or Vienna. This should now be possible. And one of the many things we are doing, or at least that we want to do in connection with the Christmas Meeting is to make this News Sheet a medium for all anthroposophical work in the world. It will be necessary to pay some attention to the News Sheet, and then everyone will realise what he can do to promote its aims.

While I am speaking here the third number of the News Sheet is being issued in Dornach; in it I have shown how every Member can co-operate in making it a genuine reflection of anthroposophical achievements. Only because I believe that to this end it is necessary for Anthroposophy to be cultivated more intensively within the Society—I do not mean in the sense of more content, but with greater intensity, greater enthusiasm, greater love—only for these reasons, although in the ordinary way I should have every right at my age, to retire, I have decided, after having given up the personal leadership of the Society in 1912, to begin again and to imagine that I have regained my youth and am capable of the work. I want this to be understood as a desire to stimulate interest for a more active life in the Anthroposophical Society. My hope—and anyone who was not at Dornach can read about it in the Goetheanum Weekly and the News Sheet—is that whatever of spiritual value was achieved at the Christmas Meeting shall in some way reach every individual Member. Thereby the aim of bringing true esoteric life into the Society will be achieved. The High School for Spiritual Science was founded at Christmas with the aim that esoteric life shall again flow into the Anthroposophical Society.

I hope that the words I have spoken to you to-day will have expressed the desire that this esoteric life may again unfold among us in the way that will be made clearer and clearer to you. This aim can become reality through what can go out in future from Dornach as the centre where the General Anthroposophical Society was founded at Christmas. May the Members of this Berne Group be able to contribute effectively to what we should like to achieve in Dornach for the whole Movement, to the extent that our forces permit.

On the last occasion, during our Waldorf School Conference, I spoke to you about karmic connections in the evolution of humanity, and to-day I want to say something more on the same subject. I shall begin with matters of which you already have some knowledge and then pass on to others less familiar to you.

When the human being passes through the gate of death, his ether-body dissolves away into the Cosmos when the physical body has been laid aside at the moment of death itself. To-day we shall not be studying this first stage after death, when the ether-body is dissolving, but the stage which follows. This can best be understood by thinking, to begin with, of the earthly life between birth and death. This earthly life runs its course in two sharply different conditions: waking and sleeping. You know from Anthroposophy that during the waking state the four members—physical body, ether-body, astral body and Ego—interpenetrate, mutually stimulating and sustaining their several functions. But in sleep the physical body and etheric body remain in the bed, leading temporarily a plant-like existence, while the astral body and Ego-organisation live independently in the spiritual world, separated from the physical and etheric bodies. We know from ordinary experience that when we are recollecting our earthly life, our remembrances are falsified in a certain sense. For when we look back with ordinary consciousness over our life, this retrospect seems to be a continuous, onward flowing stream, one event proceeding from another consecutively, and as a rule we ignore the fact that the stream of our memories is continually interrupted by the nights. In remembrance, therefore, there is a sequence of day-night-day-night; a period of clear consciousness passes over into one of darkness and this again into one of light. With the exception of dreams which arise from sleep, the part of earthly life which is spent in sleep remains, for the most part, unconscious. Generally speaking, this constitutes a third of the earthly life—if a man is not an abnormally long sleeper. Even taking into consideration the many more hours a child spends in sleep, it will be found that sleep occupies about a third of the time of life on the Earth.

We may ask: What are the Ego-organisation and astral body doing during the period of sleep? They are, it is true, in the spiritual world. But they have no awareness in that world and with the exception of dreams they remain unconscious. Moreover if the human being—constituted as he is on Earth with his ordinary consciousness—were always to have awareness during sleep he would go astray in one direction or another. A man of a more Ahrimanic disposition would go about during the day as if in a swoon, as if his consciousness had suffered a kind of paralysis; a man of a more Luciferic disposition would go about in a state of confused consciousness, with his thoughts and feelings in a perpetual jumble. Generally speaking, the human being is protected by the power known as the “Guardian of the Threshold” from becoming aware of the spiritual world around him during sleep.

When a man has passed through the gate of death, however, and after the first few days has laid aside the etheric body, he starts an existence which flows backwards, beginning with the day of death, passing then to the day before that, and so on through the whole of his life, in the direction from death to birth. But he lives backwards through the nights—the periods of sleep—not through the days. Hence the time during which his life is lived through in this backward order amounts to about one third of the span of his earthly life. If a man dies at the age of sixty, this backward ‘journey’ lasts about twenty years, that is to say, this other life is passed through three times as quickly as the life on Earth. Between death and a new birth we review the nights during which—unconsciously of course—pictures were produced which are in a sense negative images of the earthly life.

If man were not protected by the Guardian of the Threshold his experiences every night would be unendurable and bring about the consequences to which I have referred. If, for instance, he had done someone a wrong, he would feel during sleep as if he were transposed into the other man, experiencing what this other man had felt as a result of the wrong done to him. For the reason given there is no such experience during sleep. But after death, during the period referred to, it comes with very great intensity. We live backwards through our earthly life and through all the compensatory experiences for what we have done or failed to do. How comes it that we are able to live through these compensatory experiences?

In order to answer this question, attention must be called to a cosmic event. During the course of the Earth's evolution, the Moon—which was originally part of the Earth—separated and emerged from the Earth to lead an independent physical existence. Some time after the physical substances of the Moon separated from the Earth, the ancient primeval Teachers of humanity departed to the Moon. While they were on the Earth, these primeval Teachers had not incarnated in physical bodies, but only in etheric bodies. Hence the nature of their influence upon human beings was imaginative, inspirational. And all the wonderful teachings which were given in a more poetic form and contained in legends and sagas, originated in a majestic, primeval wisdom imparted by these ancient Teachers on the Earth. But the essential nature of these Teachers enabled them to withdraw to the Moon which has since been their habitation.

When the human being passes through the gate of death, he moves in very truth through the Cosmos; his being expands and expands. He passes first into the Moon sphere and encounters these great primeval Teachers as they now are. They preserve as it were a naively instinctive, innocent state of the human race. Before men succumbed to the possibility of doing evil, these primeval Teachers were present on the Earth. They take into themselves what is inscribed by us into the Akashic Chronicle during the nights we live through during our existence on Earth. They permeate it with their own being and thus make it possible for us, during the first third of our life after death when we are living through the events of earthly existence in backward order, to experience it all with greater intensity than we experienced it on Earth. Events in earthly life jolt us, impel and drive us, but those whose spiritual vision is able to witness what a dead man lives through in these first decades after his death know well that through the magical power of the great Teachers who have established their colony on the Moon, the experiences of yonder life have an intensity infinitely greater and more vivid than those of earthly life. We actually undergo all this. Suppose you once gave someone a box on the ears: after death you do not experience the feeling of satisfaction or perhaps of anger or malice occasioned in you by your action, but you are then within the other man, you experience the pain and the shock that were caused to him. You feel exactly what your action made him feel. The experience of living through such events with a dead man is deeply moving—one cannot say ‘shattering.’

Let me give you an example here. Most of you will remember that among the characters in my Mystery Plays, I have depicted that of Strader. As in the case of most of the characters in the Plays, the figure of Strader is drawn from actual life. There was a man whose life was almost exactly similar to that of Strader as depicted in the Plays. You can well imagine that I was very much interested in this personality during his physical life on Earth. He died in the year 1912, and my interest in his experiences after death began from then onwards. He had ultimately become a writer on the subject of rationalistic theology, and everything he had experienced on the Earth became infinitely more intense as he himself was experiencing the effect of his books and his rationalism. After I had shared for some time in what he was experiencing, I found it impossible to continue the character of Strader in the Plays and he dies because my interest in his earthly life was no longer there; it was eliminated by the intensity of interest in what he was experiencing after death.

An incident connected with this was that certain friends interested themselves in the writings left by the original of Strader and wanted to bring them to me. I simply could not take any interest in the matter and had to ignore it, for the simple reason that interest in the dead is so much stronger and eliminates everything else. By this I merely want to indicate that the experiences of a man after death while living through his life in backward order are much more intense than they were during his earthly existence. Earthly life is almost like a dream as compared with this other experience. It is an experience in negative, an experience of the consequences in the other person of what we have done and left undone. Hence it should not be described as altogether terrible. But at any rate a man must come to realise which of his deeds, his thoughts, his feelings, were just and which were not.

You can imagine that it is in this state of existence that the first seed of karma is formed. For when the human being realises what actually happens between death and a new birth, his judgement differs from judgement as it is on Earth.—I may already have mentioned that many years ago I met a lady who had listened to a conversation that had taken place in her presence on the subject of repeated earthly lives. She said that one life was enough for her, that she had no desire at all for any others, and she protested vehemently against the possibility of having to return again and again. I was obliged to say to her at the time: ‘Yes, it may be that this is your opinion here on Earth; but that is not the point. What matters is the judgement that is made between death and a new birth.’ As long as she was with us, she realised this, but on her travels afterwards she sent me a postcard saying that after all she did not admit that there are many earthly lives!

When the human being is undergoing these intensified experiences after death, he makes a resolve that may be expressed as follows: Owing to this and that, you have become imperfect, you are an inferior human being; and you must make compensation! Thereby the plan of karma is laid down. And such resolutions in the spiritual world between death and a new birth are realities. Just as here on Earth it is a reality that you burn yourself if you put your finger into a flame, so it is a reality in the spiritual world when you form a resolution. And you do most assuredly form it!

All these experiences are lived through in the Moon sphere. Passing through the following spheres of Mercury and Venus, man gradually approaches the Sun sphere. The Mercury sphere and the Venus sphere form the transition into the Sun sphere. But entry into the Sun sphere would not be possible if the whole burden of the evil laid upon the soul in the Moon sphere had still to be taken in tow. The Cosmos therefore provides that when the human being leaves the Moon sphere, the evil in him stays behind; it waits until he returns and is again passing through the Moon sphere. But as the human being is one with his deeds, he leaves much of himself behind. If I have done evil on the Earth, this simply makes me an inferior being; in passing through the Moon sphere I lose part of myself, leave it behind. A man who had been an out-and-out villain, who had never once done anything good—but after all, nobody like this really exists—such a man would be left behind in his entirety in the Moon sphere. But, as I say, nobody like this exists ... human beings do make progress.

With less or more qualities or defects, the human being passes, at first, into the Mercury sphere. Here too, between death and a new birth, he undergoes particular experiences which are a preparation for his existence in the Sun sphere. In physical life on Earth, a man becomes ill in one way or another. In soul and spirit he must be completely healthy when he passes into the Sun sphere. Hence in the Mercury sphere the human being is freed from all the effects that illnesses have produced upon the soul. Therefore it is the case that true medicine can only be mastered when one is able to perceive how the dead are freed from illnesses in the Mercury sphere. This can teach us what must be done for human beings on the Earth to free them from illnesses. And so, in the times of the Mysteries and of instinctive clairvoyance, medicine was regarded as a revelation from the Mercury sphere through the Mysteries. Just think: What is a God to modern man? A God is a Being who can never be seen on the Earth. This was not so in the days of instinctive clairvoyance. Mercury had his Mysteries. As you can read in the book, Occult Science, there were Mercury Mysteries. Indeed the Arch-High-Priest of the Mercury Mysteries was Mercury himself. This was brought about through a man being born whose spirit was then released by a super-human process in order to seek embodiment in another way. The body was there, and this body was used by the God Mercury in order to come to the Earth, that is to say, to reveal himself in the Mysteries. The Gods themselves were the teachers in the ancient Mysteries. The same applies to all the Gods of Greece; they were all on the Earth in this sense. The God Mercury taught men the art of medicine of which Hippocrates, later on, still preserved a tradition.

Then the human being enters into the Venus sphere where he becomes wholly aware of his incompleteness. But in the Venus sphere all that is incomplete in him is prepared for the Sun existence in which the longest period is spent. Man lives twice through the Sun sphere, but we need now speak only of the one period. He spends the longest period in the Sun existence where, to begin with, he is in the company of those souls with whom he has some kind of karmic connection and who are now, like himself, in the spiritual world. But he is also in the company of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and so on. What happens here? Inasmuch as the human being is fully conscious of his incompleteness, he works together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies at the model and prototype of his next Earth existence. During the first half of the Sun existence he works more at the prototype of his future physical corporeality, and during the second half more at the prototype of his moral nature as it will be in his next Earth existence. This work that proceeds during the Sun existence is by no means as uniform as it seems when one has to describe it, but it is infinitely richer, more splendid and more mighty than anything that a man can experience on the Earth. On the Earth, man does not experience what is actually enclosed within his skin, but what is around him. During the Sun existence it is the exact opposite, for then man experiences everything that is within the Cosmos. Just as here on Earth we say: this is my stomach, so in yonder sphere we say: out there is my Venus. And as we say here: this is my heart, over yonder, we say: this is my Sun. The Beings of the universe become our organs. We ourselves are as the universe. While man is on Earth—I refer of course to a spiritual conception of man—he is merely filled by earthly substance. This inner world of the human being is in very truth more all-embracing, more splendid than the Cosmos outside man on the Earth. On the Earth, man is not conscious of all that is concealed within his being. But it is much greater, much more majestic than anything he sees on Earth. And what thus lies concealed within him, is revealed to him during the Sun existence. Out of what is then his world, he forms and shapes his physical and moral nature for his next life on Earth. He also works at his karma. After having learnt during the first decades after death how he has to work, he proceeds to labour at his karma. The final touch, as it were, is not given until the evil he has done is encountered again during the second passage through the Moon sphere, and to the model and prototype is added the force which impels him into the karma of a new earthly life.

In order to have more precise insight into how karma is formed, we must think of the following.—Stars—what are they, in reality? Scientists speak of the stars as if they were orbs of burning gas or the like. It is by no means so! Suppose you were on the planet Venus. The Earth would then appear to you more or less as Venus appears to you now, and you would describe the Earth as you now describe Venus; you would estimate that on the Earth—which is the theatre of man's existence—there are so and so many souls. But wherever a star shines, there are souls! There are souls on the Moon: the souls of the great primeval Teachers, intermingled in a sense with the souls of the Angeloi. On Mercury there are the souls of the Archangeloi, among whom we live when we pass through the sphere of the Archangeloi. The God Mercury is an Archangelic Being. On Venus are the Archai. And upon the Sun are the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in whose company man forms his karma. We must see in the shining stars the outer signs of colonies of Spirits in the Cosmos. Wherever a star is seen in the heavens, there—in that direction—is a colony of Spirits.

When the human being has lived through the Sun existence, he enters into the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. He has already, in the Sun sphere, begun to work at his karma. But as well as this—in order that he shall find the load of evil that belongs to him when, later on, he goes back through the Moon sphere, and in order that karma may be prepared in such a way that it can be fulfilled on Earth—he needs to live with the Spirits indwelling Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Moreover when highly characteristic human destinies are being worked out, it is the case that the final stage of the development of karmic connections takes place in the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere or the Saturn sphere. Karma can, of course, be worked out when the human being comes again into the Venus sphere, and also into the Mercury sphere. Between death and a new birth man works at his karma, together with the Beings of the planetary systems. And it is exceedingly interesting to investigate this.

Today the time has come to speak more openly, with greater freedom and frankness, of many spiritual facts. The Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum was held in order to introduce this esoteric character which should now imbue the whole Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, when I was able to speak to you on the last occasion, I began to explain all kinds of karmic connections. Let it not be thought that one is delving with clumsy fingers into the life of man when attempts are made to speak of interesting human phenomena from the point of view of their karmic connections. For thereby the world becomes for the first time transparent, full of light—not poorer but richer, more splendid in content.

I should like to speak today about an individual who was incarnated about the second century A.D. in Rome, as it then was, and who with great sensitiveness of perception had witnessed the willing martyrdom suffered by the Christians in their efforts to promulgate their cause in the Roman Empire. This individual had also witnessed the terrible injustices and the many forms of depravity and corruption which were so rife in the Roman Empire at that time. Numberless manifestations of Good and Evil were witnessed and experienced by this individual. With the methods of spiritual research which enable such happenings to be recognised, we find this individual drawn into the tumultuous happenings which at that time, during the second half of the second century A.D., were experienced in the Roman Empire in connection with the spread of Christianity. There is something extremely moving about this individual when the eye of spirit is directed upon him in the way I explained last time with reference to other individuals in their repeated earthly lives.

In this individual who lived to a very great age and who had witnessed so much Good in deeds of supreme sacrifice in the sphere of germinating Christianity, and so much that was evil and bad in Roman life at that time, there arose a kind of realisation which was also a question: Where is the balance, the mean? Is there only the wholly Good and the wholly Evil in the world?

With the consciousness of Imagination and Inspiration one can follow quite clearly how this individual was subsequently reborn in the eleventh century, as a woman. The experiences undergone in the life as a woman levelled out the hard, steel-like angularity of soul which had developed during the Roman incarnation when he had reached a great age. This trait was softened and mellowed and became a faculty of inner, thoughtful contemplation of Good and Evil. This individual then came again to the Earth in the eighteenth century and was born as the German poet, Friedrich Schiller.

And now study Schiller's life and see how it develops, striving to find a middle condition, a balance, a mean. Schiller needed Goethe before he could get rid of all that had remained in him from the conviction that there is only Good, there is only Evil. Read Schiller's dramas, and you will understand them if you think of his earlier incarnation.

What circumstances lie behind Schiller's life and outlook? The experiences he had undergone in the Roman incarnation continued to be alive within him, but he had subsequently incarnated as a woman in the Middle Ages. And then, in his life between death and a new birth, it was in the Saturn sphere that the most significant development of his karma took place.

Initiation-knowledge, of the degree that can be attained only in advanced age, is necessary in order to understand the essential nature of the Saturn sphere. The question may be asked: How is it possible to acquire knowledge of life on the stars and the like? I have told you that when the human being reaches Imaginative consciousness, he beholds his whole life in a great tableau. But he also beholds it divided into epochs. When Inspiration is attained, and the emptied consciousness wipes out this tableau, something shines out of every such epoch. Instead of beholding his own life between birth and the seventh year, a man beholds, at this place in the life-tableau, the happenings of the Moon existence—he can look into these happenings. In the tableau of the second epoch which lies between the change of teeth and puberty, the Mercury existence shines through all the happenings. The events of the school period, seen as they are backwards in this tableau, lead into the Mercury existence. How aptly and truly were the functions assigned to the several planets in the days of instinctive wisdom on the Earth! Statistics reveal that the human being is most healthy, not in the years between birth and the change of teeth, nor after puberty, but during the school period as it is called (between the ages of seven and fourteen), because that is the time when Mercury works most strongly into the human being in his Earth existence. In the tableau arising from the epoch stretching between puberty and about the twenty-first or twenty-second years, the processes and Beings belonging to Venus are seen. Again it was genius that ascribed to Venus the initial stages of the sex life. The Sun existence shines through the epoch lying between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, the Mars existence through the epoch lying between the years forty-two and forty-nine; the Jupiter existence through the epoch from forty-nine to fifty-six; and the Saturn existence through the epoch from fifty-six to sixty-three. Truth to tell, even an Initiate cannot see the circumstances of life between death and a new birth in which Saturn plays a part, until he has passed the sixty-third year of his life. Before then it is possible to learn about this existence in many different ways; but in actual vision it is possible to behold these happenings and their connections only when one has passed the sixty-third year of life. So you will realise why it is that I am only now speaking of matters connected with the Saturn existence.

As I said, Schiller developed his karma above all in the sphere of Saturn. To behold this Saturn existence in the way I have indicated, causes great amazement, because it is so different from anything one can experience on the Earth. In the consciousness of the Beings on Saturn there is only Past; there is no Present at all. But the Past is revealed in great majesty. Let me try to make a comparison with something that might happen on the Earth—it does not happen, but hypothetically it is possible. Imagine that you have no idea what you look like, you know only that you exist. You act, you do something—you do not see this at the time, you see it only when it has become the Past. You walk: you do not see your own steps or the movements you make; but immediately afterwards these movements change into a snowman—and you draw the whole movement after you when you look round and see what you have been doing! Such is the life of these strange Spirits upon Saturn. They are never aware of what they do out of an immediate resolve of the Present, but they perceive it only when it has become the Past. This is a difficult conception for the ordinary consciousness, but it is so nevertheless. Individualities like that of Schiller, who are also forming their karma, live in similar conditions of existence. Such individuals develop a wonderful vision of the Past. And so the soul of Schiller, before he was born in the year 1790, lived in the spiritual world with a majestic vision in retrospect of all the Past that was connected with his own karma. And then, on the Earth, this changed into the reaction: the vision of the Past is now transformed into enthusiasm for ideals of the Future. Schiller's ideals of the Future arose from his activity in connection with his karma during his Saturn existence.

And now let us take another life. During an incarnation in Greece, a certain individual had had a great deal to do with Greek plastic art and also with the Platonic philosophy. As a young man he was filled with enthusiasm for plastic art which he was able to view with the eye of spirit, and his colossal artistic powers were able to translate into art what he perceived spiritually. After other incarnations had been lived through, we find this individuality developing his karma in the Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter Beings differ from the Saturn Beings. The Jupiter Beings are unlike the men of Earth. When a man of Earth wants to grow wise, he must undergo inner development, he must struggle, battle inwardly and overcome; through periods that are filled with active development the human being on Earth struggles to acquire an unpretentious form of wisdom. Not so the Jupiter Beings. They are not ‘born’ as earthly beings are born, they form themselves out of the Cosmos. Just as you can see a cloud taking shape, so do the Jupiter Beings form themselves in the etheric and astral worlds, out of the Cosmos. Neither do they die. They interpenetrate one another, do not, as it were compete with each other for space. These Beings are, so to speak, wisdom that has become real and actual. Wisdom is innate in them; they cannot be other than wise. Just as we have circulating blood, so have the Jupiter Beings wisdom. It is their very nature. Among them too, karma can be shaped. The individuality of whom we are speaking, who lived through one of his most important earthly lives in ancient Greece, passed through the Jupiter sphere, came into contact with the wisdom of the Jupiter sphere where his karma was shaped, and was born again in the eighteenth century as Goethe. Such is the origin of the wonderful combination of Greek culture and wisdom that is present in Goethe.

When history is studied in this way, when we try to glean from the Mysteries and from secrets of the Cosmos what is happening on the Earth, I do not think that the Earth's history loses significance thereby. Prosaic professors may always be insisting that it is much more to the point to depict Goethe as the man he actually was in life, than to waft him away into a higher sphere! In richer epochs of evolution, when instinctive clairvoyance still survived, men spoke, openly as well, of how life in the heavens is revealed through human acts and human existence. In this respect we must get away from that abstract mentality which makes us think we are mere worms looking upwards from the Earth, believing only what the astronomers and astro-physicists have to say about the stars. In our civilisation and culture, with all their heavy trials, it is urgently necessary to understand the battle that is being waged between men who strive for the Spirit in order to comprehend spiritual law in the Cosmos, and men who have no desire for such knowledge, who limit themselves to the Earth, not only in the sphere of natural science but also in what is called ‘cultural’ or ‘spiritual’ history at the universities where documents alone are studied—for documents too are records only of happenings in the physical, material world. A decision will most certainly have to be taken in the course of Earth-evolution. Either degeneration of the spiritual life will intensify, and an illness of which I have been speaking for years—even in public lectures—will become more and more widespread. Very little is said about it as yet in medical literature, but it will none the less exist in life—its name is Dementia professoralia (Academic dementia)—or the human being will have to unfold enthusiasm for knowledge of the Supersensible. And this will also lead him to realisation of the connection between the Cosmos and the life of man.

I want to give you a third and rather more complex example. In an earlier life on Earth, a certain individuality was incarnated in India, when India was already in decline, and in that incarnation assimilated much knowledge of a kind accessible to one with extremely poor physical sight. Such details must be studied, for, as I have often said, it is details which lead to perception of the real connections. This individuality lived through various other incarnations which were, however, less important than the characteristics developed in him in India, where his extremely poor sight allowed him to see the lotus flowers and all the blossoms only with blurred outlines. His whole vision was clouded, lacking in clarity. His knowledge of life was of the kind that is inevitable when sight is blurred and the deeper qualities of things unprobed. The karma of this individuality was developed in a complicated way. He unfolded in the Mars sphere, to begin with, qualities that made him into a regular squabbler in the spiritual world! He also worked a great deal at his karma in the Mercury sphere, developing qualities of wit, of satire. And, in the background of all this, picture to yourselves a non-European world. The individual in question tends to be reborn in Europe. He passes through the Mars sphere—battle; through the Mercury sphere—critical, subtle thinking and perception. Having developed still other characteristic qualities in the Venus sphere—it is a particularly complex karma—and with the tendency to evade the physical, while at the same time strongly permeated with spirituality, this individual in the nineteenth century becomes Heinrich Heine.

Just try to realise the understanding that arises of every verse written by Heine, of the very language, words and form, when we know: this is, in reality, a product of the Mars sphere, the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere. All of it really originates in the Cosmos. Karma is formed and fashioned in the Cosmos; it is lived out upon Earth.

And so, looking backwards upon the life-tableau of man, we perceive the Moon sphere, the Mercury sphere; from the 21st to the 42nd years the Sun sphere, then the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. (I cannot now go into the still later periods; there too one sees something, but I cannot enter into it now). We see that all these spheres have something to do with karma. Ordinary consciousness does not know that man has within him the workings of the Mercury sphere, Moon sphere, and so on. Yet karma is brought into being by what is thus within man; he is impelled by these forces to live out his karma in his own particular way. Heinrich Heine unfolded and developed his karma in the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere, the Mars sphere; and it is these same beings of the Venus sphere, Mercury sphere, Mars sphere which work through his earthly bodily nature in order to help him to fulfil his karma. And so, by virtue of his karma, the whole being of man stands within the Cosmos, gives expression to the Cosmos here on Earth—in one case in this way, in another in that.

These things must be studied with a free and wide outlook. When I say to you that Goethe, in the Jupiter sphere, transformed what he had absorbed in ancient Greece into deep, instinctive wisdom, which comes out in all his creations because living beings are at work—this will have a different result in another case. At the time when the culture of ancient Mexico had fallen deeply into decline, though the echoes of the Mysteries and their cults still persisted, there lived a certain individual. He came into close contact with the magic arts, the decadent manifestations of the Mystery epoch in ancient Mexico, and he understood the sense in which such beings as Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl, had been living realities. Orthodox books on cultural history as a rule mention hardly anything more than the names of these Beings. Nevertheless there was a time when men had living conceptions of all these Gods, of Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl; they had actual connection with super-sensible Beings. These matters were understood by the individual to whom I am referring; and comparatively quickly, without an intermediate incarnation, he was born again in the nineteenth century as the occultist Eliphas Lévi, having passed through the Jupiter sphere in his life between death and a new birth. In ancient Mexico he had been connected with such things as sorcery, magic arts, and the like, and had absorbed an outworn, decadent kind of knowledge. A peculiar, primitive form of wisdom—an inferior wisdom—was in this case transformed in the Jupiter sphere into the kind of content we find in the books of Eliphas Lévi. Whereas the Jupiter sphere produced in Goethe, as the fruit of the earlier incarnation, a mellow, Olympic fire, and great wisdom, Eliphas Lévi dabbles with a kind of charlatanism in all sorts of magical formulae and the like.

The earthly life is, of course, the decisive factor in what the stars are able to make of our karma. But the stars, that is to say the Beings who live where the stars indicate their existence, the stars transform into karma those things which, here on Earth, become elements in the constitution of karma.

It is in this way that we shall try more and more to deepen Anthroposophy. And if a great deal seems paradoxical and strange—as it certainly will—we must not mind it. In the paradoxical and the strange lies the truth. Man's life is based upon foundations that are deeper and more complex than is usually believed. In order to understand it, our thoughts must not be fettered to the Earth but take wings out into the expanses of the Cosmos. On the Earth man gazes at matter and too easily forgets the Spirit. The opposite is the case as soon as only a little Imaginative knowledge leads us to the realms of the heavens. There quite certainly we forget matter and begin gradually to behold the Spirits, as did the simple Shepherds in an ancient, primitive time, and as was the case on into the Middle Ages when, instead of inscribing external signs on maps of the heavens, men drew figures and forms, because they actually beheld these figures in Imaginative knowledge.

Anthroposophy deepens our inner perceptions too, as I have repeatedly said. Just think of it! If we make the attempt with the kind of knowledge I have described, we begin to gaze upon the destiny of a single human being with holy awe. For what is it that works in the destiny of each human being? In very truth it is star-wisdom—all-embracing star-wisdom! Nothing can enable us to behold the working of the Gods in the universe with deeper or truer feelings than to behold it in the destiny of a man. A world-justice flows through Eternity in the existence, the deeds, the thinking, of the Gods weaving behind the being of man.

That is what I wanted to say to you today concerning karma.

Yesterday I used the culture of the Druids—which at the moment is particularly relevant to the development of our Anthroposophical Movement—to illustrate the soul-quality of an earlier age in a particular region. If we go back three or four or five thousand years—it varies in different parts of the Earth—we can always penetrate into a quite different type of soul-quality, and we then find that the whole spiritual and social guidance of human life in a particular period follows the pattern laid down by such a quality. The development to which I am referring is connected with the gradual evolution of human consciousness. It would be true to say that in olden times men were quite different beings from what they are today, and in the future they will again be different. Ordinary history tells little of this and so as soon as we get a few centuries away from the present, ordinary history, as it is presented to us, is to a considerable extent quite illusory as an aid to a real understanding of man.

In the lecture yesterday I pointed out how we should have to study three main stages of human consciousness, though naturally with many different shadings. The states of consciousness with which we are familiar—waking, dreaming and sleeping—are valid only for the present. If we go back into older periods of human evolution we no longer find the sort of waking condition of today, with its logically interrelated concepts. The farther we go back, the more do we fail to find this logical consciousness, which appeared in full development only during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though it had begun in the later period of Greek culture. In earlier times, on the other hand, we discover a type of consciousness filled much more with living pictures than with abstract concepts; and we find this consciousness in man everywhere.

Natural forces in our sense were quite unknown to an older humanity. In the times I spoke of yesterday, people did not talk of meteorological laws controlling wind and weather, but, as I explained, of beings seen pictorially, of elemental spirits hovering around the plants, or of gigantic spiritual beings active in wind and weather, frost and hail, storm and thunder. All this was living in their observation of Nature without any logical deductions. Everything they saw, including the phenomena of Nature, was a living, weaving, surging of spiritual beings. The whole basis of their inner condition of soul was quite different from ours.

In a sense, men were more self-enclosed, but in a way very different from what we know today; this living in themselves was at the same time a consciousness full of living dream-pictures which led them out into the distant spaces of the Cosmos. Men saw pictures, though not in the way in which today we have thoughts, when the things are outside. While they had these experiences of the giants of frost, storm and fire, of the spirits of root, leaf and flower, they felt themselves united with plant, root, leaf and flower, with thunder and with lightning. Because they experienced the spiritual and spiritual pictures in their own being, they did not therefore feel their soul-life separated from external Nature.

If not in the very oldest periods described in my book Occult Science, at least in those that followed them, one can observe spiritually how this constitution of soul was accompanied by a general mood in the peoples who at the time were the most civilized. There was a time when men had an inner spiritual perception of the real being of man. In these pictures I have just spoken of they saw not only their present existence but their pre-earthly existence as well; just as we can see a perspective of space, they saw a perspective of time. It was not a recollection but an actual seeing; and they saw beyond their birth into a spiritual world from which they had descended into the life of man on Earth. It was quite natural for a member of this older humanity to see into his pre-earthly existence and to feel: I am a spiritual being, since before I assumed this earthly body I rested in the bosom of the spirit and spent my time within it, and there experienced my human destiny—not yet in a physical body but—if I may say so, however paradoxical it may sound—in a spiritual body.

To demand that one should believe in the spirit would have been absurd for this older humanity just as it is absurd to ask modern men to believe in mountains; you don't believe in them, you see them. In those days men saw their pre-natal spiritual life, though of course they saw it with the eyes of the soul. But there came a time when they indeed saw spiritually this inner being of man as the outcome of pre-earthly existence, while external Nature surrounding them became increasingly a sort of riddle. Pure sense-perception made its way gradually into human evolution. In very early times, such as those of ancient India, as I described them in Occult Science, men still saw everything, Nature included, spiritually. It marked a step forward when the vision of the spiritual remained inward, but Nature, if I may put is so, became gradually de-spiritualized. While man still felt inwardly that he was spirit born of spirit, when he looked outward to the blossoming of Nature, to the clouds from which the lightning flashes, to the wind and weather, to the delicate, wonderfully formed crystals, to hill and dale, a mood came over him which can be traced by Spiritual Science over long periods, especially over the times when men were civilized. They might have expressed it as follows: We men are spirit born of spirit; in our pre-earthly existence our being was knit together with the spiritual, but now we are transplanted into the environment of Nature. We behold the lovely flowers, the vast mountains, the mighty power of Nature in wind and weather, but the spirit is withdrawn.

Thus the notion of a purely material Nature in the environment increasingly arose. Men felt—I mean of course those who were the most developed, the men whom we should call civilized in our modern sense—they saw that their body was formed out of the substances of this Nature which for them had lost its divine-spiritual quality. If men nowadays felt anything like this, they would begin to think, to speculate and philosophize about it. It was not so with the men of that earlier time. Without reflection they experienced a great disharmony within themselves: “I come as spirit from a world of spirit, my essential being has descended from divine heights, but I am clothed with substance taken from a Nature which the spirit seems to have abandoned; my spiritual existence is interwoven with something that does not reveal the spirit. My body is made up out of the same substances as the flowers of the field and the water of the clouds and rain, but these substances have lost their divine quality.”

Those men felt as if they had been expelled from the spiritual world and thrust into a world to which in their essential being they did not really belong. It was of course possible to reject or to sleep through this mood, as happens nowadays with various aspects of our civilization. But those who were awake at this time felt it, and it is through moods and feelings like this and not in thoughts and concepts that mankind develops.

Even the way in which our thoughts evolve nowadays is only an episode—as indeed these lectures will show—and anyone who speaks merely in the form of thoughts is speaking in an unreal way. This is particularly true of the way we speak nowadays. The people who pride themselves most on being practical and are filled with conceit about it are basically the worst theorists. We have these theorists in offices, in schools—obviously in schools, but no less in offices and commercial houses—and everything there has a theoretical bias and thoughts run riot. But it is only an episode without any essential truth. These people will attain to some truth in their thinking about life only if they feel once more as men did when they found Nature de-spiritualized, when they feel that they are an outcast race, taken from a divine-spiritual world where they really belong, into one where their inmost human being is a stranger.

One of the ways in which this mood expressed itself was through the feeling that there had been a Fall of man. This idea arose from a change that had come about in human consciousness. Men felt that they had been thrust out of a spiritual world and that the reason for this must lie in some original sin. Thus at a particular epoch the conception of original sin, of the Fall of man, dawned in human consciousness.

If we understand the changes in human consciousness from the past through the present into the future, we shall also be able to understand how this conception of original sin, of a pre-historic Fall of man, arose. And at the same time when this mood came over man, his need was not for some grey theory, but for words through which souls needing comfort could find healing power. And what we have often described as the guidance of mankind in the old centers of ritual and religion, in the Mysteries, can be seen arising at a particular period of time coinciding approximately with ancient Persian and the earliest Chaldean culture in the Near East—it can be seen to coincide with what came from the priests, the great comforters of mankind. Consolation streamed from them and the Mysteries they celebrated; and indeed, human consciousness at that time was greatly in need of consolation. The words of the Mysteries had to contain some quality of soul that could speak to men's hearts with a power of healing and consolation. This is the epoch which exhibited such magnificent creative power (though in a somewhat different form from alter periods) in the spheres of art and religion, and a great deal in our art and in our religious ideas derives from that time, particularly the symbols, pictures and ritualistic ceremonies.

What was the source from which these teachers of the Mysteries drew in order to give this consolation? If the general waking consciousness consisted in the sort of living picture-consciousness I have described, yet at that time too there were three stages of consciousness. Nowadays we have sleeping, dreaming and waking. In those days, as opposed to the waking dream which, as I showed yesterday, was the normal form of waking consciousness, sleep was not as it is today, when it completely damps down our consciousness. Although with these men, too, consciousness was dimmed during sleep, there remained something of it on waking. Yesterday I described this by saying that when men woke after sleep, there remained something of it on waking. Yesterday I described this by saying that when men woke after sleep they had a sort of after-taste. Most people felt, not merely on the tongue or in the mouth, deeply permeated by a certain sweetness of experience which was the after-taste of their sleep. This sweetness they experienced in sleep spread over from their life of sleep into that of waking. This sweetness was to them a test of the healthiness of their life, whereas if other tastes were present it was evidence of illness.

It sounds strange to say that an older humanity experienced the sweet after-effects of sleep in their limbs, the arms, right down into the finger-tips and the other members. But spiritually-scientific investigation shows that it was so; and the genius of language has retained something of this, though in a crude and materialized form. A sleeping-draught was once something spiritual; that is, sleep itself, and it was only later that it became an actual liquid draught in material form. Sleep was then itself a draught of Nature, which extinguished the ordinary memories of day; it was a draught of forgetfulness. What ordinary men had from it was only a vague after-feeling, but Initiation gave the Mystery teachers, who were the leaders of humanity, a more exact consciousness of what really was experienced in sleep. In modern Initiation we ascend from our ordinary ideas to spirit-sight, but in those days, while ordinary men passed from their dream-waking life into sleep, for which they cultivated a consciousness and experienced this after-taste, the Mystery priests had means to feel their way consciously into sleep and so got to know what this after-taste implied. They learned of the water beyond physical existence, the water into which the human soul plunged during sleep each night—the waters of the weaving astrality of the world.

But that was only a second condition beyond the waking and reaming of ordinary life. The third condition was one of which modern humanity has no knowledge at all, a condition deeper than dreamless sleep today. I said yesterday that one might call it a state of being surrounded by the Earth, and this was the condition of man at night during deep sleep. Only the priest of the Mysteries by means of his Initiation could attain consciousness of it and impart the results of this experience, which constituted the knowledge of those days. Men felt themselves embraced by the Earth, but they felt something more; they felt that in the ordinary course of the day they had come into a condition very near death, a death, however, from which there was an awakening. They experienced this third condition of consciousness as if they had actually descended into the Earth and been laid in a grave, yet not one that could be called an earthy grave. I will try to make clear to you in the following way how this grave not only was, but how it had to be, conceived.

Now when the Sun's rays fall on to the Earth, they are not merely reflected from flowers and stars. Farmers know this better than the city dweller does, for during the winter they use the Sun's warmth which has penetrated into the Earth. At that time of the year we have within the Earth what has streamed into it during the summer. Not only the Sun's warmth but other forces stream into the Earth. Yet from the point of view of which I am speaking this was the less important fact; the more important was that the activities of the Moon could also penetrate below the surface of the Earth to a certain extent. It was a pleasant idea of those days, not just a poetical idea but, in a way, a super-poetical one—though of course not held in any logical conception as we should today, but as a picture—when men thought of the light of the Sun streaming down to Earth in the light of the full Moon and penetrating a certain distance into the Earth, then being reflected not just from the Earth's surface but from its interior, after the light had been absorbed by the Earth.

The silver ebb and flow of the moonlight were experienced by man as the rhythmic play of its rays. It was not only a beautiful picture; the priests of the Mysteries knew something definite about this flowing moonlight. They knew that man is subject to gravitation as he lives on the Earth; that gravity holds him to the surface of the Earth, and thus the Earth draws his being to itself, as it were. The forces of the Moon were known to work against this force of gravity. They are in general weaker than the vigorous forces of the Earth's gravity, but they work against those forces. It was known that man is not just a clod held fast by the Earth's gravity, but that he is rather in a sort of balance, drawn to the Earth by gravity and away from it by the forces of the Moon, and that for him as earthly man it is the Earth which holds the upper hand. But as regards his head-activity, the effective influence on it is the negative gravity that draws him away. Thus though man might not be able to fly, at least he could raise his spirit into the starry spaces. By means of this Initiation, through these Moon activities, humanity in those days learnt from their Mystery-priests the effect on earthly man of his starry environment.

This was the astrological Initiation, so much abused nowadays, which was specially prevalent among the people of ancient Chaldea. By its path men could learn not only of the activity of the Moon, but of that of the Sun, Mars, Saturn, and so forth. Nowadays man is—if you will pardon a pictorial way of putting it so, for it is hard to describe such things in strictly logical words—man, as far as his knowledge goes, has become a kind of worm, not even an earthworm but something worse, a worm for whom it never rains so that he never emerges from the soil! Worms do after all emerge periodically when it rains, and then they can enjoy whatever is happening on the Earth's surface: and that is healthy for them. Modern man, with regard to his soul and spirit, is a worm for whom it never rains, and then they can enjoy whatever is happening on the Earth's surface: and that is healthy for them. Modern man with regard to his soul and spirit, is a worm for whom it never rains, and he is entirely encased in the Earth. Thus he believes that the members of this body grow on Earth more or less as stones are formed. He has no idea that the hair on his head is the result of the Sun's activity, for he is a worm which never comes above ground, a creature, that is, which bears the Sun-forces within him but never comes to the surface to investigate them. As the old Mystery-priests well knew, man has not grown out of the Earth like a cabbage; he has been created by the joint activity of the whole cosmic environment. You can see, therefore, how men in those days felt towards their Initiates and Mystery-leaders who could tell them from their training what his cosmic environment signifies for man.

These priests of the Mysteries could thus proclaim something which I shall have to give in an unimaginative form, since we are not nowadays capable of speaking as they did; they clothed all they said in wonderful poetry. The genius of language made that possible then, but nowadays we can no longer speak in such a way, because language is inadequate. If we had to put into words the message of the priests of the Mysteries to their people who came to them for comfort, feeling themselves thrust into a Nature which had lost its spirit, we should have to put it somewhat as follows: As long as you remain in your ordinary waking consciousness, your environment will seem to have been robbed of spirit. But if you plunge consciously into the region embraced by the Earthy, where you can behold the power of the star-gods in the silvery light of the Moon flowing and surging through the Earth, you will come to learn—no longer with the earlier spontaneity but only by human effort—that external Nature is everywhere permeated by spirit-beings and bears the gifts of the gods within herself as spirit-beings and elemental spirits.

This was the consolation which the priests of the Mysteries could give their people in olden days; they made them see that plants are not just beautiful but are really permeated by the weaving of the spirit; that the clouds do not just sail majestically through the air but that divine-spiritual elemental beings are active in them—and so on. It was towards the spirit of Nature that these Initiates led the men who depended on them for guidance.

Thus at a certain point in man's evolution the task of the Mysteries was to make it clear that when Nature appeared to have lost the spirit, this was only an illusion of ordinary waking consciousness. Actually, spirit was to be found everywhere in Nature. You see, there was a time when man lived within the spirituality of existence, and through the Mysteries experienced this spirituality even in the sphere which at first sight seemed to have been robbed of spirit. Man was still dependent on the spirit in all that affected him, whether instinctively when he had inner spiritual perception, or by the Mystery-teachings which showed him that Nature also was permeated by spirit.

If human evolution had stopped there, our consciousness could never have experienced one of the greatest blessings of humanity, perhaps the very greatest—I mean the experience of free-will, of freedom. The old mood of soul, with its instinctively experienced spirituality, had to be damped down. Man had to be led to three other conditions of consciousness. The feeling of being embraced by the Earth, which had enabled the old Initiates to attain their star-wisdom and their knowledge of Nature's spirits, died away completely, and man's soul-condition came to include only dreamless sleep, dreaming and waking. To balance this, there were the beginnings of that sphere of consciousness in which freedom can dawn. What we call today our waking consciousness, which enables us to enjoy our ordinary life and knowledge, was quite unknown to early humanity. Yet through it came the possibility of pure thinking; we may profess doubts about its existence, but in it lies the only possible basis for the impulse of freedom. Had men never attained this pure-thinking—which is actually pure thinking and does not, as such, guarantee the actual reality—they would never have reached the consciousness of freedom.

We might say that as humanity developed, man's earlier association with the spirit was veiled in darkness; on the other hand, he acquired those three states of consciousness which led him from spiritual heights into the depths of the Earth. But out of these depths he was to find the original forces for the unfolding of freedom. This quality of soul, with its waking, dreaming and sleeping, had been developing for close on a thousand years, and men had gone far into that darkness where the light of the spirit does not shine but where the impulse of freedom is to be found. Try to realize what human evolution has really been like. There was a time when man looked up to the starry heavens and the knowledge he still had of the stars showed him that their forces lived within him and that he belonged essentially to the Cosmos. But now, man—as spirit—was thrust down to Earth and the Heavens became, so to speak, dark, for the light, though shining down physically from sun or stars, became impenetrable for him. It was as if a curtain had come down, so that he could no longer find any basis for his existence. He could no longer perceive what lay behind the curtain.

We shall see tomorrow how this curtain has existed for a thousand years, becoming thicker and thicker, and how this expressed itself in man's whole mood. Then a light appeared which did penetrate the curtain and to a certain extent the curtain fell away; it was the light that shone forth on Golgotha. In this way the Deed of Golgotha finds its place in human evolution. This Deed, accomplished on the Earth, was to reopen for man the vision of the spirituality of the world which he had once seen in the wide spaces of the Cosmos. Christ, by passing through the Mystery of Golgotha, was to bring into man's life on Earth what had in earlier times been seen in the Heavens. The divine-spiritual Being of Christ was to descend and live in a human body, so that He might bring this light in a new way to men who could no longer leave the Earth.

We are only just beginning to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, and the future evolution of the Earth must consist in this Mystery being ever more deeply understood, so that the radiance spreading from the Mystery of Golgotha will change more and more from an inward to a cosmic radiance and will gradually irradiate everything perceptible to man.

But we shall be able to talk of this in greater detail only if we lay some further foundations for it today. Now something which was once a living fact in human evolution is, in a sense, returning. The priests of the Mysteries possessed, as I have told you, the power of contemplating the influence of the Moon; the influence of the Moon bore them up to their astrological Initiation. They learnt how it was possible to be initiated into the secrets of the stars by this means. An important point for the candidate for Initiation was that he should feel as though gravity were of less importance to him than it normally was. He felt that he weighed less. But then he was instructed by the older teachers not to give way to this feeling; when he began to feel lighter he must restore his heaviness by a strong exercise of will. The technique of the old Initiation made it possible for the candidate to allow the weight which was lost by the influence of the Moon to be restored by an effort of will; and as a result the wisdom of the stars shone forth. Thus every tendency in man at that time to overcome gravity was used to develop the will to hold fast to the Earth by the power of his own soul. But since this exerting of the will acted as a kindling of an inner light, it shone forth into the Cosmos and he could attain knowledge of cosmic spaces. When Spiritual Science throws its light on these matters, it is possible accurately to describe how this old consciousness came into being.

Now there is always a tendency for what existed in such men to recur; there is a sort of atavism, an inheritance, of things long past. It recurs just because men themselves return; and when this relation to the Moon appears in men who live at a time when, because this deep sleep is a thing of the past, such a relation should not occur, it appears as somnambulism, especially as ordinary sleep-walking. Then they do not combat this increasing sense of lightness by exerting the forces of their soul, but they wander about on roofs or at least get up out of bed. They do with their whole being what only the astral body should properly do. Something which has now become an abnormality was in earlier times an asset which could be used to attain knowledge. It was quite appropriate that popular usage should call such men “moon-struck,” for this condition of man's being is connected with an atavistic relation to the Moon-forces which has survived from older times.

Again, just as man is related, in the way I have described, to Moon-forces, he is also related to Sun-forces. But they are active in a more hidden part of man's being and we find them only indirectly. The Druids of the finest period—not those when decadence had set in—certainly sought their Sun-Initiation in this relation to the Sun-forces. Now whereas astrological Initiation depends on Moon-forces and makes possible a knowledge of the secrets of the Cosmos, this Sun-Initiation makes possible a sort of conversation with the divine-spiritual Beings of the Universe, a kind of Inspiration, whereas the Moon-Initiation gave only Imagination. Sun-Initiation is like a listening to the counsel of the spiritual Beings of the Cosmos—certainly a much deeper vision of the secretes of the world's being than could be given by Moon-Initiation. This may also recur atavistically, for Sun-activity exists in every man. But the constitution of man's soul today is quite different from that of the past, and his eyes are now specially organized to see only the physical rays of the Sun. As I told you yesterday, in the physical rays of the Sun there is an element of soul and spirit. Modern man does not realize or perceive this. In his attitude to the Sun, present-day man behaves as if he met another man who claimed to possess some inner quality of soul, and said to him: “There is no such thing; if you move your arm, it is a mechanical process like that of a lever; the muscles act as cords and when they are drawn tight the lever comes into action. That is the mechanism of it.”

That is really how men behave nowadays in regard to the Sun; they see only the external-physical; that is, the physical light. But when the physical light of the Sun's working penetrates into us, the spirituality of the Sun's being penetrates also. By means of a sort of inner concentration—not acquired in the way described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds but possessed atavistically like some elemental force—a man can nowadays (and by nowadays I mean our present epoch of history which may of course extend for some thousands of years) cease through inner concentration to be strongly receptive to the physical working of the Sun but may, on the contrary, become receptive to its spiritual activity. Then his sight is changed. When this atavistic capacity appears, he sees differently from the ordinary way. When we look into a mirror, we see the reflection of what stands in front of the mirror. Just because the mirror is not transparent, it can reflect in this way. Now when a man's soul is constituted in such a way that, even when in full possession of all his senses, instead of looking into the Sun and seeing the physical sunlight he sees darkness, the darkness then becomes a sort of mirror which reflects his immediate surroundings. He does not say to himself: Here I have a plant which has a root which sends forth its leaves, flower, fruit and seed; rather, he says: When I look into the lower part of a plant, I see in it an elemental spiritual wisdom which makes it solid and permanent; if then I look further up the plant, I see how that quality is gradually overcome and how the plant strives to create alternatively a contraction and expansion in the formation of leaves, and finally strives upwards in the blossoms, as through transformed by fire. In this way the life of the plant is reflected in the darkness, which is however spiritual light.

Jacob Boehme possessed this atavistic power when he looked a the plant and saw the quality of salt below, the mercurial in the middle and the phosphoric above. Thus we can see in the spirit of a man such as Boehme, who was a natural Sun-Initiate, a capacity belonging to an earlier period of civilization, that primal civilization before there was any reading or writing. You completely misunderstand him if you read works such as the Mysterium Magnum, the De Signatura Rerum or the Aurora and do not see that in this stammering presentation there is something quite similar to what I described in relation to the Druids. Boehme was not initiated in an external sense, but his Sun-Initiation rises within him like a repetition of an earlier earthly existence. We can trace this into the very details of his biography.

There are still deeper forces which can be active in men, the forces of the outermost planet of our solar system. Modern astronomy does not regard it as the outermost since it has added two more—though even orthodox astronomers are worried because the movement of the moons does not properly fit, (The moons of Neptune and Uranus move in the opposite direction to the satellites of other planets,) but since it is the spatial arrangement with which they are concerned, they have added Uranus and Neptune. These, however, cause trouble because their moons are a little crazy compared with the ordered moons of Jupiter and other planets. In reality one must say that, for a living, concrete grasp of the planetary system, Saturn is the outer-most planet. Now just as a man can be under the influence of the Moon-forces which I described in detail, or of the Sun-forces, which I only outlined, he may also be under the influence of Saturn-forces. The activity of Saturn, as it rays into the planetary system and thus also into man, is like a cosmic historical memory. Saturn is, as it were, the memory, the recollection, of our planetary system, and if you want to know anything about the history of that system, you cannot really get it by astronomical speculation. Even external science is becoming rather desperate about all this because nothing fits. But the problem is not rightly tackled.

We have often spoken among ourselves about the so-called theory of relativity and the idea that it is never possible to talk of absolute motion; that there is nothing but relative motion. We can either say that the Sun moves and the Earth stands still, or that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still—as we have done in modern times. It makes no difference which one says, since everything is relative. And on one occasion here in Stuttgart, at a meeting of the Anthroposophical Society when we were talking about relativity, a supporter of the theory showed his audience clearly how it is all the same whether you take a match and strike it on the box, or take the box and move it past the match: in either case you light the match. This was meant as a serious scientific statement, and there is nothing to be said against it. Perhaps some simple soul might have thought of nailing the box to a wall—and then we should have had a little bit of “absolute.” We might somehow have moved the whole house and we should have had relativity again—but this might have been difficult! Yet it one takes the whole physical world, Einstein is quite right in saying that within the world there is nothing absolute, everything is relative. Unfortunately he stops at relativity, and it is just this relativity that ought to lead us on to look for something absolute, not in the physical world but in the spiritual. Everywhere nowadays, science—were it only rightly understood—offers us entry into the spiritual world. It is not a question of amateurish but of genuine exact science, and genuine science—except that it is not thought through to the end even by its experts—will lead to the spirit. Ordinary physical investigation cannot really tell us what this Saturn of our universe is. Saturn is in a sense the memory of our planetary system; everything that has occurred within that system is preserved in Saturn, and a Saturn-Initiate can learn of all those happenings.

Now just as our relation to the Moon can appear in a one-sided form in men as an inheritance of an older period of human evolution, with the result that they become sleep-walkers, or, again, as the spiritual forces of the Sun may emerge so that a man will not see the sunlight with open eyes but will see into the darkness in which Nature is mirrored, and then he will see as Boehme did—in the same way it is possible to experience our relation to the forces of Saturn, which work particularly on the head and implant in the human being a passing memory during his life on the Earth. These Saturn-forces can appear in a peculiar way, and just as we can talk of “Moon-men” who are the ordinary sleep-walkers, and of “Sun-men” such as Boehme, or in a lesser degree, Paracelsus, so we can also speak of a Saturn-man. This is what Swedenborg was. His is another case which should worry ordinary science—though it does not!

Swedenborg was master of the ordinary science of his time and was regarded as an authority. Up to his fortieth year he was thoroughly orthodox in his views and said nothing to which ordinary science might take exception. Then he suddenly became befogged. Actually we ought to say that the Saturn-forces became active in him, though people with an ordinary materialistic outlook say that he went mad. But it ought to make us pause to realize that there are so many surviving works of his which are recognized as scientific and are being published by a Swedish Society. The most distinguished scholars in Sweden are occupied just now in publishing his works—works, that is, written shall we say, before he attained spiritual vision. There is something unpleasant in having to deal with a man who up to his fortieth year was the most brilliant man of his age and after that must, to put it mildly, be called a fool!

Actually Swedenborg did not become a fool, but, at a particular moment, just after he had reached the heights of ordinary science, he began to see into the spiritual world. When this power of vision reached his head—the organ he had developed to so high a level—and when it was influenced by the spirituality of Saturn, he had his own special power of vision, not the vision of Boehme who saw the inner secrets of Nature mirrored in the darkness, but direct vision into the etheric, where the patterns of a higher spirituality appear. And thus he was able to give his own descriptions of them—though he did not actually see what he imagined he had, for the spirit-beings to whom he was referring are different. Nor on the other hand was it a mere earthly reflection of these spirits; he saw etheric forms and the activities of spirits in the etheric. He saw in the ether of the Earth the deeds of the spirits, though not the spirits themselves. Whereas Boehme saw reflection of Nature, Swedenborg saw what was accomplished in the etheric by the spirits whose activity was all he could see. Thus when he describes Angels, it is not Angels whom he sees but etheric forms. Nevertheless, these forms were actually the work of Angels—a picture of the activity of Angels. We must always keep our eyes on the reality of such things. And whereas it would be an error to claim that Swedenborg saw the spiritual world as such (that was not his peculiar power,) yet it was a reality that he saw.

The ordinary sleep-walker does something real, does with his physical body what he ought to do only with his astral body. Boehme saw with his physical body, particularly with his eyes, which were organized in such a way that he could exclude the physical and see into the darkness, but in that darkness he saw the light, the mirroring of Nature-spirits. Swedenborg did not see mirror-pictures, but etheric pictures of a spiritual existence of a higher order. Here we have an upward process from the sleep-walker who, being permeated by spirit, does not see but acts automatically, through what I may perhaps call the natural second sight of Boehme who saw not the external side of Nature but the mirror of his inner side, up to Swedenborg who saw not mirror-pictures but reality in the etheric, the picture of activities which proceed in higher spiritual regions.

You see then in what way we can speak of man's past and present, and how in the so-called abnormal conditions there is a sort of inherited survival which we must try to understand. When we can see the past in this light and see also what survives from the past into the present, we shall be able to get some idea of mankind's future with the help of a deeper understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. This is what we shall attempt in the lecture tomorrow.

[ 1 ] The significance of the Mysteries in the spiritual life of Greece can be seen in Plato's conception of the world. There is only one means of understanding him fully: he must be placed in the light which shines forth from the Mysteries. The later pupils of Plato, the Neoplatonists, attribute to him a secret teaching, to which he admitted only those who were worthy, and then strictly under the “seal of silence.” His teaching was considered secret in the same sense as the Mystery wisdom. Even if Plato himself is not the author of the seventh Platonic Epistle, as some people assert, this makes no difference for our purpose; it need not concern us whether Plato or someone else expresses the attitude of mind contained in this letter. This attitude of mind was inherent in his conception of the world. It says in this Epistle: “But this much I can certainly declare concerning all these writers, or prospective writers who claim to know the subjects which I seriously study, whether as hearers of mine or of other teachers, or from their own discoveries; it is impossible, in my judgment at least, that these men understand anything about this subject. There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith, for it does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies, but, as a result of continued application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself.”³⁰ These words could only indicate a powerlessness in the use of words due to personal weakness, if one could not find in them the sense contained in the Mysteries. What Plato never wrote and never intended to write about must be something that defies expression in writing. It must be a feeling, a sensation, an experience that cannot be conveyed in a moment, but is attained through “continued application ... and communion.” The intimate training Plato was able to give to the elect is indicated here. For them fire flashed forth from his words; for the others, only thoughts. It is of great consequence how one approaches Plato's Dialogues. They mean more or less according to one's frame of mind. To Plato's pupils more than the mere literal sense of his expositions was conveyed. Where he taught, the participants experienced the atmosphere of the Mysteries. The words had overtones which vibrated with them. But these overtones needed the atmosphere of the Mysteries. Otherwise they died away unheard.

[ 2 ] In the center of the world of Plato's Dialogues stands the personality of Socrates. We need not touch on the historical aspect here. What matters is the character of Socrates as represented by Plato. Socrates is a person sanctified through death for the cause of truth. He died as only an initiate can die, one to whom death is but a moment of life like other moments. He meets death as any other occurrence of earthly existence. His behavior was such that not even in his friends were the feelings usual to such an occasion aroused. Phaedo says in the Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul: “For my part, I had strange emotions when I was there. For I was not filled with pity as I might naturally be when present at the death of a friend; since he seemed to me to be happy, both in his bearing and his words, he was meeting death so fearlessly and nobly. And so I thought that even in going to the abode of the dead he was not going without the protection of the gods, and that when he arrived there it would be well with him, if it ever was well with anyone. And for this reason I was not at all filled with pity, as might seem natural when I was present at a scene of mourning; nor on the other hand did I feel pleasure, as was our custom when we were occupied with philosophy—although our talk was of philosophy—but a very strange feeling came over me, an unaccustomed mixture of pleasure and of pain together, when I thought that Socrates was presently to die.”³¹ And the dying Socrates instructs his pupils about immortality. His personality, knowing by experience the valuelessness of life, here acts as proof of a quality very different from all logic and intellectual reasoning. It is not as though a man were conversing—for this man is at the point of crossing the threshold of death—but as though the eternal truth itself which had made its abode in a transitory personality, were speaking. Where the temporal dissolves into nothingness we seem to find the air in which the eternal can resound.

[ 3 ] We hear no proofs of immortality in the logical sense. The whole dialogue is directed toward leading the friends to the point where they can behold the eternal. Then they will need no proofs. Is one to prove that the rose is red to someone who sees it? Is one to prove that the spirit is eternal to someone whose eyes have been opened so that he can see this spirit? Socrates indicates living experiences. First of all it is a meeting with wisdom itself. What is the aim of the person who pursues wisdom? He wishes to free himself from all that his senses offer him in everyday observation. He wishes to seek the spirit in the material world. Is not this a fact which can be compared to dying? “Other people”—this is Socrates' opinion—“are likely not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be reluctant when that came for which they had been eagerly practicing all along.”³² To reinforce this, Socrates asks one of his friends, “Do you think a philosopher would be likely to care much about the so-called pleasures, such as eating or drinking? ... Or about the pleasures of sexual desire? ... Do you believe such a man would think much of the other cares of the body—I mean such as the possession of fine clothes and shoes and the other personal adornments? Do you think he would care about them or despise them, except so far as it is necessary to have them? ... Altogether, then, you think that such a man would not devote himself to the body, but would, so far as he was able, turn away from the body and concern himself with the soul? ... To begin with, then, it is clear that in such matters the philosopher, more than other men, separates the soul from association with the body”³³ After this Socrates is entitled to say: Striving for wisdom is comparable to dying, in that man turns from physical things. But where does he turn? He turns to the spiritual. However, can he expect the same of the spirit as of his senses? Socrates explains himself on this: “Now, how about the acquisition of intelligent insight? Is the body a hindrance or not, if it is made to share in the search for wisdom? What I mean is this: Have the sight and hearing of men any truth in them, or is it true, as the poets are always telling us, that we neither hear nor see accurately? ... Then, when does the soul attain to truth? For when it tries to consider anything in company with the body, it is evidently deceived by it.” All that we perceive with³⁴ the physical senses comes into existence and dies away. And this coming into existence and dying away is the cause of our being deceived. But if we examine objects more thoroughly with intelligent insight, then we partake of the eternal in them. But the physical senses do not convey to us the eternal in its true form. They deceive us when we rely implicitly upon them. They cease to deceive us if we confront them with logical insight, making everything conveyed by the senses subject to examination by this insight. But if logical insight is to judge the statements of the senses, must not something live within this insight which transcends the perceptions of the senses? Hence what is true and false in objects is judged by something in us which opposes the material body, and therefore is not subject to its laws. Above all, this something must not be subjected to the laws of growth and decay, for it bears truth within itself. Truth cannot have a yesterday and a tomorrow; it cannot be this on one occasion and that on another, as material things are. Hence truth in itself must be eternal. As the philosopher turns away from the transitory material world, and turns to truth, he approaches an eternal element, dwelling within him. If we immerse ourselves wholly in the spirit, then we live entirely in truth. The material world around us is no longer present in its material form only. “Would not that man,” asks Socrates, “do this most perfectly who approaches each thing, so far as possible, with the reason alone, not introducing sight into his reasoning nor dragging in any of the other senses along with his thinking, but who employs pure, absolute reason in his attempt to search out the pure, absolute essence of things, and who removes himself, so far as possible, from eyes and ears, and, in a word, from his whole body because he feels that its companionship disturbs the soul and hinders it from attaining truth and wisdom? ... Well, then, this that we call death, is it not a release and separation from the body? But, as we hold, the true philosophers and they alone are always most eager to release the soul, and just this—the release and separation of the soul from the body—is their study ... Then, as I said in the beginning, it would be absurd if a man who had been all his life fitting himself to live as nearly in a state of death as he could, should then be disturbed when death came to him ... In fact, then, the true philosophers practice dying, and death is less terrible to them than to any other men.”³⁵ Socrates also bases all higher morality on the liberation of the soul from the body. One who obeys only the demands of his body is not moral. Who has courage? asks Socrates. He has courage who not only disregards his body but follows the demands of his spirit when this endangers his body. And who is self-restrained? He who is “not excited by the passions and in being superior to them acts in a seemly way. Is self-restraint therefore not a characteristic of those alone who despise the body and pass their lives in philosophy?”³⁶ And thus it is with all virtues, according to Socrates.

[ 4 ] Socrates proceeds to characterize intelligent insight itself. What does cognition really mean? Doubtless we attain cognition through forming judgments. Very well, I form a judgment about something; for instance, I say to myself, This thing that stands before me is a tree. How do I arrive at such a statement? I shall be able to do so only if I already know what a tree is. I must remember my idea of a tree. A tree is a material thing. If I remember a tree, I remember a material object. I say that a thing is a tree if it reminds me of other things I have perceived before, and which I know to be trees. Memory enables me to reach cognition. Through memory I can compare the various material things with each other. But in this my cognition is not exhausted. If I see two similar things I form the judgment, These things are similar. But in reality two things are never completely similar. Wherever I find similarity it is only relative. Therefore I think of similarity without finding it in material realty. The thought of similarity helps me toward judgment, as memory helps me toward judgment and cognition. Just as I remember trees when I see a tree, so I remember the thought of similarity when I see two similar things. Therefore thoughts arise within me like memories which are not gained from material reality. All cognition not derived from this reality is based on such thoughts. The whole of mathematics consists only of such thoughts. It would be a poor geometrician who could relate mathematically only what he sees with his eyes and grasps with his hands. It follows that we have thoughts which do not stem from transitory nature, but which arise from the spirit. And precisely these thoughts bear the stamp of eternal truth upon them. What mathematics teaches will be eternally true, even if the whole universe were to collapse tomorrow, and a totally new one arise. The present mathematical truths might not be applicable to the conditions prevailing in a new universe, nevertheless they would remain true in themselves. Only when the soul is alone with itself can it bring forth such eternal truths out of itself. The soul therefore is related to truth, to the eternal, and not to the transitory, the seemingly real. For this reason Socrates says, “When the soul reflects alone by itself, it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and the changeless, and being akin to these, it dwells always with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith. And this state of the soul is called wisdom ... Then see, if this is not the conclusion from all that we have said, that the soul is most like the divine and immortal and intellectual and uniform and indissoluble and ever unchanging, and the body, on the contrary, most like the human and mortal and multiform and unintellectual and dissoluble and ever-changing ...Then if it is in such a condition, the soul goes away into what is like itself, into the invisible, divine, immortal and wise, and when it arrives there it is happy, freed from error, folly, fear, fierce loves and all the other human ills and, as the initiated say, lives in truth through all after-time with the gods.”³⁷ Here we cannot undertake to show all the paths along which Socrates guides his friends to the eternal. All these paths breathe the same spirit. All are intended to show that man finds one thing when he follows the paths of transitory sense perception, and another when his spirit is alone with itself. Socrates points to the archetypal nature of the spirit for those who listen to him. If they find it they can see with spiritual eyes that it is eternal. The dying Socrates does not prove immortality: he simply demonstrates the essence of the soul. It then becomes evident that growth and decay, birth and death have nothing to do with this soul. The essence of the soul lies in truth, but truth itself cannot grow and decay. The soul has as much to do with growth as the crooked has to do with the straight. Death, however, belongs to this process of “growth.” Therefore the soul has nothing to do with death. Must we not say that the immortal assumes mortality as little as the straight assumes crookedness. Continuing from this, Socrates says, “If the immortal is also imperishable, it is impossible for the soul to perish when death comes to meet it. For, as our argument has shown, it will not admit death and will not be dead, just as the number three, we said, will never be even.”³⁸

[ 5 ] Let us trace the whole development of this dialogue, in which Socrates leads his listeners to the point where they are able to see the eternal in the human personality. The listeners absorb his thoughts; they search within themselves for something in their own inner experiences through which they can say “yes” to his ideas. They put forward the objections that spring to their minds. What has happened to the listeners when the dialogue has reached its end? They have found something in themselves which they did not possess before. They have not merely absorbed an abstract truth; they have gone through a process of development. Something has come to life within them which was not alive in them before. Is not this comparable to an initiation? Does not this throw light on the reason why Plato expressed his philosophy in the form of dialogue? These dialogues are intended to be nothing but a literary form of the proceedings in the Mystery places. What Plato himself says at various points convinces us of this. As a teacher of philosophy, Plato wanted, insofar as possible through this medium, to be what the initiator was in the Mysteries. Well does Plato know himself to be at one with the methods of the Mysteries! He considers his method to be the right one only if it leads to the place to which the mystic should be led! He expresses this in the Timaeus: “All men who possess even a small share of good sense call upon God always at the outset of every undertaking, be it small or great: we therefore who are purposing to deliver a discourse concerning the Universe, how far it is created or is uncreated, must needs invoke gods and goddesses (if so be that we are not utterly demented), praying that all we say may be approved by them in the first place, and secondly by ourselves.”³⁹ And to those who seek along such a path, Plato promises “that the Godhead, as Savior, makes it possible that such a distant and difficult investigation—one so prone to error—can be accomplished through an enlightened philosophy.”⁴⁰

[ 6 ] The Timaeus in particular reveals to us the relationship of Plato's world conception with the Mysteries. At the very beginning of this dialogue, reference is made to an “initiation.” Solon is “initiated” into the creation of worlds by an Egyptian priest, and also into the manner in which myths that have been handed down, express eternal truths in picture form. “There have been and there will be many and divers destructions of mankind,” (thus the Egyptian priest instructs Solon) “of which the greatest are by fire and water, and lesser ones by countless other means. For in truth the story that is told in your country as well as in ours, how once upon a time Phaethon, son of Helios, yoked his father's chariot, and, because he was unable to drive it along the course taken by his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth and himself perished by a thunderbolt -that story, as it is told, has the fashion of a legend, but the truth of it lies in the occurrence of a shifting of the bodies in the heavens which move round the earth, and a destruction of the things on the earth by fierce fire, which recurs at long intervals.”⁴¹ This point in the Timaeus clearly refers to the relationship between the initiate and the myths of the people. He perceives the truths hidden in their pictures.

[ 7 ] The drama of the world's creation is presented in the Timaeus. Whoever wishes to retrace the paths leading to this creation comes to the point of divining the archetypal force from which everything has sprung. “Now to discover the Maker and Father of this Universe were a task indeed; and having discovered Him, to declare Him unto all men were a thing impossible.”⁴² The mystic knew what was meant by this “thing impossible.” It indicates the drama of God. God is not present for him in the materially comprehensible world. There He is present as nature. He lies spell-bound in nature. According to the ancient mystics, only he can approach Him who awakens the divine within himself. Therefore He cannot so easily be made comprehensible to everyone. He does not appear in person, even to those who approach Him. This is what the Timaeus says. The Father has created the world out of the cosmic body and the cosmic soul. In perfect proportions He has united harmoniously the elements which came into being when He offered His own, separate existence by diffusing Himself. Thus the body of the world came into existence. On this body of the world, the soul of the world is stretched in the form of a cross.⁴³ This soul is the divine element in the world. It has met with death on the cross in order that the world may exist. Plato is able to call nature the tomb of the divine element.⁴⁴ This is not a tomb containing something dead, but something eternal, for which death only gives the opportunity to express the omnipotence of life. Man sees this nature in the right light when he approaches it in order to deliver the crucified soul of the world. It must be raised from death, the spell must be lifted from it. Where can it come to life again? Only in the soul of the man who is initiated. In this way wisdom finds its right relationship to the cosmos. The resurrection, the deliverance of the Godhead: this is cognition. The evolution of the world from the least to the most perfect is traced in the Timaeus. An ascending process is represented. The beings develop. God reveals Himself in this development. The process of creation is a resurrection of God from the tomb. Man makes his appearance in this stream of evolution. Plato shows that with man something special has arrived. True, the whole world is divine. And man is no more divine than the other beings. But in the other beings God is concealed, and in man He is manifest. The end of the Timaeus reads: “And now at length we may say that our discourse concerning the Universe has reached its termination. For this our Cosmos has received the living creatures both mortal and immortal and been thereby fulfilled; it being itself a visible Living Creature embracing the visible creatures, a perceptible God made in the image of the Intelligible, most great and good and fair and perfect in its creation—even this one and only begotten world.”⁴⁵

[ 8 ] But this one and only begotten world would be incomplete if it did not have among its images the image of the Creator Himself. Only out of the soul of man can this image be born. It is not the Father Himself who can be born of man, but the Son, the offspring of God living in the soul, who is like unto the Father.

[ 9 ] Philo of whom it was said that he was Plato reborn, called the wisdom born of man, the “Son of God;”⁴⁶ this wisdom lives in the soul and contains the intelligence that exists in the world. This world-intelligence, the Logos, appears as the book in which “has been inscribed and engraved the formation of the world.”⁴⁷ Further it appears as the Son of God, who “followed the ways of his Father, and shaped the different kinds, looking to the archetypal patterns which that Father supplied.”⁴⁸ In the manner of Plato, Philo speaks of this Logos as the Christ: “For since God is the first and sole King of the universe, the road leading to Him, being a king's road, is rightly called royal. This road you must take to be philosophy ... the philosophy which the ancient circle of ascetics pursued in hard-fought contest, eschewing the soft enchantments of pleasure, engaged with a fine severity in the study of what is good and fair. This royal road then, which we have just said to be true and genuine philosophy, is called in the Law, the utterance and word of God.”⁴⁹

[ 10 ] Philo experiences this as an initiation when he sets forth on the path to meet the Logos who is, for him, the Son of God. “I feel no shame in recording my own experience, a thing I know from its having happened to me a thousand times. On some occasions, after making up my mind to follow the usual course of writing on philosophical tenets, and knowing definitely the substance of what I was to set down, I have found my understanding incapable of giving birth to a single idea, and have given up without accomplishing anything, reviling my understanding for its self-conceit, and filled with amazement at the might of Him Who is, to Whom is due the opening and closing of the womb of the soul. On other occasions, I have approached my work empty and suddenly become full, the ideas falling in a shower from above and being sown invisibly, so that under the influence of the divine possession I have been filled with corybantic frenzy and been unconscious of anything, place, persons present, myself, words spoken, lines written. For I obtained language, ideas, an enjoyment of light, keenest vision, pellucid distinctness of objects, such as might be received through the inner eye as the result of clearest cognition.”⁵⁰ This is the description of a path to cognition which is so arranged that whoever takes this path is conscious that he becomes one with the divine when the Logos comes to life within him. This is clearly expressed in the words: “When the mind is mastered by the love of the divine, when it strains its powers to reach the inmost shrine, when it puts forth every effort and ardor on its forward march, under the divine impelling force it forgets all else, forgets itself and fixes its thoughts and memories on Him alone Whose attendant and servant it is, to Whom it dedicates incense, the incense of consecrated virtues.”⁵¹ For Philo there are only two paths. Either man can pursue the material world which is offered by perception and intellect, but then he is limited to his own personality, he withdraws from the cosmos; or he can become conscious of the all-embracing cosmic powers, experiencing the eternal within his personality. “One who runs away from God takes refuge in himself. There are two minds, that of the universe, which is God, and the individual mind. One who flees from his own mind flees for refuge to the Mind of all things. For one who abandons his own mind acknowledges all that makes the human mind its standard to be naught, and he refers all things to God. On the other hand, one who runs away from God declares Him to be the cause of nothing, and himself to be the cause of all things that come into being.”⁵²

[ 12 ] Plato's “dialogue on love,” the Symposium, also describes an “initiation.” Here love appears as the herald of wisdom. If wisdom, the Eternal Word (Logos), is the Son of the Eternal Creator of the world, then love has a maternal relationship with this Logos. Before it is possible for even a spark of the light of wisdom to light up in the human soul, there must be an unconscious longing, which draws the soul toward the divine. Man must be drawn unconsciously toward that which, when raised into consciousness, subsequently brings him supreme joy. What Heraclitus designates as the daemon in man is united with the idea of love. In the Symposium men of the most varied status, possessing the most varied views on life, speak of love; the man in the street, the politician, the scientist, the poet of comedy, Aristophanes and the serious poet, Agathon. Each has his conception of love according to how he experiences life. How they express themselves reveals the stage at which their “daemon” stands. Through love one being is drawn to another. The manifold variety of things into which the divine unity is diffused strives through love toward oneness and harmony. Love therefore has a divine quality. Hence each man is capable of understanding it only insofar as he has partaken of this divine quality. After these men, representing varying stages of maturity, have declared their views on love, Socrates takes up the discussion. He considers love from the viewpoint of a thinker capable of cognition. For him love is not a god. But it is something leading man to God. Eros, love, is no god for him. God is perfect, and therefore possesses beauty and goodness. But Eros is only the longing for beauty and goodness. Therefore he stands between man and God. He is a “daemon,” a mediator between the earthly and the divine. It is significant that Socrates does not pretend to give his thoughts when he speaks about love. He says he is only recounting a revelation about it, which a woman gave him. He has conceived an idea of love's nature through mantic art.^c7 The priestess Diotima awakened in Socrates the daemonic force which was to lead him to the divine. She “initiated” him. This passage in the Symposium is most revealing. We must ask, Who is this “wise woman” who awakens the daemon in Socrates? We should not think of mere poetic fantasy here. No actual wise woman could have awakened the daemon in the soul if the force for this awakening were not within the soul itself. We must seek this “wise woman” in the soul of Socrates himself. There must, however, be a basis which allows what brings the daemon to birth in the soul to appear as a being in external reality. This force cannot work in the same way as the forces we can observe in the soul as belonging to it and at home with it. We see that it is the force of the soul before it has received wisdom, which Socrates represents as the “wise woman.” It is the maternal principle which gives birth to the Son of God, Wisdom, the Logos. The unconscious force of the soul is presented as a feminine element, which allows the divine to enter consciousness. The soul which as yet lacks wisdom is the mother of what leads to the divine. This leads us to an important idea of mysticism. The soul is recognized as the mother of the divine. With the inevitability of a natural force it unconsciously leads man toward the divine. This point throws light on the conception held in the Mysteries regarding Greek mythology. The world of the gods is born in the soul. Man regards as his gods what he himself creates in the form of pictures. But he must progress to another idea. He must transform into pictures of the gods the divine force present in himself which is active before the creation of these pictures of the gods. The mother of the divine appears behind the divine, and this is none other than the original force in the human soul. Man places goddesses beside his gods. Let us look at the myth of Dionysus in the light of the above. Dionysus is the son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. Zeus tears the premature infant from the mother as she lies slain by lightning, keeping him in his own thigh until he is mature. Hera, the mother of the gods, stirs up the Titans against Dionysus. They dismember the boy. But Pallas Athene rescues the still beating heart and brings it to Zeus. Thereupon Zeus begets the son for the second time. In this myth we have an exact description of a process which takes place in the depths of the human soul. Whoever wishes to speak in the sense of the Egyptian priest who instructs Solon about the nature of a myth could speak as follows: What you tell us, that Dionysus, the son of a god and a mortal mother, is dismembered and is born again, may sound like a fable, but what is true about it is the birth of the divine and its destiny in the human soul. The divine unites with the temporal-earthly soul of man. As soon as this divine element, Dionysus, comes to life, the soul experiences a great longing for its true spiritual status. The consciousness which once again appears in the image of a female divinity, Hera, is jealous of the birth out of a better consciousness. It stirs up the lower nature of man—the Titans. The child of god, still immature, is dismembered. It is present in man as a dismembered material-intellectual science. But if in man sufficient higher wisdom (Zeus) is at work, it cherishes and cares for the immature child, which then is born again as the second son of god (Dionysus). Thus out of science, out of the dismembered divine force in man, is born the harmonizing wisdom, which is the Logos, the son of God and of a mortal mother, who is the transitory soul of man striving unconsciously for the divine. We are far from the spiritual reality represented in all this as long as we see in it only a mere process of the soul and take it as a picture of this process. In this spiritual reality the soul does not merely experience something within itself; it is completely disconnected from itself and participates in a cosmic process which in truth takes place outside itself and not within it.

[ 13 ] Platonic wisdom and Greek mythology unite; so, equally, do Mystery wisdom and mythology. The gods that they created were the objects of the religion of the people; the history of their coming into existence was the secret of the Mysteries. No wonder that it was accounted dangerous to “betray” the Mysteries. This meant “betraying” the origin of the gods of the people. And the right understanding of this origin is wholesome; misunderstanding is destructive.

• 30. Plato, Epistle VII, 341 C.
• 31. Plato, Phaedo, 58 E.
• 32. Plato, Phaedo, 64 A.
• 33. Plato, Phaedo, 64 D.
• 34. Plato, Phaedo, 65 B.
• 35. Plato, Phaedo, 66 A, 67 D, 67 E.
• 36. Plato, Phaedo, 68 C.
• 37. Plato, Phaedo, 79 D, 80 B, 81 A.
• 38. Plato, Phaedo, 106 B.
• 39. Plato, Timaeus, 27 C.
• 40. Plato, Timaeus, 48 D.
• 41. Plato, Timaeus, 22 C, 22 D.
• 42. Plato, Timaeus, 28 C.
• 43. Plato, Timaeus, 36—“... like a great cross †.” Here Plato refers to the Greek letter &Chi, “Chi.”
• 44. Plato, Cratylus 400 BC: “... some say it (the body) is the tomb of the soul, their notion being that the soul is buried in the present life.” The Greek words for “body” and “tomb” suggest a mystical similarity between the two. This was a part of the Orphic doctrine.
• 45. Plato, Timaeus, 92 C.
• 46. Philo of Alexandria, De Profugis, I, 562. Philo or otherwise known as Philo Judaeus, a Jewish philosopher, was born at Alexandria in Egypt, c. 10 B.C., where he spent most of his life. In the year 40 A.D., he headed a Jewish embassy to Rome to petition the Emperor Gaius to refrain from requiring homage from the Jews as a divinity. Eusebius and other Church Fathers advanced a tradition that in Rome Philo met St. Peter, but this is not confirmed. Philo was the most important representative of Hellenistic Judaism, and his many writings extant are brilliant expositions of the Mosaic law and the Jewish religion.
• 47. Philo, Legum allegoriarum, Allegorical Interpretation, Lib. I, 19. (Includes commentary on Genesis 2:1–17)—“Book is Moses' name for the Logos of God in which has been inscribed and engraved the formation of the world.”
• 48. Philo, De confusione linguarum, The Confusion of Tongues, 63. A part of Philo's Allegories of the Sacred Laws, though published under a separate title. The work contains a commentary on Genesis 11:1–9
• 49. Philo, De poseritate, Caini, The Posterity and Exile of Cain, 101, 102. A part of Philo's Allegories of the Sacred Laws, this work includes commentary on Genesis 4:16–25.
• 50. Philo, De migratione Abrahami, The Migration of Abraham, 34, 35. Commentary on Genesis 12:1–6.
• 51. Philo, Quod a Deo mittantur somnia, On Dreams, that they are sent by God, II, 232. A commentary on the two dreams of Jacob, Genesis 28 and 29, and Book II refers to dreams of Joseph, the chief butler, the chief baker, and Pharaoh, Genesis 37, 40, 41.
• 52. Philo, Legum allegoriarum, Allegorical Interpretation, III, 29. See Note 47, above.

  [ 11 ] Plato's world-conception aims to be a form of cognition which in its whole nature is religion. It brings cognition into relationship with the highest man can reach through his feelings. Plato allows cognition to be valid only when it completely satisfies man's feelings. Then it is not pictorial knowledge; it is the content of life. It is a higher man in man. The personality is but an image of this higher man. In man himself the superior, the archetypal man is born. And with this another secret of the Mysteries is expressed in Plato's philosophy. The Church Father Hippolytus points to this secret: “This is the great and ineffable mystery of the Samothracians (the guardians of a particular Mystery-cult) which it is permissible only for the initiated to know. For the Samothracians expressly hand down, in the Mysteries that are celebrated among them, that Adam is the archetypal man.”

• 53. Hippolytus, born probably 2nd half of 2nd century A.D. in Rome; according to legend he was a Roman soldier converted by St. Lawrence. Died c. 326 in Rome. Steiner's reference is to Hippolytus' The Refutation of All Heresies, Book V, ch. 3. Otherwise known as the Philosophumena, Book I was long printed with the works of Origen, Books 2 and 3 have been lost, and Books 4 through 10 were found in ms. form at Mount Athos by a Greek scholar in 1842.
• c7. In ancient mysticism “Mantic” signifies everything relevant to knowledge gained through “spiritual eyes.” On the other hand, “Telestic” is the indication of the paths which lead to initiation.

When the riddles of existence touch the human soul, they become not only great problems in life, but life itself. They become the happiness or sorrow of man's existence. And not a passing happiness or sorrow only, but one he must carry for a time through life, so that by this experience of happiness or sorrow he becomes fit or unfit for life.

Now, man's attitude to his own soul is such that the most important questions about it and about its spiritual essence do not arise from any actual doubts he has regarding the spiritual element within him. It is precisely because he is certain of his spiritual substance and because he cannot help seeing in it his human dignity and his true significance as a man, that the question of the fate of his soul becomes for him a tremendous riddle. To deny the mind in man himself does not, of course, occur to even the most rigid materialist. He acknowledges the mental as such, regarding it as a result of physical, material processes. Yet anyone who, with no such theory but simply from his deepest emotional needs, queries the fate of this soul of his, will find himself confronted by a plethora of phenomena and experiences. And these become riddles to him just because he is fully conscious of the mental or spiritual life, and must accordingly ask: Is this spiritual life a passing breath, rising from physical existence and returning with it once more into the generality of natural phenomena, or is it connected with a spiritual world within which it has eternal significance?

Of the many experiences in the realm of the psyche which present the riddles of the soul to our “mind's eye,” I will select only two.

There are, it may be objected, very few people on whom such experiences obtrude so much that they become even conscious, let alone theoretical, problems. But that is not the point. The point is that these experiences take hold of the subconscious or unconscious, establish themselves there, and flow up into consciousness only as a general temper or distemper of the soul, making us courageous and vigorous in life or making us dejected, so that at no point can we properly come to grips with life. As I have said, I want to pick out only two of these experiences.

The first appears before the “mind's eye” every evening when we fall asleep, when the mental and psychic experiences that have floated up and down during the day sink down into the unconscious as if extinguished. Now, when he looks at this experience or, as is most often the case, when the unconscious awareness of it affects his soul, man is overcome by a sense of the powerlessness of his mental life in face of the outside world. And just because man sees in this life his most valuable and dignified quality and cannot deny that he is in the true sense of the world a spiritual being, he is assaulted from within by this sensation of powerlessness, and has to ponder the question: Does the general process of nature overtake mental experiences when man passes through the gate of death, just as it always does at the onset of sleep? The first experience, if I may so put it, is a sense of the powerlessness of mental life.

The second experience is in a way a direct opposite of the first. We perceive it distinctly or indistinctly, consciously or unconsciously, when on waking, perhaps after passing through a fantastically chaotic dream world not attuned to reality, our spirit descends into our bodily existence. At such times we feel it informing our senses, feel too that our psychic experience is being permeated by the interplay between the outside world and our senses, which are of course physical and physiological. We feel the spiritual element descending further into our body; we inform our organs of will with it and become alert and self-possessed, able to make use of our body, our organism. On reflection, however, we cannot help realizing: Anatomy and physiology make a valiant attempt to penetrate and analyse the bodily functions from without; yet looking from within, we ourselves, by means of ordinary consciousness, do not know anything about the interrelationship between our spiritual element and our bodily functions. A glance at the simplest bodily function controlled by the will, the lifting of an arm or movement of a hand, tells us: First there exists in us the thought or concept of this arm-lifting or hand-movement. How this thought or concept flows down into our organism, however, how it informs our muscles, and how finally there comes about what again we know only through observation—what actually goes on inside remains hidden from ordinary consciousness. So, too, in that wonderful mechanism that physics and physiology show us, the human eye or some other sense-organ, there remains hidden the spiritual element that informs this wonderful mechanism.

We are thus faced with problems both by the powerlessness of our mental life and by the darkness into which we feel our spirit descending when it flows down into our own body. We are forced to conclude (most people certainly don't do so consciously, but it affects them as the temper of their soul): this spiritual element in its relationship with the organism is unknown to us just when it is creative; it is unknown to us at the very point in physical life where it manifests its outgoing function.

What every naive individual thus experiences extends, in a different form, to psychology itself. It would need a great many words to explain scientifically how these enigmas creep into the subject; but we can put it, rather superficially perhaps, as follows.

On the one hand, psychology looks at the mind and asks: What is the relation between this and the physical, the external and corporeal? In looking at the physical, on the other hand, and at what physical science has to say about it, some people—and in this respect psychology has a long history—believe that we must regard the mental as the really effective cause of the physical; others believe that we must regard the physical as the really empowering element, and the mental only as a kind of effect of it. The unsatisfactory nature of both views has been perceived by recent psychologists. They have therefore set up the curious theory of psycho-physical parallelism, according to which one cannot say that the body affects the mind or the mind the body, but only: corporeal processes are parallel to mental ones, and mental processes to bodily ones; one can only say what mental processes accompany the corporeal or what corporeal ones the mental.

Psychology itself, moreover, is conscious of this powerlessness of the mind! If we attempt to examine the mind, even as it presents itself to the psychologist, with ordinary consciousness, we find that it has something passive about it, so that we cannot see how it can penetrate dynamically the life of the body. Anyone who looks at the psychic characteristics of thinking and feeling (volition is impenetrable, so that for psychology much the same is true of will as of thinking and feeling)—anyone who looks at thinking and feeling with the tools of psychology finds them powerless, and cannot locate anything that would really be capable of effectively activating the physical. It is then that the psychologist experiences his sense of the powerlessness of mental life in the eyes of ordinary consciousness. The most varied attempts have certainly been made to overcome this feeling. But the disputes of philosophers and the changing philosophies that have succeeded one another provide the impartial observer of humanity with factual evidence of the impossibility for ordinary consciousness of approaching the mind's experience. Everywhere there obtrudes a sense of the powerlessness of the mind as it is perceived by ordinary consciousness.

With regard to this particular point, a series of works have appeared here in Vienna which represent milestones in the development of philosophy. Although I cannot associate myself in any way with their content, I believe that, from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness, these books are extraordinarily significant. They include Richard Wahle's The Whole of Philosophy and its End, which is designed to show that ordinary consciousness is incapable of reaching any significant conclusion about mental life, and that what philosophical investigation is here attempting ought to be handed over to theology, physiology, aesthetics and social science. And Richard Wahle went on to work out these ideas still more clearly in his Mechanism of Mental Life. We may say: here for once ordinary consciousness is revealed as basically incapable of saying anything about the problems of mental life. The ego, the psyche, everything that earlier psychology brought to light—all these collapse in face of the self-criticism of ordinary consciousness.

In recent years, however, psychology has, understandably and indeed of necessity, not attempted to deal directly with the things of the mind—in face of which, as we have seen, ordinary consciousness is powerless—but has sought to discover something about what are usually called mental phenomena indirectly, via the physical phenomena that spring from them. In this way, experimental psychology has come into being. This is a necessary product of our present attitude to life and methods of research. And anyone taking the philosophical standpoint that I do will never for one moment deny that experimental psychology is completely justified, though he may not perhaps agree entirely with this or that detail of its methods and results.

It is here that the other enigma of the soul comes in. However much we learn about what can be experienced by the human body in experimental psychology, the fact remains: everything that appears to be discovered in this way about purely psychic functions is, strictly speaking, only indirect knowledge, acquired via the body. It all belongs to a sphere which, at man's death, is given over to the general process of nature, so that through it can be learnt nothing about the soul, whose fate in the world is of such paramount concern to man. Thus we may say: for psychology, also, the great riddle of the soul reappears.

This point, too, has been made by a modern psychologist who for many years lived and worked here in Vienna, and who will never be forgotten by those who sat at his feet here, as I did. In the first volume of his unfinished work on psychology, he asks: What can any psychology ever achieve by establishing—whether experimentally or non-experimentally, I might add—how concepts combine and separate, how attention operates, how memory develops in life etc.?—if, precisely because of the scientific character of this psychology, with its emulation of natural science, we must renounce all claim to understand the fate of the human soul once the body crumbles into its elements? This was said not by some eccentric or other, but by that rigorous thinker Franz Brentano, who made psychology his central concern in life and who sought to apply to his work the strict scientific method of modern times. Yet he it was who presented the riddle of the soul to his contemporaries in the way I have just outlined, as something scientifically unavoidable.

From all this the impartial observer today must draw a conclusion. It is that, in the study of man, scientific methods will take us only to the point they have now reached; but that we cannot deal with the soul by means of ordinary consciousness, entirely adequate as this is for science and for ordinary life. And so, since for scientific reasons this fact must be apparent to the impartial observer today, I speak to you from the standpoint of a philosophy of life that concludes: it is impossible, with the soul-powers that manifest themselves to ordinary consciousness and operate in ordinary life and ordinary science, to investigate the life of the soul. There must be developed other powers, which to ordinary consciousness are more or less sleeping or, let us say, latent in the soul.

To adopt the right attitude to such a conception of life, we need something which, if I may say so, is found only rarely in people today. I would call it intellectual modesty. There must come a moment in life when we say to ourselves: When I was a little child, I developed a mental life that was so dim and dreamy that it has been forgotten like a dream. Only gradually did there arise from this dream-like mentality of the child something that enables me to orientate myself in life, to bring my thoughts, my impulses and my decisions into step with the world, and to become a capable being. Out of the vagueness and lack of differentiation of the child's mental life, interwoven with the body, has emerged that experience which derives from our inherited qualities, as these develop with the growth of the body, and which derives also from our customary education.

Anyone looking back, with intellectual modesty, on his development during his life on earth, will not be above saying to himself at a certain point: Why shouldn't this continue? The soul-powers which are the most important to me today, and by which I orientate myself in life and become a capable being, were dormant during my existence as a child. Why shouldn't there be dormant in my soul other powers that I can develop from it?

We cannot help reaching this conclusion, which springs from intellectual modesty. I call it intellectual modesty because men are inclined to say: the form of consciousness I have once attained as an adult is that of the normal person; any impulse in the life of the soul to be different from this so-called normal consciousness is eccentric or hallucinatory or visionary or something similar. The philosophical standpoint from which I speak definitely starts from a healthy psyche and attempts on this basis to develop powers dormant in the soul, cognitive powers, which then become clairvoyant powers in the sense in which I spoke yesterday of exact clairvoyance. What the soul has to undertake I indicated yesterday. I mentioned my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, Occult Science, Riddles of the Soul and so on. There you will find details of those exercises which, starting from a healthy soul-life, lead upward to the development of the soul, which thus in fact attains a kind of spiritual vision with which it can see into a spiritual world, just as with the ordinary sense-organs it can perceive the physical and sensuous world. In each of these books there is a first part, which is accepted as something that can be definitely useful to man even by many opponents of the philosophy of life I am advocating. It shows that by certain exercises of an intellectual, emotional and moral kind man can produce in himself a state of soul and body that can be regarded as wholly healthy. They also enable him to be on his inner guard against anything which, deriving from an unhealthy life of the soul, leads to mediumism, hallucinations and visions. For everything brought about in this way is unacceptable to a true psychology. Visions arise not from the sphere of the soul, but because morbid structures exist in the organism; the same is true of mediumism. None of these have anything to do with sound psychology and sound psychic development, and indeed from the point of view of this sound psychology all must be condemned. Opponents today, however, find fantastic and harmful the exercises which follow these preparatory ones, and which are designed to draw from the soul those powers of thinking, feeling and volition which, once they are trained, introduce man into a spiritual world in such a way that he learns to orientate himself in it and can enter it at will.

I have already suggested how, as modern man, we manage by certain mental exercises to remove thinking from its ordinary state of passive surrender to the phenomena of the outside world, and to what appear inwardly as memories but are also connected with the outside world. We transcend this kind of thinking by carrying out exercises in meditation seriously, patiently and energetically, and by repeating them over and over again. Depending on predisposition, it may take one person years, another not so long; but each can note, as he arrives at the crucial point, how his thinking, from what I have previously called dead and abstract thinking, becomes inwardly vital thinking in tune with the rhythm of the world. A balanced view of the world and of life thus strives, not to conjure up visions or hallucinations from the soul, but to experience the life of thoughts and concepts with an intensity that we otherwise experience only through the outward senses.

You need only compare the vitality of our experience of the colours we perceive through the eye, and the sounds we hear through the ear, with the pallor of our experience of thought in ordinary consciousness. By energizing our mental life in the way I suggested yesterday, we can gradually give the mere life of thought and concept the same intensive quality as the life of the senses. Man today, seeking to know the spiritual, does not therefore, if he is a reasonable being, seek hallucinations and visions. He strives quite calmly to achieve the ideal of the life of the senses, with its intensity and plasticity, in his mental activity. And if you devote yourselves as students of the spirit to meditations such as I have described, you need not be in any way dependent on the unconscious or subconscious. You can refer to the exercises, they are all directed at what I am trying to describe—and you will find that everything that is carried out by way of exercises in the life of the soul is done as consciously, as reasonably, as precisely we may say, as are operations in mathematics or geometry.

To sum up: we are concerned here not with the old nebulous clairvoyance, but with a clairvoyance brought about by fully conscious and balanced experiences and exercises of the soul. The self-possession at each step is such that we can compare what a man experiences and makes of himself here with what we otherwise experience in the case of a geometrical problem. If not, the exercises have no value.

A conceptual life of this kind is energized; is independent of breathing; is set free of the body; is a spiritual function only; and in it, as we know by direct perception, thinking is carried out not by the body, but in the purely spiritual sphere. Only when modern man attains this kind of conceptual life does he feel his thinking, in contrast to abstract thinking, as something vital and not as something dead. Our sensation when we experience the transition from ordinary abstract thinking to vital thinking is exactly as if we found a dead organism suddenly come to life. And although this vital thinking is a spiritual process, it is not so linear, not so superficial as ordinary abstract thinking. It is full and plastic. And this plasticity is what counts.

Now, however, a very great deal depends on our carrying over the balanced attitude, required during the actual exercises, to the moment when this vitalized or plastic thinking appears in us. If at this moment we surrender ourselves to the images we have struggled to achieve, believing we find in them realities of a spiritual kind, then we are, not students of the spirit but simply fantasy-mongers. This is something we must certainly not become; for it could not provide us with a firmly based philosophy of life for modern man. Only when we say to ourselves: we have attained one component of spiritual life, but it is a semblance component; it merely tells us something about powers that operate within ourselves—about what we ourselves can do through our own human nature; only when we really say to ourselves: this imaginal knowledge cannot give us any information about any kind of outside world, not even about what we are in the outside world; only if we perceive ourselves in this semblance-making and know ourselves as a power living within it—only then do we have the right attitude to this experience and feel ourselves as spiritual beings outside the body, and yet feel ourselves only in ourselves, with an inner plasticity.

Only by having the courage to continue the exercises to the next stage do we attain true spiritual perception. This next stage not only involves developing the capacity to focus our consciousness upon certain concepts that are readily comprehended—as we comprehend geometrical concepts, which we know to contain no unconscious element—so as to increase our strength of soul; it must also, and more particularly, involve being able calmly and at will to banish these concepts from our consciousness. This is, in some circumstances, a difficult task! In ordinary life, forgetting is not particularly difficult, as our ordinary consciousness is only too well aware. But when one has just struggled, although without driving oneself into auto-suggestion—which cannot occur if we are self-possessed—to focus one's consciousness upon certain concepts, then unusual strength is required to banish them from consciousness again. However, one must develop this greater strength gradually; and just as at first we concentrated all our attention and inner strength of soul, so that we might dwell upon such a concept in a state of meditation, so now we must dispel these concepts, and all other concepts, calmly and voluntarily from consciousness. And there must be able to enter, from our will, what one might call “empty consciousness.” What “empty consciousness” (if only for a few moments) implies, can be judged by reflecting on what happens to ordinary consciousness when it has to forgo both sense-impressions and recollections—when for some reason or other man is deprived of external impressions and even memories: he falls asleep; that is, consciousness is depressed and dimmed. The opposite of this is what must happen: completely controlled, conscious wakefulness, despite the fact that the will has swept consciousness completely clear.

If we thus first strengthen the soul and then empty it, yet keep it conscious, there will appear before it, as colour to the eye and sounds to the ear, a spiritual environment. We can look into the spiritual world. And so we may say: to the spiritual investigation here intended, it is perfectly understandable that ordinary consciousness cannot reach the spirit and the soul, and indeed that it turns out, as Richard Wahle found for instance, that ordinary consciousness ought not to speak of an “I” at all! For in this sphere, ordinary experience can only indicate and label with words a dark element which is immersed in and contrasted with the clear light; and which will never emerge until we have developed powers that are usually lacking. It is a sober recognition of the limits of ordinary consciousness, tied to the body, that impels us to develop in ourselves those powers that alone are capable of really discovering the soul and the spirit.

There is another point to consider, however, if you seek to arrive by this path at a sound and not a morbid psychology. Taking the mediumistic, visionary and hallucinatory as morbid, the fact is that anyone who falls into this kind of morbid psychic activity is entirely absorbed into it. For the duration of his sickness of soul, at least, he becomes one with this activity. Quite the reverse with the exercises I have been proposing here. Anyone who explores the soul with their aid does, it is true, leave behind his physical body with its capacity for ordinary thinking and ordinary orientation in life. He steps out of this body and learns to see imaginally, free of body; he develops a visual thinking. Yet not for a moment is he completely subsumed in this higher man, if I may so call it without arrogance. He always remains capable of regaining his body and acting just as calmly as before: there always stands beside this more highly developed man that ordinary man with his healthy common sense who is a sober critic of everything to which in his vision this higher being attains.

By developing plastic, vital thinking and then creating an empty consciousness, we reach a view of our own psychic nature, one that embraces in a single image all we have encountered in this life since we entered it. Our past life does not stand before the soul as is usual in the memory, with isolated reminiscences emerging, independently or after some exertion. Instead, all at once our life is surveyed like a mighty tableau, not in space but in time. All at once, with a single glance of the soul, we survey our life; but we see it as it informs our growth and the energies of our physical body. We see ourselves as we have been here on this earth as thinking, feeling, willing beings, but in such a way that thinking, feeling and willing now densify and at the same time take their places organically within the human substance. We can see into our spiritual life in its direct association with the physical. We cease trying to establish by philosophical speculation how the soul affects the body. In seeing the soul, we also see how at every moment our physical life on earth has been informed by what the tableau shows us. This will be described more fully in the next few days.

The next step must now be to strengthen still further by removing them from our consciousness the energized concepts that we have introduced into ourselves. We do this by continually repeating the exercises, just as we strengthen muscles by repeated exercise. And by continuing with these energized concepts, we also manage to eliminate from our consciousness this whole newly achieved tableau of the life of the soul from birth to the present. This requires more effort than the simple elimination of images, but one does eventually achieve it. We succeed in removing from consciousness what in our earthly existence we call our inner life, so that now our consciousness is empty not only of current impressions, but also of all that we experience within as if in a second and finer body (which yet informs our growth and our memory), a finer being, an ethereal being as it were, a now for the first time super-sensible being. And when we do so, our consciousness, which though fully awake is now empty and yet has attained a greater inward power, will be able to see further in the spiritual world. It will now be able to look at the nature of its own soul before this descended from spiritual worlds to an earthly existence. Now, what we call the eternity of the human soul is taken out of the sphere of mere philosophical speculation and actually beheld. We learn to look at the purely spiritual that we were in a spiritual world, before we descended to clothe ourselves, through conception, foetal life and birth, in a physical earthly body.

Although attained by as exact a method as are mathematical concepts, this may seem fantastic to many people today. Still more paradoxical may appear what remains to be said, not only about the soul when it still had a spiritual existence, but also about the concrete nature of this experience. These things can only be suggested in this lecture; more will be said in subsequent lectures. The suggestions can perhaps be explained in the following terms.

Let us first ask ourselves: What do we actually see when, in ordinary life, as beings who recognize, understand and perceive, we enter into a relationship with our natural environment? We actually see only the external world. This is clear from what I mentioned at the beginning today. We actually see only the outside world, the cosmos. What takes place within us we see, too, but only by making it into something external through physiology and anatomy. Imposing as these sciences may be, we see what is within only by first externalizing it and then investigating it exactly as we are accustomed to do with external processes. Yet it remains dark down there in the region into which we descend, where we feel our spiritual element flowing into our body. In the last analysis, we see in ordinary life only what is outside ourselves; by direct observation we cannot look directly into man and see how the spiritual informs the bodily organs. Anyone, however, who can examine life impartially from the spiritual viewpoint I have established will conclude: noble and great is external appearance and the laws we discover in the external world of the stars and of the sun, which sends us light and warmth; noble and great is our experience when we either simply look—and we are complete men when we do so look—or when we investigate scientifically the laws by which the sun sends us light and warmth and conjures forth the green of plants; noble and mighty is all this—but if we could look into the structure of the human heart, its inner law would be even nobler and greater than what we perceive outside!

Man can sense this with his ordinary consciousness. But the science that rests on exact clairvoyance can raise it to the status of true research. It can say: far-reaching appear to us the changes in the atmosphere, and there exists an ideal of science which, here too, will discover greater and more potent laws; but greater still is what is present and goes on in the structure and functions of the human lung! It is not a question of size. Man is a microcosm in face of the macrocosm. But as Schiller said: “In space, my friend, dwells not the sublime.” He means the highest form of the sublime. This highest form can be experienced only in the human organism itself.

Between birth and death it is not investigated by man with his ordinary consciousness. Exactly the opposite is true, however, of our existence before we unite with the body—our spiritual existence, in a spiritual environment. In this life on earth, the inner world is dark and the outside world of the cosmos bright and full of sound; in the purely spiritual life before our earthly embodiment, the outer cosmic world is dark, and our world is then the inner world of man. We see this inner world! And truly, it seems to us no smaller and no less majestic than does the cosmos when we see it with our physical eyes during our earthly existence. As if it were our “outside world,” we come to understand the law of our spiritual inner world, and we prepare ourselves, in the spiritual realm, for dealing later with our bodily functions, with what we are between birth and death. For what we are between birth and death extends before us like a world, before we descend into this physical existence on earth.

This is not speculation. It is direct perception arising from exact clairvoyance. It is something which, starting from this exact clairvoyance, leads us some way into the connection between the eternal element in man and the life on earth—that eternal element which remains hidden from us between birth and death, and of which we see the first gleams when we are able to perceive it in the still unembodied state. And with this we explore a part of human eternity itself. We don't even have a word in our modern languages for this part of human eternity. We rightly speak of immortality; but we ought also to speak of “unborn-ness.” For this now confronts us as a direct experience.

This is one aspect of exact clairvoyance, one aspect of human eternity, of the great riddle of the human soul, and thus of the supreme problem of psychology in general. The other aspect arises from those other exercises, which I yesterday termed exercises of the will, through which we so take in hand our will that we learn to make use of it independently of the body I explained that these exercises induce us to overcome pain and suffering within the soul, in order to make it into a “sense-organ” (to speak loosely) or a spiritual organ (to speak exactly) of vision, so that we not only look at the spiritual, but see its authentic shape. And when we learn to experience in this way outside our body, not only with our thoughts but with our will itself—that is, with our entire human substance—there appears before the soul the image of death, in such a way that we now know the nature of experience without the body: both in thinking and in willing and in what lies between, feeling. In an imaginally creative way we learn to live without the body. And in doing so we gain an image of our passage through the gate of death; we learn how in reality, too, we can do without the body and how, passing through the gate of death, we enter once more that spiritual sphere from which we descended into this bodily existence. What is eternal and immortal in us becomes not only philosophical certainty, but direct perception. By training the will, we disclose for the soul's contemplation the other side of eternity—immortality—just as unborn-ness is disclosed by the training of thought.

When the soul becomes a spiritual organ in this way, however, it is as if, at a lower level, a man born blind had been operated on. What for those endowed with sight is a world of colours, the blind man has hitherto been accustomed to perceive by touch alone. Now, after the operation, he sees something quite new. The world in which he previously lived has changed. So too, anyone whose “mind's eye” is opened in the way I have described finds that his environment is changed. How far it is changed I wish to bring out today in only one respect.

Even with our unopened “mind's eye” we can see in life how, for example, a man takes his childish steps, then grows up and reaches a fateful moment in his life: he meets someone, and their souls link up so that the two people combine their fates and move on through life together. (As I said before, I want to single out just one event.) In ordinary consciousness we are drawn to regard what happens in life as a sum of chance occurrences; to regard it, too, as more or less chance that we are brought at last to this fateful meeting with the other person. Only a few individuals, like Goethe's friend Knebel, gain an inner wisdom of experience, simply in growing older. He once put this to Goethe in the following words: If at an advanced age one looks back on the course of one's steps in life, one finds that these steps seem to reveal a systematic arrangement, so that everything appears to have been present in embryo and to have developed in such a way that one was led by a kind of inner necessity to what we now see to have been a fateful event. Human existence as seen with the “mind's eye” unveiled is as different from the life observed by the unopened eyes as the world of colour is from the merely tactile one of the blind man.

Looking at the child's soul life and the interplay of sympathy and antipathy, we see how it develops from these first steps; how then, welling up out of his innermost being, the man himself, out of his innermost longings, directs his steps and brings himself to the fateful moment. This is sober observation of life. When we look at life in this way, however, we see it rather as we see the life of an old man. We should not say that an old man's life simply exists “in its own right;” by logical processes we know how to refer it to its infant beginnings; its very idiosyncrasies make us so refer it. What simple logic does for the old man's life is done for human life in general by exact clairvoyance, by true vision: if we are really to look at life as it develops from the innermost longings of the soul, we must follow it back. And when we do so, we come to earlier lives on earth, in which were prepared the longings that appear in the present and lead to our activities.

I have not been able to do more today than suggest that what leads to this comprehensive contemplation of life is not a tissue of fantasy, but an exact method. It is a contemplation which, by means of an advanced psychology, penetrates to the eternal in human nature. And on this foundation there now arises something that is a certainty, something that wells up out of the knowledge appropriate to us as modern men today and forms a basis for true inner piety and true inner religious life.

Anyone with an insight (and I may say that I am using the word “insight” in its literal sense) into the way the individual soul struggles free of the body, in order to enter a spiritual realm, will have a different way of looking at our social life too. Armed with this new attitude, he can see how friendships, relationships of love, and other associations are formed; how soul finds its way to soul, moving outside the family and other social groups; how physical proximity may be a means to the community of souls, the sympathy and togetherness of souls. He now knows that, just as the body falls away from the individual soul, so the physical element and all earthly events fall away from the friendships and from the relationships of love; and he sees how the soul-relationship that has come into being between men continues into a spiritual world, where it can also be spiritually experienced.

On a foundation of knowledge, not of faith, we can now say: as they stride through the gate of death, men find themselves once more together. And just as the body, which impedes our sight of the spirit, disappears in the spiritual world, so too in that world every impediment to friendship and love now disappears. Men are closer together there than in the flesh. A mode of knowledge that may still appear abstract in relation to true psychology culminates in this religious feeling and vision. Yet the philosophy of life I am here presenting does not seek to infringe religious faith. This philosophy can be tolerant; it can recognize fully the value of every individual religious faith, and even exercise it in practice; but at the same time, as a nurse to this religious life, it provides an epistemological basis for this religious life too.

I have sought today to say something basic about the relationship to psychology of a spiritually appropriate modern view of life. I know, better than many an opponent perhaps, the objections that can be raised to the beginnings of such a philosophy. But I believe I also know that, albeit entirely unconsciously, the longing for such a psychology is present today in countless souls. It therefore needs to be said over and over again: just as one does not need to be a painter to feel the beauty of a picture, so too one does not need to be a spiritual scientist oneself—although one can become one up to a point—to be able to test whether what I am saying here is true. Just as one can feel the beauty of a picture without being a painter oneself, so with ordinary common sense one can perceive what the spiritual scientist says about the soul. That one can see it, I think I have established all the more firmly in recognizing how souls thirst for a profounder approach to psychology and to the great riddles of existence in relation to the soul. The aim of a modern view of life such as has been outlined here today does in fact represent the desire of countless people, though they are not ordinarily aware of it; it forms the pain, the sorrow, the privation, the wish of countless people—of all those who are serious about what we must regard as constructive forces in face of the many forces of decline present in our age.

Anyone today who wishes to advocate a philosophy for the times must realize that he has to speak, think and will in harmony with what the souls in our serious age, if in many cases unconsciously, strive for. And I believe—if I may close on this note—that just such a philosophy as I have adumbrated does hold something of what countless souls strive for today, something of what they need as spiritual content and vital spiritual activity for the present and for the immediate future.

The tasks assigned to the humanity of the present and of the immediate future are great, significant, and peremptory; and it is really necessary to bring forth a strong soul courage in order to do something toward their accomplishment. Anyone who today examines these tasks closely, and tries to get a true insight into the needs of humanity, must often reflect how superficially so-called public affairs are treated. We might say that people today talk politics aimlessly. From a few emotions, from a few entirely egotistic points of view—personal or national—people form their opinions about life, whereas a real desire to gain the factual foundations for a sound judgment would be more in conformity with the seriousness of the present time. In the course of recent months, and even years, I have inquired into the most varied subjects, including the history and the demands of the times, and have given lectures here on such subjects, always with the purpose of furnishing facts which will enable people to form a judgment for themselves—not with the purpose of placing the ready-made judgment before them. The longing to know the realities of life, to know them more and more fundamentally, in order to have a true basis for judgment—that is the important thing today. I must say this especially because the various utterances and written statements which I have made regarding the so-called social question, and regarding the threefold structure of the social organism, are really taken much too lightly, as anyone can clearly see, for the questions asked about these things are concerned far too little with the actual, momentous, basic facts. It is so difficult for people of the present time to arrive at these basic facts, because they are really theoreticians in all realms of life, although they will not acknowledge it. The people who today most fancy themselves to be practical are the most decidedly theoretical, for the reason that they are usually satisfied to form a few concepts about life, and from these to insist upon judging life; whereas it is possible today only by means of a real, universal, and comprehensive penetration into life to form a relevant judgment about what is necessary. One can say that in a certain sense it is at least intellectually frivolous when, without a basis of facts, a man talks politics at random, or indulges in fanciful views about life. It makes one wish for a fundamentally serious attitude of soul toward life.

When in the present time the practical side of our spiritual scientific effort, the Threefold Social Order, is placed before the world as the other side has been, it is a fact that the whole mode of thought and conception employed in the elaboration of this Threefold Social Order is met with prejudices and misgivings. Where do these prejudices and misgivings originate? Well, a man forms concepts about truth (I am still speaking of the social life), concepts about the good, the right, the useful, and so forth, and when he has formed them, he thinks they have absolute value everywhere and always. For example, take a man of western, middle, or eastern Europe with a socialistic bias. He has quite definite socialistically-formulated ideals; but what kind of fundamental concepts underlie these ideals? His fundamental concept is that what satisfies him must satisfy everyone everywhere, and must possess absolute validity for all future time. The man of today has little feeling for the fact that every thought that is to be of value to the social life must be born out of the fundamental character of the time and the place. Therefore he does not easily come to realize how necessary it is for the Threefold Social Order to be introduced with different nuances into our present European culture, with its American appendage. If it is adopted, then the variations suited to the peoples of the different regions will come about of themselves. And besides, when the time comes, on account of the evolution of humanity, that the ideas and thoughts mentioned by me in The Threefold Commonwealth are no longer valid, others must again be found.

It is not a question of absolute thoughts, but of thoughts for the present and the immediate future of mankind. In order, however, to comprehend in its full scope how necessary is this three-membering of the social organism in an independent spiritual life, an independent rights and political life, and an independent economic life, one must examine without prejudice the way in which the interaction of the spiritual, the political, and the economic has come about in our European-American civilization. This interweaving of the threads—the spiritual threads, those of rights or government, and the economic threads—is by no means an easy matter. Our culture, our civilization, is like a ball of yarn, something wound up, in which are entangled three strands of entirely different origins. Our spiritual life is of essentially different origin from that of our rights or political life, and entirely different again from that of our economic life; and these three strands with different origins are chaotically entangled. I can naturally give only a sketchy idea to-day, because I shall briefly follow these three streams, I might say, to their source.

First, our spiritual life, as it presents itself to one who regards as real the external things, the obvious, is acquired by people through the influence of what still persists of the ancient Greek and Latin cultural life, the Greco-Latin spiritual life, as it has flowed through what later became our high schools and universities. All the rest of our so-called humanistic culture, even down to our elementary schools, is entirely dependent upon that which, as one stream let us say, flowed in first from the Greek element (Diagram 13. orange); for our spiritual life, our European spiritual life, is of Greek origin; it merely passed through the Latin as a sort of way-station. It is true that in modern times something else has mingled with the spiritual life which originated in Greece: namely, that which is derived from what we call technique in the most varied fields, which was not yet accessible to the Greek, the technique of mechanics, the technique of commerce, etc., etc. I might say that the technical colleges, the commercial schools, and so forth, have been annexed to our universities, adding a more modern element to what flows into our souls through our humanistic schools, which reach back to Greece—and by no means flows only into the souls of the so-called educated class; for the socialistic theories which haunt the heads even of the proletariat are only a derivative of that which really had its origin in the Grecian spiritual life; it has simply gone through various metamorphoses. This spiritual life reaches back, however, to a more distant origin, far back in the Orient. What we find in Plato, what we find in Heraclitus, in Pythagoras, in Empedocles, and especially in Anaxagoras, all reaches back to the Orient. What we find in Aeschylus, in Sophocles, in Euripides, in Phidias, reaches back to the Orient. The entire Greek culture goes back to the Orient, but it underwent a significant change on its way to Greece. Yonder in the Orient this spiritual life was decidedly more spiritual than it was in ancient Greece; and in the Orient it issued from what we may call the Mysteries of the Spirit—I may also say the Mysteries of Light (Drawing). The Grecian spiritual life was already filtered and diluted as compared with that from which it had its origin: namely, the spiritual life of the Orient, which depended upon quite special spiritual experiences.

Naturally, we must go back into prehistoric times, for the Mysteries of Light, or the Mysteries of the Spirit, are entirely prehistoric phenomena. If I am to represent to you the character of this spiritual life, the manner of its development, I must do so in the following way: We know, of course, that if we go very far back in human evolution, we find increasingly that human beings of ancient times had an atavistic clairvoyance, a dream-like clairvoyance, through which the mysteries of the universe were revealed to them; and we speak with entire correctness when we say that over the whole civilized Asiatic earth, in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, there dwelt people to whom spiritual truths were revealed through clairvoyance—a clairvoyance that was completely bound to nature, to the blood, and to the bodily organization. This was true of a widely dispersed population; but this atavistic clairvoyance was in a state of decline, and became more and more decadent. This “becoming decadent” of the atavistic clairvoyance is not merely a cultural-historical phenomenon, but is at the same time a phenomenon of the social life of mankind.

Why? Because from various centers of this wide-spread population, but chiefly from a point in Asia, there arose a special kind of human being, so to speak, a human being with special faculties. Besides the atavistic clairvoyance, which still remained to these people in a certain sense—for there still arose out of their inner soul-life a dream-like comprehension of the mysteries of the world—besides this they also had what we call the thinking faculty; and indeed they were the first in the evolution of humanity to have this power. They were the first to have dawning intelligence.

That was a significant social phenomenon when the people of those ancient times, who had only dream-like visions of the mysteries of the world arising within them, saw immigrants enter their territories whom they could still understand, because they also had visions, but who had besides something which they themselves lacked: the power of thought. That was a special kind of human being. The Indians regarded that caste which they designated as Brahman as the descendants of these people who combined the thinking power with atavistic clairvoyance; and when they came down from the higher-lying regions of northern Asia into the southern regions, they were called Aryans. They formed the Aryan population, and their primal characteristic is that they combined the thinking-power with—if I may now use the expression of a later time—with the plebeian faculties of atavistic clairvoyance.

And those mysteries which are called the Mysteries of the Spirit, or particularly, the mysteries of Light, were founded by those people who combined atavistic clairvoyance with the first kindling of intelligence, the inner light of man; and our spiritual culture derives from that which entered humanity at that time as an illuminating spark—it is nothing but a derivative of it.

Much has been preserved in humanity of what was revealed at that time; but we must consider that even the Greeks—just the better educated personalities among them—had seen the ancient gift of atavistic clairvoyance gradually wane and become extinguished, and the thinking-power remained to them. Among the Romans the power of thought alone remained. Among the Greeks there was still a consciousness that this faculty comes from the same source as the ancient atavistic clairvoyance; and therefore Socrates still clearly expressed something which he knew as experience when he spoke of his Daemon as inspiring his truths, which were of course merely dialectic and intellectual.

In art, as well, the Greeks significantly represented the pre-eminence of the intelligent human being, or better, the development of the intelligent human being from the rest of humanity; for the Greeks have in their sculpture (one need only study it closely) three types differing sharply from one another. They have the Aryan type, to which the Apollo head, the Pallas Athene head, the Zeus head, the Hera head belong. Compare the ears of the Apollo with those of a Mercury head, the nose of the Apollo with that of a Mercury head, and you will see what a different type it is. The Greek wanted to show in the Mercury-type that the ancient clairvoyance, which still persisted as superstition and was a lower form of culture, had united with intelligence in the Greek civilization; that this existed at the bottom of Greek culture; and that towering above it was the Aryan whose artistic representation was the Zeus head, the Pallas Athene head, and so forth. And the very lowest races, those with dim remnants of ancient clairvoyance—who also still lived in Greece but were especially to be observed near the borders—are plastically preserved in another type, the Satyr-type, which in turn is quite different from the Mercury-type. Compare the Satyr nose with the Mercury nose, the Satyr ears with the Mercury ears, and so forth. The Greek merged in his art what he bore in his consciousness concerning his development.

What gradually filtered through Greece at that time, by means of the Mysteries of the Spirit or of the Light, and then appeared in modern times, had a certain peculiarity as spirit-culture. It was possessed of such inner impulsive force that it could at the same time, out of itself, establish the rights life of man. Therefore we have on the one hand the revelation of the gods in the Mysteries bringing the spirit to man, and on the other, the implanting of this spirit acquired from the gods into the external social organism, into the theocracies. Everything goes back to the theocracies; and these were able not only to permeate themselves with the legal system, the political system, out of the very nature of the Mysteries, but they were able also to regulate the economic life out of the spirit. The priests of the Mysteries of Light were at the same time the economic administrators of their domains; and they worked according to the rules of the Mysteries. They constructed houses, canals, bridges, looked after the cultivation of the soil, and so forth.

In primitive times civilization grew entirely out of the spiritual life, but it gradually became abstract. From being a spiritual life it became more and more a sum of ideas. Already in the Middle Ages it had become theology, that is, a sum of concepts, instead of the ancient spiritual life, or it had to be confined to the abstract, legalistic form, because there was no longer any relation to the spiritual life. When we look back at the old theocracies we find that the one who ruled received his commission from the gods in the Mysteries. The last derivative is the occidental ruler, but he no longer gives any evidence of having originated from the ruler of the theocracy, with his commission from the gods of the Mysteries. All that remains is crown and coronation robe, the outer insignia, which in later times became more like decorations. If one understands such things it may often be observed that titles go back to the time of the Mysteries; but everything is now externalized.

Scarcely less externalized is that which moves through our secondary schools and universities as spiritual culture, the final echo of the divine message of the Mysteries. The spiritual has flowed into our life, but this has now become utterly abstract, a life of mere ideas. It has become what the socialistically-orientated groups latterly call an ideology, that is, a sum of thoughts that are only thoughts. That is what our spiritual life has really become.

Under its influence the social chaos of our time has developed, because the spiritual life that is so diluted and abstract has lost all impulsive force. We have no choice but to place it again on its own foundation, for only so can it thrive. We must find the way again from the merely rational to the creative spirit, and we shall be able to do so only if we seek to develop out of the spiritual life prescribed by the State the free spiritual life,¹ which will then have the power to awake to life again. For neither a spiritual life controlled by the Church, nor one maintained and protected by the State, nor a spiritual life panting under economic burdens, can be fruitful for humanity, but only an independent spiritual life.

Indeed the time has come for us to find the courage in our souls to proclaim quite frankly before the world that the spiritual life must be placed on its own foundation. Many people are asking: Well, what are we to do? The first thing of importance is to inform people about what is needed: to get as many people as possible to comprehend the necessity, for example, of establishing the spiritual life on its own foundation; to comprehend that what the pedagogy of the 19th century has become can no longer suffice for the welfare of mankind, but that it must be built anew out of a free spiritual life. There is as yet little courage in souls to present this demand in a really radical way; and it can be thus presented only by trying to bring to as many people as possible a comprehension of these conditions. All other social work today is provisional. The most important task is this: to see that it is made possible for more and more people to gain insight into the social requirements, one of which has just been characterized. To provide enlightenment concerning these things through all the means at our disposal—that is now the matter of importance.

We have not yet become productive with regard to the spiritual life, and we must first become productive in this field. Beginnings have been made in this direction, of which I shall speak presently—but we have not yet become productive with regard to the spiritual life; and we must become productive by making the spiritual life independent.

Everything that comes into being on earth leaves remnants behind it. The Mysteries of Light in the present-day oriental culture, the oriental spiritual life, are less diluted than in the Occident, but of course they no longer have anything like the form they had at the time I have described. Yet if we study what the Hindus, the oriental Buddhists, still have today, we shall be much more likely to perceive the echo of that from which our own spiritual life has come; only in Asia it has remained at another stage of existence. We, however, are unproductive; we are highly unproductive. When the tidings of the Mystery of Golgotha spread in the West, whence did the Greek and Latin scholars get the concepts for the understanding of it? They got them from the oriental wisdom. The West did not produce Christianity. It was taken from the Orient. And further: When in English-speaking regions the spiritual culture was felt to be very unfruitful, and people were sighing for its fructification, the Theosophists went to the subjugated Indians to seek the wellsprings for their modern Theosophy. No fruitful source existed among themselves for the means to improve their spiritual life: so they went to the Orient. In addition to this significant fact, you could find many proofs of the unfruitfulness of the spiritual life of the West; and each such proof is at the same time a proof of the necessity for making the spiritual life an independent member in the threefold social organism.

A second strand in the tangled ball is the political or rights current.

There is the crux of the cultural problem, this second current. If we look for it today in the external world, we see it when our honorable judges sit on their benches of justice with the jurors and pass judgment upon crime or offence against the law, or when the magistrates in their offices rule throughout the civilized world—to the despair of those thus ruled. All that we call jurisprudence or government, and all that results as politics from the interaction of jurisprudence and government, constitutes this current (see drawing, white). I call that (orange) the current of the spiritual life, and this (white) the current of rights, or government.

Where does this come from? As a matter of fact this too goes back to the Mystery-culture. It goes back to the Egyptian Mystery-culture, which passed through the southern European regions, then through the prosaic, unimaginative Roman life, where it united with a side branch of the oriental life, and became Roman Catholic Christianity, that is, Roman Catholic ecclesiasticism. Speaking somewhat radically, this Roman Catholic ecclesiasticism is also fundamentally a jurisprudence; for from single dogmas to that great and mighty Judgment, always represented as the Last Judgment throughout the Middle Ages, the utterly different spiritual life of the Orient, which had received the Egyptian impulse from the Mysteries of Space (see drawing), was really transformed into a society of world-magistrates with world-judgments and world-punishments, and sinners, and the good and the evil: it is a jurisprudence. That is the second element existing in our spiritual tangle which we call civilization, and it has been by no means organically combined with the other. That this is the case anyone can learn who goes to a university and hears one after the other, let us say a juridical discourse on political law, and then a theological discourse even on canonical law, if you like, for these are found side by side. Such things have shaped mankind; even in later times, when their origins have been forgotten, they are still shaping human minds. The rights life caused the later spiritual life to become abstract; but externally it influenced human customs, human habits, human systems.

What is the last social offshoot in the decadent oriental spiritual current, whose origin has been forgotten? It is feudal aristocracy. You could no longer recognize that the aristocrat had his origin in the oriental, theocratic spiritual life, for he has stripped off all that; only the social configuration remains (drawing). The journalistic intelligence often has very strange nightmarish visions. One such it had recently when it invented a curious phrase of which it was especially proud: “spiritual aristocracy”—this could be heard now and then. What is that which passed through the Roman Church system, through theocratising jurisprudence, juridical theocracy, became secularized in the civic systems of the Middle Ages, and completely secularized in modern times—what is it in its ultimate derivative? It is the bourgeoisie (drawing). And thus are these spiritual forces in their ultimate derivatives actually jumbled up among men.

And now still a third stream unites itself with the other two. If you would observe it today in the external world, where does this third current appear in an especially characteristic way? Well, there actually was in Central Europe a method of demonstrating to certain people where these final remnants of something originally different were to be found. It happened when the man of Central Europe sent his son to an office in London or New York to learn the methods of the economic system. In the methods of the economic life, whose roots are to be found in the popular customs of the Anglo-American world, the final consequence is to be seen of that which has been developed as outgrowths from what I might call the Mysteries of the Earth, of which, for example, the Druid Mysteries are only a special variety. In the times of the primitive European people the Mysteries of the Earth still contained a peculiar kind of wisdom-filled life. That European population, which was quite barbaric, which knew nothing regarding the revelations of oriental wisdom, or of the Mysteries of Space, or of what later became Roman Catholicism—that population which advanced to meet the spreading Christianity possessed a strange kind of life-steeped-in-wisdom, peculiar to it, which was entirely physical wisdom. Of this one can at best study only the most external usages, which are recorded in the history of this current: namely, the festivals of those people from whom have come the customs and habits of England and America. The festivals were here brought into entirely different relations from those in Egypt, where the harvest was connected with the stars. Here the harvest as such was the festive occasion; and the highest solemn festivals of the year were connected with other things than was the case in Egypt: namely, with things that belong entirely to the economic life. We have here without doubt something which goes back to the economic life.

If we wish to comprehend the whole spirit of this matter, we must say to ourselves: Over from Asia and up from the South men transplanted a spiritual life and a rights life which they had received from above and brought down to earth. Then, in the third current, an economic life sprang up which had to develop of itself and work its way up, which really was originally so completely economic in its legal customs and in its spiritual adaptations that, for example, one of the yearly festivals consisted in the celebration of the fructification of the herds as a special festival in honor of the gods; and there were similar festivals all derived from the economic aspect of life. If we go through the regions of northern Russia, middle Russia, Sweden, Norway, or into those regions which until a short time ago were parts of Germany, or to France, at least northern France, and to what is now Great Britain—if we go through these regions, we find dispersed everywhere a population which, before the spread of Christianity in ancient times, undoubtedly had a pronounced economic life. And what ancient customs can still be found, such as festivals of legal practices and festivals in honor of the gods, are an echo of this ancient economic culture.

This economic culture met what came from the other side. At first it did not succeed in developing an independent rights life and spiritual life. The primitive legal customs were discarded because Roman law flowed in, and the primitive spiritual customs were cast aside because the Greek spiritual life had entered. And so this economic life becomes sterile at first, and only gradually works its way out of this sterility; it can succeed in this, however, only by overcoming the chaotic condition created by the introduction of the spiritual life and rights life from outside. Consider the present Anglo-American spiritual life. In this you have two things very sharply differentiated from one another. First, you have everywhere in the Anglo-American spiritual life, more than anywhere else on earth, the so-called secret societies, which have considerable influence, much more than people know. They are undoubtedly the keepers—and are proud to be the keepers—of the ancient spiritual life, of the Egyptian or oriental spiritual life, which is completely diluted and evaporated into mere symbols,—symbols no longer understood but having a certain great power among those in authority. That, however, is ancient spiritual life, not spiritual life grown in its own soil. Side by side with this there is a spiritual life which does grow entirely in economic soil, but hitherto it has produced only very small blossoms, and these in abundance.

Anyone who studies such things and is able to understand them knows very well that Locke, Hume, Mill, Spencer, Darwin, and others, are nothing but these little blossoms springing from the economic life. You can get quite exactly the thoughts of a Mill or a Spencer from the economic life. Social democracy has elevated this to a theory, and considers the spiritual life as a derivative of the economic life. That is what we encounter first: everything is brought forth from the so-called practical—actually from life's routine, not from its real practice. So that going along side by side are such things as Darwinism, Spencerism, Millism, Humeism—and the diluted Mystery teachings, which are perpetuated in the various sectarian developments, such as the Theosophical Society, the Quakers, and so forth. The economic life has the will to rise, but has not yet made much progress, having produced thus far only these small blossoms. The spiritual life and the rights life are exotic plants and—I beg you to note this well—they are more and more exotic the farther we go toward the West in the European civilization.

There has always been in Central Europe something—I might say like a resistance, a struggling against the Greek spiritual life on the one hand and against the Roman Catholic rights life on the other. An opposition has always been there. An illustration of it is the Central European philosophy, of which really nothing is known in England. Actually, Hegel cannot be translated into the English language; it is impossible. Hence, nothing is known of him in England, where German philosophy is called Germanism, by which is meant something an intelligent person cannot be bothered with. In just this German philosophy, however—with the exception of one incident, namely, when Kant was completely ruined by Hume, and there divas brought into German philosophy that abominable Kant-Hume element, which has really caused such devastation in the heads of Central European humanity—with the exception of this incident, we have later, after all, the second blossoming of this struggle in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; and we already have the search for a free spiritual life in Goethe, who would have nothing to do with the final echo of the Roman Catholic jurisprudence in what is called the law of nature. Just feel the legal element in the shabby robes and the strange caps which the judges still have from ancient times, and feel it likewise in the science of nature, the law of nature—the legal element is still there! The expression “law of nature” has no sense in connection, for example, with the Goethean science of nature, which deals only with the primordial phenomenon, the primordial fact.

There for the first time is radical protest made; but naturally it remained only a beginning. That was the first advance toward the free spiritual life: the Goethean science of nature; and in Central Europe there already exists the first impulse even toward the independent rights life, or political life. Read such a work as that of Wilhelm van Humboldt, who was even Prussian minister of public instruction—read The Sphere and Duties of Government,² and you will see the first beginning toward the construction of an independent rights life, or political life, of the independence of the true political realm. It is true it has never gone beyond beginnings, and these are found as far back as the first half of the 19th century, even at the end of the 18th century. It must be borne in mind, however, that there are nevertheless in Central Europe important impulses in this very direction, impulses which can be carried on, which must not be left unconsidered, and which may flow into the impulse of the Threefold Social Organism.

In his first book Nietzsche wrote that passage that I have quoted in my book on Nietzsche³ in the very first pages, a premonition of something tragic in the German spiritual life. Nietzsche tried at that time in the foreword to his work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, to characterize the events of 1870–71, the founding of the German Empire. Since then this strangulation of the German spirit has been thoroughly accomplished; and when in the last five or six years three-fourths of the world fell upon this former Germany (I do not wish to speak about the causes or the guilty, but only to sketch the configuration, the world situation), it was really then already the corpse of the German spiritual life. But when anyone speaks as I did yesterday, characterizing the facts without prejudice, no one should infer that there is not still in this German spiritual life much that must come forth, that must be considered, that intends to be considered, in spite of the future gypsy-like condition. For what was the real cause of the ruin of the German people? This question must also be answered without prejudice. They were ruined because they too wanted to share in materialism, and they have no talent for materialism. The others have good talents for it. The Germans have in general that quality which Herman Grimm characterized excellently when he said: The Germans as a rule retreat when it would be beneficial for them to go boldly forward, and they storm ahead with terrific energy when it would be better for them to hold back. That is a very good description of an inner quality of character of this German people; for the Germans have had propulsive force throughout the centuries, but not the ability to sustain this force. Goethe was able to present the primordial phenomenon, but he could not reach the beginnings of spiritual science. He could develop a spirituality, as, for example, in his Faust, or in his Wilhelm Meister, which could have revolutionized the world if the right means had been found; but the outer personality of this gifted man achieved nothing more than that in Weimar he put on fat and had a double chin, became a stout privy counselor, who was also uncommonly industrious as minister, but still was obliged at times to wink at certain things, especially in political life.

The world ought to understand that such phenomena as Goethe and Humboldt represent everywhere beginnings, and that it would really be a loss to the world and not a profit, to fail to take into account what lives in the German evolution in an unfinished state, but to which must come forth. For after all, the Germans do not have the predisposition which the others have in such remarkable degree the farther we go toward the West: namely, to rise on all occasions to ultimate abstractions. What the Germans have in their spiritual life is called “abstractions” only by those who are unable to experience it; and because they themselves have squeezed out the life, they believe others lack it too. The Germans have not the talent for pressing on to ultimate abstractions. This was shown in their political life, in their most unfortunate political life! If the Germans had had from the beginning the great talent for monarchy which the French have preserved so brilliantly to this day, they would never have become the victims of “Wilhelmism”; they would neither have countenanced this strange caricature of a monarch, nor have needed him. It is true that the French call themselves republicans, but they have among them a secret monarch who firmly holds together the structure of the state, who keeps a terribly tight rein on the people's minds; for in reality the spirit of Louis XIV is everywhere present. Naturally, only a decadent form remains, but it is there. There is no doubt that a secret monarch is there among the French people; for it is really shown in every one of their cultural manifestations. And the talent for abstraction demonstrated in Woodrow Wilson is the ultimate talent for abstraction in the political field. Those fourteen points of the world's schoolmaster, which in every word bear the stamp of the impractical and unachievable, could only originate in a mind wholly formed for the abstract, with no discernment whatever for true realities.

There are two things which the cultural history of civilization will doubtless find it difficult to understand. One I have often characterized in the words of Herman Grimm—the Kant-Laplace theory, in which many people still believe. Herman Grimm said so finely in his Goethe: People will some day have difficulty in comprehending that malady now called science, which makes its appearance in the Kant-Laplace theory, according to which all that we have around us today arose through agglomeration, out of a universal world-mist; and this is supposed to continue until the whole thing falls back again into the sun. A putrid bone around which a hungry dog circles is a more appetizing morsel than these fanciful ideas, this fantastic concept of world-evolution. So thinks Herman Grimm. Naturally, there will some day be great difficulty in explaining this Kant-Laplace theory from the standpoint of the scientific insanity of the 19th and 20th centuries!

The second thing will be the explanation of the unbelievable fact that there ever could be a large number of people to take seriously the humbug of the fourteen points of Woodrow Wilson—in an age that is socially so serious.

If we study the things that stand side by side in the world we find in what a peculiar way the economic life, the political rights life, and the spiritual life are entangled. If we do not wish to perish because of the extreme degeneration which has come into the spiritual life and the rights life, we must turn to the Threefold Social Order, which from independent roots will build an economic life now struggling to emerge, but unable to do so unless a rights life and a spiritual life, developed in freedom, come to meet it. These things have their deep roots in the whole of humanity's evolution and in human social life; and these roots must be sought. People must now be made to realize that way down at the bottom, on the ground I might say, crawls the economic life, managed by Anglo-American habits of thought; and that it will be able to climb up only when it works in harmony with the whole world, with that for which others also are qualified, for which others also are gifted. Otherwise the gaining of world dominion will become a fatality for it.

If the world continues in the course it has been taking under the influence of the degenerating spiritual life derived from the Orient, then this spiritual life, although at one end it was the most sublime truth, will at the other rush into the most fearful lies. Nietzsche was impelled to describe how even the Greeks had to guard themselves from the lies of life through their art. And in reality art is the divine child which keeps men from being swallowed up in lies. If this first branch of civilization is pursued only one-sidedly, then this stream empties into lies. In the last five or six years more lies have been told among civilized humanity than in any other period of world history; in public life the truth has scarcely been spoken at all; hardly a word that has passed through the world was true. While this stream empties into lies (see drawing), the middle stream empties into self-seeking; and an economic life like the Anglo-American, which should end in world-dominion—if the effort is not made to bring about its permeation by the independent spiritual life and the independent political life, it will flow into the third of the abysses of human life, into the third of these three. The first abyss is lies, the degeneration of humanity through Ahriman; the second is self-seeking, the degeneration of humanity through Lucifer; the third is, in the physical realm, illness and death; in the cultural realm, the illness and death of culture.

The Anglo-American world may gain world dominion; but without the Threefold Social Order it will, through this dominion, pour out cultural death and cultural illness over the whole earth; for these are just as much a gift of the Azuras as lies are a gift of Ahriman, and self-seeking, of Lucifer. So the third, a worthy companion of the other two, is a gift of the Azuric powers!

We must get the enthusiasm from these things which will fire us now really to seek ways of enlightening as many people as possible. Today the mission of those with insight is the enlightenment of humanity. We must do as much as possible to oppose to that foolishness which fancies itself to be wisdom, and which thinks it has made such marvellous progress—to oppose to that foolishness what we can gain from the practical aspect of anthroposophically-orientated spiritual science.

My dear friends, if I have been able to arouse in you in some measure the feeling that these things must be taken with profound seriousness, then I have attained a part of what I should very much like to have attained through these words.

When we meet again in a week or two, we shall speak further of similar things. Today I wished only to call forth in you a feeling that at the present time the really most important work is to enlighten people in the widest circles.

• 1. The human being is essentially a spiritual being. When he is engaged in art, science, and religion, he is active spiritually; this activity is his spiritual life.—Editor.
• 2. Translated by Joseph Coulthard, London, 1845.
• 3. “Extirpation des deutschen Geistes zu Gunsten des deutschen Reiches,” Extirpation of the German Spirit in favor of the German Empire—quoted in Friedrich Nietzsche, ein Kampfer gegen seine Zeit (not translated).

We have made a number of observations that have essentially been concerned with showing how a recovery of our social and other conditions of human coexistence can only be brought about by people being seized from within by different ways of thinking from those that have, so to speak, been developed over the course of the last three to four centuries. Among the influences that have been particularly effective in bringing forth such ways of thinking that must no longer dominate people, the scientific way of thinking was also particularly influential. It is difficult to speak quite impartially about this scientific way of thinking today, because there is no doubt that great, tremendous progress has been made for humanity through this scientific way of thinking. However, we must realize that the very advances of modern times that have been made in this area are those that have diminished the actual spiritual life of man. Little by little things have turned out in such a way that those parts of human knowledge have mainly undergone progress that could be utilized in external technology. And even the rest of cultural life has been influenced by this tendency to always orient human thinking, human imagination, towards how it can be used in external technology.

It would be quite wrong to think that this statement applies only to that which is dependent on the scientific way of thinking in modern intellectual life. That is not what is meant here; rather, it is meant that the whole thinking of modern humanity, insofar as old ideas, old elements in this thinking have not been inherited, is of the same nature as it has now come to expression in the extreme in scientific thinking and is expressed. It is not only those people who are directly influenced by science who think scientifically today. It is even true to say, somewhat paradoxically, that those people who are directly influenced by science are the ones who think least in the sense meant here. It is only that which is the general way of thinking of human beings that has found expression in a particularly characteristic form in natural science, so that, to a certain extent, natural science is the best way to see how this modern humanity thinks. Thus, we have repeatedly spoken of the influences of the way of thinking that has found its particular characteristic expression in natural science.

Now I would like to point out a particular idiosyncrasy that is inherent in our thinking, in our entire conceptualization, in fact in our entire modern soul life, due to the fact that so much of natural science impulses is present in this soul life. This idiosyncrasy consists in the fact that we, as modern human beings, have, in a sense, forgotten how to observe things impartially. People believe that they observe things impartially; but they do not. Even our school education today is such that it instills in people a great many preconceived ideas, which color our pure perception of things. We do not actually have a pure perception of things at present.

You can raise the question: Should not the particularly harmful aspect of this fact, that we do not have a pure view of things, be particularly evident in scientific research, in natural science? — One should believe that it is so. But if you look more closely, you notice something else. Science saves itself from the devastating and destructive nature of this inability to properly see relationships by directing more and more of its attention to the external sense world, to that which is given to the external senses. The outer senses do not conform to preconceived ideas, and so they constantly correct what comes from preconceived opinions and ideas, especially from preconceived views. In this way, observation constantly corrects what man carries within himself into his view of things. That is why we do not notice when scientific observations are made that all kinds of preconceived ideas are also brought into them. But they are still brought in. And if you then take what is produced scientifically in context, you will find that preconceived ideas are indeed brought into the entire scientific view.

But the particularly harmful aspect of this inability to see is especially evident when the present-day person is to reflect on social conditions. In this case, the facts do not at all correct the preconceived notions that people bring to these facts. And so, little by little, we have really come to the point where, with regard to the social facts of life, you can ultimately assert anything you want to assert. Today, in fact, you find all sorts of opinions represented. On the one hand, you find the opinion that true social reality consists only of economic processes, that all spiritual life is only a kind of superstructure, a kind of smoke that rises up or is erected over economic facts; that is one extreme. The other extreme is this: today, since we have no clear concept of the real spiritual powers that live in the world, we speak of the prevailing, abstract ideas, ideas of things and so on, and claim that these ideas shape – perhaps through people, but they do shape – what external economic and other facts are.

As you can see, there are two opposing opinions. Now it is a matter of proving one opinion and the other opinion. You can give quite correct arguments, incontestable arguments today for both the one and the other opinion, arguments that are equally good for the one and for the other opinion. If someone comes forward today and claims that all events are actually controlled by the spirit, by ideas, he can prove it. And someone else can come forward and say: What you are proving is pure fantasy; in reality, all ideas are only the mirror images, only the superstructure of what are economic facts. He can refute what the other says in the most beautiful way; he can prove his case and the other's. The arguments are in both cases equally good.

This is a phenomenon that is actually far too little appreciated in the intellectual life of our time. People today separate themselves into parties or groups and advocate some maxim or other, some program. They are convinced of this maxim, they are convinced of this program and can prove it. The others represent a completely different maxim, a completely different program; they can also prove it, and it cannot be said that one has worse or the other better reasons for his conviction. This is a phenomenon of public life that should really be noticed, because it is the most characteristic phenomenon of our time. This phenomenon ultimately leads to the most anti-social facts and attitudes. For if one is convinced of some maxim and one knows the good reasons for this maxim, then one considers the person who has a different conviction to be a fool or a scoundrel or some kind of dishonest person. And the other person, who may have the same good reasons, in turn considers the first person to be a fool or a scoundrel or a dishonest person. That this fact is not recognized as such is, in a sense, the tragedy of the present time. It is just that people today are so attuned that they believe that what is true for the human soul today has always been true. And as soon as anyone's attention is drawn to this phenomenon today, one can almost certainly expect that he will come and say: Yes, what you are explaining, that all opinions prove themselves side by side, that has always been the case in the development of mankind. If people would only take the slightest interest in educating themselves about the real development of humanity, they would not make such an assertion; for it was not always so in reality; the well-proven opinions and maxims and programs were not as openly juxtaposed as they are today. For today one can prove very well. Today, if one is as clever as certain socialists on the Left, one can prove Marxism quite clearly, and one can prove quite clearly, if one is willing to take just one other point of view, that Marxism is complete nonsense. Today one can prove very, very well; one should be quite clear about that.

This training, this ability to prove, is instilled in children today. But therein lies something extraordinarily sad for our present time, that one can prove everything so clearly and so strictly, and therefore can be so easily convinced of a thing. Because of all the ways of being convinced of a thing, the easiest, in today's sense, is to prove this thing. There is no easier way to acquire a conviction today than to prove it. It is precisely because of this ability to prove that people have completely lost a feeling, a real feeling, that convictions in life must be fought for and acquired, that overcoming is necessary if conviction is to take root in the soul.

Where does this fact come from, this fact that is so deeply ingrained in our entire lives, that we can prove so very easily? It comes from the fact that we are accustomed to thinking so superficially with our thoughts. People today think superficially about things, without making any effort to penetrate very deeply into them. And the more superficial one's thinking, the better one can prove. It is extremely important to realize this. The thinner the concepts are – and on the surface of things all concepts become thin and abstract – the better these concepts seem to provide evidence for what one wants to believe and accept from completely different sources, from very unconscious sources, from feelings, from directions of will and the like. Our entire party life should one day be studied and described from the point of view that has just been developed before you here.

What can be achieved least of all under the influence of this superficial approach is a real knowledge of the human being. That is why so many people today demand that we should at last deepen our conception in this respect, that man should penetrate to something of self-knowledge, that is, to knowledge of his essential nature. How many writings and lectures and instructions and political speeches there are today that already speak of this necessary knowledge of the human being! But first of all, the basis for such a possible knowledge of man must be established! It cannot be gained from any starting point. And what is necessary in order to get beyond the misery of proof is to learn to see impartially, to see things really simply as they are in the outer life. For a healthy perception and for a healthy view, it is especially necessary that we learn to see things as they are; for that is what we have most unlearned. We prove how things should be; but we do not look at them in reality, as they are, because looking is indeed more inconvenient than proving that things are so or so. One can only arrive at certain assertions, for example in the social sphere today, if one proves. But if one secures an unbiased view of reality, one cannot arrive at such assertions. So what matters most is a real looking at, a real seeing of things as they are.

If you read Goethe's scientific writings, as well as his writings on art, you will see how he tried to point out with all his might how to see with an unbiased eye even in his time. He saw how all the sciences work from concepts that have to be proven. He found this to be something that must be overcome above all else, and he wanted, above all, to achieve that people really get to know the phenomena, the appearances, the facts in their original meaning, to get to know them as they are. It has been of so little use that the ground on which Goethe particularly tried to let the facts speak, the ground of the theory of colors, is still today a ground on which Goethe's right to speak about the matter is completely disputed. But in particular, it is necessary for the knowledge of the human being to come to a real seeing of the facts of life, of subjective life. For example, people today talk a lot about what is external to the human being and what is internal. I believe that if you ask many people today: You see a red color, you hear a certain sound, you perceive this or that in the outside world - is that inside or outside? - that the person in question will tell you: What the senses perceive is the external! - Then he points to his inner being: that is in contrast to the external. Now ask the person if he is clear about what kind of contrast there is between the external and the internal. He will tell you with a fair degree of certainty: Yes, I am quite clear about that; I know exactly: what the senses perceive is the outside, and what is inside, what belongs to the person himself, that is the inside. But if you go further in your questioning and say to him: Look, you say about the outside: the grass is green, the sky is blue, the sun rises, and so on, you say what you observe and list it in detail, fine. But also describe to me in just as much detail what you have inside, what you call your inside! — Try to get any clear answer at all from most people today, an answer in which you are dealing with concrete facts by which a person describes his inner being to you. He is under the illusion that he knows this inner being quite well in contrast to the outer being; but if you penetrate a little into him and say: Describe your inner being to me as you describe your outer being! you will see that this knowledge of the inner self is not very profound. And when a person does manage to describe this inner self, it turns out to be nothing more than a reflection of the outer self, what has developed from the outer self, stored in the memory, at best, faded in the mind's eye. But what a person describes is not much different from the outer self. As a rule, he cannot tell you anything more about his inner life than that the grass is green and the sky is blue; at most he will tell you that he feels this way when he sees the blue sky, that he feels that way when he sees the green grass, and so on. But a real contrast and a relationship between the external and the internal will not be easily described to you by a modern person.

But this has a great consequence. The consequence is that people today do not even come to grasp the contrast between the external and the internal in relation to the human being in any correct way. For you see, natural science, from its present point of view, endeavors to examine the organs that are supposed to be the carriers of the inner processes. And if one regards from the present point of view what is proved there, but is by no means really seen, one will say: Well, the table is outside, inside is the soul life. And here one points to one's own inner life and thinks, for example in natural science, that the inside of the skull is the inside of the human being. One transfers the unclear images gained by seeing to the human body and says: “In there, somewhere behind the eye, is the inside.” If perhaps some people, when they want to grasp more precise concepts, begin to question the things that are given to them as concepts, unconsciously man still thinks: there, at the tip of my finger, that is outside, and in there, behind the eye, that is inside. But the fact that we say this, and in particular that we draw this conclusion for the bodily organs, arises only from an inaccurate seeing. Because in fact, everything that you are entitled to call your inner self is what you experience in the outside world, in the so-called outside world. You are constantly together with the outside world, and what you seemingly experience inwardly, you experience with the whole wide outside world.

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In one of the 'Eight Meditations' — you can read about it there — I pointed out how, by observing the outside world, a person actually grows together with this outside world, and that it is quite unjustified to distinguish between the external and the internal with regard to what we experience in the outside world. That which is in our surroundings for our consciousness, we could only describe as our inner being if we really expressed what we see. But that is precisely our inner being. This is, however, an unpleasant thing for some mystics, because they attach great importance to deepening inwardly. But this inward deepening is usually nothing more than calling certain physical ideas of the outer world inward and even renaming them as divine inward and the like. These are favorite ideas that one borrows from the outer world. That which one can see without prejudice and which one usually describes as the exterior, that is what one should actually call the interior. In a sense, a person is inside his own face in his inner being. After all, we are really much more at home, let's say, in the moment when you are all sitting here in this hall than in your so-called inner being, especially if you call what is inside the skull behind the eye this inner being. Because however you may think about this inner life, except for the few concepts that you have absorbed from anatomy or physiology, which are really quite scanty, you know terribly little about what is behind your eye or your brain skull. And if you ask yourself: What is more inward to me, what is around me in this hall or what is behind my brain skull? you will say to yourself: What is in this hall around me is undoubtedly more inward to me than what is behind my brain skull. — In any case, at this moment your inner life is much more affected by what appears to be the outside world in this hall than by what is going on inside your brain skull. What goes on in your brain is very external to you, it is something that is not really within you at all. And if you describe objectively what you see, you must say: the external is actually the internal, and the internal is very much an external for the human consciousness.

Now you may say: these are concepts spun out of a spider's web. — First of all, it is not the case that they are concepts spun out of a spider's web, but rather they are concepts that stem from the observation of what is really perceived in contrast to what is theoretically proven, proved. It is what is really perceived, really seen. It is what is immediately present in consciousness and what one would regard as correct if one were to observe only what is really present in consciousness and if one did not construct the matter through preconceived notions. That is what needs to be said for the time being. But there is an important consequence to this. As long as you entertain the belief that what is out there is an external thing and what is in there is an internal thing, you cannot come to what I always call: understanding spiritual-scientific facts through common sense; because spiritual-scientific facts can only be understood if you take an unbiased look at them. But then one can see them, can see them long before one ascends in any way to clairvoyant views. But with the complicated concepts of today's everyday life, it is of course very difficult to see what the truth is.

The fact that we see the outside world - what we usually call the outside world - as we see it, and that it also contains our correctly seen and defined inside, comes from our senses and has to do with the way our senses are arranged. Through the senses we live in the immediate present. And we experience through our senses what is happening around us in the present. Our senses essentially make us co-experiencers of the present. But while we are absorbed in the outside world, our perceptions give rise to our ideas, which we then carry forward in our memory. We remember afterwards what we have experienced as co-experiencers of the present. We carry that with us. And these are essentially our concepts. People's concepts are mostly recollections of what they have taken from the so-called external world. But these ideas, these concepts and ideas are mediated, not created, but mediated, by what is otherwise called the inner self, what we have now got to know as the outer self. Through that – what you actually don't know – what lies behind your eye, through that, ideas and concepts are mediated. That is certainly the case. These ideas and concepts are conveyed through it. But what actually goes on in this human head?

If you observe what is actually going on in this human head, then you cannot say: insofar as man thinks, insofar as man imagines, he is just as much a witness to the events of the present as he is when he perceives with his senses. — That is not the case as a thinker, but rather, in our head, through our thinking, there is an effect of what we did as an activity before birth or before conception. That is to say, what goes on in there (see drawing), by imagining, is not an activity that you engage in by being a present human being, but you engage in this activity by the activity that you carried out in the supersensible world between death and new birth or conception continuing to resonate.

You are only a present-day human being because you perceive through your senses; by opening your senses to the external world, you perceive the present and live as a present-day human being with the external present. But the moment you begin to think, what plays into your brain is not what you are presently as a human being, but the echo of what you were in the spiritual world, in the supersensible world before birth or before conception. If you want to visualize it pictorially, you can imagine it quite well by thinking: I strike a note; this note continues to sound even after I have long since stopped striking it. Now imagine that you have some kind of activity in the spiritual world all the time between your last death and this birth, which I am describing schematically (see drawing, red). This activity has an after-effect; and this after-effect is the activity you perform when you think as a present human being. You are not performing an activity of the present human being by thinking now, but the activity that you performed in the supersensible world between your last death and your present birth still resonates.

You are only a present-day human being as a sensual human being. As a thinking human being, you carry out an activity that is the reverberation of what you did before your birth in the supersensible world. It is simply not true that, by thinking, we are “engaged in an activity that originates in the present.” If you examine the present scientifically, what is inside your brain, you will of course only find material things, because what works inside your brain outside of the material is something that came into being before birth and only resonates. The living proof for those who can see correctly is the fact that man not only comes out of the supersensible world, but that what he has practiced in the supersensible world still lives on in him while he lives here.

If you imagine that you have experienced a strong pain here in this physical world, which lingers in you, that is the echo of the pain that no longer causes itself in facts. So in the present your thinking is the echo, the reverberation of what you experienced in a much more intense way before you were conceived here for the sensual world.

Thus, only by perceiving with the senses are we men of the present. If we were only people of the present, we would never think, because we are not granted thinking by being born here into the physical world, but we are granted thinking by being able to resonate the activity that we exercised in the spiritual world before birth or conception, and by applying this activity to what is spreading around us sensually here.

One will never understand this fact if one starts from the ordinary concepts of 'exterior' and 'interior', and one will least of all understand the true facts, which express themselves in the human being, if one starts from that stupid mysticism that dominates so many minds today and that speaks: 'There is something to be sought within, something human and supersensible'. What should be sought is the prenatal: you should not point to your inner self by pointing beyond the outer sensory world, you should point to the time you lived through before your conception and before your birth; you should go out of this present human being into the pre-present human being, then you will enter into the real supersensible. That is what it is all about. Because one does not want to work one's way to this sound concept, one speaks in words that actually have no content, of all kinds of divine inner things or the like. The inner being that one seeks in the present human being should be sought in what was there before we were conceived for this life.

And if we act, when the will enters into our actions? Let us take the simplest action: we walk around the room; that is an action, isn't it? First we see ourselves walking around. There is no consciousness in man of how volition is connected with our walking, just as there is no consciousness in man in ordinary life of what he experiences in sleep. The human being does experience himself asleep. Outwardly, he sees as he sees the color blue or a tree or the stars, and also that which this individual of the flesh does, as he walks around. He observes himself. How he wills, he knows nothing about. He only knows that there goes one who is himself. And because he is compelled to think himself in the one who goes about, he says, “I go about.” But how this wanting hangs together with this going about – there can be no question of man's knowing anything about it in ordinary consciousness.

Now, this is again very closely related to what is usually called the “outward” and what is actually an “inner” process. When you walk around, i.e. move your legs, you see how you move your legs (see drawing on page 158). You see the guy walking around and you can see what he wants. You see this external process. But here you can actually see much more that it is actually a human inner process, because you put your will into this walking around, even if you cannot see how it is connected. This walking around is actually a part of him. You can see this more easily here than with the sense world, so that you can more easily call what is there an inner being than with the content of the sense world. With what goes from wanting to acting, you can more easily see that it is an inner being.

Of course, this does not suit the present-day mystics either, who explain external action as an external thing and say that one must penetrate to the divine human being within, who is the truly true human being and so on. But just as we have an inner side in sensory perception and an outer side in the so-called interior of the human head (see drawing above), so we have, in relation to this interior (drawing below), what the human being with limbs is.

And now we come to this strange idea, which of course does not agree with what can be proven today, but which, strangely enough, is correct if you look at it impartially. I do believe, however, that the present mood of human souls is such – excuse me, I must also mention these things – that many of the present philistine natures, and there are quite a few of them, believe that that region of the cosmos that spreads out below their diaphragm has a great deal to do with their inner selves. That is what people call something that has something to do with their inner selves. Now, in truth, this is the outermost part of the human being for human consciousness. We can say that if we call this (drawing above) an exterior, we can call that which lies below the diaphragm the outermost part of the human being (drawing below). What lies below the diaphragm, what is the human abdomen, is the very, very outermost part of the human being. Every tree, every stone that we see with our eyes is closer to us inwardly than what our abdomen is. That is the very outermost. Our true inner being is the sense perceptions, that which we perceive as our actions. The contents of the head are already external, and what lies below the human chest is the very outermost. That is the real observation of what can be seen. And it can be seen.

You see, that has a very specific meaning. Just think, since we have been practicing anthroposophy, we have always said: When a person is awake, his I and his astral body are in the physical and etheric bodies. That is correct. But when a person is asleep, from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up, his I and his astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies. But I have often pointed out what this exteriority mainly consists of. This exteriority consists in that what is otherwise of the I and of the astral body in the head, submerges into what is below the diaphragm. You can even, I might say, have empirical proof of this: You dream of the most beautiful snakes because you have just woken up from your stay in your own abdomen, where you perceived the intestines. You dream this memory of perceiving the intestines as the most beautiful snake dream. — So, when we speak of human conditions, the exterior and interior only really make sense when we know what is really exterior and interior in man.

But only if one can acquire such seen ideas, not those that can be “proven”, but such seen ideas, then one again gets the possibility to understand the spiritual-scientific achievements through common sense. Because what we want arises in a certain way from the most external.

Now think about what healthy ideas have to take the place of quite unhealthy ones. Man believes that when he wills something, it arises from his inner being. It arises from his very outermost part, it arises from that in which he is already completely out of touch during the day, and in which he is at most in touch with when he is asleep. When we want something, we are not at all within ourselves. We are in the cosmos. We are performing something that is a cosmic event, that is not at all merely our subjective event.

I have endeavored, I would say, throughout my entire literary life, to teach the present such concepts that are healthy concepts from this point of view. You can start with my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings,” in which I tried to replace the unhealthy concepts of the present with healthy ones from Goethe's worldview. In these writings, I have pointed out that one can only properly observe certain things that take place within a person if one does not say: That is going on in there, and the person does it - but if one regards this so-called human interior as the arena for human actions that are carried out in this arena from the cosmos, if one regards the so-called human interior as the arena for the cosmic. My entire development of epistemological concepts in my booklet “Truth and Science” ultimately fades away, on the last and penultimate page, into this: that man is a theater for what the cosmos actually does in him, and that he does it in connection with the cosmos, from the outside in, not from the inside out. The last two pages of my booklet 'Truth and Science' are the most important part. And because these two pages are the most important and significant, because they most intensively address what needs to change in the way we present the present, I was only able to design this booklet, which was also my doctoral dissertation at the time, after the doctoral dissertation was over. In the form in which it was submitted as a dissertation, these last two pages were missing; because one could not expect science to draw the conclusions from these things, which have a certain significance for the transformation of the entire world view. What was prepared epistemologically was relatively harmless in the dissertation; because that is an objective philosophical development. But what it amounted to could only be added in the later print. Only then, when one looks at things in such a way that one really practices this precise seeing, that one no longer succumbs to the illusions caused by preconceived notions, only then is one in a healthy way able to gain corresponding insights through the will. For what we see outside when the “guy” or the “gal” walks around, when we observe ourselves doing the simplest of actions, when we move our legs forward, that is only the inner side of our will. The outermost side, the one that has a meaning for the cosmos, is apparently hidden within us. But hidden in our outermost being is a spiritual element that underlies the inner being, which is not readily accessible to people. And what happens in there, the spiritual - of course not what happens physically, but what goes parallel to this physical as a spiritual - that is not a present moment. What is present is what you observe externally in the guy or gal. What is going on internally is something different, something that is only just beginning to happen in the germ, in the embryo. While you are walking around or performing some other action with your limbs, something is happening in your external being that only takes on real significance after your death. This is just as much a foreshadowing of the processes from death to the next birth as what is in your thinking is an echo of what you were in the spiritual world from your last death to this birth or conception. That which resonates in your outermost being, what people call your innermost being, is the embryo of the processes you will engage in between your next death and your next birth. Only he sees the human will that now, in turn, does not look at the present human being, but sees in what lives in the human being, seemingly in the human being, but in the uttermost part of the human being, the correlate, the belonging, to the action, and in the action sees the what emerges through the gate of death, becomes activity between death and a new birth and is formed in such a way that it can come in again and now continues to vibrate here in the external.

When one examines human volition and wants to seek mystically deep in the present human being the source of this volition, the divine source of this volition, then usually the word mystics find that they should not do that in the gut, because that is not noble enough for the word mystics; for them it is not about truth, but about special, unctuous phrases. But if one goes to the truth, then it is a matter of the fact that, with regard to the sensual-physical fact, now, let us say, the most unsavory thing is a correlate that goes through the gate of death into the later world; there we must seek the future man. And so we obtain the evidence from the thinking of prenatal man and from the volition of the man after death, as I have often stated here and as I have even mentioned in public lectures here and there. But these are truths that must be brought to our consciousness without fail today. It is imperative that we realize today that human thinking is something that cannot be produced at all by the human being who lives in the present with his flesh and blood and bones and nerves, but that it from prenatal life, and that the will is not something that can be brought forth by the present human being in his totality, but that the will has a side that remains beyond death. If we really get to know that which in the present human being cannot be brought forth by the bodily-carnal human being, then the eternal human being is present in the human being who stands before us. But these truths are not attained by speculating about the eternal, but by really being able to enter positively into what thinking on the one hand and willing on the other hand is. In this way one attains such knowledge.

It is really necessary: if one wants to pursue higher knowledge in the sense of today's spiritual science, then one must, above all, consider the word mysticism, which is practiced in many ways today, to be the most harmful.

That is why certain things that have to be written down today from the point of view of an honest spiritual science should be accepted. And they are indeed widely accepted. But when it comes to what it is actually about, to the intervention of the concrete facts of human life, then people no longer go along with it, because then they prefer to listen to the chatter of mystifying people who want to conjure up an inner world out of words. But the present is too serious in their lives to be able to indulge in such a pleasure. For most people, mysticism today is just a pleasure. What is to be done today is something that shapes the soul of the human being in such a way that he can really only grasp what lives in social life with these appropriated concepts. Is a person to arrive at social concepts if he cannot see, if he learns from the scientific way of thinking, to approach reality with nothing but prejudices and preconceptions? The pure observation of reality, as we need it today, can only be gained by freeing ourselves from the thicket of ideas to which we have surrendered through spiritual-scientific ideas, and which finds its ultimate, extreme consequence in some mystical aberrations of our time. The mystic aberrations of our time are not the sign of an initial improvement for the better; often they are the last sign of decline, the very utmost of mere empty words instead of real insights.

Real insights provide something like: Thinking is an echo of prenatal life; volition is a prelude to post-mortal life. These are concrete insights. When we speak of such concrete things, we speak quite differently from those who say: the eternal lives in the temporal man, the divine I lives there; when one experiences oneself in that, one has grasped the divine, that is the true I; the other is the untrue I, and so on. You can waste the whole day with playful terms. It can create a great sense of well-being internally, but you won't get any real insights with it.

You have recently seen a eurythmy performance of Fercher von Steinwand's “Choir of Archetypal Dreams” (Choir of Primordial Dreams). Fercher von Steinwand's next poem, which follows on from the “Choir of Archetypal Dreams”, is now being prepared for a eurythmic performance: the “Chor der Urtriebe” (Choir of Primordial Instincts). It is perhaps desirable for you to familiarize yourselves with the ideas of the poem first, because during the eurythmic performance, your attention will be very much taken up by the simultaneous absorption of the eurythmic and the poem. To make it possible for you to familiarize yourself with the text before the eurythmy performance, Dr. Steiner will recite the first and second paragraphs of the Chorus of Primordial Drives before the lecture today and then continue with it tomorrow.

In these reflections, I have tried to tie in a few episodes from the significant developmental events of the present, which should then offer the opportunity to provide further perspectives from our spiritual scientific point of view. Today, I would also like to present one or two more episodes to you with reference to our current events, so that within these three lectures today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, we may be able to arrive at some perspectives that must be important to everyone in the present. I would like to start today with a general observation. Among the many terrible and catastrophic events that have befallen humanity in recent years, two things in particular should be mentioned. One is that a kind of strengthening of humanity in relation to the feeling for actual truth should arise from the observation of what has been experienced. And the second should be: a certain ability to learn from world events, from the world as such, should arise from the tragedy that has taken place and will continue to take place.

These are the two things that should be gained from the observation of the past four and a half years. I said that humanity should develop a feeling for actual truth, for the truth within the world of facts. We have seen, if we wanted to see, if we were concerned to see, that over the years – by which I do not mean that it was not the case to some extent before, only it was not so noticeable – that over more than four years humanity throughout the civilized world has gradually become dulled to the observation of actual reality, of the truth that lives in events. How often is it necessary, within the circle of those who have joined together in our movement, to speak of the significance, the actual significance of truth! On the other hand, how difficult it is to awaken any understanding for the genuine image of truth, in so far as truth is not merely an abstraction but a reality. And how great are the temptations to withdraw from the vision of real truth. Mankind will also want to be informed about the last four years and about what preceded them, because at least out of the chaos something like the urge to get to know the events will develop. Today – I wanted to point this out in particular in the last reflections I made here – today few people really have a need to know the truth about the last few years. But that is not what I mean so much as devotion to reality. People love to live in illusions. Between illusions and untruths there is only a very narrow gulf, and it is very easy to cross over from illusions into the realm of downright falsehood. Whether this lie is conscious or unconscious is of little consequence when it comes to realities. The temptations are simply very great to introduce into one's world of ideas at the point where one should practice devotion to the truth, to switch on the illusion and then very soon just the untruth.

It should now be clear to the spiritual scientist that only a life lived in truth can educate, develop, build up and promote growth, whereas everything that is a life of untruth destroys and isolates. A life of untruth is always connected with selfishness. That which is so obstructive to the penetration of the truth prevailing in the facts is the spinning of one's own subjective comfort, namely, of the life of imagination, but also of the life of feeling. One does not want to rise above the illusions that everything, everything is so that one is relieved of thinking, of natural thinking.

The individual is placed in this mood, which very easily becomes the general mood, and if he has to make use of a certain form in a time that is not very favorable to the truth, he is then understood with great difficulty. Those who have been forced to have one or the other examined by the actual circumstances in the last four years, and who have been forced to take brutal realities into account, have naturally been poorly understood. But how difficult it is to develop this leaning towards the truth in the facts can be seen from the fact that it would have been truly quite uncomfortable for many people to adjust their thinking to something like what was, for example, put forward by me in that Vienna Cycle of lectures, to which I have recently referred here again; who spoke of what has been going on within humanity for decades, as of a carcinoma disease, a cancer disease that takes place in the social life of human beings. And I said at the time: Truly, only the obligation to say something like that can cause one to utter it. But at the same time I said: One would like to shout out to the world what lies within. But it is uncomfortable to hear, and it was uncomfortable for people to hear, before this catastrophe befell them, that it would happen. Of course, it was inconvenient for a large number of people to be made aware, let us say, two years ago, that events could take no other course than the one they have now taken. That this course of events is a very inconvenient one for the so-called Central Powers is already obvious today. That it will be quite unpleasant for the Entente, that will become apparent over the course of a few years, but it is not so obvious today; therefore it is still an inconvenient truth today. Of course, pretty much anywhere in the world today, something unpleasant could happen to the person who would say more clearly than has already been said here what it is all about, just as something unpleasant would have happened to someone in other areas if they had put the worship of Hindenburg and Ludendorff in the right light two years ago.

These are things that only play a role on a large scale. But there are things that occur in human life every day, they show themselves from person to person everywhere. And after all, what takes place on a large scale, what are known as the great events, are nothing more than the accumulation of what takes place on a small scale from person to person every day, in everyday life. For one thing, there is a certain tendency for people not to want to look at the truth. Of course, people talk a lot about truth. But I have never seen greater love for illusion than in those people who use the word truth all the time, just as I have never seen greater egoism than in those people who constantly say that they really only want this or that impersonal thing.

That is one thing: the necessity to develop a sense of truth, insofar as truth lies in facts. The other thing is to learn from world events. One's heart can bleed when one sees the necessity to learn precisely from the events of recent years, and when one sees how relatively little has been learned by people. When one considers things, it often seems as if centuries lie between the year 1914 and the present year, and one can still meet people today who judge exactly the same way today as they judged these or those things in 1914. Of course, a certain basic foundation of things remains untouched, but I am sure you will understand when I say that one must have learned to judge certain things differently. —- One can well understand that the same things are meant that have just come to light through such events as the last four years.

What many people could learn already is the necessity of leaning towards a spiritual view of the world. From all that is happening, especially in the field of social life, from the social complications that have finally emerged from this world catastrophe, and from the social chaos that will develop from this world catastrophe, the necessity for humanity to turn to spiritual, to spiritual world contemplation will arise above all. This is already making itself felt today in that those people who, for some time, will be at the top in this whirling dance that has now begun are the very ones who are most fiercely opposed to all spiritual life, to all spiritual contemplation of the world. But it is precisely in this terrible rejection that the real seed for the evocation of the longing for spiritual world contemplation lies. It will not be possible to achieve a social structure full of light in the future without turning one's gaze to what today's order, today's chaos, has produced. But insight into what has happened – and the present chaos is only the result of what has happened in the course of human development – can only be gained through spiritual science as a source of spiritual light.

In order to gain some control over the great proletarian questions that arise – I am not even talking about being able to solve them – one must ask oneself: What is the significance of the classes to which the proletariat, for example, looks back when it perceives itself as a class: the class of the old nobility, the bourgeoisie, and finally the class of the proletariat itself? — Definitions do not get to the bottom of things. Nor does observing how the aristocratic class behaved over the centuries, what became of it, how the bourgeoisie behaved, how the proletariat came into being. Nor does this alone lead to an understanding of what has flowed into the human social order by drawing its tributaries from other classes, especially from these three classes.

The nobility in its most diverse forms - yes, ultimately one understands what is connected with the nobility as a class only if one is able to shed light on it in a spiritual-scientific way. Only in this way is it possible to say: those people who have developed in the caste of the nobility are, of course, not only those human individuals who descend from certain ancestors according to the continuity of blood and have thereby secured certain privileges in the world on the basis of certain events, which are more or less known to you, but the members of this caste are also souls, at least for the most part souls, who have sought to embody themselves in precisely those bodies that were born into the caste. In the future, we will have to acquire the ability to look at the human being not only as a physical-bodily creature, but also in connection with the spiritual world behind him, in which he has the source of his soul. We will gradually have to develop the feeling that we do not know the human being if we do not grasp his connection with the spiritual world behind him.

One can now really make a spiritual effort to answer the question: Where does it actually come from, what has entered into humanity through the nobility? — Indeed, in the present time one has quite a few opportunities to deal with such questions in a spiritual way; at least one had the opportunity to do so. That will all come to an end now. The world has railed much against so-called Prussian-German militarism; now Prussian Germany itself rails against Prussian-German militarism. The railing may be justified from this or that point of view; the reasons that have been advanced by one side or the other, for and against, have mostly been very ugly and certainly very few true reasons, and still are not. And for the seeker of truth, it depends much more on the reasons than on the abstract vote or non-vote. But much more important than this pro and contra is the fact that eighty percent, actually more than eighty percent, of the commanding positions in the Prussian-German army are occupied by nobles, by good old nobles, leading positions, in the highest leading positions, eighty percent, over eighty percent; so that, without allowing sympathies and antipathies to prevail, one can answer the question of where, for example, what has come into humanity through the nobility comes from. Whether this is an opportunity for humanity to speak in favor or against, I will not go into that, as I said above, but what has happened can be reduced to the question: How does it actually relate to the whole process of evolution, to the whole development of humanity? — For one can, for example, raise the question precisely with regard to this militarism, what has happened through it in the course of the last decades and the last four and a half years, since it is led in its majority precisely by aristocrats. The question that I raised above can be answered: How do the impulses of the nobility relate to the overall development of humanity? And everywhere you look, even spiritually, even if you try to explore the connection between the human soul and the spiritual worlds, everywhere you look, you find that what humanity has experienced anywhere and anytime through its nobility is the effect of an old human karma, the effect of impulses that were once brought into human development by this or that. In order that certain things may befall people because of earlier collective human complications, nobility in this or that field was essentially there for that purpose, now seen spiritually; the effect of old debts, one might say. One must go back into the past everywhere if one wants to understand the impulses that work socially in nobility in terms of their significance for humanity.

Once one has begun a deeper consideration of things at the point where I have indicated it to you, then one is driven to also touch the other pole. And the other pole is the proletariat. Here the situation is reversed. All the difficulties for humanity that are caused by the proletariat, all the complications that are brought into humanity by the proletariat, all this points to the future, gives future karma, and will have to be dealt with by humanity in the future.

The former, that the nobility is, so to speak, the executive power with regard to old guilt, this realization can lead to a feeling of responsibility for what must happen today through the proletariat. After all, what happens through the proletariat is, to a large extent, caused by the bourgeoisie through the detour of the spiritual life. In order to understand the latter thoroughly, one must try to consider the bourgeoisie's middle position between the nobility and the proletariat.

You see, the nobility is usually averse to an actual scientific treatment of world events. They are not averse to knowing something about world events, but they do not want to come to an understanding of world events through scientific research and scientific thought. He would much rather enter the secrets of the world by authority, without the effort of thinking – I say all this without sympathy or antipathy, just to characterize – not through knowledge. There is no doubt that the comfortable way in which people try to enter the secrets of the world through spiritualism, for example, finds numerous followers in aristocratic circles. Well, you may say: of course not only the nobility are spiritualists. — That is really true, but in the other classes there are as many people opposed to the spiritualists who at least have a certain aspiration to enter the spiritual world by applying their own thinking, to do science. Within the nobility, people who are scientifically striving are not on the side of those who want to enter the spiritual world in a spiritualistic or mystical way – well, there are different ways, not all of which need to be characterized. On the other hand, whatever a nobility class somehow claims in the world must always be supported in some military way. A nobility class is inconceivable without military support. These are some examples – there are, of course, many other characteristic peculiarities of the nobility class – but these are the ones that are of radical importance.

As for the bourgeoisie, which stands between the nobility and the proletariat, it can be said that with the bourgeoisie there arises a certain striving to make knowledge scientific, to bring scientific form to the ideas that want to enter the spiritual world. The power of the bourgeoisie is based on the possession of the means of production, the tools and the like. I select individual things to say in order to establish certain prospects for tomorrow or the day after, but you will see that what I select has a certain significance.

What is particularly characteristic is what one class always takes over from the next one up. Thus, for example, the bourgeoisie takes over militarism from the nobility. But the interesting thing is that the bourgeoisie everywhere tends to democratize militarism. The nobleman needs an army at his disposal to keep him. How he achieves this is of no concern to him. The bourgeois, by the very nature of his relationship to his means of living and existence, is also dependent on the support of an army, but he must take this army from the same people that he puts to his means of production. Therefore, he becomes a fan of universal conscription. And, isn't it true, in the time when the bourgeoisie gradually emerged and developed, you were obviously a fool if you couldn't enthuse about universal conscription, because that was simply the greatest advance of the time, universal conscription, the so-called democratization of militarism and so on.

What the proletariat in turn took from the previous class is the science of the bourgeoisie, bourgeois science. The proletarian today – at least insofar as he is scientifically educated, and there are very many of them – he knows how to appreciate certain subconscious or unconscious things in man. He knows well how a certain thinking and a certain form of thinking comes from a person's class or caste. For example, the proletarian knows very well that if you are a member of the nobility, you think differently because you belong to the caste of the nobility than if you are a bourgeois or if you are a proletarian. The entire formation of thought is different, the instincts that flow into the thought forms and form these thought forms are different. Bourgeois science, it takes the standpoint that truth is truth, there can only be one truth, and believes in the absoluteness of its judgments. The proletarian does not do that, because he knows the dependence of what a person thinks on his caste, on his class.

Now, of course, there is also a certain basic foundation of truths that do not depend on caste, for me, certain elementary mathematical concepts and the like. Of course, even purely mathematical-mechanical astronomy is not dependent on caste. But everything that relates to social and historical life, and especially the formation and use of individual scientific ideas, depends on the caste. Proletarian science has seen through this. Proletarian science looks into many of the subconscious thoughts of people. But it takes over, this proletarian science takes over bourgeois thinking, takes over, so to speak, lock, stock, and barrel, what bourgeois education, bourgeois intelligence has conquered, and popularizes it. Exactly as the bourgeoisie has democratized the militarism of the nobility, so the proletariat popularizes bourgeois science, or rather, the bourgeois scientific method, in a completely blind faith.

From this you can already see that the proletariat, with regard to its entire thinking, is the heir to what the bourgeoisie has done with regard to human thought, with regard to human scientific achievements. This will prove to be an extremely important fact in the near future, and it would be extremely necessary to be able to learn to pay attention to such things. Otherwise, people will want to live in comfortable illusions, which are only separated from the lie by a narrow gap, about the most important things that are creeping up.

There is nothing, for example, that is more detrimental to the truth, in the sense in which I spoke of the truth earlier, than nationalism. But nationalism is precisely part of the program that will be seen as a particularly beneficial program in the near future. It belongs to the program of the near future. Therefore, when this nationalism wants to build – for in reality it can only destroy – it will have to be experienced that the illusions, which are separated from the lie by a narrow chasm, will continue to exist. For as much nationalism as arises in the world, so much untruth will there be in the world, especially towards the future. And so there will be many sources of new untruths. Untruth has ruled the world in many respects. But it will not be able to rule once humanity has taken in those impulses, those currents, which today emerge chaotically in the proletarian masses and which, as you have seen - I presented this to you recently from spiritual scientific documents - correspond to one of the three great currents in the development of humanity.

Actual events are essentially connected with these things. But people have been reluctant, especially in recent decades, to look into the world in such a way as to really see what is real. One could only look into the world without looking at the spirit if one did not want to miss what is real. You see, everything that has happened in recent years goes back, basically, to spiritually transparent power dynamics in the civilized world. There was actually nothing more dreadful in the course of these sad events than talking from this or that so-called national or other point of view. Most of the time, people were talking about things that had nothing at all to do with the course of events. The strange thing was that the leading statesmen also spoke in such a way that their speeches had little to do with the course of events. One should not treat so lightly the things that are touched upon here, that is to say, what might be called the fate of human beings, insofar as these human beings are crowded together in groups, in groups of nations, for example. For here one touches on circumstances that are fundamentally and deeply connected with the spiritual, and one should not speak of them as superficially as one often does.

Above all, it should not be overlooked that certain terms mean quite different things in different parts of the world. Just think that people everywhere, let us say, speak of the state. But it is not important to have a certain concept of the state, but rather to associate at least something with this concept of the different emotional nuances that are attached to this state here or there, and above all to get away from the unfortunate amalgamation of state and nation and the people, that unfortunate confusion which is a fundamental characteristic of Wilsonianism, which always confuses the state and the nation and the people, and even wants to found states on nations, thereby perpetuating the lie, at least in certain circles, at least if it were possible.

We must look at the specific, real issues everywhere. In the course of these reflections, I have shown you how a certain configuration of Central Europe is connected with those old suggestions, based on group instincts, that emanated from Roman Catholicism, from Rome. You see, what was the old imperial idea of Central Europe, which died in 1806, was closely connected with this specter of the old Roman Empire, as spiritual science says. Until then, there was more or less, really more or less nominally, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which only disappeared in 1806. It did not actually disappear, but was only abolished. For this Holy Roman Empire, which more or less favorably or unfavorably held together or divided the various German tribes over long periods of time, this imperial impulse of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation has actually gradually been transferred to the Habsburg power, and that is what has been blessed with the Austro-Hungarian state structure. But a state that existed in the shadow of Habsburg power means something different from a state that, let us say, has developed since the fifteenth or sixteenth century, as it has actually formed as a state more in connection with the people in England or France. Where the state has no real substance, in what was the Habsburg Empire, where different peoples were held together under the aspect of the Habsburg power and this Habsburg power had them like a mantle, like an old treasure, there was something deeply medieval, namely the emperorship from the old Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. What the Habsburgs were was the oldest Middle Ages, and unfortunately also thoroughly connected with the oldest Middle Ages in terms of Romanism, in terms of that Catholicism that had been revived or at least made lifelike by the Counter-Reformation and which has produced all those conditions of which I have already spoken to you here, which has contributed so much to the lulling to sleep, to the dimming, but also to other evil effects within the Central European world.

This Habsburg empire of the oldest medieval type was confronted by a most modern one, which had gradually become completely modern, something of the most modern character: the Prussian-Hohenzollerian empire, that Prussian-Hohenzollerian empire which represented Americanism within the German being, Wilsonianism before Wilson. That is the great, enormous difference: this most modern character of Prussian-Hohenzollern Americanism, masked as an empire, and the medieval Habsburg empire, which was forged together from the outside. It is necessary to study these things if one wants to understand what has happened and what will happen.

What emerged as Hohenzollern-Prussian Americanism had a very specific peculiarity: it developed exactly the same impulses that developed, for example, in the British Empire, but it developed all these impulses in the opposite way. You see, there are three currents, handed down from ancient times, arising in the present: the aristocratic, the bourgeois, and the proletarian. Nowhere else, I might say, have these three currents, the aristocratic, the bourgeois, and the proletarian, developed in such a pure form, side by side, yet separate, as in the British Empire and also within the so-called Germany – which is not an official name, there is no Germany under constitutional law, there never has been under constitutional law – that is, in the so-called German Reich. So in both areas, but in the exact opposite sense, these three currents developed. In the British Empire, it all developed in such a way that the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat came together, always striving towards a common tendency. There is good old nobility, but it knew how to balance with the demands of the bourgeoisie, namely with the demands of the material and financial bourgeoisie. You are not only a nobleman, you also become a wealthy nobleman, a rich person in the modern sense. You can have your income from industry and be a good, old, respected nobleman. But you manage everything so that the proletarian in his undertakings does not deviate too much from what the others want. It always comes together in some way.

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Within the new German state structure, everything diverged. There were also three currents, but they developed in such a way that they diverged in the following sense: you had industry forming large-scale industry, which had its own current; you had the old nobility in the Prussian landed gentry – the two may have pushed together, but it was also afterwards! the proletariat, which increasingly became the opponent of the bourgeoisie and set itself the task of taking up the class struggle against the bourgeoisie in the most eminent sense. All this developed apart. Anyone who has studied historical events in this respect will find this particularly interesting. And all this within a framework that was bound to burst. For what had been constructed as so-called Germany – as I said, which never existed under constitutional law – bore the stamp of Bismarck, the stamp of a man for whom modern big industry never became a reality, who never knew it, who never reckoned with it, who constructed the framework he constructed to exclude the development of big industry. Now the whole Americanism of big industry developed into it and burst the framework. It was already blown up in itself long before this war catastrophe occurred.

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To study these conditions with an unbiased eye, with scientific objectivity, in peace, humanity in the mad whirl in which it had fallen in all possible fields, truly had no peace. Because one is not very inclined to go into realities. One must actually seek to achieve realities. One must have a sense for realities, perhaps not only a sense, but also an instinct for realities; for the trend of the times is to deny realities, not to engage with realities at all. You see, the people who looked at where the Inn flows, the Moldau flows, the Danube flows, the Leitha flows, they did not distinguish much between two fundamentally different things: between the German-Austrian people and the Habsburg Empire. That merged. And again, when people visited Austria, where the German-Austrian people lived, who are now heading towards such a tragic fate – how did they get to know what lives within the actual people? As a traveler to Austria, you got to know – as a writer once stated – the “Aryan” attitude, which was very closely connected with sloppiness. When you arrived at a train station, well, you were instructed to go there because you had a connection. You went there, and if you were supposed to arrive at the right time, you certainly did not arrive at the right time. Not true, you were never sure if you relied on the trains that you would arrive at the right time, but you were, as the person said, safe everywhere you went, that you would get a good cup of coffee. But that is just a superficiality. What was there in this area of Central Europe and from which a certain brutality was to stop, was precisely the possibility of developing strong spiritual individuals from a certain background of nationality.

You see, little was printed by Fercher von Steinwand in the 1880s. I lived in Vienna with some friends, younger writers. Once, the conversation turned to Fercher von Steinwand, and I knew some of his poems. It was around the time when I was editing the “Deutsche Wochenschrift” in Vienna. Hamerling had pointed out Fercher von Steinwand with great understanding and sincere goodwill. Then some friends said to me: Yes, we can find Fercher, Of course, I was quickly willing to find Fercher von Steinwand. You could only find him by going to a secluded restaurant on Singerstraße in Vienna. That is a street that goes from the opera house towards Stephansplatz. Yes, you see, among all kinds of brothers, who you could already call “brothers,” there was Fercher's fine, spiritualized face in the middle. This German from the Carinthian region, entirely descended in terms of the way he forms his thoughts, this German-Austrian area, and yet precisely that connection to the world of ideas, as it is a spiritual connection and as he actually only lives in this way in this way. Fercher von Steinwand also had great political ideas, but he was not suited to somehow put these political ideas into practice according to the practices that took place in such fields. He was not at all. There are such people everywhere, even if they are not as talented as Fercher von Steinwand, who, precisely in this area, are connected to the spiritual world, who have carried within themselves for a long time a certain feeling for impulses that live there. But it was uncomfortable to listen to such people.

I must say that I was often with Fercher von Steinwand. He always seemed to me to be like one of those gypsies who wander around the world, but the aristocrat among gypsies, like their leader, with great ideas in his head, and who spoke of great ideas as if he had been among them himself. One evening, as we were sitting together, I said to him, just as I had just edited the “Deutsche Wochenschrift”: “Tell me, Mr. Fercher, couldn't you give us something that has not yet been printed?” Surely you still have all sorts of poetry that has not yet been printed; I would be happy to publish it in the weekly magazine.” — ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have all sorts of funny things lying around that I still have.’ And so he gave me this ‘Choir of Primal Instincts,’ which he had had in his desk for a long time and which I published at the time.

This Fercher von Steinwand is one of those individuals who have truly emerged from the folklore of Central Europe. I would like to give you a little insight into the way Fercher von Steinwand was connected to his folklore.

On April 4, 1859, Fercher von Steinwand gave a lecture at the Dresden Antiquarian Society, in the presence of the then Crown Prince Georg (this book still says: present King of Saxony), all ministers and many officers of the highest rank – I ask you to note the latter in particular – in front of all these people, Fercher von Steinwand, so please: in 1859, on April 4, gave a lecture, and on the Gypsies at that. This lecture on the Gypsies contains an extraordinary amount, not so much because of the subtle observations Fercher von Steinwand makes about the Gypsies, but because of the great psychological insights into the psychology of nations that he presents in connection with the Gypsy question. He believes that the gypsies are Indo-Europeans. And now his gaze wanders – as I said, he gave this speech, from which I will now read a piece to you, before Crown Prince Georg of Saxony, before all the ministers and before high military dignitaries – to the Germans, and he said in the course of this speech:

“We Germans, who for a long time did not believe that such a dark genius was possible on earth, had to pay for our bright trust in the world and world order one after the other on inglorious battlefields. We Germans have the unfortunate virtue of respecting a foreign people to the point of foolishly disregarding ourselves, even if they have little or nothing praiseworthy about them, as a striking peculiarity.”

Now I will skip what he says next.

"But our virtue suddenly turns to vice as soon as a great event comes crashing before our doorstep, without stirring up our suffering and troublesome nature and overcoming our ingrained unnatural fear of the divine hint of history, which has often led us to the guillotine of doom. The gods are more hostile to no one than to the Philistine, and nowhere under the sun are there small-time merchants who would not be bullied by a big-time merchant. Like every future, our German future may be a mystery to us. But this one is not as impenetrable as we usually think. We are already coming up with real solutions to this German puzzle, solutions that we can prophetically call prophetic with reference to our homeland.

All this in a speech about the Gypsies. He ties his observations to being a Gypsy, Fercher von Steinwand.

"Let us look a little over the Atlantic Ocean! Let us turn our gaze to São Jorge dos Ilheus or let us travel in our thoughts up the Rio Contas, where we encounter German settlements. “With quiet contempt – so Emperor Max, who is a man of feeling and creative spirit, so something far better than the Emperor of Mexico – ”with quiet contempt, the new shoots look at the old mainland. The gaunt children with the pale, sallow faces, the forget-me-not blue eyes and the straw-yellow, spiky hair particularly caught my eye and vividly reminded me of the descendants of our German villages. I approached two older boys and spoke to them in German; they looked up at me shyly and could not answer me, only uttering their own German names with difficulty. They were children of German immigrants, of whom there are many in Ilheus. Not without a feeling of indignation, I found that even they were complete Brazilians, unable to speak their mother tongue even with their own parents. And then the Germans wonder why they have no independent position anywhere, that they, instead of dominating, are a kind of halfway house between slaves and free people. What a disgrace for German parents to communicate with their children in foreign languages! How the family relationship must suffer when the weak mother must struggle with her own blood in foreign expressions! – This fact, which can be found everywhere, may be a major reason for the gloomy melancholy that weighs heavily and worryingly on the faces and natures of all German colonists. During my trip, I did not see a single cheerful German emigrant; they all bore a secret pain. Sometimes the children benefit from the broken existence of their parents, but their lack of character almost always leads them to abandon the foreign and closed nationalities. This is the pain that weighs on the minds of these strangers. — Two pale men with haggard features were walking along the path; a few German words proved their transatlantic origin. They answered in the language of their homeland, but the sound was no longer full and pure, the dull tone had something tired and sad about it; their figures were also without energy and elasticity, as if they were people who missed their calling, did not feel at home, for whom the French expression dépaysé applies in the fullest sense. Most German emigrants present such a picture of melancholy; the secret worm gnaws at all of them.”

Is that not the air of the gipsies wafting over from the banks of the Rio Contas? And that dreadful Melusine, what whispers she in our ears? A word from our German future, an icy greeting from her for a speedy reunion. Yes, this future is already approaching eerily on our horizon.

This was spoken in 1859!

"Yes, this future is already approaching eerily on our horizon, looking over the banks and mountains into the depths of our lands, gaunt enough, like the genius of death with the pallor of death on its face. We have no right to expect otherwise.

What we say has no marrow; what we do has no core; what we create artistically has neither the sound nor the nobility of the great outdoors. It seems as if we have set ourselves the task of teasing art with barren idiosyncrasy, with sober folksiness, with forced naturalism. What we think or contribute to history has enough room in the hollow cone of a sleepyhead."

Thus spoke that which really spoke out of this folklore. And that is present, that still lives today. It can only be brutalized. That has also been sufficiently brutalized in the course of recent years. It will also have to be conceded at some point what national self-awareness is in select individuals; perhaps it did not live best under the aegis of people like Clemenceau, but perhaps under a different aegis.

From time to time, one must also look at things apart from the phrases that dominate the world, and in world-historical moments this is perhaps also necessary. When Fercher von Steinwand speaks of his people in reference to gypsy characterizations, there is perhaps something melancholically pessimistic about it when it comes out exactly as it did in this speech, but that is not how it is meant, it is truly not meant that way. Something of these “gypsies” must go into world mission. This is rejected today, this is denied today. This denial is closely connected with Wilsonianism, but the facts will teach the world otherwise. And so that from some side there is already protest against what will certainly be connected with much worldly infallibility and much worldly belief in authority in the near future, so that there may be protest against this – perhaps the world will say: Gypsy -Protest is taking place here — I have expressed my wish and my thoughts that this building, as a protest against what will happen in the coming years to all of civilized humanity, so-called civilized humanity, should be called the Goetheanum. This is not just to connect with Goethe in some superficial, easy way, but it is out of the impulse of our time.

We will continue this discussion tomorrow.

In the last lecture we began to consider aspects of mankind's post-Atlantean evolution which can provide a key to our present problems. Current events do indeed present a riddle to those who attempt to understand them merely by means of the materialistic concepts and ideas of our age. That we are in need of new ideas must be obvious from the many things we have considered. Concepts that sufficed in the past are no longer sufficient to understand present-day life which has become so much more complex. I have for years repeatedly emphasized in various lectures something which I believe to be of utmost importance for the present time.

I have repeatedly said in various places the following: If we survey the field and scope of thoughts and ideas, by means of which attempts are made to understand the world and attain a glimpse behind the scenes of external physical reality, we shall find that the most valuable of those ideas originated in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch which began in 1413 has not produced any ideas that are fundamentally new. Certainly it has produced, in admirable fashion, an enormous amount of new facts and combinations of facts. However, they are understood in the light of the old ideas. Let us take an example: What Darwin and his successors have brought together, in order to demonstrate organic relationships, has been introduced into the concept of evolution; but the concept of evolution is in itself not new; it stems from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. When concepts and ideas are taken seriously and their true nature and reality is understood, then it will be seen that this way of dealing with issues permeates all spheres of knowledge.

Only when Goethe brought the ideas from the past into movement can it be said that a step forward was made. He saw in the concept as such the possibility of transformation, of metamorphosis and thus introduced something quite new which as yet is not properly appreciated. Concepts of blossom, of fruit and so on he saw as transformations of the basic concept “leaf.”¹ To recognize a living mobility in concepts and mental pictures is something new. It enables one to transform concepts within oneself so that they follow the manifold metamorphoses taking place in the phenomena of nature. I have for many years pointed out that this is Goethe's most important discovery, a discovery whose further development is to be found only in spiritual science. Spiritual science alone brings man new concepts enabling him to penetrate true reality.

It is of special importance that the concept of history should be widened. In our recent considerations we have in fact worked with a much extended concept of history. This enabled us more particularly to recognize how the constitution and whole disposition of man's soul has changed. Just a few centuries ago man's soul was fundamentally different from what, in conformity with human evolution, it is now. I drew attention to the fact that during the first, the ancient Indian epoch, man continued his bodily development right up to the ages between 56 and 48. I tried to illustrate this by saying that whereas today in the child and youth the development of the spirit-soul being takes its course parallel to the development of the physical body, in that ancient cultural epoch this continued right into the fifties of a person's life. Today man no longer notices when his body passes beyond the 30th year. All he is aware of inwardly is that in childhood his muscles become stronger and the nerve functions change. It is during this time when changes take place in muscles, nerves and blood that he notices the soul-spiritual element following a parallel development to that of the physical organism. Then comes the time when the soul and spirit cease to be dependent on the organism. However, in the ancient Indian epoch, the dependence persisted, and this is something we must consider in more detail.

Man was at that time, just as he is now, more or less consciously aware of becoming physically stronger during childhood, aware also that at the same time his life of will, of feeling and also his mental life became different. In other words, he was aware during childhood and youth of his soul's dependence on the growing, thriving, flourishing life of the organism. Then came the time when he reached the middle of life which occurs in his thirties; the 35th year must be regarded as the middle of life. Today man is not aware of going through the middle of life the way he is aware, for example, of going through puberty from 12 to 16. But in that ancient time man was aware of this; he sensed to a certain extent, that before he reached his thirties life had welled up within him, had grown ever stronger till it reached a climax and now had begun to recede. He sensed that growth had stopped, that the formation of nerves had come to an end and that from now on he would remain as he was. Those who were particularly sensitive even felt their life forces become sluggish and recede; they felt ossification taking place and that they were becoming mineralized.

When man at that time reached his forties he felt that a decisive decline began, that the organic life was withdrawing. But he also experienced something which can be experienced no longer, namely his soul's dependence on the declining life of the body. Thus, in that ancient time man experienced going through three stages of development whereas now he experiences at most going through one.

How were the three stages experienced? Let us look quite carefully at the dependence on the thriving, flourishing life forces during the body's growth; let us establish initially that an individual felt himself to be thoroughly healthy—something very few people do today—so that he strongly experienced that the healthy, flourishing, thriving life welling up within him was carried by the spirit. After all, what grows is not the merely physical substances taken in as nourishment; it is the spiritual forces underlying the body that cause growth and development. One can look at one's origin as a human being and say: My body came into being through hereditary substances; the spirit united itself with the body and caused its growth and development. In that ancient time man's spirit-soul being felt itself within the body; its healthy dependence upon the body was felt to be brought about by God, and indeed by God the Father. Man at that time said to himself something like this: I am placed into the world with forces of growth, of thriving, and provided one pays attention and has a feeling for what takes place in the body, then the soul can sense in the growing and thriving the effect of the Father God. Man felt related to nature, that human beings grow and thrive just as plants and animals do. He felt related to natural existence and felt the Father God within himself. Thus you see that something which today can take place only under exceptional circumstances was in that ancient time experienced simply as part of life. Then began the period in the life of the individual when he passed through the middle of life and therefore through the culmination, the climax of the growing, thriving life forces, and then the time of decline began.

As we have seen, the growing, thriving life of the healthy body, upon which the spirit-soul being of man knew itself dependent, called forth the feeling “ex deo nascimur,” “from God I am born.” Man felt he originated from God, who also caused his further growth and development. When he passed beyond the middle of life, he could still detect during ordinary waking consciousness the thriving life forces. This was partly because he still remembered his spirit-soul being's earlier dependence on the bodily nature and because he could observe growth and thriving of a similar kind in external nature. However, during lowered states of consciousness, such as dream or sleep and also during the state of atavistic clairvoyance, the astral body and I withdrew from the declining life forces which remained connected with the physical body. It is during sleep that the declining life forces are particularly important to man. In that ancient time those who reached the age when their life forces were declining perceived them particularly in such states of lowered consciousness. And when the physical body began to withdraw and become sclerotic, the soul began to live within the spirit of the whole cosmic environment. Thus in that ancient epoch, when man had passed the climax of the thriving life forces and the body's decline had set in, he perceived in waking consciousness the spiritual in all natural existence; in states of dream, of sleep, or of atavistic clairvoyance he perceived the spirit that pervades the whole cosmos.

Try to imagine these experiences: Man felt his awareness of the spirit-permeated, God-ensouled nature alternate with awareness of the spirit of the cosmos; one kind he experienced as ascending, the other as descending. Thus he was directly aware of the union of the spirit of the cosmos with the spirit of nature and was conscious that the spirit of nature is on earth and the spirit of the cosmos in the earth's environment. He knew that they are related, that they weave into one another and that during his life man passes from one to the other. When his life forces began to decline after having reached their climax, he experienced becoming permeated with the spirit of the cosmos, later known as the Christ.

At that time, during their forties and beyond, people experienced their spirit-soul being's dependence on their declining life forces, especially during dream, sleep and other states of semi-consciousness. If they lived beyond their forties, they became aware of the spirit itself, the spirit which is not linked to matter, but lives as spirit. From their forties onwards they perceived the Holy Spirit. Thus when we look back to that ancient time we find that people in the course of their life perceived directly the Father-God, the Christ-God—who had not yet descended to earthly existence—and the Holy Spirit. Such direct human experiences are the basis for the ancient religious traditions, to be found everywhere, of a divine Trinity.

We see in this how one truth complements another, which is something that must be recognized more and more as a feature of science of the spirit. If it were recognized, we would not hear remarks, such as those made recently to a member of our movement, to the effect that what is said in our lectures is all very beautiful but lacks all foundation. Such a statement is just about as clever, or should I say stupid, as it would be had someone said, when Copernicus established that the earth circles the sun and consequently cannot be fixed on a base; Oh, but the earth lacks all foundation—planets and stars must be sitting on something! Just as planets and stars are self-supporting physically, so it should be recognized that the science of the spirit is an edifice whose individual aspects are mutually self-supporting.

We now come to the ancient Persian epoch during which, as described, man's natural development continued only in his forties, that is, to the ages between 48 and 42. You will realize that this meant the direct vision of the spirit in its purity faded, though there was still an awareness of it. Those who lived beyond the ages between 48 and 42 could still be aware of the Holy Spirit.

Then came the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch. Mankind's general age dropped to that between 42 and 35. Vision of the spirit in its purity clouded over. Towards the end of this epoch it was really only those initiated in the mysteries who could know about the pure spirit. In the mysteries everywhere one could, of course, learn through direct vision about the secret of the Trinity. But as far as ordinary life was concerned understanding of the spirit receded. However, in this third post-Atlantean epoch man was still strongly conscious that in the cosmos, in the heavens, an ascending and descending spirit lives. Consciousness of the cosmic Christ was general. Man was still strongly conscious of his connection with the world of the Gods.

As we come to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch all this changes. During this epoch mankind's age corresponded to that of individual man between 35 and 28. At the beginning of this epoch, which began in 747 B.C. and ended in A.D. 1413, it was still the case that when a person reached the same age as that of mankind, 35, he still had imaginative knowledge of the Christ Spirit. However, at the end of the first third of that epoch, when a third of Hellenism had run its course and modern chronology began, mankind's age was about 33. Man's dependence upon the flourishing, up-thrusting life forces no longer lasted beyond the point of their culmination though the dependence was still experienced much more strongly than was the case later in the fifth epoch. Man was still conscious of the Father God, but consciousness of the cosmic Christ gradually faded. Then came the event which replaced what was lost from consciousness. Just as mankind's age dropped to that of 33, the cosmic Christ descended to the earth and entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christ force spread over the earth and, from another direction, bestowed upon man what formerly he had possessed as an immediate human experience through his spirit-soul being's dependence upon his physical-bodily nature. This is the immense significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. It explains the significance of what is understood by “the promise of the Holy Spirit.” A time had begun in which the Holy Spirit must be attained from within, independent of man's bodily development, through the impulse initiated by Christ. The connection man formerly had with the spiritual world came about purely through the way his soul and bodily natures were interrelated; this now changed. What had filled man's consciousness thanks merely to normal evolution gradually vanished.

Then came the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Mankind's age dropped to 28 and will drop to 21 during this epoch. As I have mentioned we live at the time when mankind's general age is about 27. Therefore (and this must be continually emphasized) it is now necessary that within the soul, forces are initiated which do not arise because bodily forces shoot into the soul. Now spiritual impulses, engendered independently, must be established in the soul, impulses which further the soul in its independence from the body. A healthy person leading a healthy life can sense the dependence on the Father God up to about his 30th year; that is, as long as the forces of growth are still thriving in his body, even if only those of his muscles. As you will realize, it is essential that, as the fifth epoch progresses, there should develop a healthy sense also for the divine spiritual element that withdraws from the forces of growth. A sense and feeling for this was still vivid in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch right up to the 15th century. In that epoch mankind's general age corresponded to the middle of life spanning the ages between 35 and 28. Already mankind's age is one year less; because of this, the bodily constitution of man makes him inclined toward materialism and atheism. The spread of atheism is due to man's bodily organism. It will spread ever more unless a spiritual counterbalance is created by impulses that originate purely within the soul, developed in complete independence of the body. Man becomes an atheist when he ceases to participate in the forces of growth and thriving, and therefore no longer experiences himself as a healthy, complete human being. That is why I have said that one can only be an atheist when one does not, in a healthy way, sense one's spirit-soul being's connection with the growing and developing bodily nature. Spiritual science recognizes atheism as an illness that will increasingly take hold of man in the course of his normal evolution. This is because man will more and more lack the support provided by the bodily nature which enables him to grasp reality in general.

To deny or fail to recognize Christ must be regarded as a misfortune, a tragic destiny, for Christ—from the external world—comes to meet man full of grace. To fail to recognize the spirit must be regarded as soul blindness. To be an atheist is an illness; what is meant is, of course, illness in the widest sense. It is necessary to make these distinctions.

From what has been explained you can see that if one truly wants to understand the evolution of the human race, a completely new concept of evolution is needed. The Darwinian idea of evolution is dreadfully abstract; once its crudeness has been recognized it will be realized that along that path no progress is possible. Evolution follows, as we have seen, an ascending as well as a descending line. The view of today's superficial materialism is that evolution starts from a certain form of life which then progresses to ever higher stages, thus believing that there is a continuous trend towards ever greater perfection.

During post-Atlantean epochs man's evolution goes in the direction of his soul and spirit becoming ever more independent of the body. During the earlier epochs there burst into his soul and spirit, from his bodily nature, comprehension of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The first to fade was comprehension of the Holy Spirit, next that of the Son, and we are now at the stage when, in ordinary life, comprehension of the Father is fading. This fading comprehension of the Father has its origin in man's life of feeling, for as I said, man is at present more or less conscious of his soul-spirit's connection with the bodily nature. This is related to something else. Bear in mind that in general man's spirit-soul being receives less and less from the bodily nature, with the consequence that, if man wants to approach the spirit, he must do so along paths where there is no support from the bodily organism. This accounts for the fact, clearly perceptible to those able to observe such things, that man produces ever fewer concepts and ideas. The concepts and ideas at man's disposal in ancient times bubbled forth, so to speak, from his bodily nature, for all matter contains spirit and this the body simply handed over of itself. But now the body provides man with fewer and fewer concepts and mental pictures. So, expressing it somewhat drastically, he must now rack his brain more and more or, if he is too easy-going, not rack it. Either way he no longer finds concepts welling up within him; he must turn to spiritual knowledge if he wants to acquire them. Spiritual science provides mobile concepts which, in contrast to the rigid, lifeless concepts understood by means of the physical body, must be understood by means of the ether body. Thus, in the course of normal evolution, man becomes ever poorer in concepts. The way he is naturally organized prevents him, if he refuses the path of spiritual knowledge, from delving into true reality.

This explains the present situation. It makes comprehensible what must be described, without levelling any criticism, as the cause for man becoming ever more obtuse without spiritual knowledge. These are things that must be faced in deep earnestness. The brain will gradually become more and more mineralized, it will become a blunt insensible instrument with which ideas capable of delving into reality can no longer be formulated. Only people who make no effort and feel no inclination to understand what is actually taking place in the world can pass these things by. Yet it is of utmost urgency that one should try to understand.

Provided one is not asleep, one cannot be unaware of the many curious things that occur. However, most people are asleep for they are aware only of what takes place on the surface, not of the effective impulses beneath. If one pays attention to what goes on there is much that seems inexplicable, for without spiritual insight one is helpless in face of these riddles. An event that illustrates this quite aptly took place recently in Austria. A certain Robert Scheu, a man of great idealism, has tried for decades to bring about what he visualized as a movement of a cultural-political nature.² He is concerned about the kind of issues often discussed in our circles. In his endeavour to discover new approaches to political issues, he gathered around him a group of intellectuals. His aim was that together they should discover policies that would ensure greater spiritual influence in people's lives.

This start to the project would have been commendable if by bringing intellectuals together, spiritual influences in people's destinies could be ensured. But what induced Robert Scheu to start this venture in the 1890s? The impulse arose within him from an indefinite feeling that things could not go on as they were; he felt some essential ingredient was missing in life which must be discovered. Needless to say he has not found what mankind so sorely needs. Like so many others who vaguely feel something is missing, he looks upon spiritual science as fantastic superstition. Such people consider themselves far too clever to be concerned with matters of this kind. However, Robert Scheu does feel very strongly that something is lacking. He says the following: “My fundamental conviction, which I herewith repeat, is: As far as cognition, as far as mental activity is concerned, our time is far ahead of the times.”³

A curious expression—what does he mean? He says nothing about the fact that thoughts have become blunted; he is only aware that today's intellectuals are clever in the sense that they can produce abstract ideas like clockwork, and are so sure of their judgments because of the transparency of their abstract ideas. That is why he says that “as far as cognition, as mental activity is concerned, our time is far ahead of the times.” In other words, people are very capable of producing thoughts, but these thoughts are of the kind I have described, quite unrelated to reality. Thus one could also say: Our time is far behind the times. Scheu goes on to say: “As knowers we have become decadent, our thoughts are too rarefied.” That is certainly true of modern man. We need only look at our literature or observe everyday life. Just think of all the intricate thoughts people spin out, but thoughts that are quite incapable of penetrating reality. Hence Scheu is right when he says: “As knowers we have become decadent, our thoughts are too rarefied, too translucent; we are still dominated by the Middle Ages. The reason is that the furnace in which thoughts ought to be recast does not function.”

Scheu expresses himself with feeling in a strange way, but what he says is based on a true sense for what is lacking in our time. Indeed the “furnace” does not function in which thoughts, lost in nebulous abstraction, could become so inwardly strengthened, that they become able to unite with reality. He recognizes that thoughts have become abstract to the point of decadence and that a great number of people have poured our abstract ideas concerning socialism, social-democracy and liberalism with marvelous logic, especially in marxism. Combinations of such abstractions are also possible such as national liberalism, social liberalism and so on. We also have abstract ideas about conservatism. On the basis of all these abstractions—abstract because the furnace is missing that could transform them—one builds up parliamentary systems, representative systems and the network of ideas on which are based liberalism, social liberalism, social democracy, conservatism, nationalism and so on.

Robert Scheu has done what from his point of view is not a bad thing; he has attempted with the means at his disposal to replace the abstractions with reality. Instead of the abstract ideas he wants inquiries set up, maintaining that those who are knowledgeable about an issue should be the ones to judge what should be done about it. After all, whether one is a liberal or conservative is of no great moment when it is a question of organizing the sale of oil or arranging art galleries. What matters in such instances is insight into oil distribution or knowledge about art. Robert Scheu did in fact arrange inquiries into various issues and saw to it that people who made the inquiries spoke about them. A very ingenious start.

He attempts to decide where what he calls the “furnace” is, or ought to be, located. He asks, “Should it be the parliament, the congress? Or should one look for it in the administration? And do the parties uphold the system of representation?” He further points out that “the system contains programs of fundamentally conflicting interests; the parties do not grasp the real issues of life to which they have a purely deductive approach. They are only interested in what constitutes means for enhancing the power of the party.”

Here is someone who for once realizes that the rarefaction, the abstractness of thought—one could also call it dullness, obtuseness, for the thoughts have no contact with reality—have a direct effect on life. He links this problem with the problems of development in social conditions, whether under the system of representation or any other form of government. He is fully aware that no, solution is possible by treating the problems in the old manner. He ponders the possibility of discovering from life itself what could bring order into the structure of-social life; he has in fact done much in this direction. What is interesting is that he now looks back at his efforts and asks himself, “What did I actually attempt to achieve?” What he tried to do was to penetrate to the reality of the issues. However, he expresses this in today's abstract terminology by saying, “I replaced deduction with induction.” These kinds of expressions one meets with everywhere. But Robert Scheu is not altogether satisfied with the result of this endeavour; that is why at the end of the article in which he presents the whole story he says, “I have come to the conclusion that my inductive approach to cultural and political life needs to be completed by a deductive approach. I realize the problem is like a tunnel that must be excavated from both ends if a breakthrough is to be achieved. The mental work necessary must be a joint effort of all Europeans of good will.”

So you see that Robert Scheu comes to recognize that the problem must be approached from two sides. What he does not recognize is the source from which concepts and ideas, allied with reality, must be drawn. He comes to a standstill and does not really believe in his so-called inductive approach via all kinds of inquiries. In any case, to make inquiries is to approach reality from one side only. The approach to the other, the spiritual side, would be the search for the spiritual aspect by means of spiritual knowledge.

Everyday practical life demands spiritual science. This is not suggesting anything out of the way or difficult; rather, it is a thought that essentially belongs to this very moment in mankind's evolution. Just imagine how fruitful spiritual science could be if people would overcome the prejudices which blind them to its reality. Without spiritual knowledge one only arrives at absurdities which deteriorate into all kinds of ridiculous situations. This becomes very obvious when one lives within the mobile concepts of spiritual science. Robert Scheu, for example, wants inquiries set up into the various branches of social life; he wants people who are knowledgeable to speak on the issues. One such issue he wants altered through an inquiry is the system of registration of domicile; just imagine what that would mean at the present time.

However, he does represent a striking example of the fact that people are beginning to feel that something is lacking, but cannot make the decision to turn to what is necessary. Yet I have always tried from the beginning to prevent spiritual science from becoming abstruse and sectarian. I have tried to let it flow into life in response to human requirements. Whenever my advice was sought I tried to give it in accordance with each person's individual need. It must be said, though, that the present materialistic way of life creates huge difficulties in applying such advice. It is understandable that a manufacturer would find it strange if told that science of the spirit could help him run his business better. Yet one could hope that it would work at some point.

A man came to me some years ago who said he wanted his scientific work to be enhanced by spiritual science. We spoke about his scientific work. He was wonderfully erudite; he had really mastered Babylonian and Egyptian archeology to a remarkable degree. I tried to work out with him where the threads could be attached to today's knowledge which would allow spiritual science to flow into his endeavors, so that at least a part of his science could be fructified by spiritual science. He had what modern science can say about the subject; from us he found what spiritual science can reveal about it. He had both—but he could not bring forth the will to penetrate and illumine the one with the other.

If one does not develop this will, one will never understand what is actually intended with spiritual science. One will rather be inclined to make the science of the spirit into merely one more doubtful mysticism so beloved by those who belittle earthly life. There are those who have the view that this life is worth nothing; one must rise to a higher life. One must rise from this world of the senses into a reverie—then a higher life will arise. Why bring up one's children properly here when one can rather think about one's prior incarnations? That brings one into the higher regions and so forth. That is not what is at stake here. What is essential is that, in the area where one stands, one can make science of the spirit fruitful. It can be made fruitful everywhere. Life demands it.

One would wish to have something more than words today to make that comprehensible. Who feels today what lies in words? Who really feels into words? Feeling with words—that is something that humanity has almost lost, at least in that portion of humanity to which we belong. Let me use an example. [^* ] When someone says, “You did your job pretty well” (ziemlich gut), who feels much more today at these words than “You almost did your job well” (fast gut)? “Pretty” (ziemlich) is “almost” (fast). We say one instead of the other. Place your hand on your heart and say you don't feel “almost” when someone says “pretty” (ziemlich) in that way! But “pretty” (ziemlich) is a word which has referred to activities and products which were done properly or decently (geziemend). Who feels anymore the “proper” (geziemend) in the “pretty” (ziemlich) in this case?

Or, who feels in the word “Zweifel” (doubt) the fact that it carries the “Zwei” (two), that one stands before something which divides into two? Who feels indeed the “zw, z-w”?^** But wherever the “zw” appears, you have the same sensation as in doubting (Zweifel), which divides the things in two. “Zwischen” (between)—there you have the same! “Zweck” (goal), “Zweifel” (doubt), “zwar” (indeed)—try to feel it! Feeling can lie in all speech relations. But our words have today become an exceedingly worthless currency. Therefore one would really like to have something other than language to give a penetrating impression of what is necessary for today and what spiritual science could give. The way speech is used today deadens thinking even more than is happening anyway as an effect of natural evolution. The result is a chaos of obtuse thoughts written and printed everywhere.

One could sweat blood, as almost happened to me this morning when I picked up a book by Dr. Johann Plenge, professor of political science at the University of Munster in Westphalia.⁴ This man claims to have unraveled a great contradiction which developed between the ideas of 1789 and 1914. He regards himself as an extremely important fellow, but let that pass. On page 61 of his book one comes across an astonishing sentence. I shall now be somewhat pedantic, but the pedantry refers to something subtle, and those who can feel it, will do so. The sentence on page 61 slugged me—excuse the expression. It says: “Imagine you were a future historian who one day hears about the world catastrophe of 1914.” What is one to make of a sentence like that? He imagines a future historian who suddenly hears about the world war of 1914. So during his whole youth he has never heard of it, but only does so quite by chance when he is a writer of history! One really can no longer be living within living images to be able to produce something like that. He tried to characterize the nature and significance of ideas. He points to ideas that run through mankind's history, saying that ideas can emerge and again withdraw. In this way he attempts to discover the essence of ideas. He tries to show how ideas unconsciously emerge in primitive races and gradually become more conscious. During his attempts he comes up with the following: “A civilized nation in the making lives according to the example of an imagined ennobled humanity. The position of Homer in antiquity is the best example of such a formation of an idea-complex.”

So, the position of Homer in antiquity is an example of the formation of ideas! One might just as well say that the role of a court advisor is an example of how an idea-complex is formed. It is impossible to think along with something like that if one wants to connect living images with one's concepts. When one is used to doing so from youth, sentences containing such affectations in words are experienced like a slap in the face. They remind me vividly of a professor who began a course of lectures by raising 25 questions. He is a professor of literature who has become very famous indeed. I shall not name him, for you would not believe me. Having put his 25 questions he said: “Gentlemen, I have placed before you a forest of question marks!”—So one had to imagine a wood composed of rows of question marks. Ask yourselves what sort of thinking it is when thoughts remain unrelated to reality, when a person does not live in his thoughts, and they result in nothing but verbiage.

This is a situation that is not uncommon; one comes across the strangest assertions. Plenge, for example, says, “Like the astronomer, so the true historian is able to forecast events.” And then the good fellow proceeds to show how things developed in the period leading up to the catastrophe of the present war. Since he regards himself as a truly great historian, he should be well able to forecast such a catastrophe, but though he has written several books on external affairs, he has not done so. This troubles him; he therefore explains how he has done it after all. And how has he done it? He says, “Well, I have shown that because of the way things were developing one had to strive for peace with all one's strength and power; then I have shown that, as things were, only the war could come.” No one can deny that to be an accurate prophecy! It is comparable to my having two coats and saying, Provided I will not wear this one tomorrow, I shall be wearing the other one. And he continues in the same vein, for when he speaks about how he faltered between forecasting peace or war he says—or rather he quotes himself (quotations are a peculiar feature throughout the book), “To make such a forecast one must let one's fantasy play with the idea of war.” What a sentiment! To suggest that one should indulge in fantasy of war in the years leading up to the present catastrophe reveals an attitude of incredible irresponsibility.

As I said, quotations are a peculiar feature of this book by Plenge. The book is associated throughout with an article that appeared in a daily newspaper. The article is quite inoffensive, written by an unknown journalist who rebels against Plenge's “discovery” of the way ideas had changed by 1914. What makes the composition of Plenge's book peculiar is that on the first page one finds the newspaper article reproduced, or as much of it as Plenge found suitable for his purpose. He speaks about the article, quoting it again on page 21. So the article has now been read twice. He then continues and quotes part of it for a third time. Towards the end of the book, having quoted the article three times, he does so once again, So you have a book with a newspaper article quoted four times.

I chose such concrete examples in order to make clear how things really are and to show also what is necessary. I want to demonstrate that science of the spirit is what is needed, what must intervene in present affairs. The things I have spoken about may seem like trifles; nonetheless they are closely connected with the great issues with which we started our considerations. This I ask you to bear in mind during these lectures.

• 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832; Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited by Rudolf Steiner (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland) 1982. Original edition by Joseph Kiirschner, 1883–1897.
• 2. Robert Scheu, 1873–1964, Kulturpolitik, Vienna, 1901.
• 3. Ibid.
• *. This portion of Steiner's lecture used characteristics of German words unique within that language for those examples. An analogous substitution of the word “pretty” for “ziemlich” has been used in the following rendering for the English reader. The analogy is not direct, since “pretty” and “ziemlich” have diverging semantic roles and heritages; it is nevertheless imperfectly useful in grasping the speaker's train of thought.
• **. Pronounced as one would pronounce the letters “ts-v” in English. This sound has not carried over into English, although a similar combination of letters, today unpronounced, remains in the word “two” (German dialect “zwo” = “zwei” = “two”).
• 4. Dr. Johann Plenge, 1874–1963, 1789 and 1914. Die symbolischen Jahre in der Geschichte des politischen Geistes, Berlin 1916.

The two previous lectures dealt with important questions relating to the nature and destiny of man. We heard that the human physical body and ether-body are not connected merely with the external world perceived by the senses and that this bodily nature of man can only be understood aright when we also recognise its relation with the Zodiac. And we then tried to understand how the heaven of the fixed stars and the planetary spheres work upon what lies within the outer covering of man, shaping and imbuing it with life. In the last lecture we also heard how the inner, spiritual core of man's being is related to the world of the higher Hierarchies. It was indicated that this connection with the world of the higher Hierarchies becomes especially noticeable when we observe how in his physical life on Earth, man can achieve union with the spiritual world through morality, religious devotion and love for his fellow-men; in this way he enables his Guardian Angel so to order his descent at the end of his life between death and a new birth that he again acquires the full power of individuality and is able, as a free individual, to take hold of his human nature. We also heard that if a man has not established this relation to the spiritual world in some incarnation, his link with his nation, for example, is of a purely external kind, and that this, in its extreme form, leads to chauvinism.

Such studies show us that man's life can only be truly understood when the other side, too, is considered, that is to say, the life stretching between death and a new birth. As soon as we come to study the inner nature of man, this life between death and a new birth must be taken into consideration.. For life here on the Earth is in truth a reflection of the life between death and a new birth. Life in matter is the bodily life and what we have developed in the world of spirit-and-soul before birth expresses itself in this bodily life.

What we must acquire anew, what must be built up anew in the core of our being, is the element appertaining to the will, and in a certain respect also to the life of feeling. The faculty of thinking that is bound up with the head—this we bring with us from the spiritual world—to the extent to which thinking is unmixed with feeling. Our thinking faculty per se comes with us at birth into physical existence and we have only to develop it during physical life or allow it to be developed by education. What we mainly acquire in the new incarnation through intercourse with the outer world are the qualities inherent in feeling and in will, which for this reason play an extremely important part in education.

In the sphere of education, if through our own short-comings as teachers we are incapable of helping the child to think properly, we may leave undeveloped much that by virtue of his previous incarnations he could have brought to expression. If, however, we are unable to work on the child's life of feeling and of will through our natural authority and our example as teachers, then we fail to impart to him what he ought to receive in the physical world, and thus we do injury to his subsequent life after death. In the modern world this is a cause of deep pain to anyone who understands these things. In the world of education to-day people insist upon the importance of the child being made to use his brain, upon the cultivation of his intellect. True, much that the child brings with him through birth is brought out by these means. But it can only be of real use when earthly life, too is presented to the child in the right way, that is to say, when we are able through example and authority to impart to him the intangible qualities belonging to feeling and to will. We injure the child's eternal life if we fail to cultivate in him the right kind of feeling and. will.

The faculty of thinking which we bring with us at birth, comes to an end here, in the material world, it dies with us. Only what we cultivate through feeling and will—which is nevertheless unconsciously permeated with new thoughts—this and this only we take with us through the Gate of Death. In our present very difficult times, religion, education, indeed every domain of mental and spiritual life must begin to take account of man's eternal nature, not merely of human egotism.

Religions of the present day speculate far too much upon human egotism. On the one side they encourage inertia by not spurring men on to acquire those things which are eternal by inner individual effort in the life of feeling and of will; and on the other side they enhance egotism by speaking only of eternal life after death, not of what was there before birth or conception and has come down with us into the physical world. I have said before that this life before birth is connected with selflessness in man, whereas human egotism comes into play whenever mention is made of the life after death. Life after death assumes an egotistic form in the religious concepts of to-day. The idea is put before man in such a way that his longings are satisfied. When the religions believe that they have helped the egotistic life of soul in man, they think they have done what is expected of them. But through a truly spiritual understanding of the world, mankind must be brought to realise how essential it is for the whole life of the human being to be viewed in the light of eternity, free from every trace of egotism and moulded accordingly by those whose task it is to teach and educate.

Now this has a significant bearing upon public life too, and it is of this that I want to speak to-day. For it is in the highest degree necessary that what we gain from an anthroposophical knowledge of higher worlds should be carried into actual life, that we should know how to bring it to expression in life. Abstract theories are really of little use. Life on the Earth is many-sided, full of variety. If, for example, we consider the life of the peoples, it is not only obvious that Indians differ from Americans or Englishmen, but Swedes are often said to differ from Norwegians although they live in such near proximity. We cannot let ourselves be guided entirely by general principles; concrete, individual conditions prevail everywhere and it is these that are important. It is just these individual conditions that we shall fail to recognise if we do not take our start from the Spiritual. Modern man does not really know the world. He talks a great deal about the world but he does not know it, for he is unaware that the soul-and-spirit extends into physical existence and that, fundamentally, this physical existence is governed by the Spiritual. This knowledge is not acquired by studying abstract, general principles. These abstract principles are often perfectly correct, but they do not carry us very far in the world as it actually is.

Certainly it is quite correct to say: ‘God rules the world.’ But in face of the manifold variety of the world it is purposeless to keep repeating: ‘God rules the world in India, God rules the world in England, God rules the world in Sweden, God rules the world in Norway.’ Certainly, God rules the world everywhere, but for the purposes of life in its immediate reality, it is necessary to know how God rules the world in India, in England, in Sweden, in Norway. In spiritual study the individual conditions must be observed in every case. Of what use would it be, for example, to take a man into a Geld, show him a plant with yellow flowers and round petals and merely tell him, “That is a plant”—and then take him to a plant with thorns and pointed, tapering petals, repeating: “That is a plant.” It is the specific and individual properties of the plant that must be made clear to him. But in spiritual matters man has become so easygoing and slack that he is content with general principles. He only wants to hear: ‘God rules the world,’ or ‘Man has a Guardian Angel’ and he feels no desire for detailed knowledge of how life is differentiated in the various regions of the Earth, or how its various manifestations have been influenced by the spiritual world.

This, then, will be the theme of the lecture.

It is precisely in these days of tumult, when people all over the world are so utterly at sea in public affairs, when congresses and conferences produce no result, and in spite of high-sounding programmes, men disperse without having come to any real decision—it is precisely now that deeper questions should be raised concerning all that is revealing itself from the spiritual world in the different regions of the Earth.

Think of the peninsula which you, together with the Swedes, have as your earthly dwelling-place. There is something about it that presents a kind of riddle to those who do not live in Sweden or Norway, as well as to those who actually live here. There was certainly a great difference in the way in which since 1914, let us say, you thought about the tumultuous events going on in the world. These events have struck their blows in manifold ways but man to-day is largely unaware of their effects; he does not realise what deeper forces have been and are in operation. Looking down to Middle Europe, to the South of Europe, to Africa, even to regions of Asia, the events will have seemed to you to be the direct expression of violent, elemental passions, whereas up here you were merely experiencing the consequences and reverberations of those events. People up here in the North may well have been perplexed, for it really was as though men had suddenly become frenzied with desire to tear one another to pieces. Those who were only onlookers must certainly have been perplexed when they thought about these happenings more deeply.

But such things cannot be explained by studying only the one period—even a period fraught with happenings as momentous as those of recent years. True, someone may say that it seems to him as though he had lived through centuries in these few years, but in general there will only be a very gradual realisation that this is actually so. Most people are living and thinking to-day exactly as they did in 1914. In countries like these in the North, this is in a way understandable. But that it is also the case in Middle Europe is terrible. The normal feeling would be one of having lived through events which would otherwise have come to pass only in the course of centuries. Everything was compressed into a few short years. Events like those of 1914-1915 embraced within a brief space of time as much as about ten years of the Thirty Years War, and a measure of illumination can only be shed upon them when they are studied in a much wider historical perspective.

From the vantage-point of your Northern peninsula you will be able to realise that it is only since the beginning of the present epoch that things have been happening South of you in which your participation has been different from that of the peoples who live in the South of Europe, in Western Asia, or in Middle Europe. There has really been an utter contrast between the South and the North of Europe in this respect.

I want you to think of the fourth century A.D., or rather of the period which reaches its climax in that century. In the South, on the Greek peninsula and especially on the Italian peninsula—also in the life of Middle Europe which was in contact with Italy—you see the spread of Christianity. But something else as well is to be perceived. Christianity makes its way from the East into the Pagan world of Europe, expressing itself in many different forms. When we consider the early centuries, the first, second and even the third centuries, we find the old, inherited wisdom being brought to bear upon Christianity. Efforts are made to understand Christianity through the Gnosis, as it is called, to interpret Christianity in the light of the highest form of wisdom. A change comes about in this respect, but not until the fourth century, just at the time when Christianity begins to spread more towards the regions of Middle Europe. The Gnostic conceptions, the wisdom-filled conceptions of Christianity now disappear. A writer like Origen who wants to introduce something of the old Gnostic wisdom into Christianity is branded as a heretic: Julian, the so-called Apostate, who wants to unite the old pagan wisdom with Christianity, is ostracised. And finally Christianity is externalised by the deed of Constantine into the political form of a Church. In the fourth century, that which in Christianity had once been quite different, those secrets which were felt to need the illumination of the highest wisdom if they were to become intelligible—all this begins to take on a more superficial character. Men are called upon to lay hold of Christianity in a more elementary way, with a kind of abstract feeling. Christianity makes its way from the South towards the North. It is, of course, true, that from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, the Christian life which develops in the South and especially in Middle Europe, is rich in qualities of soul, but the Spiritual in its living essence, has receded. The Gnosis is regarded as an undesirable element in Christianity... There you have one or two cursory flashlights upon happenings among the peoples of Europe more towards the South.

Christianity spreads out, finds its way into the Greek world, the Roman world, into the life of Middle Europe, and there, in a certain sense it is stripped of spirituality. Think now of your Northern world in the third and fourth centuries, that is to say in the same early centuries of the post-Christian era. External history gives no true account of the conditions then prevailing. This period must be studied with the help of Anthroposophy. In connection with the European Folk-Souls this was done here some years ago (1910) but to-day we will think more of the external character of the peoples.

At the time when, in the South, the Spirit withdrew more and more towards the East—that is to say, shortly after the period I have described—the old Athenian Schools of Philosophy were closed and the last philosophers of Athens were obliged to make their way to the East, where they attached themselves to the mysterious academy of Gondi Shapur from which at that time a remarkable spiritual life was spreading via Africa and Southern Europe towards the rest of Europe, deeply influencing the spiritual life of later times. Yet it can truly be said that there, in the South, men looked back to a lofty spirituality they had once possessed.. The mighty Event of Golgotha had taken place. In the first centuries it had still been found necessary to understand the Mystery of Golgotha with the help of this sublime spirituality. This spirituality had been gradually swept aside; the human element had more and more taken the place of what may be called the working of the Divine in the life of man.

The Gnosis still helped man to realise the existence of the Divine-Spiritual within him. This Divine-Spiritual reality was more and more put aside and the human element brought to the fore. In this respect much was contributed by those peoples who took part in the migrations. In their migrations towards the South, in their conquests of the Southern regions, the Germanic peoples of Middle Europe who brought with them souls more naturally bound to the physical, contributed to this repression of the Spiritual. For they did not understand the old spirituality and brought a more fundamentally human influence to the South. And so the lofty primeval wisdom which had once been alive in men receded from the spiritual culture of the West. And at the same time when this repression of the Spiritual was taking place—in the third and fourth centuries A.D.—we find that up here in the North, teachings about the Gods were being spread among men.

In those days human beings who were inspired in an instinctive way were held in high esteem. These were times which had long since passed away for the Southern people. Up here in the North it still happened that here and there a man or a woman living in isolation would be sought out and listened to, when in a mysterious way, through faculties arising from their particular bodily constitution, they gave revelations concerning the spiritual worlds. These faculties were a natural gift in certain individuals who worked in this way among their fellows. And when the people were listening attentively to these isolated seers, they realised, when they went into the hut of one of these ‘God-intoxicated,’ ‘God-revealing’ men or women, that it was not really the physical man or woman to whom they were listening, but that it was the Divine-Spiritual itself which had descended and was inspiring such individuals in order that they might give forth the teaching of the Gods to their fellow-men.

It is very striking for the anthroposophical student of European history to find that the men of the North were still so constituted as to be able to receive divine teachings, to feel that the Gods—the Beings of the higher Hierarchies—were still living realities among them; whereas in the South, during the same period, the Spirit is becoming weaker and weaker and the human element which man brings to expression in his life on the physical Earth comes to the fore and supersedes the Divine. So it was in the decisive fourth century, when the men of the South were becoming more and more eager for human doctrine.

These individual revelations, springing as they did from obscure depths of spiritual life must be taken in all seriousness. It is verily as if in those times the Gods moved as teachers among the still childlike peoples of the North. This condition which was still present in a particular form in the North during the first centuries of the Christian era had long since vanished in the South. But it is a remarkable and significant fact in the destiny of the peoples that the men of the North became for the men of the South, the bearers of what had been learnt from the Gods —not from men.

This must be taken earnestly. The people who belonged, in the main, to the population of the West of your peninsula, whose descendants are the Norwegians of to-day, journeyed towards the West, towards the South West, and as a result of their wanderings, their sea-voyages and conquests, their influence reached right down to Sicily and North Africa The sons of the Gods went to the sons of the World, bringing them what they had learned from their Gods.

It is an interesting chapter of history to study the migrations of the Northern peoples towards the South West and to see how—in continual metamorphosis, of course—the teachings of the Northern Gods spread towards the South West, deeply influencing the British Isles, France, Spain, Italy, Sicily and North Africa. Moreover, the effect of this influence is perceptible even to-day. The Roman, Latin form of life which makes its way from the South towards the North is permeated with the Northern influence. Whatever consciousness of the Divine has remained in the stream of civilisation from the South is here influenced by the Northern teachings of the Gods. But it takes on a peculiar character which is not fully noticeable until we look towards the Eastern side of this Northern peninsula—towards Sweden.

We need remind ourselves only of one fact—how the peoples of Eastern Europe turned to the Vareger, and how in the East of the Northern peninsula the trend is more towards the East. It is a really remarkable picture. The form of life that later on tends more towards the civilisation of Norway, streams towards the South West, and the life that later on tends towards the civilisation of Sweden, streams towards the South East. Everywhere, of course, there are the teachings of the Northern Gods, but they are presented in different ways.

The peoples who later on became the Norwegians, carry the element of activity, of strength, of enthusiasm, towards the South West. In this way the languishing Latin culture is stimulated and imbued with life. The influence of the Northern Gods in these migrations is such that it is a stimulus to activity in the whole life of the peoples. This is apparent everywhere and it is a most fascinating study.

But we also see what is happening in the East of this peninsula.—It is of course influenced by geographical conditions, but these geographical conditions are also reflected in the character of the people, for the human being does not grow out of the Earth but is born on the Earth, he comes down from world of soul-and-spirit and there is a real difference between being born as a Norwegian or as a Swede. We shall not get anywhere by simply saying that the geographical conditions are such and such, but we must question further as to why one soul has the urge to become a Norwegian, and another a Swede. But now think of the remarkable character—and this applies even at the present day—of the Eastern Scandinavian, the Swedish impulses which make their way towards the East.

These impulses stream towards the East but as they advance they are everywhere deflected. They do not become really active. They cannot maintain their stand against what is brought over from the East, first by other Asiatic peoples and later by the Mongols and Tartars, nor against the early, more characteristically Eastern form of Christianity. This stream flows towards the, South East but meets with obstacles everywhere and takes on a more passive character. The impulse as a whole is deeply influenced by the North. But what streams from the West of the Northern peninsula towards the South brings activity everywhere; whereas the influence that makes its way towards the East, is seized by the inactive, the more reflective element of the East and its own activity is in a way blunted.

As the Northern Gods send their impulses towards the West, they unfold, paramountly, their nature of will. As they send their impulse towards the East, they unfold their life of reflection, their contemplative nature.

External wars and conflicts are ultimately only the material images of what takes place in the way I have just indicated. Those who are abstract theorists, who view the whole world from the standpoint of some theory—and the empiricists of to-day are fundamentally the greatest theorists of all, for they never get down to realities, they think about things instead of trying to know them from inside—these theorists will bring forward all sorts of characteristics displayed by the Norwegians and the Swedes. The inhabitants of these countries themselves often emphasise the existence of outward divergencies simply because people to-day will not penetrate to the depths of human nature in order to acquire a real knowledge of life. But life must be observed in the way indicated in the two lectures I have given here. External life must be viewed not only from the standpoint of life between birth and death, but also from the standpoint of life between death and a new birth; we must be mindful not only of those things which satisfy the egotism of the human being who merely wants to be happy after death and because he still has physical life before him, does not trouble about the life before birth. We must study how we can apply in this earthly life what we have brought with us through birth from worlds of soul-and-spirit.

Then we begin to see that there are connections in the life of men and in the life of the peoples which are only revealed when we perceive what man is and has become through many earthly lives, when we have knowledge of the periods he spends between death and a new birth.

A most remarkable connection is then revealed, helping us to understand what comes to pass on Earth. In the external national character of the Norwegian of the present day there are traits which have been inherited from those men who once migrated towards the South West and by their revelations of the Gods poured life and activity into the Roman-Latin form of civilisation. At that time something developed in the great plan of the world which gave the Norwegians their special character, their particular task. And those who are born in Norway to-day will understand their destiny and task in the world as a whole, only if they look back with spiritual understanding to the times when Norway was able to develop in a particular way, when the Northern people went forth on their migrations, their raids and their campaigns of conquest towards the South West, to fulfil a task on Earth. The task sprang out of the character of the people who inhabit these countries. Their character, it is true, was different in those times but something remains as a heritage in the present-day Norwegian and endows him with certain faculties which are important from the point of view of man's eternal life, of man's immortality.

From the Eastern part of this peninsula where the Swedish character has developed, the old teachings of the Gods were carried towards the East, to men whose own religious doctrines had been preserved in a certain mystical, oriental form. What was more a revelation from Nature met with little response in the East; those who wandered towards the East, therefore, were destined to lead a more contemplative life.

But this again has left a heritage which has set its stamp upon the character of the people. And if we are to understand the western and the Eastern parts of the Scandinavian peninsula, we must look back to what these peoples have experienced through the centuries, realising what they have become to-day as a result of these experiences. We have every reason at the present time to think about these things. It is, after all, quite easy to realise in an elementary way that spiritual forces must be working in the world, in the whole international course of events, in the whole racial life of man, and that the missions of each particular people must be understood in the light of spiritual knowledge.

Now when the power of super-sensible cognition is brought to bear upon this connection between the tasks of the modern Norwegians and Swedes and the course of their historical evolution, remarkable things come to light. Norwegians have a definite gift—nor does this gift depend upon actual birth into a Norwegian milieu. What develops in the life of Norway can be seen even in the physical world; it can be described by anthropologists, historians, or even journalists. Their statements will be more or less correct but will give no true account of the forces at work in the depths of the human soul. For man has a mission not only here on Earth; he has a mission also in the spiritual worlds after death. And this mission in the spiritual worlds after death takes shape here, on the Earth.

What we experience in the period immediately following death is a consequence of our Earth-evolution. What we experience on the Earth immediately after birth—this again is a consequence of our life in the world of soul-and-spirit, and it is of the highest importance to study the mission of the Norwegian people not only on the Earth but in the period after death, with the means at the disposal of spiritual investigation.

Because of their physical and racial character, because of the special constitution of their brains and the rest of their bodily make-up, it can—I repeat, it can—fall to the lot of those souls who pass through the gate of death from the soil of the Western part of the Scandinavian peninsula, to give a very definite stimulus to other souls after death. They can give to other souls after death something that only the Norwegian characteristics are able to impart. In this epoch especially, the Norwegian character is so constituted that subconsciously and inwardly it understands certain secrets of Nature.

I am not now referring to your external, intellectual knowledge but to the kind of knowledge which you develop in your spiritual body, without using the physical senses, between the time of falling asleep and waking, when you are outside your bodies. When during sleep you experience the spirit in the plant-world, in stone and rock, in the rustling trees and the roaring of the waves, you become aware of the reality of forces living in the plants, hidden in the rocks, operating in the waves of the sea as they break in upon the shores, in the sparsely flowering rock-plants. A great picture arises in your souls during sleep, in the form of an intimate knowledge of Nature of which the intellect and the life of the senses are unconscious. And when, as I described in the last lecture, you develop a real connection with the Angel-Being, then you can bear into the spiritual world this unconscious Nature-wisdom, this concrete knowledge of spirituality in the plants, the stones and the other phenomena. of Nature.

Those who in the true and real way have lived a Norwegian life become the stimulators and teachers of their fellow-souls after death in regard to the secrets of Nature here on the Earth. For in the spiritual world, souls must be taught about the secrets of the Earth, just as here, on the Earth, they must be taught about the secrets of the spiritual world.

In the Eastern portion of this peninsula, where the heritage from olden times is as I have described it, a different mission is carried through the gate of death. What the souls there carry through death into the spiritual world is not so much what is experienced during sleep but during waking consciousness in connection with the external world, in contemplation and study of the sense-world and in a kind of understanding—permeated with feeling—of the external world.

But this after all, is something which fundamentally speaking, has significance only for the earthly life. Yet while man is developing just this element in earthly life, something very significant develops in the subconscious region of the soul. I have pointed out to you that even in waking life a certain part of our being sleeps and dreams. The life of feeling is really only another form of dream life. In our feelings we dream and in the operations of our will we are asleep. What we know of our will is only the illumination thrown upon it by our thinking. But the kind of will that is kindled in the Swedish soul is less capable of penetrating the secrets of Nature during sleep. What enters the Swedish soul more unconsciously in the life of will and of feeling during contemplation of the outer world and in the operations of intellect and reason—that is what is carried through death. So the mission of the souls belonging to the Eastern part of the Scandinavian peninsula who pass through death is to impart to other souls an element pertaining more to the will—exactly the opposite of what they were able to impart to their physical fellow-beings during the times of their old historical connection with them.

Let me put it like this—A special gift in connection with the element of will developed in the Eastern part of the Scandinavian peninsula as a primary and then as an inherited quality of the character of the people. The people of Europe have lived a long time without asking in this concrete way what they really have to do after death, for they have contented themselves with the egotistical answer: We shall be happy. But if the world is to be prevented from falling into complete decadence, this egotistical answer will not suffice. It will only be possible for men to lead a true and proper life when they are willing to accept the selfless answer, when they not only ask about the happiness in store for them after death but when they also ask: What am I called upon to do, in view of my particular situation in earthly life? Only when people are willing to frame the question in this way will they put their situation in life to proper use and so prepare truly for their mission. And then the preparation will no longer be difficult.

The two lectures—indeed the three—which I have given you here, are all connected in this respect. In view of this special mission, it is essential that the spirituality in the anthroposophical attitude to the world should be understood here in Norway. For when you consider that it is a specific task to create out of the subconscious life a natural science for the next world—however paradoxical this may seem, it is indeed so—then you must deliberately and consciously prepare your life of feeling in such a way that your souls, while you sleep every night, are not unreceptive to the knowledge of Nature which should be infused into them during sleep. But the bodies of to-day are not always a help in this process of preparation. The souls of the Northern peoples are, through ancient heritage, fundamentally fitted for the spiritual world. Here above all, the bodies must be influenced by a spiritual form of culture.

And now a great question arises which can be illuminated by comparing the mission of the peoples of Middle Europe with that of the peoples of the North.

The state of the people of Middle Europe, if they will not accept the Spiritual, was not badly described by a man who gave no thought at all to the possibility of a spiritual regeneration of humanity. Oswald Spengler has written his book on the Decline of the West, that brilliant but thoroughly pessimistic book—although he has repudiated the pessimism in a subsequent pamphlet. Of course, it is pessimism to speak of the decline of the West. But Spengler is actually speaking of the decline of culture, of something that is of the soul. Without spiritual regeneration the people of Middle Europe will suffer injury to their souls. But in this corner of Northern Europe, human beings cannot be injured only in the life of soul; when they are injured in the soul, their very bodily nature is injured at the same time. In a way this is fortunate, for if the people of Middle Europe do not accept spirituality, they become barbarian, they degenerate in soul. The Northern people can only die out, in the bodily sense, for everything depends here upon the particular constitution of the body.

The influence of a new stream of spiritual culture is profoundly necessary. For Middle Europe will degenerate, will become barbarian will go to its decline if it does not allow itself to be influenced by the spirit. The Northerner will die out, will suffer physical death if he does not allow himself to be influenced by the Spirit.

And so what is developed here, during physical life, is connected with the mission of Northern souls after death. They cannot fulfil their mission if they allow their bodies—which are so well-adapted for spirituality—to degenerate.

These earnest words must be uttered to-day for the evolution of our epoch demands that men shall speak together of such matters. And it is for this reason that I wanted to speak to you from the general, human standpoint, to say to you what a man says to his fellow-beings on this Earth if he has the destiny of Earth-evolution deeply at heart. For those human beings who do not prepare themselves selflessly for an eternal life, will not be leading their earthly life between birth and death aright.

That is the thought I should like to leave with you. Those who feel themselves Anthroposophists should realise that they are a tiny handful of people in the world who must apply all their energy to shaking a lazy humanity out of its lethargy and helping it onwards. Those who hate Anthroposophy to-day—this may be said. among ourselves—hate it because their love of comfort and ease prevents them from being willing to grapple with the great tasks of humanity. They are afraid of what they must overcome if they are to transform their easy-going thoughts and feelings and experience something much more profound. For this reason we see many a storm of opposition arising against what is taking place in Anthroposophy and developing out of it. You too will have to accustom yourselves to violent attacks being made against Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science by reactionaries of every kind, by all who love to saunter along their old beaten tracks. Those however who let this opposition deter them from developing their powers, are not firmly rooted in the real task of Anthroposophy. When people see how Anthroposophy is being attacked to-day from all sides, they may become timid and say: Would it not be better to go forward more quietly so that the opposition may be less violent? Or again they may ask, if they find praise being meted out to them by men who in a decadent age hold leading positions: What have I done wrong? This is a matter of great importance from the anthroposophical point of view. Attacks and abuse are usually explicable for the reasons given above. But if praise were to come from the same quarters, it would be a bad augury for anthroposophical world! It is just because the opponents of Anthroposophy to-day do attack it, that we can be reassured—but only, of course, in the sense that we must apply all the more energy in order to introduce Anthroposophy into the world, not out of personal idiosyncrasies but out of a deep realisation of the needs and tasks of the world.

On this note, then, we will conclude. Let me express to you my heartfelt thanks for your active and energetic co-operation. I assure you that I mean it seriously when I say that separation in space is no separation to those who know the reality of the spiritual bond between souls. In taking my leave, I remain together with you, I do not really go away from you. I believe you can always realise this, if you wish it to be so. You may be quite sure that there are already numbers of people who feel this bond and who look with love in their hearts towards this region in the North West with its special task—the importance of which is so well known to Anthroposophy.

I take leave of you with this love in my heart for those who feel that they truly belong to us, to our Anthroposophical Movement. May our next meeting, too, be full of the inner strength that is necessary and right among Anthroposophists.