The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I would like to indicate how everything which can be comprehended about man can serve as a basis which can enable us to take greater connections of history into consideration. So that tomorrow we can go onto understand something in this direction about our present time. The day before yesterday, as you know, I spoke about man himself in his constitution. I would like to do this today from a different point of view.

Let us look at man simply, as he stands in life from day to day and From the very ordinary side this time. Man needs nourishment to sustain himself. He has to take up into his own organism what we call substances from nature, from the animal, plant, and also partly from the mineral kingdom. But what man takes into himself from the outer environment undergoes a very powerful change inside his organism. The first one is that when we take up food we receive it ordinarily—at best prepared by cooking—as it is outside in nature, maybe just made ready in some way. Besides that we receive the air through breathing again 'in that state as it exists in our environment. Let us look at first other things, which basically are still more important, as for example light, which we also receive from our surroundings, as it is as light. But also the foodstuff and the air must undergo powerful changes inside our organism, so that they can satisfy and become human, so to say, inside our organism.

Described externally the process is very well known today. We take up the food—staying with this now next—perhaps somewhat prepared already, as said before. Next we inwardly digest particularly through the excretion of the glands, through the other digestive apparatus. We take it into us, wash it, saturated with a substance called ptyalin, which is excreted by the salivary glands of the mouth. We then bring the food farther into our digestive apparatus. I don't have to characterise here the way the whole process is taking place. By taking articles of food into ourselves and assimilating them, they will already be somewhat changed in regard to what they are in our surrounding outside. The foodstuffs never could become through outer proceedings what they become inside our organism. We can work at the substances, that present our food in the most different ways inside chemical laboratories—but never can occur there, what happens to the food when we bring it into our stomach and from there into our digestive apparatus. There the foodstuffs change over into something entirely different from what they were outside.

First every trace of life is extinguished, so to say. People eat meat. This is taken from the outer surrounding, from the animal kingdom. But by eating it man drives out right away just through the first stage of digestion (varverdauung) I would like to say—and through further digestion all that what these substances present in the body of the animal. Also, all what the vegetable foods—since they were part of a living being in the plant—have as life in themselves, has to be driven out. Only the real mineral particles we take up as outer material substances. Where we add to our meals salt, which is already of an outer mineral substance, if we add sugar, which through outer preparations—though originally it might come out of the organic has been driven so Far, that it has become dead, we have taken up something already dead. These underlie the least transformations in us; they really undergo only a transformation, which one could accomplish already also in an exterior way inside a laboratory. But everything that gets into our organism from the animal or plant kingdom, has to be thoroughly killed, if I want to express myself that way.

In our cooking we accomplish also a sort of advance killing by subjecting the food to heat and so on. This is done more thoroughly through our digestion, so that—where our foods have undergone a certain inner development until they get into the bowels, where they have approached these lower digestive organs—essentially all has been driven out what they are externally by being, for example subjected to the etheric body of the plants, by being subjected to the astral body of the animal etc. Consequently it must first be achieved on the way from the mouth to the bowels, that all foodstuffs are dead.

Diagram 1 Click image for large view

Because, when now the foodstuff gets to the glandular organs, which transmit the articles of food from the bowel into the lymphatic glands and then into the vessels of the blood, on this way back a reviving of the food must take place. The food at first must become dead in us and then must be revived again. We cannot tolerate in our human organism a continuation of that kind of life, which exists in the animal or the plant from which we take the food. We can at most take up the inorganic nature so that it presents us our own laws. We cannot, let us say, eat cabbage, cannot let it arrive during the digestive process at our villous intestines so that the same etheric forces would be present there, which the cabbage has, because it is a plant. The etheric, the astral, what the foods have, these must be first removed. Then, what we receive this way must be taken hold of by our own etheric body, so that it can be revived again. Life of the nourishment inside us, must come from us. And this happens on the way from the intestinal organisation through the vessels toward the heart. So that you can have the picture: where the foodstuffs coming from the mouth reach the intestines, the last traces of the outside world gradually have been lost (see drawing 1, red) but here they will be revived anew on the way to the heart. Being enlivened anew means, that they are taken up by our own etheric body. But now they would have too little of a character of the earthly, if only would happen what I have described to you up to now. Namely we would have to be beings who have a mouth—and a digestive apparatus only up to the heart, and then we would have to begin to be angels, because our ether body would take up the foodstuffs and completely dissolve them. We would not be able to be earthly beings. We would be a kind of mouth flying about with an esophagus attached to it. We would still have a stomach, intestines and heart and then you see, all that would be taken up by our ether body. But then we would be just an ether body and in the ether body the food would then dissipate. We would be able to be earthly beings. That we can be earthly beings is brought about by oxygen which is taken up now from the air. Thus, into what has been permeated by the ether body as foodstuffs oxygen of the air is taken up. Therefore, the possibility stays with us to be earthlike (flesh-like) beings here on earth between birth and death (diagram 1, white). It is oxygen that makes us again into an earthly substance that otherwise would dissipate in our ether body. Oxygen is that kind of substance which brings into the earthly state, what other wise by itself would form only as something etheric. The heart would not yet make us into an earthly human being but would bring us only far enough that we would unite our heart with the ether body and fly around on earth as such angels. But since the heart is connected with the lung and takes up oxygen the food that is taken up is not only etherised but also made earthly.

Now the necessity arises that what is taken up by our ether body and is saturated by oxygen, so that we can be earthly human beings, has to be inserted into the astral body. So far, it was not taken up by the astral body, only by the ether body. Now an activity has to be developed that everything that had been formed up to the heart-lung activity, will be taken up by the whole organism; but in such a way that also the astral organism has something to do with it. This is mediated by the human kidney system, which excretes now, what cannot he used of the matter that had been taken up, but leads the remaining into the whole organism on paths which today's physiology does not really describe at all, but which do exist.

And now the whole pulp—if I may express myself that way which now already stays alive—it was only completely killed inside the intestinal canal and has now been revived, and saturated by oxygen—is forwarded into the astral body through the activity of the kidney system which extends over the whole organism and radiates everywhere, so that this' astral body can cooperate in the further configuration of all that, what is effected in us through the food. (see diagram 1, yellow)

This astral organism in so far as it receives its impulses from the kidney system is in turn connected with the head-sense-system, which, so to say, is like a ceiling above. Kidney-system and head-system together work continuously, so that all which is liquid and dissolving through the activity of the heart, will be formed now into the special organs. We would not have firm organs if only mouth, stomach, intestines, heart and lung were there. But the stomach itself would have to be a dissolving organ movable in itself, the same with the heart, the lung. All that could not be firm. These organs get their configuration through the kidneys, and the kidneys are helped by what comes forth from the head.

These organs have not only to be formed during childhood, but continuously because our organs are continuously destroyed. Such an organ as the stomach is completely destroyed in the course of 7–8 years. Its substance is completely demolished, altogether removed, and is always renewed again. There have to be always form—giving forces existent, which renew these organs. Still much more has to be worked on this in childhood. But later on these form—giving forces are also there.

Diagram 2 Click image for large view

This happens as follows: (diagram 2). The kidney system, which radiates forth these forces on one side would bring these organs about only in a one-sided way. Or, for example, it would form one lobe of the lung in a way that it would be quite well defined backward, but in the front it would dissipate. Here the force of the head must come and meet, so that the frontal surface will be formed by the head; so that the single different forms of the human being are always formed in a way that the kidney radiates forth the forces and that from the head then the forces come and restrain, in order that the organs get contours, that they are rounded. By the head the surfaces are formed at the exterior. But the kidney delivers a kind of radiation into the organism. It is approximately somewhat as if I wanted to build something plastically. I take mortar, or any soft substance, into the hand and then I teach myself to throw the mortar upward (see diagram 2a, yellow—red)

Diagram 2a Click image for large view

Here you have what man receives, as nourishment driven to the point where it is taken up into the astral body of the human organism. These processes, as I have described them to you, take place also in the animal, though somewhat differently. The animal also has these processes going even still farther in the higher animal. But only indications take place in the lower animal of what is coming now. The higher animals have it, because they were branched off from the human race, they still have it, but it is deformed and degenerated with them.

Now something else is radiating into all that which is being formed there. First we have the foodstuff driven to the point where they are killed. Then we get approximately so far that we have the pancreatic gland as one of the last glands which bring the foodstuffs far enough that, while being pushed towards the lymph and being revived, they can be taken up by the ether body; so that then through the communication from the heart towards the kidneys the whole can he driven into the astral body. But now the ego also must be engaged. Everything we have in our organism must be occupied by the ego.

I have shown you now how that which unites itself with us is claimed by the etheric and astral organism, how it is taken up by the kidney system, radiating into the astral, and how with the help of nitrogen it is made into an earthly thing. Otherwise we would have to become angels again, if nitrogen were not working in us, which maintains us through the astral body within the earthly realm through the kidney system. But all this would not give us a configuration in which the ego takes part in the whole, if the liver-system would not be there. (see diagram 1)

The absorption through the lymphatic vessels is still something that belongs to the heart. As a rule, the heart is that organ, which together with the lung is driving the outer substances into our own etheric organization. From thereon it is the kidney system, which drives them into our astral organization. And then only the liver system with its gall excretion drives the whole into our very ego. The gall and liver-system is also found only in the higher animal kingdom, not with the lower animals, not even the gallic acid will be found with them in the bodily substances. Thus the liver-system then with its peculiar construction of the portal vein and so on—one can also verify this anatomically in every part—conducts the whole now so, that it is taken hold of by the ego. If only that what is radiated out by the kidney were there inside the body, it would be taken up only by the astral body. Because of the liver being there and the gall being excreted by the liver and mixed already with the chyme inside the intestines and the whole is permeated already by the liver products (diagram 1, blue), all this is driven into the ego organism. This way also our ego organism takes part through the liver, which has as its representative essentially hydrogen, in the whole building of the human organization. Man, in fact, has to take up nothing living, nothing astral from outside. All this he has to transform first inside his own organic system in such a way that it can be taken up into his astral and his own etheric being and into his ego-system.

Here, we have then the whole normal organization of man. Imagine, how all this has to be in time together. For example the activity of the kidneys must not be interrupted. If this should happen through a shrunken kidney, the astral body will not be engaged. In reality, the reverse is the case: if the astral body does not function in the right way, a shrunken kidney will develop. Therefore, if a shrunken kidney exists, we will have an exact picture with a degenerate heart of that which is going on in the ether body. I have told you last time, that there is even a going in accord of the rhythm. There are always 4 thrusts present in the radiation coming from the kidney (diagram 1, yellow) while what happens in the rounding forces, coming from the head only one thrust is there. That is the same relationship as it is expressed in the relation between respiration and pulse. Therefore, I should say if I may use this comparison again, the rounding forces are 4 times slower here than with the hand. That is the way namely, the organism is doing it.

All this must be tuned together in the finest way. Otherwise it will not work. Being ill means, that it is not in tune. Take for example the following: the ether body is completely in order, but the astral body is not strong enough to take up all that is flowing from the heart towards the kidneys and to work it through sufficiently. This can happen through' the etheric body, if it is working too strongly. I had said, the ether body might be all right;, but let us assume now, that it is working too strongly. If this is the case and the astral body is normal, the shrunken kidney can develop with its peculiar consequences. The etheric body being in the right condition and the astral body working too strong the kidney is not engaged enough. What is radiating across, because the astral body is working too strongly, will be claimed by it without the kidney working along in an orderly way in the right regulation. The kidney is put out of use thereby and the shrunken kidney develops. At the same time, because it causes a reaction, this will lead to a generation of the function of the heart and of the heart itself.

You see how one can look this way in a summary on what is going on in the human organism and that one can see by the degeneration of the organs how the members of the human being, physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego are not working together in the right way.

One has to make it clear for oneself how all these things must be in accord with one another and how they have to work in the right way. Let us assume, for example, that any area of the system of the organs is not permeated in the right way, but wrongly, by any member of the human organism, perhaps by the astral body. This can happen in a twofold way. Either what is coming forth from the kidney-system (as mentioned before, the rounding forces go out from the head, while from the kidney-system come the radiations) is stimulated too strongly, so that really everything that is working from the heart towards the kidney-system will be too much of a stimulation for the kidney system. In such a stimulation, which is too strong, you finally discover the original causes for all inflammation and ulcerations in the human organism. One has to find the way in which anywhere in the organism such an inflammation develops. One has to try there to balance the matter by medication in such a manner that one reduces the too strong effect on the kidney activity.

Diagram 3 Click image for large view

The simplest means to achieve this is to try to dam the too strong development of radiating inner body warmth, to induce an inner cooling off. Perhaps this might be done with the help of application of substances which are generated in the blossoms (organs) of plants. It is the peculiarity of these substances, which are generated in the blossom organs of plants, that one can counteract inflammations through them and bring about an inner cooling off. Or, it can also be that the plastic activity of the kidney, is working too strongly. Then some tumorous formations will arise. Here the plastic, the rounding off, the crystalising activity—I would like to say—is too great. Then one has to envelop the tumor through warmth from outside (see diagram 3, yellow, red). All tumors are in fact healed from outside. One only has to bring about in the organism, through injections of substances that diffuse in a certain way, the possibility to get the tumor enwrapped by radiation of such substances (diagram, red). If you succeed in getting a radiation into and around the tumor, then it will dissolve, crumble, and stop. If you have an inflammation, you have to bring the remedy into the organ through the digestive apparatus, where the inflammation is located. You have to bring something cooling, by way of the digestive apparatus. An inflammation has to be treated from inside (diagram 3a).

One only has to find the way here. Every substance has a specific way of spreading in the human organism. For example there are substances which, given by mouth to a human being, don't pay heed to the esophagus; it doesn't matter at all to them—all the pepsin, ptyalin and so on—they care, for example, only for the heart. To others the heart does not matter: They are conducted first through the stomach, through the heart, to the kidneys, and become active only there. So every substance has its affinity; one only has to apply the right substance. But there are also those substances which, if you vaccinate them, would not pay heed to a stomach-carcinoma at all, but would take care very much, let us say, of a breast carcinoma.

Therefore one has to find the way to attack an ulcer or an inflammation internally, to take something on from the outside, to besiege it, as it were. The tumors have to be besieged from outside. Things have to be studied this way, and they must be tuned together in a thorough way. Of course, to do this one has to know the higher members of human nature. It is impossible to talk at all about the kidney if one puts man on the dissecting table, simply, and opens him up after he has died. Then the kidney is lying next to the liver, as far as I am concerned; but what does one know more about the kidney and the liver than that both consist of cells, that both are built up, in different ways, of cells! But the kidney has an intimate. relationship to the astral body and the liver to the ego. That alone gives them their character. Without considering this, it is altogether senseless to define or to consider the whole matter.

Now, take an organ like the spleen. Ordinary physiology and medicine don't have much to say about it. You will find in all corresponding textbooks the notation: about the spleen one does not yet have anything to say today. You will find that everywhere, if you look it up. That is not very surprising. You see, the speech genius is really wiser in this respect than science. In this case,—in other cases it is the German speech genius which is extraordinarily wise,—it is the English speech genius who designates the (Milz) as “spleen”. And that is an extraordinarily favorable designation, because the spleen is connected with all those activities of man which go beyond the ego, which approach the spirit-self. The spleen is even directly the organ of the spirit-self. It enters fully into the spiritual realm. Only one must be able to stand. it. Most people cannot take the real spiritual element. Therefore they are not in any way animated through the activity of the spleen to an activity that is spiritual, but become “spleeny”. In reverse, they are tuned down. The “spleen” is nothing other than a spirit which, instead of going into the head, twists itself into the bowels. Therefore “spleen” is an extraordinarily good designation, which points directly towards the spirit, for which the spleen is the corresponding organ.

The spleen is effective in bringing about a balance, as presented in the pamphlet,—which has been worked out in our institute of physiology particularly by Fr. Dr. K.,—where the activity of the spleen is presented in relation to the formation of the development of membranes and the whole digestive process.

(Dr. Steiner then expressed his disappointment that this, which was being worked out inside the society, did not reach the outside world. Also that the members did not pay attention ...) This is what I want to say today only in parenthesis.

Indeed we can understand the human organism only if we understand its higher organization. You see how these things have to fit together. There is something out of order in the organism, if something which does not proceed in the right way works into the astral organism, because in that moment the kidney does not work in the right way, then all the phenomena that follow up a kidney which does not work rightly will appear.

But this is not so for man in general, instead, this changes from one era to another. The organization of man is an extremely fine one, but it is not always the same. If we go back a few centuries only—a couple of centuries are not much for the whole of evolution, it seems—then we come to a time where our present age, the real epoch of development of the consciousness soul, has begun. We go back from the 15th, 14th, and 13th centuries into the post-Christian time. It has been so,—as grotesque as this might appear to man today, especially in the civilized world,—that approximately during the whole time from the 4th until the 14th century the activity of the kidney was most important. Since then, the activity of the liver has become that which is most important for the entire nature of man. The anatomy and physiology of man really changes in the course of centuries, and especially of millenniums. One cannot study history if one does not enter into the fine structure of man, so that one knows how such transformations regarding outer phenomena in civilization, such as that from the middle ages into recent time, are also connected with a transformation of the whole human organization.

One has to come back again to such matters; otherwise on one side science will always come to a standstill, becoming more and more irreligious and antireligious, since finally it will only grope about with the probe and the dissecting knife, and so on,—and on the other side, there is religious life, which does not have anything to say anymore about the world, but addresses itself only to the egotistic instincts of man for life after death. These things are standing side by side. Our religious attitude of today has simply forgotten that God has created the world, and that one can find everywhere in the things of the world traces of divine creation. But one must not talk of abstract cloudlike changes of civilization in history; one must know how, especially through the delicate human organization, through this tuning in of the infinite fine clockwork of man's organization, the divine, creative forces transform man. As at one time they tighten the strings of the kidney activity somewhat more, then they relax and tighten the strings of the liver-activity, and a completely different music of civilization comes about.

Only if we don't restrict ourselves to looking at a God who is separate, but instead follow God into detailed activity, will we arrive at that which mankind needs in the future. Otherwise mankind will finally care only for the abstract, and arrive at a purely materialistic science. Only and solely if we can penetrate into concrete details, the effectiveness of matter in divine creation, will we get where we can permeate religion with science and lead science back to religion.

You see, around the turn of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries an attitude comes about in Europe, which I have already characterized from very different sides. It is expressed in the legend of the Grail, in the Parsifal legend, in all that has been written by poets like Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartman von der Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, and so on. There the motifs emerge. In the Parsifal epic, in the true Parsifal epic one motif especially arises. It consists in the sudden desire, to now present how man has to develop himself towards something one called at that time “Sälde”. It is the feeling of a certain inner sensation of happiness—Sälde—related to what we would call “bliss” but it is not the same. Sälde means being penetrated by a certain feeling of happiness. This emerges and dominates the whole civilization of the 13th and 14th century. All poetic motifs, but in particular the Parsifal motif, are permeated by it and everything strives towards it. One strives towards this Sälde, towards this inner feeling of bliss, which should not be irreligious, or perhaps a state of blissful comfort, but a state of being ensouled with the divine forces of the Creator.

Why does this arise? It arises because the transition from the kidney activity to the liver activity takes place. You will be able to understand this if you are aided by physiology. The earlier physiologists, of course, were better physiologists in many respects than the materialistic physiologists of today. Those, I mean, were the writers of the Old Testament, where one, for example, said, if one had had bad dreams—I have already drawn attention to this—“the Lord has punished me this night through my kidneys.” The knowledge of certain connections of an abnormal kidney-activity with bad dreams continued, and in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries, for example, one was still deeply permeated by the conviction, that one becomes heavy through the activity of the kidney. The activity of the kidney had developed into something like heaviness for man. Of course, one spoke outwardly only about something that became heavy for man. One couldn't quite get out of it. One was stuck to the earthly. And then one sensed that one became penetrated by the gall from the physical side—but in a way that was connected with being “inwardly permeated by Sälde”—as a deliverance, an inner redemption—but it was an inner God-filled feeling of bliss,—a striving away from the dullness of the kidney. It is so, that the kidney also develops an activity of thinking. The kidney develops the dull thought-activity in man via the detour of the ganglious system. This is then connected through induction with the system of the spinal cord and the system of the brain. It develops in particular that kind of thinking which has also played a direct role in the middle ages. One called it at that time “dullness”, (Tumpheit). And this development from Tumpheit to illumination, Sälde; this was what became the motif of Parsifal. Parsifal develops from dullness to Sälde.

One must not only look at this in an abstract manner, but one must also look at it with feeling and a sensitivity. In the beginning Parsifal is as one arising out of a culture that has become heavy. One cannot quite get him in movement. Only later, after he has passed through his doubting, does Saelde permeate him. This doubt in him arises through being jolted by the heart-lung system. After he has gone through that, he finds the entry into Sälde.

It is possible to follow up into the members of the human organism what has gone on in the larger history of the world. One can say: leading individualities, like those who have fashioned the Parsifal-motif, they were pioneers, the first precursors of the modern human corporeal organization, which has proceeded from the old kidney-activity to the newer liver activity.

One must not feel contempt for something like that. One must not say: that is only the lower sensual nature. Even God did not despise the creation of lower matter—in fact, He was its Creator! By the same token we are obliged through cognition, to pursue the divine activity of the creator into the outermost ramifications of what is material. One should not be a dignified historian who describes Parsifal and says: If one describes Parsifal, one must not look at the same time at something so low as the physiological activity of man.

The world is a unity, and to understand the great historical connections, one has to be able at the same time to illuminate the different human connections. Men of ancient times, and even up until the Middle Ages, still had traces of such knowledge. You can follow that up in descriptions as that of “Armen Heinrich”, where we see that healings of a moral nature are still occurring, and so on.

These matters discussed today should be a preliminary indication of the fact that all human cognition presents a great unity. One can descend from what has to be conceived as the highest religious ideas to something that people often regard as being so low, that they don't want to look at it. Present-day science is guilty of such an attitude, because it does not at all realize that one must follow the spirit into the outmost ramifications of matter. But only then does one learn to understand the world. Only then does one also learn to strive upwards towards a true religious comprehension of the world. Otherwise one generally has just an egotistic point of view, which speculates on the egotistic motives of man, but does not enter into cognition and will lead us into decadence, instead of a renewal of civilization.

A new arising of civilization is connected with people receiving Light into themselves and contemplating the world in this Light, and not in darkness. Today's physiology and anatomy, just places people on the dissecting table and looks but at those symptoms which can still be observed in sick people by materialistic science. But this never attains to a real understanding of man.

One can say: foodstuff taken up, killed, revived, astralized, transformed into the ego—only then one understands ptyalin, pepsin, in the food that has been taken up and killed, and then transported into the lymphatic glands conveyed to the heart, fired by the heart. The kidneys then radiate through it, and all is astralized, taken up by the liver functioning and conveyed to the Ego. Then the whole can be caught up by the activity of the spleen and then, under certain circumstances the person will be made into an enthusiast, one who receives strength from the spiritual world through the activity of the spleen,—or otherwise he will be made into a “spleeny”, depressive person—one without the will to hold his head upright—through the activity of the spleen—one who only wants to sit on his chair and preFers not to he permeated by the spirit, who does not want to do any thinking. There are many people like—that today. They sit on their chairs, really only a big lump, as if they did not have a head at all. The activity of the spleen, which could be something lofty in man, really has a crushing effect on these people. Instead of enthusiasm, they have “spleen” and the “spleen” appears today already in a variety of forms.

But what one needs today is the kind of work that transforms spleen into enthusiasm, into fire so that men do not have a sleepy, but rather a wakeful civilization. This is what should come forth from Anthroposophy: to be awake, to have enthusiasm, to transform cognition into true activity, into deeds, so man does not only know more but will become something through Anthroposophy. Only then has Anthroposophy a goal and can such a goal be truly attained. But to become sleepy through Anthroposophy means that one gives much too much respect to the physical quality of the spleen and that one does not fructify the high spiritual nature of the spleen. But this points towards something that present-day mankind sorely needs. Men need fire, they need enthusiasm, they need to be inspired about something. As long as we cannot do that, as long as we think only about ourselves, we are placing too much value also on that which is excreted by us as urea, uric acid, which is not meant to be contained in the sphere of a cell, of protein—but should be brought into the state of fluctuating protein, which we are in our whole being. Basically we are something like a living, but large cell-like being, that stays in continuous, vivacious movement. Because we have carbon in us, we receive oxygen through the etherisation of the food, we get nitrogen, because the food substances are radiated through by the activity of the kidneys. We receive hydrogen, because the activity of the liver plays into it, and in connection with the activity of the senses, we do also receive sulphur—either the unsuitable one, which is the one mostly discussed today—or the proper sulphur. We really get what is necessary, so we are a living being who consists of protein—carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and also sulphur—but it must he the proper sulphur. (This is related to a joke about a philosopher in Wurzburg, on whose door students had written “sulphur—shack”.) That I don't mean. But man must be alive through and through, through and through ensouled, through and through permeated by spirit. This is something one also can learn, especially if one observes this in the outermost ramifications of matter. Only then will we get a physiology, then also will we get something which can really approach therapeutically the nature of man.

IT WILL be my task today to proceed in our spiritual observations from the foundations which we laid here the last time to such spiritual processes which lie immediately behind the events our age that speak so seriously to our souls.

If we live, in the sense of our spiritual science, with the forces that stream from the so-called dead into the realm in which we dwell during our incarnation, it is possible to observe with great vividness what it is spiritually that under-lies such a difficult time. To be sure, people of the present age have little longing to know the spiritual background of existence. Such lack of interest is closely connected with the fact that his great catastrophe has befallen mankind in the present age. I have drawn your attention to the fact that in the last third of the nineteenth century, in contrast to earlier periods of time, great changes took place in human evolution. I have repeatedly pointed to the end of the seventies of last century and have shown that the end of the seventies was an incisive moment in the evolution of mankind. Very few people of the present time are aware of the fundamental difference in the spiritual life since the end of the seventies as compared to the spiritual life that preceded it. Human beings lack the perspective to see this; for such a thing only becomes apparent if one is able to observe the differences from a certain distance. If mankind is not to expect still greater misery, this perspective must be gained as soon as possible. For, my dear friends, our present age is governed by a strange and very vivid contradiction. I shall describe this contradiction to you, and you will find it very grotesque: There is no time within historical human evolution that is so spiritual as the time in which we live, the time since the end of the 70's. From a historical point of view, we live in the most spiritual of times. Still, it is an undeniable fact that people who consider themselves spiritually developed believe that our time is completely materialistic! As far as life is concerned, our time is not materialistic; but as far as the belief of many people and its results are concerned, our time is certainly materialistic. What do we really mean if we say: “ours is a spiritual time”?

Well, my dear friends, consider the natural-scientific world conception of the present day; compared to it, the natural-scientific world conception of the past is materialistic. Today we have a natural-scientific world conception which rises to the most subtle, the most spiritualized concepts. We see this if we observe existence beyond the immediate physical present.

Most spiritual conceptions today, although well-meant, mean very little to the so-called dead. But the natural scientific conceptions of the present age, if reflected upon without prejudice, mean extraordinarily much to them. It is an interesting fact that so-called materialistic Darwinism is conceived of and employed in a completely spiritual fashion in the realm of the dead. In full life things appear quite different from the way they appear in the frequently erroneous belief produced by what people experience in the body. What do I really mean by pointing to the natural-scientific spiritual? Well, in order to be able to form these concepts, to rise to such thoughts as are developed today in regard to evolution, and so forth, a spirituality is needed which did not exist in previous ages. It is much easier to see ghosts and to take them for something spiritual than to form sharply defined concepts for that which seems to be only material. This has brought about the fact that human beings develop in their soul life the most spiritualized concepts, and then proceed to deny them. These spiritualized concepts are mistakenly believed to relate only to material things. The materialistic interpretation of the present natural-scientific world conception is nothing but a denial of its true character. It has sprung from a tendency to cowardice, pure cowardice! One cannot bring oneself to live with one's feelings in these spiritualized concepts and to grasp this spirituality in the rarefaction needed for the forming of clear-cut concepts about nature. One does not dare to acknowledge that one lives in the spirit when one develops these rarefied, spiritualized concepts. One deceives oneself by saying: these concepts relate merely to material things; for this is not true, it is mere self-deception.

The same holds good for other spheres of life. As I pointed out to you the day before yesterday, {Rudolf Steiner, Das Sinnlich-Uebersinnliche in seiner Verwirklichung durch die Kunst. Not yet translated. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} many artistic creations of the present time show values through this spiritualized, refined feeling which did not exist in the art development of earlier epochs. This change in the spiritual life has been brought about through a quite definite spiritual event which I should like to characterize today from a certain point of view.

At the beginning of the forties of the nineteenth century, when the middle of that century had not quite been reached, the Archangel Michael gradually rose from the rank of an Archangel to that of a Time Spirit. He began at that time to undergo an evolution which enabled him to work into human life not merely from the super-earthly standpoint, but directly from the standpoint of the earthly. He had to prepare himself to descend to the earth itself, to emulate, as it were, the great procedure of the Christ Jesus Himself, to take his starting point here upon the earth and to be active henceforth from the point of view of the earth. From the forties to the end of the seventies of the last century this spiritual being prepared himself for this task. Thus it may be observed that the period between the forties and the year 1879 presents a significant battle in that super-earthly sphere which borders immediately on the earthly sphere. {See Rudolf Steiner, Geistige Wesen und ihre Wirkungen, Vol. II: Der Sturz der Geister der Finsternis. (Not yet translated) Anthroposophic Press, New York.} This spiritual being whom we call the Archangel Michael had to fight a hard battle against certain opposing spirits. If we wish to understand what actually happened there, we must consider these opposing spirits.

These spiritual beings who had to be fought by the Archangel Michael becoming a time spirit have always affected the life and evolution of mankind; during the past millennia, prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, their task in the spiritual world was to create differentiation among human beings. Those spiritual beings who are the direct followers of the Archangels strive to lead human beings back to the group soul, to spread uniformity over the whole of mankind. If these beings alone had been active, mankind would have become one indistinguishable species, similar to the animal species, but on a somewhat higher level. These spiritual beings, however, against whom the Michaelic principle had to fight had the task of spreading differentiation among mankind, to split humanity into races and peoples; to bring about all those differences that are connected with the blood and with the nerved temperament. This had to happen. They may be called Ahrimanic beings, and we must realize that the Ahrimanic principle was a necessity in the course of mankind's evolution.

Now at time of great significance arrived in the evolution of mankind, beginning with the forties of the nineteenth century. The time arrived when the old differentiations had to vanish, when the divided human race had to be formed into a unity.

You see, the cosmopolitan views which, to be sure, sometimes turned into cosmopolitan slogans in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century are simply a reflection of what occurred in the spiritual world. The tendency exists in mankind to wipe out the various differences which were fostered by the blood and the nerve temperament. It is not a tendency of the spiritual worlds to create further differences among mankind, but it is a tendency of the spiritual worlds to pour a cosmopolitan element over mankind. Although, under the impressions of our catastrophic times, people have little understanding for this, still it has to be stated as a true fact. If this fact, mirrored in the earthly events, is observed in its spiritual background, clairvoyant vision shows that it was the spirit who was to become the time spirit of the modern age that from the forties onward fought against the race spirits, the folk spirits that produced the difference between peoples. What has always been represented by a significant symbol took place here, although at a different stage. The symbol refers also to other stages of evolution, for matters repeat themselves at various stages, and what I am telling you now is only a repetition at a certain stage of a spiritual event that took place at other stages. It is the event that is represented by the symbol of the conquering of the dragon by the Archangel Michael. This conquering of the dragon by the Archangel Michael, which means that the counter-striving powers have been cast out of the realm in which the Archangel Michael rules, took place in a certain sphere, beginning with the forties of the last century. Certain spiritual beings whose task in the spiritual world it was to divide mankind into races and peoples were cast out of heaven down upon the earth. These spiritual beings who up to the forties produced these differentiations among mankind have no longer any power in the region bordering the earthly world. They have been cast down among men upon the earth with everything they could bring with them.

This is what spiritual science designates as the victory of the Archangel Michael over the counter-striving spirits, which took place at the end of the seventies; the pushing down upon the earth of certain spirits resisting him.

Thus, since the end of the seventies, since 1879, we have two things: we have on earth for those who may be said to be of good will—if we understand the expression in a qualified sense—the rulership of the Time Spirit Michael who enables us to acquire spiritualized concepts, a spiritualized intellectual life. We also have on earth the counter-striving spirits who deceive us into denying the spirituality of the present time. If we fight against the materialism of our time, we should be constantly aware of the fact that we must not fight against what is good in our age but against the lies of our age. For the spirits that have been pushed out of heaven down upon the earth are chiefly spirits of falsehood who, as spirits of hindrance, prevent us from looking for the spiritual in our grasp of natural existence.

If one learns to know those human beings who descended to earthly incarnation from the spiritual world after the year 1841 and who have died since, one can indeed see how these things are considered from the other side, as it were. One is then in a position to correct much of that which here in the physical world, is very difficult to see through.

You see, at the beginning of the twentieth century it gradually became apparent how necessary it is to point again to the most varied fields of spirit in life; and those who drew attention to this fact were the human beings who, after the year 1848—more precisely, after 1840—had participated in the hard battle which was carried on by the Archangel Michael in the spiritual world and which ended in 1879 with the casting down of the counter-striving spirits into the life of the earth, where they now are among human beings. One participates in the battle of the Archangel Michael if one rises against these spirits and tries to drive them from the field. {See: Rudolf Steiner, Goethestudien und goetheanistische Denkmethoden. (Not yet translated) Anthroposophic Press, New York.}

Now, there exists a certain law which states that from every point in world history evolution may be traced in two directions: backward as well as forward. If we focus our attention on any point in the historical development of mankind, we may say: At this point of time this or that happened. Now, as time goes on, the events may be observed; but time may also be observed retrospectively. We may go back from 1879 to 1878, 77, 60, 50, and so on, and may then observe the spiritual world in retrospect. The following then presents itself: In the deeper structure of events as they proceed we may discover a repetition of what preceded them. If one expresses something great in a simple way, it may easily sound trivial. But I shall speak simply. If we consider the year 1879, we can proceed to 1880, or we can go back to 1878. If we proceed to 1880, we shall observe in the deeper spiritual structure of that year that what has happened in 1878 is still active within it; behind the events of 1880, there stand, as active forces, the events of 1878, and behind the events of 1881 there stand, as active forces, the events of 1877. As we go back, it is as if the line of time reversed itself, and the events which lie back of a certain point of time placed themselves behind the events which lie ahead of that point of time. Much can be understood if we grasp these things.

Now I beg you to remember that I have for many years spoken about the year 1879, and not only since 1914, which would be cheap. This is important, my dear friends, and I ask you now to make a simple calculation with me. Count back from the year 1879, count back to the year which I have often designated as the other boundary. I have always stated that the battle of which I am now speaking started at the beginning of the forties, around 1840, 1941, count back: 1879, 1868, 1858, 1848, and 8 or 9 years more; this is 38 or 39 years. Now count forward: 1879, 1889, 1899, 1909, 1914, and right up into our days (1918), and you also have 38 or 39 years. If you observe the year 1917, you will find a surprising result. You will realized the deep significance of the occultist's statement that, in starting from an incisive historical event, you will find the preceding spiritual event repeated in the subsequent one. Behind the earthly events of our days there stand the spiritual events that began in the forties and which we designate as the Archangel Michael's battle against the counter-striving spirits. These events stand behind present-day events. We have a repetition today of what took place at the beginning of the forties. You can imagine how differently one looks at the events of our time if one pays attention to this law. One will develop a deeper understanding of events that now pass unnoticed, that do not penetrate into one's soul. One will realize that the battle of the Archangel Michael against the counter-striving powers has, to a certain degree, returned to its starting point.

It is, in general, very difficult to speak to human beings of the present day about these deeper relationships, because they violently reject that which would help them to understand the present time and enable them to act in the proper manner. It is necessary today to rid ourselves of old prejudices and consciously to understand the facts.
For things happen here on the physical plane which are of a much more spiritual nature than events in general. This is connected with the descent of the Archangel Michael into our earth region. Many people speak of this descent. But if they are seriously called upon to take this fact on its true background, then they do not follow, they do not want to follow. Yet it is extremely necessary that a spiritual understanding of the most important impulses of our age lay hold of ever more extended circles of our contemporaries. Therefore it was very important, during all these years of our group meetings, to draw attention to the necessity of not sleeping away the stream of events which in our time is so strongly influenced by the spirit. For to sleep away events is a characteristic trait of our time. People pass by the events as though asleep, and it can be said that the more incisive, the more significant an event is that enters the physical plane, the more human beings sleep through it.

The events of March, 1917—if I may indicate a concrete fact {Outbreak of the Russian Revolution. Abdication of the Czar. (Editor)}—were of tremendous significance and will produce results of such great importance of which mankind does not even dream today; and it is really unbelievable how little understanding exists among people for the necessity of a complete revision of their judgments, of a complete revision of all that people have believed prior to 1914.

On this occasion, I may perhaps be permitted to point to the fact that in 1910 I delivered a number of lectures in Kristiania (Oslo) about the European folk souls. In the first of these lectures you may read that human beings will soon be called upon to understand something about the relations of the European folk souls. {Rudolf Steiner, the Mission of Folk Souls in Connection with Germanic-Scandinavian Mythology. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} The following has been repeatedly emphasized in our lectures: turn your gaze toward the immediate East; what happens there is important for human evolution. How often has this been said! Every one of my listeners has heard it. And in the spring of 1914, in my Vienna lecture cycle about the life between death and a new birth, {Rudolf Steiner, The Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} I dared to make the emphatic statement that the social life of our time may be compared with a special form of disease, namely, with a carcinoma; I stated that a creeping cancerous disease permeates social life. Naturally, my dear friends, under our present conditions these things cannot be stated in another form; but they must be understood.

We must not think of world events following one another in continuous progression, as historians imagine. They believe that the later event develops out of the preceding one, which has in turn developed out of the one preceding it, and so forth. The prejudice which maintains that the later must develop in the most tranquil fashion out of what preceded it we may leave to those who do not have the sense for reality which is expected of the anthroposophist. We may leave this prejudice to the politicians. Reality, however, is quite different. We must think of the course of events as of a pair of scales in full motion, the scale-beam descending first on the right side, and then on the left. Therefore, the time since the beginning of the forties may be characterized as follows: Great possibilities existed if only the attempt had been made during the period from 1840 to 1914—the year 1879 divides this period into two parts—to prepare in an adequate manner the spiritualization of mankind which is striven for by the Archangel Michael; if the attempt had been made on a larger scale to imbue mankind with spiritual concepts, spiritual ideas. Mankind, however, must depend in our age on its own free will; and if, out of its own free volition, mankind fails to grasp such possibilities, then the scale-beam sinks to the other side. What could have been reached on the spiritual path is now discharged through the blood. What we experience in our catastrophic times is an equalization of the scales. Mankind who has rejected spiritualization must be forced to accept it. This can happen through a physical catastrophe.

This idea may be verified if we place ourselves upon the following firm foundation: We live here in this physical world; but we are awake in this physical world only through our perceptions and our concepts, as I described the day before yesterday. We dream with our feelings and sleep with our will impulses. This is a matter of course for man. But if we familiarize ourselves, through imagination, inspiration and intuition with the spiritual world which is always around us like the air, and in which the so-called dead exist, together with us, in which their impulses are active, then we perceive how life, here in the physical world, is connected with the life of the so-called dead. The dead are able to receive from human hearts only spiritual thoughts.

Recall what I told you the day before yesterday. I said: If a human being dies in his youth, he has, in a spiritual sense, not actually left his family; he has, in reality, remained here. Something of great importance to the dead is connected with this and I beg you to take this very seriously. For the departed one it is not merely a question of being here. For him it is a question of being able to bear this existence. If the dead person is present in a materialistically inclined family which does not cultivate spiritual thoughts, he is constantly oppressed and distressed; the family constitutes a nightmare for him, comparable to the nightmare we experience when we inhale too great an amount of air. Only spiritual thoughts among those with whom he has remained can rid him of this nightmare and make life among them bearable for the departed one.

And again, I told you: If an older person is torn from his family, he takes their souls with him, in a certain respect. He draws them after him; but if they are not permeated by spiritual thoughts, they likewise constitute a nightmare for him.

Now let us consider the following: We can learn a great deal if we observe the sudden death of a human being caused by outer or abnormal inner conditions. Let us say, a human being is slain or shot. In such an instance, death is brought about in a way which is very different from gradual death through illness. Imagine the following case: A human being is shot in his thirty-fifth year; his life is destroyed through outer circumstances. If the bullet had not struck him (certainly, there are karmic connections, but what I am going to say nevertheless holds good) this human being's constitution might have enabled him to live another thirty-five years. He bears within him the constitution for another thirty-five years. This, now, produces a quite definite effect.

My dear friends, if a human being dies by violence with his life forces are still very active, he has tremendously significant experiences at the moment of death. Condensed into one moment, he experiences things which would have been spread over long periods of time. What he could have experienced during the next thirty-five years he now experiences in a single moment. For the important experience in the hour of death is the following: the human being sees in truth his body from outside; he sees the transition it passes through; he sees that it relinquishes the control of the forces it possessed when the soul dwelt in the body, and that it now becomes a nature-being, given over to the nature forces, to the external physical forces. The tremendously significant experience at the moment of death is that the human being then beholds the relinquishing of his organism to the physical nature forces. If a human being suffers a violent death, he is suddenly delivered not only to the normal nature forces, but his organism is treated by the bullet shot as if it were an inorganic, lifeless body; it is completely relegated to the inorganic world. There is a great difference between a slow death through illness and a sudden death through the interference of the external world with the human organism, be it in the form of a bullet or in any other form. In this moment there is a sudden flaring up, a sudden flashing forth of a tremendous amount of spirituality. The flaming up of a spiritual aura takes place, and the one who has passed through the portal of death looks back upon this flaming up. This flaming up greatly resembles the event that takes place only when the human beings devote themselves to spiritual concepts. These are values, my dear friends, which are interchangeable. It is extremely interesting to see the following similarity: the departed one perceives from the other side the sentient thought which arises in a person when he enjoys or creates an image, a painting, that is born out of spiritual life; the departed one then sees how similar this sentient thought, seen from the beyond, is to the sensation a person has (who is of course unconscious of this) when he suffers an external injury, let us say, to his arm and pain arises from it. There is a great relationship between the two events; one may take the place of the other.

Now you will grasp the karmic connection between the two events. Naturally, quite a number of people knew the “aspect of the stars” when the forties of last century approached. If occultists wish to designate such an event as the battle of the Archangel Michael with the dragon, they do so by using the technical expression: “this is the aspect of the stars.” There existed at that time quite a number of people who knew that such a significant event was taking place. There were some who wanted to take precaution, but one of the scales of the balance was too heavily weighted: the materialistic inclination was too strong. Thus the worse measures possible were restored to. People who understand the signs of the times were fully aware of the fact that spiritual life must enter mankind. If this spiritual life had entered mankind from the beginning of the forties onward, mankind would have been spared many catastrophes. For what took place would have taken place, but in another form. What is karmically necessary happens; but it may occur in various forms. This must always be kept in mind.

I shall express myself more explicitly. There are two ways of thinking about what ought to happen in the social sphere or any other field. We may present a program, may form programmatical concepts; we can think out how the world should develop in a certain field; this can be presented in beautiful words. We can swear by these words, take them as dogmas, but nothing will result from them, nothing at all! We might have the most beautiful ideas about what ought to happen, but nothing will come of them. Ideas, however beautiful, need not result in anything. Thought-out programs are the most worthless things in life. In contrast to this, we can do something else, and many a person does it without any special clairvoyance. We may, simply through a naive, intuitive knowledge of the condition of the times, ask ourselves: What is bound to happen in the next twenty or thirty years? What is it that in our time wishes to become reality? Then, if one has discovered what will inevitably happen, one can say to oneself: Now we can choose; people can either come to their senses and guide the course of events in the direction it must take in any case: then matters will turn out well. Or they can fail to do this by being asleep and simply allowing matters to run their course: in which case that which must take place will be brought about by catastrophes, revolutions, and cataclysms. No statistics, no programs, however well thought out, are of any value. Only the observation of what wills to appear out of the hidden depths of the times is of value. This must be taken up into our consciousness; by this the intentions of the present must be governed.

In the forties of the last century the many people who adhered to programs have won the victory over the few who understood what I have just stated. From this sprang all kinds of attempts to spiritualize mankind: spiritism (spiritualism,), for instance, is one of them; it is an attempt to spiritualize and reform mankind with inadequate means; to reveal the spiritual worlds materialistically. Even our thinking may be materialistic. It is a materialistic thought that says: This or that particular group of mankind is in the right. Why do the spiritual powers not intervene and help them vindicate their rights?—How often do we hear people say today: Why do the spiritual powers not intervene? The day before yesterday I gave an answer to this in a more abstract form: Mankind today must rely on its own freedom. Those who ask: why do the spiritual powers not intervene? proceed from the assumption that ghosts instead of men should make politics. That would certainly be easy progress if ghosts instead of human beings were to introduce the necessary reforms. This, of course, they do not do, because human beings must rely on their freedom. The expectation of help from ghosts is what most decidedly confounds human beings; it draws their attention away from what ought to happen. Thus the period in the life of mankind in which refined spiritual concepts were gradually developed was precisely the time when mankind was exposed to the strongest materialistic temptations. Human beings simply are unable to distinguish between refined spiritualized concepts and sensations on the one hand and that which, on the other hand, approaches them as temptation and counter-acts the grasping of the spiritualized element within them. Therefore, because people did not comprehend at the right time how evolution must proceed, our catastrophic age, our present difficult times have become a necessity. Without the present hard experiences mankind would have sunk still deeper into doubt of itself. To be sure, it would have developed spirituality, but it would have rejected it to a still greater degree.

This is part of the background of historical development. I should like very much, indeed, to throw light from this background upon much that lies in the foreground; but you will appreciate the reasons why this cannot be done in our present age. I must leave it to the individual to illuminate for himself what lives in our immediate present, seen from the background I have just described.

You see, my dear friends, the sleeping away of events which I have characterized causes an inward overlooking of the sharp angles and contours of life. But if we overlook the sharp angles and contours of life, compromises arise. Now, there may be times which are suitable for compromises. The time that preceded the forties of the nineteenth century was one; but this is not true of our time. Our time demands that we see things as they are, with all their angles and contours, in sharp relief; but it also arouses in the human soul the urge—just because of the presence of these sharp angles and contours—to close its eyes sleepily to them. What I have just stated may be observed even in regard to the greatest, the most significant events in human evolution.

In regard to the greatest event in world history, human evolution has brought about just these angles and contours! Indeed, even in regard to the greatest event of world history, namely, the Mystery of Golgotha. We know all the observations made in the course of the theological development of the nineteenth century concerning the Mystery of Golgotha. From the time Lessing began to speak about the Mystery of Golgotha right up to the time of the theologian Drews, all kinds of statements have been made regarding it. And it may well be said that the whole theological development of the nineteenth century offers complete proof of the fact that people have entirely forgotten how to understand the mystery of Golgotha. But there are some very interesting publications concerning the Christ Jesus. Very interesting publications, indeed! Take for instance, a Danish one {Emil Rasmussen Jesus, A Comparative Psychopathological Study.} This Danish publication is written entirely from the standpoint of the modern natural-scientific thinker. The author states: I am a psychologist, a physiologist, and a psychiatrist; I observe the Gospels from this standpoint. And at what conclusion does he arrive? Quite factually, in the sense of modern psychiatric judgment, he arrives at the following one: The picture which the Gospels sketch of the Christ Jesus is a pathological one. We can only conceive of the Christ Jesus as a person suffering from insanity, epilepsy, morbid visions, and similar conditions; he possesses all the symptoms of a serious mental illness.—If one reads the most important passage of this book to people, as I have recently done, {See: Rudolf Steiner, Geistige Wesen und ihre Wirkungen (Spiritual Beings and Their Effects), Vol. IV, first lecture (not yet translated) Anthroposophic Press, New York.} they are shocked. This is comprehensible; for, if what they consider sacred is described as a pathological case, people are horrified. But what are the real facts in the matter? My dear friends, the facts are as follows; Among the great number of dishonest compromisers one arose who takes his stand completely upon the natural-scientific viewpoint; he makes no compromises whatsoever but states: I am a scientist: therefore I must speak as I do; for these are the facts.—If people would place themselves honestly upon the standpoint of natural science, they would have to hold such views. There are these sharp angles and contours from which they cannot escape. They cannot escape unless they forsake the natural-scientific standpoint and go over to the spiritual-scientific standpoint: in this case they will remain honest,—or they may choose to remain honest upon the natural-scientific standpoint; then they are obliged to observe matters, without compromising, in the way of such a scientist who, although entirely honest in his field, is thoroughly limited in his views and does not try to conceal his limitations. He is thoroughly limited, but consistent. This has to be understood. If people would see today what must of necessity result if certain things are consistently carried through, they would see life without compromise.

Someone recently handed me an interesting slip of paper mentioning a book that is already known to me, but since I do not have it with me here, I can only read you what is written on this slip of paper. It was handed to me in order to show me what things are possible today.

“Anyone who has attended high school will remember the unforgettable hours when he had to ‘enjoy’ in his studies of Plato the conversations of Socrates with his friends. Unforgettable because of the fabulous boredom which was engendered by these conversations. He will perhaps remember that these conversations of Socrates struck him as extremely stupid; but, of course, he did not dare utter this opinion, for after all, the man in question was Socrates, ‘the greatest philosopher.’ Alexander Moszkowski's book, Socrates the Idiot, (published by Heysler & Co., Berlin) completely does away with the unjustified overestimation of the good Athenian. In this small, entertainingly written book, the historian Moszkowski undertakes to divest Socrates thoroughly of his philosophical honors. The title, Socrates the Idiot, is to be taken literally. We shall not go wrong in assuming that this book will call forth scientific discussions.”

Now, you will think it dreadful that such things are written. But I do not find it dreadful at all. I think it is self-evident and quite honest of Moszkowski; for, according to his concepts and sentiments, he cannot do otherwise, if he wishes to remain consistent, than to call Socrates an idiot. In doing so he is more honest than many others who, in keeping with their views, should call Socrates an idiot, too, but who prefer to make compromises instead.

I do not need to say, my dear friends, that you should not go out now and spread the news that I am in agreement with Moszikowski when he declares Socrates to have been an idiot. I hope that you understand what I really mean.

But I must acknowledge the fact that people arrive at certain judgments in our time because they make dishonest compromises. It is impossible to think about soul-pathology as modern psychiatrist do and not write a book such as that by the Danish author concerning the Christ Jesus. It cannot be done. One is dishonest if one does not either reject these concepts and replace them by spiritual concepts, or take the standpoint that the Christ Jesus was a mental case.—If one is acquainted with the views of such people, if one knows Moszkowski's opinion concerning the whole structure of the universe, his peculiar views about the theory of radiation and the theory of the quantum, one can appreciate why he, if he wishes to remain honest and consistent, must consider Socrates and also Plato idiots.

What is especially necessary for mankind is the rejection of compromises. Human beings should not make compromises, at least not within their souls. It is very important to consider this as a demand of our age, for it belongs among the most significant impulses of the Time Spirit, Michael, to pour clarity, absolute clarity into human souls. If one wishes to follow the Archangel Michael, it is necessary to pour clarity into human souls, to overcome sleepiness. This sleepiness arises in other spheres also, but above all it is an absolute necessity today to gain insight into the consequences of things. In previous ages this was different. During the centuries prior to the Michael age, in which European mankind was governed by the Archangel Gabriel, the compromises which human beings made in their thinking were lessened by the influence of the spiritual world. Michael is the spirit who works, in the most eminent sense, with the freedom of man. Michael will always do what is necessary. You must not believe that Michael fails to do the right thing. In the unconscious regions of the soul of every human being there is today, sharply outlined, every contour and angle of the spiritual life. It is there. Anyone who is at all capable of bringing to the surface what exists in the depths of the soul life as latent visions knows what it is that lives today in the souls as discrepancies and unrelated facts. He knows that in the souls there live side by side the modern materialistic psychiatry which does not shrink from seeing an epileptic in the Christ Jesus, and even the acknowledgment of the Christ Jesus. Anyone who is at all capable of raising these things into consciousness becomes aware of these facts. It would be interesting if a good painter, with a real understanding of our present time, would paint “Christ, seen from the point of view of a modern psychiatrist,” depicting it expressionistically. The result would be very interesting if the painter had a real understanding of what takes place at the present time in the depths of human soul life.

You see, in our time we have to plumb the depths if we wish to grasp what takes place at the surface of existence. But one can understand, on the other hand, that people are seized by a certain cowardice and discouragement if they are to approach the indicated matter.

This is the other quality necessary today: courage, even a certain audacity, in perceiving, in thinking; an audacity that does not dull our concepts but makes them highly acute. Everything that has to be said today may be found in outer events; the spiritual researcher simply describes it more precisely because he sees it against its proper background. And if the spiritual researcher then describes this background, the outer events will corroborate all the more what has, for example, been indicated today.

Many people ask: “What shall I do?” It is so obvious what one should do! One should open one's eyes! One's spiritual eyes, to be sure. If one opens one's eyes, the Will will follow. The Will depends upon our life situation. It is not always possible in one's particular circumstances, according to one's karma, to do the right thing; but one must try to open one's eyes spiritually. Today, however, the following often happens: If one tries to impart to people in words what is necessary for the present age, they quickly close their eyes, they swiftly turn their minds away form it. This is the descending of the scales on the other side.—What I am saying here might be considered a criticism of our age, but this is not my intention. My purpose is to draw attention to the impulses that must enter human souls, human minds out of the spiritual world, if we wish to get beyond the catastrophic times in which we live. As I have stated, it is not possible to enter into concrete details. Each of you can do that for himself.

Not long before the completion of the second part of his “Faust,” Goethe told his faithful Eckermann that he had taken great care to ensure that this work, in particular, met theatrical and artistic standards so that those who merely wanted to enjoy it with their senses would get their money's worth. And Goethe himself adds that those who are initiated into the secrets will indeed find the deeper meaning behind these images.

But everything is sensual and, conceived for the theater, will catch everyone's eye. And that's all I wanted. If it's just that the crowd of spectators enjoys the appearance; at the same time, the initiate will not miss the higher meaning, as is the case with The Magic Flute and other things.

This, my honored audience, can be an indication of how justified it is to look for deeper secrets in this, Goethe's most mature work. And he himself knew that not everyone could easily succeed in understanding these deep secrets. For another time he said to Eckermann:

I will confide something to you that will help you in many ways and will benefit you for the rest of your life. My works cannot become popular; anyone who thinks or strives for this is mistaken. They are not written for the masses, but only for individual people who want and seek something similar and who are moving in similar directions.

However, on the path that we characterized here yesterday, which Goethe himself had to ascend from decade to decade to a certain human perfection, only a few can follow; and if everyone had to go through this lengthy path of life in spirit, then the understanders of the second part of “Faust” would indeed be few and far between. But through theosophy, which seeks to penetrate into the depths of life, there is the possibility that the soul first summons its innermost powers in order to see spiritually what it can see with the senses. When man penetrates into the results of spiritual research, he certainly arrives at a quicker understanding of what personalities of such rich content as Goethe have to say.

Yesterday we saw how Goethe ascended to perfection, as the stages of this appear to us in his “Faust”. We also pointed out that the first part of Faust was actually only published in its completed form in 1808. We pointed out what a personal, individual work Faust was at first and how it becomes more and more impersonal, talking more and more about matters of the human soul that are more or less meaningful to every human being.

In this way, Goethe removes his Faust from the narrow confines of the individual and into the struggle of the objective powers of the world. That is why he has to organize what you know as “Prologue in Heaven”. There it is not only the inner powers of the soul, but the objective world spirits, which are behind the worlds, that begin their contest for the soul of Faust. There [Goethe shows us how deeply he has penetrated in understanding that it is a mistake] when man regards himself as a separate being; how it is an illusion. Our finger does not do that. It would say to itself: the moment I am cut off, I am no longer a finger. If it wanted to succumb to the same delusion as a human being, it would disintegrate. It would disintegrate if it could walk around on our body – cut off. A human being can walk around on the earth, which is why he succumbs to the delusion of being a separate being. If only he would devote himself with all his soul to the fact that he can no longer live physically just a few miles above the earth, he would not give himself over to this delusion, would feel how the forces not only of the physical but also of the spiritual world play into his own soul. For Goethe, this happened visibly from decade to decade. Thus the powers of the human soul grew into world powers. And in his poetry, he shows us the representatives of the good spirits confronting the representatives of the evil spirits. And it seems to him, Goethe, that man is not just a “fearfully cringing worm”, but someone who understands how, from millennium to millennium, human affairs go through the process of becoming earthly and take hold of the individual human being. Hence the marvelous similarity to the old Biblical record where he has God say to Mephistopheles: “Do you know Faust?” — Mephistopheles: “The doctor?” — The Lord says: “My servant,” as we find it again in the Old Testament Book of Job, where Satan appears before the Lord and the Lord asks him:

Have you taken care of my servant Job?

[Now it seems to us that not just any human being appears to us in Faust; now Goethe appears to us as one who understands how, from stage to stage, human affairs pass through the evolution of the world.] Thus, as Goethe matured, Faust gradually became a world poem. It could only become one because Goethe, through his own development, was able to experience more and more in his inner life how the forces that he had sensed back then in Frankfurt could really be there, developing out of the depths of the soul. In his restless striving, he finally brought them out of himself. And so he knew that man can look into the supersensible world, that there are spiritual eyes as there are sensory eyes, that there are spiritual ears as there are sensory ears.

As early as 1808, he speaks as one knowing about all the things that were still closed to him when he first stood before the Earth Spirit: He speaks as one knowing about the phenomenon that the Pythagorean school recognizes under the name “music of the spheres”. [There, the soul foundations appear to man as harmonies. It is not music, but it is something that can be compared to it, something real that becomes the inspiration of the soul.

When the soul draws from the depths what lies dormant there, the inner tones appear to it as harmonies, as something that is heard with spiritual ears.

It is what is expressed in inspiration. Then the human being feels what this spiritual music is. Then he no longer looks through external vision and admires the appearance of light, but then the soul feels that something behind it is inspired. This is what Goethe expresses in the prologue:

The sun sounds in the old way.

And may those who believe that they are standing on the ground of realistic aesthetics say: the poet allows himself such images. A poet like Goethe, who only gives what he has experienced, does not write nonsense, as in the external realistic sense, when speaking of the sounding sun. He speaks of it only when he has experienced it as something spiritual and real, when he knows that such a resounding exists for the human being who enters into the higher spheres of existence. Therefore, he sticks with this image when he lets Faust ascend to a real insight into the foundations of this world (after the impetuosity and sin of the first part). When Faust, at the beginning of the second part, is to look deeper into the spiritual world, we read the words:

Hark! listen to the storm of the hours!
For the ears of the spirit
The new day is already being born.
Rock gates creak and clatter,
Phoebus' wheels roll and clatter,
Light brings a mighty roar!
It trumpets, it trompets,
Eyes blink and ears are amazed,
the unheard do not hear.

Goethe already presents his Faust as someone who listens to the deeper essence of things. And Goethe truly expresses that he wants to say that “Faust” has ascended from the point of view where he longed for these things but could not grasp them. There he had only one certainty:

The spiritual world is not closed;
a sense is closed, your heart is dead!
Rise up, bathe, disciple, undaunted,
the earthly breast in the dawn!

But the “timidly coiled worm” was then far from bathing the “earthly breast in the morning dawn”.

In the second part, we see how Faust awakens; and how wonderfully described it is, how he bathes in the dawn, how revelation comes to him from the very foundation of things! Such is the inward artistic consistency of Goethe in the continuation of his “Faust.” And Faust is now to be introduced to the great world, to learn to recognize in it all that comes from the Mephistophelian power. Since man is a part of the whole human essence, the power that - as we have characterized - creeps into the human soul and permeates it with deception and lies, will also show itself [not only where man is alone with himself, but also where] man creates without having raised himself above the ordinariness of existence. Therefore, Faust must be led from the small world to the imperial court, must be led to where the great world destinies are decided for his time. It must be shown how the power of Mephisto also leads from error to error there. Therefore, Faust appears with Mephisto at the imperial court. He intervenes in world-historical events. With exquisite humor and precisely for that reason, Goethe describes the scene of Mephisto's hand in the invention of paper money. In the history of literature, it has hardly ever been described with such delicate humor how these forces intervene in world history. There is also this Mephisto in it.

People have often scoffed at the masquerade that is enacted in the second part. If one could take the time to interpret each individual figure from Goethe's mind, one would see how every thought is realized down to the smallest detail, and each would show us the way in which the powers play into everything. [They show us the reflection of Mephistophelean power.] This can be shown in a palpably realistic way. That is why Goethe shows it in a masque. There Goethe showed how the Mephistophelian powers work. He wants to take this even further, showing how Faust and Mephisto relate to each other by moving forward, awakening more and more of the slumbering powers of his soul. He wants to show at court that not only the outwardly sensual appears in the masque plays [but also the ancient, not belonging to the sensual present]: one demands to see the ancient figures of Paris and Helen. There we are led out of a realm that belongs to the sensual present into something that is not in the present in any sense.

But Goethe shows very clearly that he has insight into the conditions of existence. He knows that there is not only something transient but also something eternal in human life, and that something of what has lived as a human being in times as old as can be is present in the world: that the spirit can be found in the spiritual world. And in his picture, Goethe wants to tell us that those people who connect with their own eternal in the soul can penetrate into the realm that lies beyond what eyes can see and ears can hear. [This spiritual realm is not theoretical.] This realm is an experience for those who prepare themselves in an appropriate way. [It is] very real. And it was there for Goethe too, very present.

However, this realm differs quite significantly for the student from what the eyes can see outside. Let us first point out one difference between the two worlds: in our world, things appear with sharp contours, so that we have, so to speak, quite a bit of time to get an idea of how things are. It is different when the soul enters the spiritual world. Then a realm appears to us that shows us the entities that are there in continuous transformation. Just as our feelings change from moment to moment in our own soul, and our passions change from hour to hour, so in the spiritual world there is a continuous transformation.

Formation, transformation,
eternal sense's eternal entertainment,

as Goethe [characterizes it]. He knows that the sensual is born, crystallized out of the spiritual [world], which lies behind our world. He seeks an understandable expression for what the soul sees behind this sensory world. He found the expression.

He had once read in Plutarch. He read about the city that was in the possession of the Carthaginians and that Nicias was supposed to win back for the Romans. Therefore, the Carthaginians considered him a traitor and he was to be imprisoned. As Plutarch recounts, he then behaved as if he were possessed; he ran through the streets shouting: “The Mothers, the Mothers are pursuing me!” Thereupon no one dared to lay a hand on him. The expression ‘the Mothers’ made a special impression on the ancients. ‘The Mothers’ were goddesses who were supposed to represent those powers of the soul that were to lead into the spiritual world, to crystallize out of it like a crystal from the mother liquor. Therefore, Goethe found the name and called this realm ‘the realm of the Mothers’.

What then remains of Paris and Helen after their earthly personalities have sunk into the realm of decay? In the realm of the supersensible world, in the realm of the Mothers. Therefore, if Faust is to bring forth what is demanded of him, he must bring forth the immortal and imperishable in Paris and Helen. To do so, he must descend into the realm of the Mothers. He knows that this realm of the mothers exists and that he can find the immortal in human beings there. But how does he get there? He has not yet banished all Mephistophelian forces from himself; so Mephistopheles must give him advice on how to find the entrance, how to get from the outer world into the realm of the mothers. At his stage of development, Faust cannot yet enter the spiritual realm, although he is certain of its existence. Mephisto belongs to the spiritual world, but is not in fact an externally visible being. He rules in the sensual world, but does not belong to it. Therefore, he has understanding and even the key to lead Faust there; but he does not know what it looks like there. Where he rules, there is no understanding for the supersensible world. Mephisto is the power that presents the external world to us as an illusion: He rules in the realistic world. [This Mephistophelian power also rules today in the materialistic mindset. The error that the material world is the only true one is an influence of Mephisto, who prevents the soul from recognizing the reign of the supernatural. Realism is therefore only possible if Mephisto rules in the soul. And he can only go as far as the external material man can come. But he provides the key to the supernatural world, but can only come to the gate himself. [Thus one can go far through the outer science, up to the gate of the supersensible world, but one cannot enter through it.] Because he has no sense for the supersensible forces, Mephisto only delivers the key. This allows Faust to enter the realm of the mothers. For anyone who experiences the realm that is behind our sensory world, this is an appropriate representation.

And now the dialogue between Faust and Mephistopheles unfolds, which shows how far Goethe was able to penetrate into the relationship between the sensual and the supersensible world. Mephisto describes the realm of the mothers, where the eternal beings of Paris and Helen are, in such a way that he says: You may swim across the sea as far as you like, you see the sun, moon and stars moving; but when you enter the realm that you now want to enter, you see nothing, space seems empty to you, time seems empty. Mephistopheles sees nothing in the realm of the mothers, just as materialism sees nothing where the supernatural world is. But Faust replies to Mephistopheles, as always the spiritual researcher does to the materialist:

In your nothingness, I hope to find the all.

Thus the two stand facing each other: the eternal question of materialism and that world view that seeks to penetrate the supersensible – formulated in this dialogue. Faust even suggests that precisely because Mephisto is the power we characterized yesterday, he must also lead to lies and deception with regard to the supersensible world, and so Goethe has Faust say to Mephisto:

You speak as the first of all mystagogues,
who has ever deceived faithful neophytes
Only the other way around.

I have shown how easily one becomes entangled in error and lies when entering the spiritual world while still embraced by Mephisto, how one becomes a charlatan instead of a spiritual researcher. How justified, therefore, is the fear wherever the charlatan is near the spiritual researcher. Faust calls him a “mystagogue,” because the term used for the leader of the Eleusinian mysteries is rightly used for the charlatan who, without having made the journey, wants to point the way to the spiritual world. [This is the charlatanry that is only separated from the noblest spiritual research by a fine cobweb.] So Faust calls the mystagogue, who speaks of error from the spiritual powers that he cannot recognize – only the other way around, you speak, he says to Mephisto. While they speak of the many things they have seen, you speak of nothing. Mephisto speaks in the opposite, lying way to the spiritual world, just like those deceitful mystagogues. He speaks of it as a nothingness; they fantasize about some kind of spiritual world.

Goethe expresses himself so precisely because he speaks from the innermost experience. But that is why he also shows us what is necessary to penetrate into this world. One can, of course, if one penetrates unworthily – if one has not yet banished from one's soul everything that works as selfishness and egoism – one can indeed see many things in the spiritual world and penetrate, as Faust is now penetrating; but Goethe wants to make it clear that he is not yet inwardly mature, wants to show how difficult the path is to rid the soul of all Mephistophelean influences, wants to show how selfish passions still prevail in Faust. To be worthy, one needs a soul completely cleansed of selfishness. In Faust, personal passion still asserts itself. He wants to possess Helena for himself; but in that moment, the apparition becomes a danger to him. Even his consciousness becomes clouded – the [Helena] figure disappears into the realm of mothers.

Faust must seek another way to free himself from Mephistophelean powers, must develop his soul in such a way that he does not want to conquer the spiritual world at a double march [as in the first part]. [And even not at a single step, as he now entered the spiritual mother realm, he is not allowed to enter there.] He must conquer it in slow inner soul life, so that he follows step by step the inner spiritual conditions. If he really wants to go to Helena, then he must first himself attain full knowledge of how one can ascend again when one has descended, and must look into the secrets of how man really comes into existence. [He must look into those processes that accompany man's entry into life.]

Here, Theosophy shows that it is justified to present man as a threefold being. [How man consists of three bodies: the physical body, the soul body and the spiritual body. He who truly looks into the spiritual world with dignity sees how these three parts of man are combined.] And there, first of all, what we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears presents itself: his physicality. Then his soul shows itself. Thereupon spiritual science structures further and higher up. Today we are only interested in the spirit; so these three: body, soul, spirit. These three are here together. But anyone who looks into the spiritual world must know how they are structured out of the supersensible, these three. Only when it is shown how the immortal spirit of Helena unites with a soul and the connection from soul to body takes place, only then can Faust approach Helena, who is re-entering humanity, [then he is worthy for the spiritual world]. And from this man can see – for spiritual research shows him, but what Goethe knew: the view of the re-embodiment of the innermost human being.

It may seem quite strange when people today speak with certainty of the fact that Goethe had the idea of re-embodiment. But it is indeed the case that what lives in us returns not once, but often and often. Gradually, our time is approaching what will once be of the greatest satisfaction to our time, what will give the greatest satisfaction [where this idea, which will give people the greatest comfort, will appear to them as truth, where it will become popular. Truths only come gradually]. In Goethe's time, people had to lock such truths deep within their souls, for this and another reason: because they knew how infinitely many-faceted and ambiguous truth is [as soon as we approach the spiritual world], and how human words are so easily suited to present this truth with outlines that are too sharp. Therefore, Goethe could not but express in hints what lived in the depths of his soul. He expressed it in the second part of “Faust”. In his “Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years” he also expresses what man's innermost being is, the reappearance to be of use to one's great-grandchildren in this world:

[...] we hope that such an entelechy,

that is, the innermost essence of man,

will not leave our solar system entirely, but, when it has reached the boundary of it, will long to return in order to have an influence on earthly life and well-being again for the benefit of our great-grandchildren].

He does say it with great significance, but he hides his deepest conviction because people were not yet ready for [this idea, which will gradually and consistently emerge from natural science as well].

He expressed this idea poetically in the second part of Faust. He shows that there is a part of the human being that must join with, or be added to, the physical part in order to place the whole person in the sensory world: that there is a soul. And he was familiar with the term for this, which stands between spirit and body. The old terminology recognized it. In medieval literature it was called the “little man” in the big man, the same as what is called “purusha” in Indian literature, the little being that permeates the human being in countless personalities. It is the soul, not yet the spirit. Therefore, one who has not yet risen to the spirit can also penetrate to this soul. [To symbolically conceal this, Goethe has Wagner, who

greedily digs for treasure and is happy when he finds earthworms,

find the homunculus.

Goethe speaks very precisely, much more precisely than people are accustomed to reading. It should be explicitly pointed out that [with the homunculus] one is not dealing with something that belongs to the sensory world, but rather something that is added to it. Therefore, he coins a special image for the creation of the homunculus. All coming into being is called a creation. Here he coins a word himself, [as he had already done in “Faust” for the man striving beyond himself in the earth spirit scene, the word “superman” (Übermensch)]: “Überzeugung” (Über-zeugung) and means by Über-zeugung what extends beyond the ordinary man. That is what the scene with Wagner is about. Read the passage:

It will! The masses are stirring more clearly,
the conviction of the true, the true.

[Read what is usually written about this in the commentaries.] Goethe wanted to point out that the creation of the soul is a conviction. Such writings, which arise from inspiration, must be read carefully; they stand up to scrutiny.

[So now we have the soul.] Helena is to appear to Faust on earth. Faust wants to have her in his possession on earth. We only have the soul of Helena in the Homunculus. This soul must first unite with the body before the spirit can enter.

Now it is shown how the physical is stored in the soul. For this purpose, the homunculus must be guided into a world where it is known how the soul can be incorporated.

[He is not lacking in spiritual qualities,

— Spiritually, it is used in a trivial, soul-like way.

But it is used too much in a tangible, efficient way. So far, the glass alone gives it weight, but he would like to be more embodied.

He should be embodied by taking the natural path of how man develops; developing himself in the sense of the wisdom taught by Thales, for example. This leads him to Proteus. He must be taught and led to where the elements prevail, so that they can integrate into his soul. [He must be led into the classical Walpurgis Night, where the elements prevail, so that his soul can integrate into them.] Thales advises him

to start creation from the beginning

— to go through it —, and advises the homunculus to start with the mineral kingdom, then continue through the plant kingdom. [This is how he comes to Anaxagoras first. Then he seeks to classify the laws of the plant kingdom.] Goethe finds an expression for going through the plant kingdom:

It grunts so.

This describes the soul's passage through the plant element;

until you reach man, you have time,

it is said. [From the beginning, through the kingdoms of nature, the homunculus must embody himself.

The whole process that takes place on Walpurgis Night is the incorporation of the physical body into the soul, so that at the end we have before us the connection between the soul and the body. The soul or homunculus is characterized in such a way that when Faust, [still paralyzed by Helena], is lying in bed, he has a dream. The homunculus can look into the dream of “Faust” and describe the events. [Because he still belongs to the soul world, he could see him.] Every word in the second part of “Faust” could be a clue for the soul to merge with the body. Once this connection is made, the spirit that was present in previous embodiments can be absorbed. [At the end of the second act, the soul is connected to the body.] In the third act, the reincarnation of Helen appears to us, [after Faust had recognized in full detail how body, soul and spirit are joined together]. Now Faust has her before him as he can have her before him as an external human being.

At the same time, however, this poem shows us how Faust's soul forces are increasingly stirring. [When the mighty event of reincarnation presents itself to him, so that he recognizes it, his soul forces grow.] The characteristic of such a poem is that, alongside what is shown externally, there is an inner soul experience at the same time. By recognizing and seeing, his soul forces grow. What unfolds becomes a process of developing his soul. He makes mystical progress. We are presented with a mirror image of what Faust experiences in his soul.

From the union between Faust and Helena, Euphorion is born, the child of Faust and Helena. The aim is to show how Faust's soul has entered into a marriage, as it were, with the spiritual world. By increasing its powers, the soul feels something like a spiritual marriage. And what then arises in him appears to him as an image of the external spiritual world. [The soul feels supersensible knowledge as a child of itself with the universe. Thus Euphorion is like an image of mystical inner knowledge.]

Thus we are shown an image of the spiritual experience of Faust himself. [And at the same time, the stage at which Faust now stands is to be indicated]. He has not yet reached the stage of one who can permanently hold on to his supersensible experience; he can only catch certain glimpses of the spiritual world, then he must return to ordinary external life. And this is the experience of the developing mystic. [In a moment of celebration, the spiritual world opens up to him.] He knows how the descent from spiritual experiences affects the soul, knows that mood of the soul when what was knowledge sinks again and the soul calls for it. This is echoed in the words of Euphorion, who dies young and cries out [from the realm of shadows]:

Let me in the dark realm,
Mother, not alone!

That is the mood that our soul feels: it must, according to its insights, which have once again disappeared.

In a wonderful way, Goethe describes in the events what can appear as an inner soul experience of man as he progresses into the spiritual world. But Faust must go further when what he experiences fades away again. [The soul must regain what it once saw.] This is shown in the fact that the veil and the dress of Helen remain behind for him, Faust. Thus, such a personality retains only the memory of the spiritual experience. Faust must go further. These steps, too, are fully characterized by Goethe. First, it is shown how difficult it is – even for someone who has gained deeper insights into the spiritual – to guard against what still works in the world as the last Mephistophelian forces: Faust becomes a military leader in the [fourth] act, to accomplish a humane deed. He is not yet so far advanced that he can lead purely spiritual forces into the field. The Mephistophelian still mingles with what is around him. [It is not yet possible to see through what forces are leading Faust into the world.] Here the armor from old armories is presented. [Not only the natural, but also history], the historical appears here. The path that a person has to take to mature and to face nature is long. When contemplating nature, the powers of deception can interfere. [Yes, you can go very far with knowledge of nature and history]. The Mephistophelian powers interfere with what is presented as armor. We do not face the phenomena with pure knowledge, the fourth act should also show that.

Faust must be purified more and more, that he may be freed from all that still adheres to our desires of Mephistophelian power. That is difficult. It is the fact that he does not see them that makes it so difficult for man to free himself from these powers. [Again and again, things approach us in which Mephisto is hidden.] Faust does not yet see how the elements that can lead to deception are mixed into the actions of the mountain people. As long as we cannot see into these powers, we cannot free ourselves from them. We must bring it to the point where we are face to face with Mephisto in the flesh. Then he appears in the form in which he is depicted in all religious documents, then he appears as the tempter. Then we know what has power over us. Thus Mephisto must present himself to Faust as tempter, must emerge from unconsciousness into consciousness. Only then does Faust know what Mephistophelian power is. He must confront that power as a tempter. Goethe also indicates that in the course of his supersensible development, Faust confronts Mephisto in the form of the tempter, in that he lets him say:

But, that I may at last speak quite understandably,
Didst thou not favor anything on our surface?
In immeasurable expanses thou overlooked
The realms of the world and their glories.
But, insatiable as thou art,
Didst thou not feel any desire?

The Riches of the World and their Splendor: In the same sense as he speaks in the Gospels, Goethe has Faust face the tempter and be offered the glories of the world. [Man wants to possess them as long as the Mephistophelian power has power in him.] Man must renounce what things are. [That too is only possible in stages.] Faust learns to renounce. He has come so far that he rejects these glories [as immediate possessions; he takes them as a fief, not because he wants to possess them, but because he wants to make them fruitful]. He wants a piece of land that he can win from the sea; he wants

to stand on free ground with a free people,

wants to realize:

Action is everything.

He wants to work selflessly, not for his personal possessions, not for his own selfishness. This is the answer he gives to Mephisto, who offers him

the riches of the world and its glories.

He rejects it, even in the form of a small piece of land.

But [only one step on the way to shedding selfishness has been taken, and there is still something selfish about him]. He cannot yet renounce the unobstructed view. He still wants what he wants from the sea to appear free before his external gaze. The hut of Philemon and Baucis hinders him from this free view. This is a sign that he has not yet overcome the last stage of selfishness. But for Mephisto to once again make such a mistake, [the last remnant of Mephistophelian power must intervene in him, so to speak]: it is he who burns down the hut belonging to the old people.

Now Faust encounters something that even the advanced student knows from experience. [He falls prey to a final danger.] [He who can renounce sensual possessions but not yet miss the view.] The things of the outside world cannot harm him; not harm, want, guilt. He is freed from the fetters of these things. But that which is the last to depart from our soul and which clings until the last remnant of selfishness has vanished, that is worry. He will not be rid of it until the last remnant of selfishness has vanished. Worry! There is a far, far higher form of it, a far, far more heavenly form than the one we encounter in ordinary life. When a person tosses and turns in bed at night and cannot sleep because of worry, [this is also a sign that he has not entered the spiritual world, where he should be at night]. In the symbol, it appears: how he is not allowed into the spiritual world, the higher power of worry. Worry exists as long as he is chained to the sensual world. Man can find the key and block his way down from the spiritual world into the sensual world. If he has not yet separated himself from everything in the sensual world, then worry creeps into his life. [It blocks his access to the spiritual world. And so it happens to Faust as well.] Then it also shows that man still has something to overcome in his nature. Goethe expresses this by making Faust physically blind. Now he can no longer express this selfishness, outwardly he has gone blind. But

inside a bright light shines

– a brighter one. Now Faust is ready to enter the spiritual world.

Because Goethe knew these secrets, he spoke the word at the sealing of his package, which contained the second part of “Faust,” which contains Goethe's testament to humanity. He was satisfied because he could say to himself: I have expressed the abilities that I brought with me into this life as much as I could in this incarnation. He had come so far. Since most people will find it difficult to understand this word of the inner soul-becoming of man, from physical to spiritual vision and the possibilities that the soul must go through to ascend to such spiritual vision, Goethe had to depict in pictures what can only be expressed in words today: what he knew about the secrets of existence, about the supersensible powers of the soul life.

Now he had so much of what he desired during the Frankfurt period. But he could only present it to humanity in images because he knew how few words are suitable to express it. Because first people have to shape their words — as spiritual science is now trying to do — to express the tremendous content of the supersensible world.

Goethe was aware of the soul's inner progress. He expressed it in images. If we understand the term “mystical” correctly, this experience of the soul is called the “mystical life”. And because Goethe expresses this mystical life in his mighty testament to humanity, he allows what he has to offer humanity to fade away in the “Chorus mysticus”. That the soul has dormant powers within it, through which it can become aware of the eternal. For Goethe, this substantiates the saying that everything sensual in the world is an image, a parable for the immortal. What Goethe felt, that it is difficult to characterize the comprehensive things of the soul with words, he wanted to suggest by depicting in images what people cannot grasp. He presents what cannot be described, only seen, as an inner deed of the soul, in a very realistic way. What can be illustrated for the outer senses is done here in the second part of “Faust”. [Everything that is transient is only a parable for the immortal, everything sensual only an image for the supersensible. He felt that it is difficult to describe these transcendental phenomena in their fleeting movements with words. What is inadequate for ordinary life, he made an event in “Faust”.

The soul is certain that such a realm exists and that it can work its way up. It feels that it is something like a feminine that allows itself to be fertilized by the spiritual masculine forces of the universe. When it unites with all such creative forces of the universe, it feels itself to be the eternal feminine in relation to these forces. It is a sin against the great nature of Goethe to accept profane explanations of this sentence. [The eternal feminine of the soul allows herself to be fertilized by the cosmic forces in a cosmic marriage.] What the fertilizing of the universe brings forth is the feminine, that is what Goethe wants to say. This is what is presented to us only through experiences, what he himself has experienced - what man can experience in his mystical experiences. [Only when we have fully understood and experienced Goethe's Faust do those words resound powerfully in our ears.] Goethe's “Faust” ends with the mystical choir depicting this experience. [What a person can achieve in mystical development through spiritual research is summarized in the magnificent sentences that apply to every striving soul.

All that is transitory Is but a parable The inadequate, Here it becomes an event; The indescribable, Here it is done;

In one of my recent lectures here, I pointed out that in the present day, education and teaching not only demand a certain traditional kind of didactic-pedagogical, as they are called, knowledge and skills, but that, above all, it is necessary for the educator and teacher of the present day to penetrate the great cultural currents of the present day. The educator is dealing with the growing humanity. This growing humanity will have to face many more questions and will have to be placed in them than those that have already been experienced in the past up to the present. And it is necessary that the educator and instructor, in dealing with the growing generation, has some inkling of the age and its character into which the present young generation of humanity is growing.

It should be more or less clear to everyone by now how those who speak in the ordinary sense of guilt or misconduct between these or those nations cling to the surface of things. It should be clear today that one cannot clearly see the course of events in the present and the recent past if one cannot free oneself from those ideas of guilt or atonement that apply to the individual life of people. For what has happened and what is still happening, such concepts as tragedy and fate are much more applicable than the concepts of injustice, guilt, atonement or the like. And however little humanity is inclined to raise its own present judgment to a higher level, it will have to be raised. For does not the struggle that humanity has fought point clearly and unmistakably to the fact that, in terms of cultural history, one might say anthropological history, there was a restlessness in humanity that gripped humanity almost all over the world? If one asks here and there: What did people clearly do or think in 1914? - then the judgments are all over the place. One must look at the elementary inner restlessness that has come over humanity all over the world. And this inner restlessness, which is clearly expressed today, has first of all been lived out, one might say, in physical warfare. This physical battle was more physical than previous wars, for how much that is purely mechanical and machine-like has taken part in this weapon fight! But just as this battle was such that it cannot be compared with anything in history, so it will be followed by a spiritual battle that also cannot be compared with anything in history. The extreme physical battle on the one hand will be followed by a spiritual battle, which will also represent an extreme of what humanity has experienced so far in its historical development. It will be seen that the whole earth will take part in this spiritual battle, and that in this spiritual battle Orient and Occident will stand with contrasts of a spiritual and mental kind as they have never been before.

These things always announce themselves through all kinds of symptoms, the significance of which is not always appreciated strongly enough. Much will depend on how the Anglo-American world, as the Occidental world, will behave towards the Oriental world in the future. For the Anglo-American world will not find it as easy as with Central and Eastern Europe physically to cope with the Orient spiritually. That half-starved India is today, crying out for a reorganization of all human conditions, means something tremendous in the present. For when this half-starved India rises, then, through the legacy of the spiritual heritage of the most ancient times, it will be a much more elemental enemy for the Occident, for the Anglo-American world, than Central Europe was with its materialistic outlook.

Our young generation is growing up in this great spiritual struggle, for which all social and other aspirations of the present are only the prelude, so to speak, only the propaedeutic. In this spiritual struggle, our young generation is growing up, and it will have to be armed with forces that today's humanity, even pedagogical humanity, often does not dream of. If present-day humanity wants to pursue social pedagogy, it needs to go back to completely different things than what can be learned from today's scientific methods, which are mostly natural scientific methods. In many cases, the most absurd stuff has found its way into our education system, for the very reason that there is an urge to bring something deeper from human nature into this education system, but because people still resist true reality, which cannot be conceived without spiritual reality. Just imagine that today in education, all kinds of stuff from so-called analytical psychology, from psychoanalysis, is being sought to be introduced into the educational system. Why is this happening? It is happening because people are incapable of thinking spiritually, and so they want to psychoanalytically examine the development of the spirit from the physical nature of the human being. Everywhere there is a resistance to spiritual knowledge that spoils the endeavor in which we are to engage.

Through the various materialistic inclinations of the past, we have developed a certain human attitude in ourselves as human beings. With this we live in the world today. How much this human attitude – I am not talking about a single nation, but about humanity – is worth, can be seen from the fact that millions of people have been killed and even more have been crippled as a result of this attitude of humanity. But let us now look not formally, externally, stereotypically, but let us look inwardly at the growing generation and at what we have to do for them in education and teaching. Let us look at it in the light of that knowledge of humanity, that anthropology, which we who have been involved with anthroposophy for many years should be familiar with. The smallest observation of human life borders on the greatest, most significant cultural currents and forces.

How often has it been discussed here how three successive developmental ages of man differ from each other in relation to the full development of human nature. We must, as I have often said, distinguish in the growing human being the age up to the time when he gets the permanent teeth, that is, until the change of teeth. This change of teeth is a much more important symptom for the whole human development than is usually assumed by today's natural science, which is only attached to external appearances. Over and over again, it must be emphasized that natural science has celebrated its greatest triumphs in these externalities; however, it cannot penetrate into the interior of things. Precisely because it is so great in terms of externalities, it cannot penetrate into the interior.

If we wish to understand the human being in this first stage of life, we must first consider the fundamentals of human inheritance. I have already spoken about this. These conditions of inheritance are only understood one-sidedly if we look at them only through the eyes of present-day natural science. Inheritance is such that two distinctly different influences are at work: the maternal and the paternal element. The maternal element is that which transmits to the human being more of the characteristics of the general folk culture, of the folk element. From the mother, the human being inherits more of the general: that he grows into a particular folk culture with a particular folk character. The mysterious aspect of motherhood consists in transmitting from generation to generation, through physical forces, the characteristics of the folk culture. The specific contribution of fatherhood is to throw the individual individuality of the human being into this generality, that which the human being is as an individual human being. Only when the details of human character are considered in the way suggested by the principles of inheritance will it become clear what is actually present in a newborn human being.

But then, for the first years of life, it should be noted that during this time, the human being is entirely an imitative creature. Everything that a person acquires up to about the seventh year is acquired through being an imitative creature. But through this, the life of the growing child is connected to the most intimate cultural characteristics of an age. Those whom the child imitates first are the child's role models. Everything they carry within themselves, with their most intimate peculiarities, is passed on to the growing generation. This imitation takes place entirely in the subconscious, but it is tremendously significant, and it becomes especially significant from the moment when whatever is learned by imitation from the child, when learning to speak occurs. Before learning to speak, imitation is initially still an imitation in appearance; when learning to speak begins, imitation extends into the inner qualities of the soul. The growing human being then takes on the likeness of those around him. And much more than one usually thinks, language becomes ingrained in the basic character of the growing human being. Language has an inner, a soul character of its own, and the growing child takes on a good deal of the soul of the person with whom he develops by speaking. This assimilation is very strong, very powerful; it extends into what we call the astral body. It is so strong that it needs a counterpole. That is there. And in the unbiased observation of this counterpole, the very mystery in the development of nature and being reveals itself, which today's external observation of nature cannot penetrate.

If external physical nature – let me express myself as I have no language to express these things – were more effeminate than it is, then through the acquisition of language, the human being would become entirely an imprint of that of which he learns to speak. But a kind of dam has been built against this, in that the physical nature of the human being is most strongly hardened during these first seven years. And the culmination of this hardening is expressed in the eruption of the permanent teeth. The eruption of the permanent teeth marks the completion of an inner hardening of the human physical body that continues throughout life, from birth, or at least from the appearance of the first teeth, which are purely inherited teeth, until the permanent teeth come through. These are two opposite poles: the extremely mobile inner development in speech, and the outer hardening, where, as it were, the human being rebels against it and says: I am also still there, I do not want to be just an image. — And this hardening expresses itself in what finally appears as a culmination point in the second teeth, the permanent teeth.

This process takes place in the first years of a person's life. What is the most important educational principle for this age? It is what we ourselves are. If we do not pay attention to what we ourselves are, right down to our innermost being, we educate badly, because the development of the human being at this age does not depend so much on what we tell him as on what we show him. He is a mimetic human being. You can experience it, as I have already mentioned: a child at this age, before the teeth change has taken place, steals, for example. The parents come and are beside themselves that he has stolen. If you see through the circumstances, you ask: how did it actually come about that the child stole? Well, he simply opened a drawer somewhere and took out money. That is what people tell you. If you understand the circumstances, you have to say: Don't worry about it, because it's not theft. The child has seen all along that the mother simply goes to the drawer at a certain time of day and takes money out of it. He has no particular concept of it; he is an imitator, he imitates things; if you forbid him to do so, he simply does not understand yet. It is not necessary for the harsh concepts of theft to immediately follow this act. The important thing is that we pay attention to ourselves and remember that children in these years are imitators.

Then comes the second age, which extends from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. This is the actual school period. During this school period, as I have often mentioned, the peculiar thing is that something completely different occurs in a person's life than the imitative principle of the first years of life. We must not allow ourselves to be talked into accepting such generalizations, as people love to bandy them about. That is nonsense, however it is usually meant. Nature is constantly making leaps. Just think how great a leap there is in plants from the green leaf to the colored petal of the flower. If you think that nature does not leap over an abyss, it may be right; but there can be no question of a continuous development without discontinuity in nature. This is also true for an actual observation of human development. While the human being is an imitator in the first seven years of life, he enters the age from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, where the principle of authority is the decisive factor for him. During this period something in the human being degenerates if the child is not given the healthy opportunity to develop trust in the person educating and teaching him, to trust not with the not yet awakened intellect but to do what is expected of him out of trust in the educator's authority, because the other person says it should be done and presents it as such. These things are not to be considered only from the point of view of today's tendency to absolutize everything in life, and from the point of view of the desire to make even the child an absolutely inwardly free being. If that is desired, and if it is done at this age, then the human being is not made free, but rather is made without support for life, quite without support, inwardly empty. If a person has not learned between the ages of seven and fourteen to have such trust in people that he orients himself towards them, something will be missing in the coming life in terms of inner strength and willpower, which he must have if he is to truly rise to life.

Therefore, all teaching should preferably be based on this absolute looking up to the educator. This cannot be drummed into the child, it cannot be beaten into the child; it must lie in the quality of the educator and teacher themselves, and there the matter goes right to the innermost core. These things do not take place in the same sphere as that in which we as educators say something to the child, but they take place primarily through what we as educators are in relation to the child. The way we speak, the tone of our speech, whether it is permeated with love or mere pedantry, whether it is permeated with factual interest or a mere sense of duty, is something that vibrates beneath the surface of things. This is of the utmost importance in the interplay between authoritarian action and the sense of authority. The relationship between the growing child and the educator or instructor is much more intimate than one might think. The child is now no longer merely imitating, but must grow into the most intimate, instinctive coexistence with the educator and instructor. This can be achieved even with the largest school classes; the excuse that it cannot be achieved does not apply. For anyone who has observed life knows that there is a great difference between two teachers, one of whom enters the classroom and the other enters it, quite apart from how many children are in the classroom. The one who, in the evening, as one often heard in German countries in the past, always felt the need to drink so much beer that he had the necessary heaviness in bed – that is a saying that one could often hear – will, not so much because he drank beer, but because of his inclinations, will open the classroom door and enter the room quite differently than someone who may have acquired the necessary heaviness in the evening before by, let us say, pondering a more serious matter regarding this or that ideological question. This is just one example, which could of course be varied in a hundred different ways. Only when one fully appreciates the benefit that a person receives from being able and allowed to develop a belief in authority between the time their teeth change and the time they reach sexual maturity, only when one fully appreciates this benefit, does one actually have the right judgment about what can happen in teaching and educating during this period of a person's life.

People often ask: What should we do with children? They then say: It is good at this or that age to tell children fairy tales, to let them retell fairy tales. Or they say: At this age, one should not talk to children so much in abstract terms, but rather in symbols and images. And I have pointed out that one can discuss even the most meticulous things with children, for example, the question of immortality. You point out to the child the chrysalis of an insect and how the butterfly flies out, and you point out that just as the butterfly comes out of the chrysalis, the soul of a human being passes through the gateway of death, out of the physical body into another form of existence. Yes, it is good to tell a child this. And yet, often you do not achieve any significant goal with it. Why not? Because in many cases you are asking the child to believe in it, and you do not believe in it yourself, you consider it to be a mere comparison. But this plays a significant role in the subconscious. These things are not meaningless. There is more to the relationship between people than can be expressed in external terms. There is a relationship between the whole person and the whole person. If you yourself do not believe in such a symbol, then there is no authority for the child, then you are not a role model for the child, even if you do everything else to secure your authority. You will say, of course: Yes, I cannot believe that the transition to death, to the post-mortem state, is somehow expressed in real terms by the butterfly hatching from the chrysalis. Well, I believe in it because it is actually true, because in fact the things of reality are real symbols, because it is indeed the case that in the physical world the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis according to the same laws by which, in the spiritual, the immortal soul emerges from life through the portal of death. But present-day humanity does not know such laws; it considers them wishy-washy. It has the belief that it must teach children something that has been overcome for the old. But then we cannot educate, then we cannot teach.

We can only gain a sense of authority if we pass on to the children what we ourselves believe fully, even if we have to dress it up in completely different forms for the children; but that is not the point. However, no human relationship can be established without sincerity and truthfulness at its core. And truth must prevail between people in all relationships. Only by turning to the truth will we be able to bring into the world what is now missing in the world. And because it is missing, misfortune has come. Do you not see the effect of dishonesty everywhere in the world, even the tendency, the longing for dishonesty? Is truth still spoken in world politics? No, under the present circumstances not at all! But we must start from the lowest human being to cultivate the truth again. Therefore, we must look into the secrets of the developing human being and ask: What does the developing human being demand of us in terms of education and teaching?

Those who, between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen, have not developed the ability to look to someone other than their authority figure, are, above all, incapable of developing the most important thing in human life for the next stage of life, which begins with sexual maturity: the feeling of social love. For with sexual maturity, not only does sexual love arise in man, but also what is in fact the free social devotion of one soul to another. This free devotion of one soul to another must develop out of something; it must first develop out of devotion through the feeling of authority. That is the state of the doll for all social love in life, that we first go through the feeling of authority. People who are fond of flirting and antisocial behavior arise when the sense of authority is not brought to life in teaching and education between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen.

These are things of the utmost importance for the present time. Sexual love is only, so to speak, a specific, a section of general human love; it is what emerges as the individual, the particular, and what adheres more to the physical body and the etheric body, while general human love adheres more to the astral body and the I. But the ability to love socially also awakens, without which there would be no social institutions in the world. This only awakens on the basis of a healthy sense of authority between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, that is, during the person's time at school. No matter how much people talk about a unified school system – and it is quite justified, of course – no matter how much they talk today about developing individuality and whatever the abstractions are called with which pedagogical puppets are made today: what matters is that we regain the ability to look inside human nature and, above all, to develop a feeling for the fact that the human being lives at all. Today, people have no sense at all that the human being is a living being that develops over time. Today, people only have a sense that the human being is something timeless; for today, people only talk about the human being without taking into account that he is a developing being, that something new is drawn into his overall development with each age.

If the things that lie within the program of the threefold social organism were fully explained to people today, they would still seem like a kind of madness to many in the widest circles. For you see, self-government is demanded, for example, for the educational system, separation from state and economic life with regard to the actual spiritual side of education. It is only through the emancipation of the spiritual life that it will be possible to restore man's rights. For today no one knows that the inner developmental impulses in the first years of life until the change of teeth are different from those in the time that follows until sexual maturity, and still different after sexual maturity; and no one knows today that when life goes downhill, when a person is in the second half of life, they undergo developmental states again. Who today considers that a person matures in life and that someone who, for example, is in his late forties or fifties has more to say through his life experience than someone who is only twenty years old? The course of life is something real. Today, however, it is not real for many people because they are educated and trained in such a way that they are no longer able to really gain experience in the second half of their lives. Today, people do not become older than twenty-eight years, so to speak, then they just vegetate along with the experiences up to the age of twenty-eight. But it does not have to be that way! A person can be a learner throughout their entire life, learning from life. But then they must be educated to do so; during their school years, the powers within them must be developed that can only become strong during this time, so that they are not broken again by later life. Today, people go around somehow getting a kink in their lives. Why is this so? Because in the period from the age of seven to fourteen they have not been made strong enough to withstand life. These connections must be given due attention, and other connections must not be forgotten. When we grow very old, we develop qualities that are connected with our very earliest childhood. What we imitated then develops at a higher level in the very last stage of life. And what we have gone through in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity occurs somewhat earlier, in the forties. And so what a person goes through in their very earliest childhood develops in their very latest stage of life. Human life is a real fact in its development. And we will not achieve real socialization until we treat human beings humanely. If we know nothing about human beings except that they come of age at twenty-one and are then capable of being accepted into all possible bodies and of talking about everything, then we will never establish socialism; we will only arrive at a levelling down to a human abstraction. Therefore, in the actual democratic state, where every mature person faces every mature person, everything that concerns man according to the equality of all men must be restricted, that is to say, everything that comes from mere legal concepts. It is precisely for this reason, in order not to kill reality, that the possibilities must arise again for what is bound to the becoming of man to be handed over to free development: spiritual life and economic life. It will develop in such a way that we will also have colleges of elders in spiritual and economic life again, because people will trust the art of administration more in those who have grown old than in those who are still young. The way will not be to have the state supervise the schools, as it is now, but the way will be to base the spiritual life on self-government. One often has the feeling that when a person has grown old, he is no longer suitable for one thing or another for which he was suitable in the past. In Austria, for example, there is a law according to which university teachers may only lecture until they are seventy, then they are granted a year of grace at most; but after that they are no longer allowed to lecture. I believe this law is still in force. I can even claim that it would be good if this age limit were lowered even further. But then, if a person is a university teacher, they would first have to enter the office of care and provision, the administrative office of teaching. The intimate bond between spirit and nature, which people today rave or ramble about, I believe, should be seriously sought again. We should not make arrangements that are made to the exclusion of any consideration of natural development, for example, to the exclusion of the fact that man is not an absolute being who is born at thirty-five years of age, remains that age, and does not grow older than thirty-five years. Instead, everything should be built on the development of the human being.

Let us assume the following case: we create a socialist institution today that is entirely to our liking, so that we are fully satisfied according to the view we have today of what takes place between people in a social context. And let us assume – which would also happen if one did not at the same time understand socialization in the spiritual sense – that socialization would take place entirely from today's world view. Then something would have to happen that has not yet occurred in the development of mankind: the next generation would be a generation of rebels. They would be the worst kind of revolutionaries, and they would have to be for the simple reason that they all wanted to bring something new into the world, and we here have only preserved the old. This shows how important it is to take into account the process of becoming, how we must not only consider that a person is a person, but also bear in mind that a person is a being that is born as a small child and dies with white hair, or even without hair. Today's natural science does not yet look into these things, and from today's natural science we learn for all other branches of life.

A very good, even brilliant, magnificent reflection of the scientific way of thinking in relation to social concepts is Marxism; it is science that has become social science, and is therefore basically absolutely barren. For Marxism teaches that everything will come of itself. People are particularly annoyed by the fact that so much is being written about the new formation in the sense of the threefold social organism. They say that they fully agree with my criticism of the present capitalist order, that they fully endorse the threefold order itself; but, they continue, they have to fight it in every way. These are the fruits of the present state of mind: people actually agree with something completely, but they have to fight it sharply. This is the result of applying the scientific way of thinking to all areas of life. The reason why this scientific way of thinking has become so powerful is that it is limited to the study of the dead. People only believe that it is an ideal that will one day be realized, that a living thing can be created in the laboratory through all kinds of combinations. But this will never happen through the scientific paths of today, because the scientific path of today only leads to dead concepts and is only great for grasping the dead. But with this grasping of the dead, one can never gain concepts for the living. We must achieve this possibility: to find concepts, ideas, sensations, impulses of will for the living; and this is especially necessary in the field of education.

As I have often stated in other places, today there is a very ingenious philosopher who saw the task of his science in something very strange. Above all, this philosopher wrote a thick book many years ago: “The Whole of Philosophy and its End”. In it, he proved that there can be no such thing as a philosophy. That is why he became a professor of philosophy at a university. Then he wrote a very ingenious book about the mechanics of spiritual life, a very ingenious book. He is a person called Richard Wahle, who has absorbed and realized the scientific way of thinking in the most ingenious way, who basically does not encounter the spiritual in his way of thinking. He just says that he does not want to deny the spiritual because he does not want to talk about the spiritual to such an extent that he does not deny it; but he only sees the known primary factors. He constructs the world entirely according to the scientific way of thinking. He is very clever, he is full of spirit. That is why he has also come to the conclusion – and this is something significant in this book 'On the Mechanism of Spiritual Life' – that is actually the scientific world view for today's human being. He asks himself: What do I have when I create the world view that today's scientist can form? And he comes to the answer: Then I have nothing but ghosts in my head; I get no reality, I have only ideas of a ghostly nature. — This is, strangely enough, correct: natural science gives nothing but ghosts. When it speaks of the atom, it is actually speaking of an atomic ghost; when it speaks of the molecule, it is speaking of a molecular ghost; when it speaks of natural laws and natural forces, they are all ghost-like. Everything is a ghost, even the law of causality. For the law of causality, as it is understood today, lives from the great illusion that what follows always arises from what has gone before, but this is not the case at all. Imagine a first, a second, and a third event. These do not need to arise from one another; the second does not need to arise from the first, nor the third from the second. Rather, the successive events can be like waves that arise from a completely different element of reality, and for each successive event you would have to look for the deeper causes somewhere completely different from the merely preceding event. I have been philosophically proving all this for decades. You only have to really study my writing “Truth and Science” and my “Philosophy of Freedom” to see that all this can be philosophically and rigorously scientifically proven. Wahle then summarized this by saying: “The scientific world view lives in the presentation of a ghostly world view. And that is true. Today's humanity does not have a conception of reality, but only a conception of ghosts, however much humanity today does not want to believe in ghosts. This belief in ghosts has in fact taken refuge in the scientific world view and is misleading people because they believe that they are fully immersed in reality. That is the revenge of the world spirit. But human nature is such that one thing never comes without the other.

What we form as a natural image, as a ghostly natural image today, is intellectual. But a human soul quality never takes on a certain character without the other soul qualities also changing in a corresponding way. While we scientifically create a ghostly image of nature, our inner will character also changes, and through this — something that today's people do not see because it is too fine for today's gross observation, but which nevertheless exists —, through the fact that our outer way of looking at things is ghostly, our will becomes nightmarish, in that the finer soul qualities arise from similar soul foundations as the inarticulate form of movement, or even speech, that takes place under the nightmare. And such a nightmare of humanity accompanies everything social, accompanies education, as our ghostly image of nature. Our social life is still a nightmare today because our image of nature is a ghost. One follows from the other. The convulsive restlessness that has taken hold of humanity today almost everywhere on the globe is a consequence of this inner life, of this ghostly conception of nature and the resulting psychological nightmare of the world of will and of the world of emotion.

This is what will lead to the fact that the genetic makeup that has been preserved in the Orient out of ancient spirituality must turn against the Occident, which has developed the qualities I have been talking about today. The farther west one goes, the more man lives under the unnatural influence of a ghostly image of nature on the one hand and under the convulsive, nightmare-like anti-social being on the other. The Orient, with its ancient spirituality, will rebel against this, and this will give character to the spiritual war that will follow the physical war. And the coming generation will have to live under this unrest. But under this unrest, what is called social organization must also develop. Therefore, there is no other way to counteract this than to let the abilities that lie in the human soul develop most strongly through social life. But this can only be done by organizing the social organism. For only by allowing each link – the economic, the legal, and the spiritual – to develop in its own way can they acquire a higher unity in the future. It would be a grave mistake to believe that a dichotomy would lead to anything. Today, some people talk about developing an economic life and a political life separately. This would lead to nothing more than the two, the economic and the political state, sabotaging each other; for the restless element of the spirit, which can only develop independently as a third link, would have to be present in both. The spiritual power of economic life would sabotage the spiritual power of state life, and the spiritual power of state life would sabotage the spiritual power of economic life. It is therefore essential that we really turn our attention to this threefold order and do not believe that we can make an advance payment in the form of a twofold order. It depends on the threefold order of the social organism. The smallest details of life will, in the near future, combine with the greatest things in life. Today, anyone who wants to can already come across the following phenomena.

In Anglo-American circles – as I mentioned earlier – people were already talking about this world conflagration, this world war, in the 1880s, because they were generous, albeit in a Western, selfish way, and reckoned with the driving forces of history. I have not yet traced it back further, but it is enough to know that in the 1880s, people in England were already talking about a world war in a similar way, not just that it would come, but that it would lead – and I am quoting the actual words that were spoken – to socialist experiments in Central and Eastern Europe, which people in Western Europe would not tolerate because they did not want to provide the conditions for such experiments. These are all facts. I am not talking about guilt or misconduct, and we must also stick to the facts. Everything that has happened so far has developed from quite significant foundations. The beginning of the socialist experiment in Russia is there. Today it has failed, as you know, can be regarded as having failed. Its defenders are always, like people in general, more papist than the Pope, are always more Leninist than Lezin; because Lenin already knows very well today that he will get nowhere with what he has brought about. And why is he getting nowhere? Because he neglected to establish a free spiritual life. If you want to go as far as Lenin did in the social sphere, you also need a free spiritual life, otherwise you become ossified and bureaucratic to the point of impossibility for the rest of social life. Today, the Russian experiment has already proved that the spiritual life must be free. But one must understand such a fact. And if people in Central Europe do not want to understand the necessity of the emancipation of intellectual life, especially of the school and teaching system, then a very terrible spiritual war will come between Orient and Occident.

Today the English, who have coped relatively easily with Central Europe in their politics, have failed to reflect on historical possibilities and impulses, today the English have to ask themselves: How will we cope with India? That need not be our concern, but it will soon be a very significant concern for Anglo-American politics, because the Indians will demand a socialization, but one that the Europeans can hardly even dream of. First of all, the stomachs of a huge part of the Indian people are rumbling. First of all, a large part of this people, mysteriously supported by all the demons that accompany the inheritance of ancient spirituality, lives with the call: “Away from England!” And England is no longer England at that moment if it does not have India. But this will not be a simple process; it will be a very significant process. Perhaps sleepy souls will oversleep it. You can't oversleep the physical war, but to oversleep the spiritual war, people might still manage to do that; because they have such a strong somnolence today, the so-called civilized people, that they oversleep the most important things. But the matter will still take place. And with all the powers that lie at the very core of the soul, the human being will be in the midst of this struggle.

The one who must first consider that we are heading for such times must be the educator and teacher. And from the thought, from the presentiment of what is to come, the strongest impulses must arise, which pedagogy, which education and teaching will need in the near future. What is to be taught and how must arise, not out of sophisticated fantasies about pedagogical and methodological minutiae, but out of an understanding of the great cultural currents of the present day, and this must shine forth into the teaching and education of the very near future.

Stuttgart 1898, Fromanns Verlag

One of the most interesting developments in the intellectual evolution of recent decades has undoubtedly been the change in our appreciation of “ideals”. Unconditional veneration has given way to doubt. Today we perceive this veneration as prejudice and ask about the conditions in the human organization that cause us to turn our feelings to a field that in reality corresponds to nothing. Even the highest of ideals, the concept of God, has become questionable to us. In her novel “In the Struggle for God”, which touches on the deepest tasks of contemporary culture, Lou Andreas-Salome& said: “The highest of human creativity is that it is able to create beyond itself, looking upwards.” The education of past centuries has worked hard to prevent the realization that the world of ideals is a creation of man. This world was to have an untouchable existence alongside and above natural reality, and the spiritual struggles were presented as humanity's striving to find harmony between ideal and reality. Indeed, if a conflict between these two realms arose, the ideal was always given the right of way and reality was expected to become more and more like it. Schiller, for example, felt the greatest happiness in fleeing from common reality into the lofty, pure realm of ideals. This has now changed. Reality has proven itself the victor in our consciousness. We only understand the ideal insofar as we can find its roots in the pure and natural. If such roots cannot be found, then the ideal appears to us as a lie or as an idol that the human spirit invents because it has a tendency to seek satisfaction in the illusory sphere that it cannot find in direct life. Truth is more important to us today than anything else. We want to reveal it without reservation, even if it means destroying goods that have been considered sacred to mankind for centuries.

Women are making a major contribution to this revelation in our time. They have had to turn their minds away from the true nature of life for the longest time and have attached their feelings to goods that reveal themselves as a sham when viewed impartially. Two books that have just been published are proof that women have revelations to make to us from the depths of their being: Rosa Mayreder's “Idole” (Berlin 1899) and Adele Gerhard's “Beichte” (Berlin 1899). Anyone who delves into these two books will feel, above all, that important things are being said here, because the courage exists to express, without reservation, what is going on at the bottom of the female soul. And the second thing we feel is the insight we gain from these works into the lives of noble women who lead a hard, honest and energetic struggle in life. Rosa Mayreder told us about this struggle in her earlier collections of short stories, “Aus meiner Jugend” and “Übergänge”. The only way to describe what is expressed here is to say that the heroic confronts us in the special way that it must take on in the highly-intelligent woman of the present day. In the “Idols” the essence of love is revealed, with the clarity of the psychologist and with the sincerity of the bold seeker of truth. Rosa Mayreder has the gift of seeing the world in terms of its greatness. Her writing is like a psychological discovery. We follow everything she says with open ears, because we soon realize that only she can tell us what she says. Adele Gerhard is of a different nature. She has no great revelations to make. Anyone who has looked around in life will have experienced countless times what she is talking about. But we have probably never looked at these things with the same degree of attention as this woman does. We are less interested in what she sees, but in how she looks at it. Much more interesting than these little stories that we have encountered everywhere, in contrast to which - we cannot deny it - we suffer from a certain blasé attitude, is the author's attitude towards things. We imagine we see the author's eyes, which look at the world very differently from our own. A free soul who finds it difficult to be free stands before us. For Rosa Mayreder, telling the truth seems to be a form of salvation, for Adele Gerhard a form of martyrdom.

I would like to suggest how the psychology of the modern woman's soul is revealed in the two books in a second article.

II

Rosa Mayreder's “Idols” are the product of the sentiment expressed in the old saying: “Man's most excellent study is man.” The value of this book lies in the fact that it presents the inner life of woman from the point of view from which the philosopher would most like to view the whole world. This point of view has often been expressed in the words: “from the point of view of the eternal”. But it would be better to say: “from the point of view of the meaningful”. Rosa Mayreder's own life is the source of deep riddles for her. And the answers she seeks open up perspectives into the abysses of human nature. On every page it becomes clear that this is a woman who has used a significant amount of strength to come to terms with her own experiences. But who also possesses this strength. As a result, the work exudes a peculiar ethical atmosphere that bears witness to the seriousness and dignity of life.

The secret that lies in the sexual relationship is at the center. It is the relationship that becomes so puzzling to those who reflect on the relationship between individuality and the whole. What is it in the opposite sex that draws us to it, in order to seek in it the completion of our own being? Rosa Mayreder presents the attraction to the opposite sex in all its power; but at the same time she shows the element that intervenes between the souls of man and woman. At bottom, individuality cannot go beyond itself. There is something that opposes the assimilation of the alien soul. It is the image of the other that comes to life in our own being. What happens when the cool, sober observer of the world compares his idea of a man loved by a woman with the image that presents itself in the female psyche itself as the reason for her love? This love awakens in one man, and it does not stir in countless others. That cool observer knows nothing of the cause of this love. And he cannot know anything about it. For what the woman loves is not an object of cool observation; it is a being that is born out of her love, it is not the strange man, it is the idol, the image of this man. Gisa loves Dr. Lamaris. “When this man entered, yes, the moment I saw him for the first time, he seemed so strangely familiar to me, so familiar, as if I had known him for a long time. And after he had spoken to me for a few minutes, polite, meaningless words, like any young man addresses to any young girl, I suddenly got the impression that I was having a great time, that the whole company, which was standing and sitting around rather leathery, was animated as never before. And how different the real Dr. Lamaris was from the idol Gisas! What a contrast there was between the two natures in all the moments in which they met! The “idea” of a radiant inner life often returned later, but never in his presence. It could not tolerate contact with reality. Reality stared at him with hurtful impressions that “burrowed into my soul like pinpricks.”

Gisa's entire world of perception is rooted in the view that the right person relates to the world in a way that corresponds to the most fundamental inclinations of his or her nature. The doctor, on the other hand, views all relationships from a different perspective. A girl should be pious because it is the best way for her to adapt to life. Gisa says: “You are religious or irreligious because of an inner state; but not because you should or shouldn't. So what does it mean to say that a girl should be pious?” The doctor, however, says: “It means that it is not beneficial for a female psyche to do without the aids that religion provides.” “So religion from the point of view of soul diet, of psychic hygiene?” the girl replies. This point of view is hateful to her. “It makes everything flat and philistine!” Lamaris knows only one thing: ”Nevertheless, civilized humanity will have to learn, if it is not to fall into complete ruin, to look at life exclusively from this point of view; it will have to re-evaluate all emotions from this point of view. Love too, and love in the first place. For since it is love that usually decides the fate of future generations, it happens all too often that the union of two people based on a love affair is something positively outrageous. It is a sentimental aberration to present love as the most desirable basis for marriage. The illusory character of this affection makes those who are affected by it completely incapable of making their choice according to rational reasons, namely in the sense of racial improvement.” One sees a second idol. The woman, whose sexual instincts have become spiritualized into a love fantasy, places her fantasy image between herself and the man she seeks. The man with the culture of reason places an abstract cultural idea in the same place. The rest of the story shows that Lamaris also has a deep affection for Gisa. However, he does not follow this inclination. This is because he comes from a family that includes mentally deranged members, and he himself has a profession that particularly demands his intellect. The spirit that lives in his organism must not be allowed to unite with that of a girl who also strives for spiritualization. That is why he marries a healthy girl with little education. It is precisely his principle that “men who live strongly at the expense of the brain should marry women from spared social classes – for the sake of the offspring.” The best way to see how this idol relates to his real emotional life is to see that his wife bears a striking resemblance to Gisa. His mind sought Gisa; his intellect determines his life.

The magic of Rosa Mayreder's book lies in the way the poet knows how to place human experiences in the great context of the world. Her artistic intuition always leads her to see a detail within a whole in a way that allows us to perceive the depths of life. The truly noble soul must be recognized in this. This is how I would like to justify saying that Rosa Mayreder sees things with greatness. The way she captures the problem of love seems to me to be different from that of other poets. Usually, we are presented with the external manifestations of love; Rosa Mayreder goes to the essence of love, one might say to its “thing in itself”. The enlightenment she has given herself about her own heart has sharpened her view of humanity as such. In the history of the development of the mind, one will no longer be able to ignore the form that this artist has given to human experiences.

III

Adele Gerhard's tasks are different. The four sketches “Beichte”, “Gönnt mir goldene Tageshelle”,¹ “Ebbe” and “Der Ring an meinem Finger” show that her interest is not in the colorfulness of life, but in the contours. These short novellas seem like [charcoal drawings]. And the intellectual conscience of the woman gave birth to them. The tragedy of female love is expressed in them. It arises from the contradiction between the situation in which women find themselves by virtue of their nature and the demands that life experiences awaken in them. Love draws women to men; they become attached. They impose duties on them that undermine their individuality. The woman described in the last story is the most significant from this point of view. “I am constantly looking for a way out, but I can't find it. The nights torment me with their heavy, exciting dreams. The ring on my hand starts to pinch me. I look at my child, it grabs my hand: Mama stays with Johanne. I kiss it. But I am also here, something inside me calls urgently, and I want my right - my right, which you call wrong.” Women who had to enter into a relationship as much as they had to long for it after they had experienced it are portrayed here. The author is a woman who recognizes the profession of woman as a way of life and who constantly feels the barriers that limit this profession. Here, nature seems to be hostile to man as a demon.

The poignant nature of this thought arises from the fact that there is no way to resolve the contradiction that has been identified. Has nature assigned the role of eternal martyr to women? I see that in these novellas this contradiction appears as terrible and tragic as possible; but I do not see any indication that would allow us to hope for a solution. Schopenhauer's philosophy, applied to the consciousness of women, is brought to life in this little book. Rosa Mayreder seeks to reveal the essence of love; Adele Gerhard portrays the catastrophes of the love idol. The fact that both books appeared at almost the same time is characteristic of the culture of the time. The “Idols” seem like an explanation of “Confession”. Is it any wonder that the “idea of a radiant inner life” cannot tolerate contact with reality and that the “hurtful impressions” of this reality bore into the soul “like pinpricks”? Dr. Lamaris finds: “For since it is love that usually decides the fate of future generations, it happens all too often that the union of two people based on a love affair is something downright outrageous.” Adele Gerhard starts from the point of view that such principled views appear shallow and philistine to women before they are married, because they are completely dominated by their idols. After marriage, reality pushes the idol back in two ways. The idol, to which the female personality has become completely lost, is destroyed, and the right of one's own individuality asserts itself again; and the prospect of the next generation, which before could only be a matter of the mind, then, when this generation enters life, becomes a matter of the heart. The duties towards one's offspring are now not only demanded by reason, but felt by the heart. And women are faced with the necessity of sacrificing their individuality to a foreign entity once again.

Laura Marholm has claimed that the women's issue is essentially a men's issue. She claims that women are naturally drawn to men in order to fulfill their essence. Rosa Mayreder shows that this search is influenced by an idol, thereby putting the “men's issue” in its place. Adele Gerhard speaks of the tragedy that the idol of love leads to; and with that it would be clear that men are an unsatisfactory solution to the women's issue.

• 1. We published this sketch some time ago in the “Magazin für Literatur> [No. 38, 24.9.1898]

[ 1 ] In June 1794, Johann Gottlieb Fichte sent the first sections of his Theory of Science ⁴⁵ to Goethe. The latter wrote back to the philosopher on June 24: “As far as I am concerned, I will owe you the greatest thanks if you finally reconcile me with the philosophers, with whom I can never do without and with whom I have never been able to unite myself.” What the poet is here seeking from Fichte is what he sought earlier from Spinoza and later from Schelling and Hegel: a philosophical world view that would be in accordance with his way of thinking. None of the philosophical directions with which he became acquainted, however, brought the poet complete satisfaction.

[ 2 ] This fact makes our task considerably more difficult. We want to draw nearer to Goethe from the philosophical side. If he himself had designated one standpoint of knowledge as his own, then we could refer to it. But this is not the case. And so the task devolves on us to recognize the philosophical core of all we have from the poet and to sketch a picture of it. We consider the right way to accomplish this task to be a direction in thinking that is gained upon the foundations of German idealistic philosophy. This philosophy sought, in fact, in its own way to satisfy the same highest human needs to which Goethe and Schiller devoted their lives. It came forth from the same contemporary stream. It therefore also stands much nearer to Goethe than do those views that to a large degree govern the sciences today. What Goethe expressed in poetic form and what he presented scientifically can be regarded as the consequence of a view that can be formed out of that philosophy. They could definitely never be the consequence of such scientific directions as our present-day ones. We are very far removed today from that way of thinking which lay in Goethe's nature.

[ 3 ] It is indeed true that we must acknowledge progress in all areas of culture. But that this progress is one into the depths of things can hardly be asserted. For the content of an epoch, however, only progress into the depths of things is decisive, after all. But our epoch might best be characterized by the statement: It rejects, as unattainable for man, any progress at all into the depths of things. We have become faint-hearted in all areas, especially in that of thinking and willing. With respect to thinking: one observes endlessly, stores up the observations, and lacks the courage to develop them into a scientific, whole view of reality. One accuses German idealistic philosophy of being unscientific, however, because it did have this courage. Today one wants only to look with one's senses, not think. One has lost all trust in thinking. One does not consider it able to penetrate into the mysteries of the world and of life; one altogether renounces any solution to the great riddle questions of existence. The only thing one considers possible is: to bring what experience tells us, into a system. But in doing so one forgets that with this view one is approaching a standpoint considered to have been overcome long ago. The rejection of all thinking and the insistence upon sense experience is, grasped more deeply, nothing more, after all, than the blind faith in revelation of the religions. The latter rests, after all, only upon the fact that the church provides finished truths that one has to believe. Thinking may struggle to penetrate into the deeper meaning of these truths; but thinking is deprived of the ability to test the truth itself, to penetrate by its own power into the depths of the world. And the science of experience, what does it ask of thinking? That it listen to what the facts say, and interpret, order, etc., what is heard. It also denies to thinking the ability to penetrate independently into the core of the world.

On the one hand, theology demands the blind subjection of thinking to the statements of the church; on the other, science demands blind subjection to the statements of sense observation. Here as there, independent thinking that penetrates into the depths counts as nothing. The science of experience forgets only one thing. Thousands and thousands of people have looked at a sense-perceptible fact and passed it by without noting anything striking about it. Then someone came along who looked at it and became aware of an important law about it. How? This can only stem from the fact that the discoverer knew how to look differently than his predecessors. He saw the fact with different eyes than his fellow men. In looking, he had a definite thought as to how one must bring the fact into relationship with other facts, what is significant for it and what is not. And so, thinking, he set the matter in order and saw more than the others. He saw with the eyes of the spirit. All scientific discoveries rest on the fact that the observer knows how to observe in a way governed by the right thought. Thinking must naturally guide observation. It cannot do so if the researcher has lost his belief in thinking, if he does not know what to make of thinking's significance. The science of experience wanders helplessly about in the world of phenomena; the sense world becomes a confusing manifoldness for it, because it does not have enough energy in thinking to penetrate into the center.

[ 4 ] One speaks today of limits to knowledge because one does not know where the goal of thinking lies. One has no clear view of what one wants to attain and doubts that one will attain it. If someone came today and pointed out clearly to us the solution to the riddle of the world, we would gain nothing from it, because we would not know what to make of this solution.

[ 5 ] And it is exactly the same with willing and acting. One cannot set oneself any definite task in life of which one would be capable. One dreams oneself into indefinite unclear ideals and then complains about the fact that one does not achieve something of which one hardly has a dim, let alone a clear, picture. Just ask one of the pessimists of our day what he actually wants and what it is he despairs of attaining. He does not know. Problematical natures are they all, incapable of meeting any situation and yet satisfied with none. Do not misunderstand me. I do not wish to extol that superficial optimism which, satisfied with the trivial enjoyments of life, demands nothing higher and therefore never suffers want. I do not wish to condemn individuals who painfully feel the deep tragedy that lies in the fact that we are dependent on conditions that have a laming effect on everything we do and that we strive in vain to change. But we should not forget that pain is the woof and happiness the warp. Think of the mother, how her joy in the well-being of her children is increased if it has been achieved by earlier cares, suffering, and effort. Every right-minded person would in fact have to refuse a happiness that some external power might offer him, because he cannot after all experience something as happiness that is just handed him as an unearned gift. If some creator or other had undertaken the creation of man with the thought in mind of bestowing happiness upon his likeness at the same time, as an inheritance, then he would have done better to leave him uncreated. The fact that what man creates is always ruthlessly destroyed again raises his stature; for he must always build and create anew; and it is in activity that our happiness lies; it lies in what we ourselves accomplish. It is the same with bestowed happiness as with revealed truth. Only this is worthy of man: that he seek truth himself, that neither experience nor revelation lead him. When that has been thoroughly recognized once and for all, then the religions based on revelation will be finished. The human being will then no longer want God to reveal Himself or bestow blessings upon him. He will want to know through his own thinking and to establish his happiness through his own strength. Whether some higher power or other guides our fate to the good or to the bad, this does not concern us at all; we ourselves must determine the path we have to travel. The loftiest idea of God is still the one which assumes that God, after His creation of the human being, withdrew completely from the world and gave man completely over to himself.

[ 6 ] Whoever acknowledges to thinking its ability to perceive beyond the grasp of the senses must necessarily acknowledge that it also has objects that lie beyond merely sense-perceptible reality. The objects of thinking, however, are ideas. Inasmuch as thinking takes possession of the idea, thinking fuses with the primal ground of world existence; what is at work outside enters into the spirit of man: he becomes one with objective reality in its highest potency. Becoming aware of the idea within reality is the true communion of man.

[ 7 ] Thinking has the same significance with respect to ideas as the eye has with respect to light, the ear to tone. It is an organ of apprehension.

[ 8 ] This view is in a position to unite two things that are regarded today as completely incompatible: the empirical method, and idealism as a scientific world view. It is believed that to accept the former means necessarily to reject the latter. This is absolutely not true. To be sure, if one considers the senses to be the only organs of apprehension for objective reality, then one must arrive at the above view. For, the senses offer us only such relationships of things as can be traced back to mechanical laws. And the mechanistic world view would thus be given as the only true form of any such world view. In this, one is making the mistake of simply overlooking the other component parts of reality which are just as objective but which cannot be traced back to mechanical laws. What is objectively given by no means coincides with what is sense-perceptibly given, as the mechanistic world conception believes. What is sense-perceptibly given is only half of the given. The other half of the given is ideas, which are also objects of experience—of a higher experience, to be sure, whose organ is thinking. Ideas are also accessible to the inductive method.

[ 9 ] Today's science of sense experience follows the altogether correct method of holding fast to the given; but it adds the inadmissible assertion that this method can provide only facts of a sense-perceptible nature. Instead of limiting itself to the question of how we arrive at our views, this science determines from the start what we can see. The only satisfactory way to grasp reality is the empirical method with idealistic results. That is idealism, but not of the kind that pursues some nebulous, dreamed-up unity of things, but rather of a kind that seeks the concrete ideal content of reality in a way that is just as much in accordance with experience as is the search of modern hyper-exact science for the factual content.

[ 10 ] By approaching Goethe with these views, we believe we are entering into his essential nature. We hold fast to idealism and develop it, not on the basis of Hegel's dialectic method, but rather upon a clarified higher empiricism.

[ 11 ] This kind of empiricism also underlies the philosophy of Eduard v. Hartmann. Eduard v. Hartmann seeks the ideal unity in nature, as this does positively yield itself to a thinking that has real content. He rejects the merely mechanistic view of nature and the hyper-Darwinism that is stuck on externals. In science, he is the founder of a concrete monism. In history and aesthetics, he seeks concrete ideas, and does all this according to empirical inductive methods.

[ 12 ] Hartmann's philosophy differs from mine only on the question of pessimism and through the metaphysical orientation of his system toward the “unconscious.” We will consider the latter point further on in the book. But with respect to pessimism, let the following be said: What Hartmann cites as grounds for pessimism—i.e., for the view that nothing in the world can fully satisfy us, that pain always outweighs pleasure—that is precisely what I would designate as the good fortune of mankind. What he brings forward is for me only proof that it is futile to strive for happiness. We must, in fact, entirely give up any such striving and seek our destiny purely in selflessly fulfilling those ideal tasks that our reason prescribes for us. What else does this mean than that we should seek our happiness only in doing, in unflagging activity?

[ 13 ] Only the active person, indeed only the selflessly active person who seeks no recompense for his activity, fulfills his destiny. It is foolish to want to be recompensed for one's activity; there is no true recompense. Here Hartmann ought to build further. He ought to show what, with such presuppositions, can be the only mainspring of all our actions. This can, when the prospect of a goal one is striving for falls away, only be the selfless devotion to the object to which one is dedicating one's activity; this can only be love. Only an action out of love can be a moral one. In science, the idea, and in our action, love, must be our guiding star. And this brings us back to Goethe. “The main thing for the active person is that he do what is right; he should not worry about whether the right occurs.” “Our whole feat consists in giving up our existence in order to exist” (Aphorisms in Prose).

[ 14 ] I have not arrived at my world view only through the study of Goethe or even of Hegelianism, for example. I took my start from the mechanistic-naturalistic conception of the world, but recognized that, with intensive thinking, one cannot remain there. Proceeding strictly according to natural-scientific methods, I found in objective idealism the only satisfying world view. My epistemology ⁴⁶ shows the way by which a kind of thinking that understands itself and is not self-contradictory arrives at this world view. I then found that this objective idealism, in its basic features, permeates the Goethean world view. Thus the elaborating of my views does, to be sure, for years now run parallel with my study of Goethe; and I have never found any conflict in principle between my basic views and the Goethean scientific activity. I consider my task fulfilled if I have been at least partially successful in, firstly, developing my standpoint in such a way that it can also become alive in other people, and secondly, bringing about the conviction that this standpoint really is the Goethean one.

• 45. Wissenschaftslehre
• 46. The Science of Knowing: Outline of an Epistemology Implicit in the Goethean World View (Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung), also translated as A Theory of Knowledge

[ 1 ] The fourth principal stage of human development is lived on earth. This is that condition of consciousness in which man finds himself at present. But before he attained it, he, and with him the whole earth, first had to repeat successively the Saturn, Sun, and Moon stages in three smaller cycles (the so-called “rounds” of theosophical literature). Man now lives in the fourth earth cycle. He has already advanced a little past the middle of this cycle. At this stage of consciousness man no longer perceives in a dreamlike manner the images which arise in his soul through the influence of his environment only, but objects appear to him “outside in space.” On the Moon and also during the stages of repetition on earth, there arose for example, a colored image in his soul when a particular object came near him. All of consciousness consisted of such images, tones, and so forth, which flowed and ebbed in the soul. Only with the appearance of the fourth condition of consciousness does color no longer appear merely in the soul, but on an external, spatially circumscribed object; sound is no longer merely an inner reverberating of the soul, but the resounding of an object in space. In mystery science therefore, one also calls this fourth, the earthly condition of consciousness, the “objective consciousness.” It has been formed slowly gradually in the course of development in the way that the physical organs of sense slowly arose and thus made perceptible the most diverse sensory qualities in external objects. Apart from the senses which are already developed, others exist in an as yet germinal state which will become fully developed in the subsequent earth period, and which will show the world of the senses in a diversity still greater than is the case today. The gradual growth of this earth consciousness has been described in the preceding pages, and in the discussions which are to follow this description will be amplified and supplemented in essential points.

[ 2 ] The colored world, the sounding world, and so forth, which earlier man had perceived within himself, confronts him outside in space during his life on earth. But on the other hand, a new world appears within him: the world of ideas or thoughts. One cannot speak of ideas and thoughts in relation to the Moon consciousness. The latter consists solely of the images we have described. Around the middle of the development of earth—although this state of affairs was already preparing itself at a somewhat earlier time—there developed in man the capacity to form ideas and thoughts about objects. This capacity constitutes the basis for memory and for self-consciousness. Only conceptualizing man can develop a memory of that which he has perceived; and only thinking man reaches the point where he differentiates himself from his environment as an independent, self-conscious being, where he recognizes himself as an “I.” The first three stages we have described were stages of consciousness; the fourth is not only consciousness, but self-consciousness.

[ 1 ] But within the self-consciousness, the present-day life of thoughts, there is already developing a disposition toward still higher states of consciousness. Man will live through these states of consciousness on the next planets into which the earth will change after its present form. It is not absurd to say something about these future conditions of consciousness, and therewith about life on the following planets. For in the first place, the clairvoyant—for certain reasons which are to be given elsewhere—strides ahead of his fellows in his development. Thus those states of consciousness which all of mankind must attain with the advance of planetary development are already developing in him at this time. In the consciousness of the clairvoyant one finds an image of the future stages of mankind. Moreover, the three subsequent conditions of consciousness are now already present in all men in germinal states; and clairvoyant research has means for indicating what will emerge from these germinal states.

[ 3 ] When it is said that the clairvoyant is already developing in himself the states of consciousness to which in future all of mankind will advance, this must be understood with one restriction. The clairvoyant, for example, is developing a seeing in the spiritual world today which in future will appear in man in a physical way. But this future physical condition of man will be a faithful likeness of the corresponding contemporary spiritual one in the clairvoyant. The earth itself is going to develop, and therefore quite different forms from those which exist today will appear in its future physical inhabitants; but these physical forms are being prepared in the spiritual and mental ones of today. For example, what the clairvoyant today sees in the form of a cloud of light and color around the human physical body as a so-called “aura,” will later change into a physical form; and other organs of sense than those of today will give the man of the future the capacity to perceive other forms. However, already today the clairvoyant sees the spiritual models of the later material entities with his spiritual senses (thus for example, the aura). A view into the future is possible for him, although it is very difficult to give an idea of the character of this view through the language of today and for present-day human conceptions.

[ 4 ] The conceptions of the present state of consciousness are shadowy and pale in comparison with the colorful and sounding objects of the external world. Man therefore speaks of conceptions as of something which is “not real.” A “mere thought”—is contrasted with an object or a being which is “real” because it can be perceived through the senses. But conceptions and thoughts bear within themselves the potentiality of again becoming real and image-like. If man speaks of the conception “red” today without having a red object before him, then this conception is, as it were, only a shadow image of real “redness.” Later, man will reach the point where he can not only let the shadowy conception of the “red” arise in his soul, but where, when he thinks “red,” “red” will actually be before him. He will be able to create images, not merely conceptions. Thereby something will be achieved by him similar to that which already existed for the Moon consciousness. But the images will not ebb and flow in him like dreams; instead he will evoke them in full self-consciousness, as he does today's conceptions. The thought of a color will be the color itself; the conception of a sound will be the sound itself, and so forth. In the future, a world of images will flow and ebb in the soul of man through his own power, whereas during the Moon existence such a world of images filled him without his acting. In the meantime the spatial character of the objective external world will not disappear. The color which arises together with the conception of color will not be merely an image in the soul but will appear in outside space. The consequence of this will be that man will be able to perceive beings and objects of a higher kind than those of his present environment. These are objects and beings which are of a more delicate spiritual and soul nature, hence they do not clothe themselves in the objective colors which are perceptible to the present physical sense organs; however, these are objects and beings which will reveal themselves through the more delicate spiritual and mental colors and sounds which the man of the future will be able to create from his soul.

[ 5 ] Man is approaching a condition in which he will have a self-conscious image consciousness³ appropriate for such perceptions. On the one hand, the coming development of earth will raise the present life of conceptions and thoughts to an ever higher, more delicate, and more perfect condition; on the other hand, the self-conscious image consciousness will gradually develop itself during this time. The latter, however, will attain full life in man only on the next planet into which the earth will transform itself, and which is called “Jupiter” in mystery science. Then man will be able to enter into intercourse with beings which are completely hidden from his present sensory perception. It will be understood that not only does the life of perception thereby become totally different, but that actions, feelings, and all relations to the environment, are completely transformed. While today man can consciously influence only sensory beings, he will then be able to act consciously on very different forces and powers; he himself will receive what to him will be fully recognizable influences from very different realms than at present. At that stage there can no longer be any question of birth and death in the present sense. For “death” occurs only because the consciousness has to depend on an external world with which it enters into communication through the physical sense organs. When these physical sense organs fail, every relation to the environment ceases. That is to say, the man “has died.” However, when his soul is so far advanced that it does not receive the influences of the outside world through physical instruments, but receives them through the images which the soul creates out of itself, then it will have reached the point where it can regulate its intercourse with the environment independently, that is, its life will not be interrupted against its will. It has become lord over birth and death. All this will come to be with the developed self-conscious image consciousness on “Jupiter.” This state of the soul is also called the “psychic consciousness.”

[ 6 ] The next condition of consciousness to which man develops on a further planet, “Venus,” is distinguished from the previous one by the fact that the soul can now create not only images, but also objects and beings. This occurs in the self-conscious object consciousness or supra-psychic consciousness. Through the image consciousness man can perceive something of supersensible beings and objects, and he can influence them through the awakening of his image conceptions. But in order for that to take place which he desires of such a supersensible being, at his instigation, this being must use its own forces. Thus man is the ruler over images, and he can produce effects through these images. But he is not yet lord over the forces themselves. When his self-conscious object consciousness is developed, he will also be ruler over the creative forces of other worlds. He will not only perceive and influence beings, but he himself will create.

[ 7 ] This is the course of the development of consciousness: at first it begins dimly; one perceives nothing of other objects and beings, but only the inner experiences (images) of one's own soul; then perception is developed. At last the perceptive consciousness is transformed into a creative one. Before the condition of earth goes over into the life of Jupiter—after the fourth earthly cycle—there are three more smaller cycles to be passed through. These serve for the further perfection of the consciousness of earth in a manner to be described in the following essays, when the development of the smaller cycles and of their subdivisions will be described for all seven planets. When, after a period of rest (Pralaya), earth has changed into Jupiter, and when man has arrived on the latter planet, then the four preceding conditions—Saturn, Sun, Moon, and earth condition—must again be repeated during four smaller cycles; and only during the fifth cycle of Jupiter does man attain the stage which has been described above as the real Jupiter consciousness. In a corresponding manner does the “Venus consciousness” appear during the sixth cycle of Venus.

[ 8 ] A fact which will play a certain role in the following essays will be briefly indicated here. This concerns the speed with which the development on the different planets takes place. For this is not the same on all the planets. Life proceeds with the greatest speed on Saturn, the rapidity then decreases on the Sun, becomes still less on the Moon and reaches its slowest phase on the earth. On the latter it becomes slower and slower, to the point at which self-consciousness develops. Then the speed increases again. Therefore, today man has already passed the time of the greatest slowness of his development. Life has begun to accelerate again. On Jupiter the speed of the Moon, on Venus that of the Sun will again be attained. [ 9 ] The last planet which can still be counted among the series of earthly transformations, and hence follows Venus, is called “Vulcan” by mystery science. On this planet the provisional goal of the development of mankind is attained. The condition of consciousness into which man enters there is called “piety” or spiritual consciousness. Man will attain it in the seventh cycle of Vulcan after a repetition of the six preceding stages. Not much can be publicly communicated about the life on this planet. In mystery science one speaks of it in such a way that it is said, “No soul which, with its thinking is still tied to a physical body, should reflect about Vulcan and its life.” That is, only the mystery students of the higher order, who may leave their physical body and can acquire supersensible knowledge outside of it, can learn something about Vulcan.

[ 10 ] The seven stages of consciousness are thus expressed in the course of the development of mankind in seven planetary developments. At each stage, the consciousness must now pass through seven subordinate conditions. These are realized in the smaller cycles already mentioned. (In theosophical writings these seven cycles are called “rounds.”) These subordinate states are called “conditions of life” by the mystery science of the Occident, in contrast with the super-ordinated “conditions of consciousness.” Or, one says that each condition of consciousness moves through seven “realms.” According to this calculation, one must distinguish seven times seven in the whole development of mankind, that is, forty-nine small cycles or “realms” (according to common theosophical usage, “rounds”). And again, each small cycle has to pass through seven yet smaller ones, which are called “conditions of form” (in theosophical language, “globes”). For the full cycle of humanity this amounts to seven times forty-nine or three hundred and forty-three different “conditions of form.”

[ 11 ] The following discussions which deal with this development, will show that a survey of the whole is not as complicated as might at first appear at the mention of the number three hundred and forty-three. It will become apparent how man can only truly understand himself when he knows his own development.

• 3. The combination, “self-conscious image consciousness,” may appear odd, but it probably best expresses the state of affairs. If one wished, one could also say, “image self-consciousness.”

A landscape which seeks to express the world of souls by its characteristic peculiarities.

Enter Lucifer and Ahriman. Johannes is seen at the right of the stage in deep meditation. What follows is experienced by him in meditation.

Lucifer:
O man, know thou thyself; O man, feel me.
From spirit guidance, thou hast freed thyself,
And into earth's free realms thou hast escaped.
Midst earth's confusion thou didst seek to prove
Thine own existence; and to find thyself
Was thy reward, and was thy destiny.
Me didst thou find: for spirits willed
To cast a veil before the eyes of sense;
Which veil I rent in twain. Those spirits willed
To follow out their will alone in thee;
But I gave thee self-will and foiled their aim.
O man, know thou thyself; O man, feel me.

Ahriman:
O man, know me; O man, feel thou thyself.
Thou hast escaped from darkened spirit-realms
And thou hast found again the earth's pure light,
So now from my sure ground drink strength and truth.
I make earth hard and fast. The spirits willed
To snatch away from thee the charm of sense;
Which charm I weave for thee in light condensed.
I lead thee unto true reality.
O man, know me; O man, feel thou thyself.

Lucifer:
Time was not when thou didst not live through me.
I followed thee throughout the course of life,
And was permitted to bestow on thee
Strong personal traits and joy in thine own self.

Ahriman:
Time was not when thou didst not me behold.
Thy mortal eyes saw me in all earth's growth;
I was permitted to shine forth for thee
In beauty proud and revelation's bliss.
(Exit with Lucifer.)

Johannes (to himself in meditation):
This is the sign as Benedictus told.
Before the world of souls stand these two powers:
The one, as Tempter, lives within the soul;
The other doth obscure the sight of man
When he directeth it to outward things.
The one took on the woman's form e'en now,
To bring the soul's illusions 'neath my gaze;
The other may be found in everything.

(Enter the Spirit of the Elements with Capesius and Strader, whom he has brought to the earth's surface from the earth's depths. They are conceived as souls looking out upon the earth's surface. The Spirit of the Elements is aged and stands erect upon a sphere. Capesius and Strader are in astral garb; the former, though the older man of the two in years, here appears the younger. He wears blue robes of various shades, Strader wears brown and yellow.)

Spirit:
So have ye reached the spot ye longed to find.
It proved indeed a heavy care to me,
To grant your wish. Spirits and elements
Did rage in mad wild storm when their domain
I had to enter with your essences.
Your minds opposed the ruling of my powers.

Capesius:
Mysterious Being, who art thou, who hast
Brought me to this fair realm through spirit-spheres?

Spirit:
The soul of man may only look on me,
Whene'er the service which I render him
Hath been achieved. Yet he obeys my powers
Through all the moving sequences of time.

Capesius:
It matters little to me to enquire
What spirit led me hither to this place.
I feel life's powers revive in this new land,
Whose light doth seem to widen mine own breast
In my pulse-beat I feel the whole world's might;
And premonitions of exalted deeds
Thrill in my heart. I will translate in words
The revelation of this beauteous realm,
That hath refreshed me in such wondrous wise;
And souls of men shall bloom, as choicest flowers
If I can pour into their life on earth
The inspiration flowing from these founts.
(Lightning and thunder from the depths and heights.)

Strader:
Why quake the depths, and why resound the heights
When hope's young dreams surge upward in the soul?
(Lightning and thunder.)

Spirit:
To human dreamers words of hope like these
Sound proud indeed; but in the depths of earth
The vain illusions of mistaken thought
Awake such thunderous echoes evermore.
Ye mortals hear them only at those times
When ye draw nigh to my domain. Ye think
To build exalted temples unto Truth,
And yet your work's effects do but unchain
Storm-spirits in primeval. depths of earth.
Nay more, the spirits must destroy whole worlds,
That deeds ye do in realms where time hath sway
May not cause devastation and cold death
Through all the ages of eternity.

Strader:
So these eternal ages must regard
As empty fantasy what seems the truth
To man's best observation and research.
(Lightning and thunder.)

Spirit:
An empty fantasy, so long as sense
Doth only search in realms to spirit strange.

Strader:
Thou may'st well call a dreamer that friend's soul
Which in the joy of youth its goal doth set
With such a noble strength and high desire;
But in mine aged heart thy words fall dead
Despite their summoned aid of thunderous storms.
I tore myself from cloistered quietude
To proud achievement in my search for truth.
In life's storm-centres many a year I stood,
And men had confidence in me, and what
I taught them through my deep strong sense for truth.
(Lightning and thunder.)

Spirit:
'Tis fitting for thee to confess that none
Can tell whence stream the fountains of our thought,
Nor where the fundaments of Being lie.

Strader:
Oh this same speech, which in youth's hopeful days
So oft with chill persistence pierced my soul
When thought-foundations quaked, which once seemed firm
(Lightning and thunder.)

Spirit:
If thou dost fail to gain the victory
O'er me with those blunt weapons of thy thought
Thou art a fleeting phantom, nothing more,
Formed by thine own deluded imagery.

Strader:
So soon again such gruesome speech from thee!
This too I heard before in mine own soul,
When once a seeress threateningly did wish
To wreck the firm foundations of my thought
And make me feel the sharp dread sting of doubt.
But that is past, and I defy thy might,
Thou aged rogue, so cunningly concealed
Beneath a mask devised by thine own self
To counterfeit the form of nature's lord.
Reason will overthrow thee, otherwise
Than thou dost think, when once she is enthroned
Upon the proud heights of the mind of man.
As mistress will she reign assuredly
Not as some handmaiden in nature's realm.
(Lightning and thunder.)

Spirit:
The world is ordered so, that every act
Requires a like reaction: unto you
I gave the self; ye owe me my reward.

Capesius:
I will myself create from mine own soul
The spirit counterpart of things of sense.
And when at length all nature stands transformed,
Idealized through man's creative work,
Her mirrored form shall be reward enough;
And then if thou dost feel thyself akin
To that great mother of all worlds, and spring'st
From depths where world-creating forces reign,
Then let my will, which lives in head and breast,
Inspiring me to aim at highest goals,
Be thy reward for deeds commanded.
Thy help hath raised me from dull sentiment
To thought's proud heights ... Let this be thy reward!
(Lightning and thunder.)

Spirit:
Ye well can see, how little your bold words
Bear weight in my domain: they do but loose
The storm, and rouse the elements to wrath,
As adversaries of the ordered world.

Capesius:
Take then thine own reward where't may be found.
The impulse that doth drive the souls of men
To seek true spirit-heights within themselves
Set their own measure, their own order make.
Creation were not possible for man
If others wished to claim what he had made.
The song that trills from out the linnet's throat
Sufficeth for itself; and so doth man
Find his reward, when in his fashioning work
He doth experience creative joy.
(Lightning and thunder.)

Spirit:
It is not meet to grudge me my reward.
If ye yourselves cannot repay the debt
Then tell the woman, who endowed your souls
With power, that she must pay instead of you.
(Exit.)

Capesius:
He hath departed. Whither turn we now?
To find our way aright in these new worlds
Must be, it seems, the first care of our minds.

Strader:
To follow confidently the best way,
That we can find, with sure but cautious tread,
Methinks should lead us straightway to the goal.

Capesius:
Rather should we be silent as to goal.
That we shall find if we courageously
Obey the impulse of our inner self,
Which speaks thus to me: ‘Let Truth be thy guide;
May it unfold strong powers within thyself
And mould them with the noblest fashioning
In all that thou shalt do; then must thy steps
Attain their destined goal, nor go astray.’

Strader:
Yet from the outset it were best our steps
Should not lack consciousness of their true goal,
If we would be of service unto men
And give them happiness. He, who would serve
Himself alone, doth follow his own heart;
But he, who wills to serve his neighbour best,
Must surely know his life's necessities.

(The Other Maria, also in soul form, emerges from the rocks, covered with precious stones.)

But see I What wondrous being's this? It seems
As though the rock itself did give it birth.
From what world-depths do such strange forms arise?

The Other Maria:
I wrest my way through solid rock, and fain
Would clothe in human speech its very will;
I sense earth's essence and with human brains
I fain would think the thoughts of Earth herself.
I breathe pure air of life, and I transmute
Beings of air into the feeling flow
That surging swells within the breast of man.

Strader:
Then thou canst not assist us in our quest.
For far aloft from men's endeavour stands
All that must abide in nature's realm.

Capesius:
Lady, I like thy words, and I would fain
Translate thy form of speech into mine own.

The Other Maria:
Most strange doth seem to me your proud discourse.
For, when ye speak yourselves, unto mine ear
Your words do sound incomprehensible.
But if I let them echo in my heart
And issue in new form, they spread abroad
O'er all that lives in mine environment
And solve for me its hidden mystery.

Capesius:
If this, thy speech, be true, then change for us
Into thy speech, that nature may respond,
The question of the true worth of man's life.
For we ourselves lack power to question thus
Great mother nature that we may be heard.

The Other Maria:
In me ye only see an humble maid
Of that high spirit-being, which doth dwell
In that domain whence ye have just now come.
There hath been given me this field of work
That here in lowliness I may show forth
Her mirrored image unto mortal sense.

Capesius:
So then we have just fled from that domain
Wherein our longing could have been assuaged?

The Other Maria:
And if ye do not find again the way,
Your efforts shall be fruitless evermore.

Capesius:
Then tell which way will lead us back again.

The Other Maria:
There are two ways. If my power doth attain
To its full height all creatures of my realm
Shall glow in beauty's most resplendent dress.
From rocks and water, glittering light shall stream,
And colours in their richest fulness flash
On all around, whilst life in merry mood
Shall fill the air with joyous harmony.
And if your souls do then but steep themselves
In mine own being's purest ecstasy
On spirit pinions shall ye wing your way
Unto primeval origins of worlds.

Strader:
That is no way for us; for in our speech
We name such talk mere fancy, and we fain
Would seek firm ground, not fly to cloud-capped heights.

The Other Maria:
Then if ye wish to tread the other path
Ye must-forthwith renounce your spirit's pride.
Ye must forget what reason doth command,
And let the touch of nature conquer you.
In your men's breasts let your child-soul have sway,
Artless and undisturbed by thought's dim shades.
So will ye surely reach Life's fountain-head,
Although unconscious of the way ye go.
(Exit.)

Capesius:
Thus are we thrown back on ourselves alone,
And have but learned that it behoveth us
To work and wait in patience for the fruit
That future days shall ripen from our work.

Johannes (speaking, as it were, from his meditation. Here and in the following scene he sits aside and takes no part in the action):
So do I find within the soul's domain
Those men who are already known to me:
First he who told us of Felicia's tales,
Though here I saw him in his youthful prime;
And also he who in his younger days
Had chosen for his life monastic rule,
As some old man did he appear: with them
There stood the Spirit of the Elements.

The same. The First Preceptor; Joseph Keane then the Grand Master with Simon; later the First and the Second Master of Ceremonies. Joseph Keane is there first; the Preceptor approaches him.

First Preceptor:
Thou didst send word thou wouldst have speech with me.
What is the news that thou art come to bring?

Keane:
Most weighty matters both to thee and me.
Thou knowest the master miner Thomas here,
Who renders service to thee?

First Preceptor:
Well I know
The worthy man; we prize him for his skill,
And his subordinates hold him in love.

Keane:
And dost thou know my child, Cecilia, too?

First Preceptor (moved):
It hath so chanced that I have seen the maid
When I have met thee with thy family.

Keane:
It happened that soon after Thomas came
He paid us frequent visits in our home.
They grew more frequent; it was evident
That to Cecilia his whole heart went out.
We did not marvel that this should be so.
But, knowing the girl's nature, it was long
Ere we could think that she returned his love.
Her life was well nigh one continuous prayer,
And almost all society she shunned.
Yet ever doth it now appear more clear
That to this stranger she hath giv'n her heart.
And as things are, we feel ourselves compelled
Not to oppose the wishes of our child;
Thomas she loves, and she would marry him.

First Preceptor (with faltering movements):
Why runs this marriage counter to thy will?

Keane:
My lord, there is no need for me to tell
Of my devotion to the brotherhood.
My heart would have to bear a heavy load
If my child's love, in its entirety,
Were cast upon the side of those who say
That you and I alike are heretics.
The monk who now o'er yonder abbey rules
Close by our home, and who doth ever seek
To thwart the mission of the brotherhood,
Hath won dominion o'er our daughter's soul.
As long as she is still beneath my roof
So long shall I too not abandon hope
That she may yet again retrace the path
Which leads from spirit-darkness unto light.
But I shall have to give her up for lost
When she shall have become the wife of one
Who, like herself, looks for salvation's light
According to the precepts of that monk.
His Reverence hath had complete success
In foisting such opinions as he holds
On Thomas, who receives them in full faith.
A thrill of terror would run over me
To hear the curses pour from Thomas' lips
Whene'er our speech should touch the brotherhood.

First Preceptor:
Our enemies are many if one more
Is added it cannot affect us much.
Thy words have not yet made it clear to me
What my concern is with this tale of love.

Keane:
My lord, thou seest this packet in mine hand.
Its contents warrant me to come to thee.
My wife and I alone have read the lines;
None else in these parts knows a word of them.
Now must they be made known to thee as well—
The maid who passeth for our flesh and blood
Is not the offspring of my wife and me.
We undertook the training of the child
When her own mother died. What I have still
To say will make it seem unnecessary,
To tell at length how all this came to pass.
For long we knew not who her father was;
The girl to-day knows not her parentage;
Father and mother she beholds in us.
And such a state of things might have gone on
Since we do love her as our very own.
But some years later than her mother's death
The papers that I hold were brought to us;
They make it plain who our child's father is
I cannot tell if he is known to thee.

(The Preceptor loses control over himself.)

But now I know—am sure ...
... that thou art he.
There is no need for me to tell thee more.
But since it is thy child who is concerned
I beg thee to extend to me thine aid.
United our endeavours may succeed
To save her from the darkness that impends.

First Preceptor:
Dear Keane. Thou hast been ever true to me,
And I would fain still further count on thee.
Neither within nor yet without these walls
Must any in this country ever know
The truth of my relation to this girl.

Keane:
My word thereon. I mean no harm to thee;
I only beg that thou wilt lent thine aid.

First Preceptor:
Thou dost perceive that at the present time
I cannot talk with thee at greater length
I pray thee come to-morrow.

Keane:
I will come.

(Exit.)

First Preceptor:
How cruelly my fate fulfils itself.
I left my wife and child in misery,
Since they seemed hindrances upon the path
Along which vanity did beckon me.
It led me on to join this brotherhood.
In words of solemn import I then vowed
My service to the cause of human love
Albeit I was laden with the guilt
Arising from the opposite of love.
The brotherhood's clear vision, as applied
To acts of men, is manifest in me.
It welcomed me a brother in its ranks
And forthwith laid on me its rules severe.
To self-examination Was I led
And knowledge of myself, which otherwise
In other walks of life I had not found.
And then when, under Fate's decree, my son
Came and dwelt near me, I was fain to think
That mighty Powers were merciful to me
In showing how to expiate my sin.
I knew long since that this Keane's foster-child
Was none else than the daughter whom I left.

The brotherhood is near its overthrow,
Each brother resolute to meet his death,
Convinced that those high purposes will live
For which he makes his life the sacrifice.
But I, alas, have felt for many days
I was not worthy of this glorious end.
My purpose ever ripened to make known
My case unto the master, and to crave
Permission to forsake the brotherhood.
I had in mind thenceforward to devote
My days unto my children, and so far
As in this earth-life yet is possible,
To offer penance. But I clearly see,
That 'twas not filial longing brought my son
To this same spot to seek his father out,
Although his good heart made him thus believe.
But he was led by forces in the blood
Which drew him to his sister. Other ties,
Blood-born, were loosened by a father's guilt,
Or else yon monk had never had the power
To rob me so entirely of my son.
Indeed the robbery is so complete,
That with the brother will the sister too
From my paternal longings be estranged.
And so nought else remains for me but this,
To take immediate measures to ensure
That they shall know the truth about themselves,
And then with resignation to await
The penance laid upon me by those powers
Who keep the reckoning of our misdeeds.

(Exit.)

(After an interval the Grand Master and Simon enter.)

Grand Master:
Henceforward, Simon, in the castle walls
Thou must abide, for since that lying tale
Was published that thou art a sorcerer,
Peril awaits thine every step outside.

Simon:
My heart is sore indeed to find that men
Assail in ignorance a proffered aid
Whose only object is to do them good.

Grand Master:
Those who, by grace of lofty spirit-powers,
Can turn their gaze upon the souls of men,
Will see the enemies therein arrayed
Which fight against the nature of the soul.
The battle which our mortal foes prepare
Is but the emblem of that greater strife
Waged in the heart incessantly by powers
Which are at enmity amongst themselves.

Simon:
My lord, in very truth these words of thine
Arouse an echo in my deepest soul.
Indeed my nature is not prone to dreams;
Yet when I walk alone through wood and field
A picture often riseth in my soul
Which with my will I can no more control
Than any object which mine eye beholds.
A human form appears in front of me
Which fain would grasp my hand in fellowship.
Such suffering on his features is expressed
As never yet I saw in any face.
The greatness and the beauty of this man
Seize firmly hold of all my powers of soul;
I fain would sink to earth and humbly bow
Before this messenger from other worlds.
Next moment like a raging flame, there comes
The wildest anger searing through my heart;
Nor can I gain the mastery o'er the power
That fans the opposition of my soul,
And I am forced to thrust aside the hand
Which is so lovingly held out to me.
So soon as to my senses I return
The radiant form hath vanished from my sight.
And thereupon, when I recall in thought
That which my spirit hath so often seen,
Before my soul this thought presents itself
Which moves me to the bottom of my heart.
I feel myself attracted by thy lore,
In which a Spirit-being is revealed
Descending from the Kingdom of the Sun,
To take a human form upon Himself,
In order to disclose Himself to men.
I cannot keep the glowing beauty out
That pours upon me from thy noble lore,
And yet my soul will not assent thereto.
The primal form of our humanity
In thy great Spirit-being I admit;
But still my individual self rebels
When I would turn to him in faith and love.
So must I ever wage an inward war
The archetype of every outer strife.
In sore distress, I seek in vain a clue
To solve the riddle of my life and fate:
How comes it that I understand so well
And yet that I in no wise can believe
The things thy noble teachings do reveal?
I follow thine example faithfully,
Yet find myself opposed at every point
To this example's goal and origin.
And when I must thus recognize myself,
A flood of doubt o'erwhelms my falt'ring faith
That in this life I may yet find myself.
Nay, worse than this, the dread doth haunt me oft
That this bewilderment of doubt may run
Through all the lives that I shall live on earth.

Grand Master:
The picture, which thou sawest, my good friend,
Before my spirit stood out strong and clear
Whilst thou didst paint it in those vivid words;
And as thou didst speak further, then it grew
In breadth before mine eyes until I saw
How cosmic aims are linked to human fate.

(Exeunt.)

First Master of Ceremonies:
Dear brother, I must openly confess
That our Grand Master's clemency exceeds
My comprehension, when I needs must see
What bitter wrong our foes inflict on us.
Although they will not study what we teach
They scruple not to paint us in men's eyes
As heretics and messengers from hell.

Second Master of Ceremonies:
His clemency from our own teaching flows.
Can we proclaim life's highest aim to be
To understand the soul of every man,
And then misunderstand our foes ourselves?
There are amongst them many men indeed
Who follow in the footsteps of the Christ.
Yet even from the souls of such as these
The essence of our teachings must be veiled,
Though they should hear them with the outer ear.
Remember, brother, how reluctantly,
And with what inner conflict, thou vast led
To grant admission to the spirit-voice.
We know, from what the master path revealed,
That future men will see in Spirit-light
The lofty Being of the Sun, who trod This
Earth once only in a human frame.
This revelation we with joy believe
And gladly follow where our leaders tread.
Yet but a short time since these weighty words
Were said by him whom we acclaim as Head:
‘Your souls must ripen slowly, if indeed
With eyes prophetic ye would see to-day
That which the men of later days shall see;
And ye must not imagine,’ said our chief,
‘That after passing one initial test
Ye can have sight of things that are to be.
When ye shall have attained to certainty
That all mankind must needs be born again,
Ye then will have to meet the second test
Which sets your personal illusions free
To dim the radiance of the Spirit-light.’
This solemn warning, too, the master gave:
‘Ofttimes reflect, in meditation's hour,
How psychic monsters, of illusion born,
Beset the path of those who seek the light.
Who falls their victim may see even there
Human existence where the Spirit seeks
To be revealed to Spirit-light alone.
If ye would worthily prepare yourselves
To recognize, by help of inner sight,
The Light of Wisdom streaming from the Christ,
Over yourselves ye must keep watch and ward
Lest personal illusion blind you then
When your souls think that it is furthest off.’
With this injunction clearly held in view
We soon shall rid us of the vain belief
That in these times we can transmit these truths,
Whose beauty we confess within our souls,
In easy manner to posterity.
Rather must we take comfort from the fact,
That we to-day can meet so many souls
In whom the seed, although they know it not,
Already path been sown for future lives.
This seed can only manifest itself
In man, by opposition to those Powers
With which it later will ally itself.
In all this hatred which pursues us now
I do but see the seed of future love.

First Master of Ceremonies:
Certain it is that highest truth's intent
Can only in such manner be disclosed;
Yet hard it seems in this our present age
To shape our lives to follow out its aim.

Second Master of Ceremonies:
Here too I follow out our master's words:
‘It is not granted unto all mankind
To live Earth's future stages in advance.
But individuals there must ever be
Who can foresee what later days will bring,
And who devote their feeling to those Powers
Which loose all being from its present ties
To guard it safe for all Eternity.’

The curtain falls, while the two Masters of Ceremonies are still in the hall

In which the Attempt is made to form a Conception of the Guardian of the Threshold

[ 1 ] When the soul has attained the faculty of making observations whilst remaining outside the physical body, certain difficulties may arise with regard to its emotional life. It may find itself compelled to take up quite a different position towards itself from that to which it was formerly accustomed. The soul was accustomed to regard the physical world as outside itself, while it considered all inner experience as its own particular possession. To supersensible surroundings, however, it cannot take up the same position as to the outer world. As soon as the soul perceives the supersensible world around it, it must merge with it to a certain extent: it cannot consider itself as separate from these surroundings as it does from the outer world. Through this fact all that can be designated as our own inner world in relation to the supersensible surroundings assumes a certain character which is not easily reconcilable with the idea of inward privacy. We can no longer say, “I think, ” “ I feel, ” or “I have my thoughts and fashion them as I like.” But we must say instead, “ Something thinks in me, something makes emotions flash forth in me, something forms thoughts and compels them to come forward in an absolutely definite way and make their presence felt in my consciousness.”

[ 2 ] Now this feeling may contain something exceedingly depressing when the manner in which the supersensible experience presents itself is such as to convey the certainty that we are actually experiencing a reality and are not losing ourselves in imaginary fancies or illusions. Such as it is it may indicate that the supersensible surrounding world wants to feel, and to think for itself, but that it is hindered in the realisation of its intention. At the same time we get a feeling that that which here wants to enter the soul is the true reality and the only one that can give an explanation of all we have hitherto experienced as real. This feeling also gives the impression that the supersensible reality shows itself as something which in value infinitely transcends the reality hitherto known to the soul. This feeling is therefore depressing, because it makes us feel that we are actually forced to will the next step which has to be taken. It lies in the very nature of that which we have become through our own inner experience to take this step. If we do not take it we must feel this to be a denial of our own being, or even self-annihilation. And yet we may also have the feeling that we cannot take it, or if we attempt it as far as we can, it must remain imperfect

[ 3 ] All this develops into the idea: Such as the soul now is, a task lies before it, which it cannot master, because such as it now is, it is rejected by its supersensible surroundings, for the supersensible world does not wish to have it within its realm. And so the soul arrives at a feeling of being in contradiction to the supersensible world; and has to say to itself: “I am not such as to make it possible for me to mingle with that world, and yet only there can I learn the true reality and my relation to it; for I have separated myself from the recognition of Truth.” This feeling means an experience which will make more and more clear and decisive the exact value of our own soul. We feel ourselves and our whole life to be steeped in an error. And yet this error is distinct from other errors. The others are thought; but this is a living experience. An error that is only thought may be removed when the wrong thought is replaced by the right one. But the error that has been experienced has become part of the life of our soul itself; we ourselves are the error, we cannot simply correct it, for, think as we will, it is there, it is part of reality, and that, too, our own reality. Such an experience is a crushing one for the “self.” We feel our inmost being painfully rejected by all that we desire. This pain, which is felt at a certain stage in the pilgrimage of the soul, is far beyond anything which can be felt as pain in the physical world. And therefore it may surpass everything which we have hitherto become able to master in the life of our soul. It may have the effect of stunning us. The soul stands before the anxious question: Whence shall I gather strength to carry the burden laid upon me? And the soul must find that strength within its own life. It consists in something that may be characterised as inner courage, inner fearlessness.

[ 4 ] In order now to be able to proceed further in the pilgrimage of the soul, we must have developed so far that the strength which enables us to bear our experiences will well up from within us and produce this inner courage and inner fearlessness in a degree never required for life in the physical body. Such strength is only produced by true self-knowledge. In fact it is only at this stage of development that we realise how little we have hitherto really known of ourselves. We have surrendered ourselves to our inner experiences without observing them as one observes a part of the outer world. Through the steps that have led to the faculty of extra-physical experience, however, we obtain a special means of self-knowledge. We learn in a certain sense to contemplate ourselves from a standpoint which can only be found when we are outside the physical body. And the depressing feeling mentioned before is itself the very beginning of true self-knowledge. To realise oneself as being in error in one's relations to the outer world is a sign that one is realising the true nature of one's own soul.

[ 5 ] It is in the nature of the human soul to feel such enlightenment regarding itself as painful. It is only when we feel this pain that we learn how strong is the natural desire to feel ourselves, just as we are - to be human beings of importance and value. It may seem an ugly fact that this is so; but we have to face this ugliness of our own self without prejudice. We did not notice it before, just because we never consciously penetrated deeply enough into our own being. Only when we do so do we perceive how dearly we love that in ourselves which must be felt as ugly. The power of self-love shows itself in all its enormity. And at the same time we see how little inclination we have to lay aside this self-love. Even when it is only a question of those qualities of the soul which are concerned with our ordinary life and relations to other people, the difficulties turn out to be quite great enough. We learn, for instance, by means of true self-knowledge, that though we have hitherto believed that we felt kindly towards some one, nevertheless we are cherishing in the depths of our soul secret envy or hatred or some such feeling towards that person. We realise that these feelings, which have not as yet risen to the surface, will some day certainly crave for expression. And we see how very superficial it would be to say to ourselves: “Now that you have learned how it stands with you, root out your envy or hatred.” For we discover that armed merely with such a thought we shall certainly feel exceedingly weak, when some day the craving to show our envy or to satisfy our hatred breaks forth as if with elemental power. Such special kinds of self-knowledge manifest themselves in different people according to the special constitution of their souls. They appear when experience outside the body begins, for then our self-knowledge becomes a true one, and is no longer troubled by any desire to find ourselves modeled in some such way as we should like to be.

[ 6 ] Such special self-knowledge is painful and depressing to the soul, but if we want to attain to the faculty of experience outside the body, it cannot be avoided, for it is necessarily called forth by the special position which we must take up with regard to our own soul. For the very strongest powers of the soul are required, even if it is only a question of an ordinary human being obtaining self-knowledge in a general way. We are observing ourselves from a standpoint outside our previous inner life.

We have to say to ourselves: “I have contemplated and judged the things and occurrences of the world according to my human nature. I must now try to imagine that I cannot contemplate and judge them in that way. But then I should not be what I am. I should have no inner experiences. I should be a mere nothing.” And not only a man in the midst of ordinary everyday life, who only very rarely even thinks about the world or life, would have to address himself in this way. Any man of science, or any philosopher, would have to do so. For even philosophy is only observation and judgment of the world according to individual qualities and conditions of the human soul-life. Now such a judgment cannot mingle with supersensible surroundings. It is rejected by them. And therewith everything we have been up to that moment is rejected. We look back upon our whole soul, upon our ego itself, as upon something which has to be laid aside, when we want to enter the supersensible world. The soul, however, cannot but consider this ego as its real being until it enters the supersensible worlds. The soul must consider it as the true human being, and must say to itself: “Through this my ego I have to form ideas of the world. I must not lose this ego of mine if I do not want to give myself up as a being altogether.' There is in the soul the strongest inclination to guard the ego at all points in order not to lose one's foothold absolutely. What the soul thus feels of necessity to be right in ordinary life, it must no longer feel when it enters supersensible surroundings. It has there to cross a threshold, where it must leave behind not only this or that precious possession, but that very being which it has hitherto believed itself to be. The soul must be able to say to itself: “That which until now has seemed to me to be my surest truth, I must now, on the other side of the threshold of the supersensible world, be able to consider as my deepest error.”

[ 7 ] Before such a demand the soul may well recoil. The feeling may be so strong that the necessary steps would seem a surrender of its own being, and an acknowledgment of its own nothingness, so that it admits more or less completely on the threshold its own powerlessness to fulfil the demands put before it. This acknowledgment may take all possible forms. It may appear merely as an instinct and seem to the pupil who thinks and acts upon it as something quite different from what it really is. He may, for instance, feel a great dislike to all supersensible truths. He may consider them as day dreams, or imaginary fancies. He does so only because in those depths of his soul of which he is ignorant he has a secret fear of these truths. He feels that he can only live with that which is admitted by his senses and his intellectual judgment. He therefore avoids arriving at the threshold of the supersensible world, and he veils the fact of his avoidance of it by saying: “ That which is supposed to lie behind that threshold is not tenable by reason or by science.” The fact is simply that he loves reason and science such as he knows them, because they are bound up with his ego. This is a very, frequent form of self-love and cannot as such be brought into the supersensible world.

[ 8 ] It may also happen that there is not only this instinctive halt before the threshold. The pupil may consciously proceed to the threshold and then turn back, because he fears that which lies before him. He will then not easily be able to blot out from the ordinary life of his soul the effect of thus approaching it. The effect will be that weakness will spread over the whole of his soul's life.

[ 9 ] What ought to take place is this, that the pupil on entering the supersensible world should make himself able to renounce that which in ordinary life he considers as the deepest truth and to adapt himself to a different way of feeling and judging things. But at the same time he must keep in mind that when he again confronts the physical world, he must make use of the ways of feeling, and judging that are suitable for this physical world. He must not only learn to live in two different worlds, but also to live in each in quite a different way, and he must not allow his sound judgment, which he needs for ordinary life in the world of reason and of the senses, to be encroached upon by the fact that he is obliged to make use of another kind of discernment while in another world.

[ 10 ] To take up such a position is difficult for human nature, and the capacity for doing so is only acquired through continued energetic and patient strengthening of our soul-life. Any one who goes through the experiences of the threshold realises that it is a boon to the ordinary life of the soul not to be led so far. The feelings that awaken are such that one cannot but think that this boon proceeds from some powerful entity, who protects man from the danger of undergoing the dread of self-annihilation at the threshold. Behind the outer world of ordinary life there is another. Before the threshold of this world a stern guardian is standing, who prevents man from knowing what the laws of the supersensible world are. For all doubts and all uncertainty concerning that world are, after all, easier to bear than the sight of that which one must leave behind when we want to cross the threshold.

[ 11 ] The pupil remains protected against the experience described, as long as he does not step forward to the very threshold. The fact that he receives descriptions of such experiences from those who have trodden or crossed this threshold does not change the fact of his being protected. On the contrary, such communications may be of good service to him when he approaches the threshold. In this case as in many others, a thing is done better if one has an idea of it beforehand. But as regards the self-knowledge which must be gained by a traveler in the supersensible world nothing is changed by such preliminary knowledge. It is therefore not in harmony with the facts, when many clairvoyants, or those acquainted with the nature of clairvoyance, assert that these things should not be mentioned at all to people who are not on the point of resolving to enter into the supersensible world. We are now living in a time when people must become more and more acquainted with the nature of the supersensible world, if the life of their soul is to become equal to the demands of ordinary life upon it. The spread of supersensible knowledge, including the knowledge of the guardian of the threshold, is one of the tasks of the moment and of the immediate future.