The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I have often characterized spiritual science, as it is meant here, in these lectures. It seeks to be a true continuation of the natural scientific world view, indeed of natural scientific research in general, in that it adds to those forces of the human soul that are used when man faces the external sensory world and uses his senses and mind to explore it, which is connected to the brain, that it adds to these forces, which are also used by all external science, those forces that lie dormant in the soul in ordinary life and in the work of ordinary science, but can be brought out of this soul, can be developed and thus enable the human being to relate in a living way to what, as spiritual laws and spiritual entities, interweaves and permeates the world, and to which man, with his innermost being, also belongs, belongs through those powers of his being that pass through birth and death, that are the eternal powers of his being. In its entire attitude, in its scientific attitude, this spiritual science wants to be a true successor of natural science. And that which distinguishes it from natural science and which has just been characterized must be present in it for the reason that, if one wants to penetrate into the spiritual world, one needs other powers for the spiritual world in the same way that natural science penetrates into the natural world. One needs the exposure of the cognitive faculty in the human soul, of cognitive powers attuned to the spiritual world.

Today, I want to show in particular that this spiritual science, as it is presented today as a starting point for the spiritual development of people in the future, is not brought out of spiritual life or placed in spiritual life by mere arbitrariness, but is firmly anchored in the most significant endeavors of German spiritual life, even if they have perhaps been forgotten due to the circumstances of modern times. And here we shall repeatedly and repeatedly encounter – and they must also be mentioned today, although I have repeatedly presented them in the lectures I have given here last winter and this winter – when we speak of the German people's greatest intellectual upsurge, of the actual summit of their intellectual life, we must repeatedly and repeatedly encounter the three figures: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

I took the liberty of characterizing Fichte, as he is firmly rooted in German intellectual life, in a special lecture in December. Today I would like to draw particular attention to the fact that Fichte, in his constant search for a fixed point within his own human interior, for a living center of human existence, is in a certain sense a starting point for endeavors in spiritual science. And at the same time — as was mentioned in particular in the Fichte lecture here — he is the spirit who, I might say, felt from a deep sense of what he had to say, as if through a dialogue with the German national spirit. I have pointed out how Fichte, in contrast to Western philosophy, for example, to the Western world view, is above all concerned with attaining a higher human conception of the world by revealing the human inner powers, the human soul powers. For Fichte, the human ego, the center of the human soul, is something that is constantly being created within the human being, so that it can never be lost to the human being, because the human being not only shares in the existence of this center of the human being, but also shares in the creative powers of this human being. And how does Fichte imagine that this creativity in man is anchored in the all-creative of the world? As the highest that man can attain to when he tries to immerse himself in that which weaves and lives in the world as the Divine-Spiritual. As such supreme spiritual-divine, Fichte recognizes that which is volitional, which, as world-will permeated by world-duty, pulses through and permeates everything, and with its current permeates the own human soul, but in this own human soul is now grasped not as being, but as creativity. So that when man expresses his ego, he can know himself to be one with the world-will at work in the world. The divine-spiritual, which the world, external nature, has placed before man, wants, as it were, to enter into the center of the human being. And man becomes aware of this inner volition, speaks of it as his self, as his ego.

And so Fichte felt himself to be at rest with his self, but at the same time, in this rest, extremely moved in the creative will of the world. From this he then draws the strength that he has applied throughout his life. From this he also draws the strength to regard all that is external and sensual, as he says, as a mere materialized tool for the duty of the human being that pulsates in his will. Thus, for Fichte, the truly spiritual is what flows into the human soul as volition. For him, the external world is the sensitized material of duty. And so we see him, how he wants to point out to people again and again throughout his life, to the source, to the living source of their own inner being.

In the Fichte lecture, I pointed out how Fichte stood before his audience, for example in Jena, and tried to touch each individual listener in their soul, so that they would become aware of how the All-Creative lives spiritually within. So he said to his listeners: “Imagine the wall!” Then the listeners looked at the wall and could think the wall. After they had thought the wall for a while, he said: “Now think of the one who thought the wall.” At first the listeners were somewhat perplexed. They were to grasp inwardly, spiritually, each within themselves. But at the same time, it was the way to point each individual to his own self, to point out to him that he can only grasp the world if he finds himself in his deepest inner being and there discovers how what the world wills flows into him and what rises in his own will as the source of his own being. Above all, one sees (and I do not wish to repeat myself today with regard to the lecture I gave here in December) how Fichte lives a world view of power. Therefore, those who listened to him — and many spoke in a similar way — could say: His words rushed “like a thunderstorm that discharges its fire in individual strikes”. And Fichte, by directly grasping the soul, wanted to bring the divine spiritual will that permeates the world, not just good will, to the soul; he wanted to educate great people. And so he lived in a living together of his soul with the world soul and regarded this precisely as the result of a dialogue with the German national spirit, and it was out of this consciousness that he found those powerful words with which he encouraged and strengthened his people in one of Germany's most difficult times. It was precisely out of this consciousness that he found the power to work as he was able to do in the “Speeches to the German Nation,” inspiring his people to a great extent.

Like Fichte's follower, Schelling stands there, especially in his best pages, one could say, like Fichte, more or less forgotten. If Fichte stands more as the man who wants to grasp the will, the will of the world, and let the will of the world roll forth in his own words, if this Fichte stands as the man who, so to speak, commands the concepts and ideas, then Schelling stands before us as he stood before his enthusiastic audiences – and there were many such, I myself knew people who knew the aged Schelling very well – he stands before us, not like Fichte, the commander of the world view, he stands before us as the seer, from whose eyes sparkled what he had to communicate enthusiastically in words about nature and spirit. He stood before his audience in Jena in the 1790s, at what was then the center of learning for the German people. He stood in Munich and Erlangen and Berlin in the 1840s. Everywhere he went, he radiated something of a seer, as if he were surrounded by spirituality and spoke from the realm of the spiritual.

To give you an idea of how such a figure stood in the former heyday of German intellectual life in front of people who had a sense for it, I would like to bring you some words about the lecture, which were written down by an audience member, by a loyal audience member because he met Schelling again and again: Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert. I would like to read to you the words that Schubert wrote about the way Schelling stood before his audience, “already as a young man among young men,” back in the 1790s in Jena. About this, Schubert, who was himself a deeply spiritual person, writes of a person who has wonderfully immersed himself in the secrets of nature, who tried to follow the mysterious weaving of the human soul into the dream world and into the abnormal phenomena of mental life, but who was also able to ascend to the highest heights of human intellectual life. This Schubert writes about Schelling:

Two things stand out in these words of the deep and spirited Schubert. The first is that he felt - and we know that it was the same with others who heard Schelling - that this man speaks from direct spiritual experience, he shapes his words by looking into a spiritual world and thus shapes a wisdom from direct spiritual experience that deals with this spiritual world.

That is the significance, the infinitely significant thing about this great period of German idealism, that countless people then standing on the outside of life heard personalities such as Fichte, such as Schelling and, as we shall see in a moment, Hegel, and from the words of these personalities heard the spirit speak, looked into the realm of these geniuses of the German people. Anyone who is familiar with the intellectual history of humanity knows that such a relationship between the spirit and the age existed only within the German people and could only exist within the German people because of the nature of the German people. This is a special result that is deeply rooted in the very foundations of the German character. That is one thing that can be seen from this.

The other thing is that, in this period, people were formed who, like Schubert, were able to ignite their own relationship to the spiritual world through these great, significant, impressive personalities. From such a state of soul, Schelling developed a thinking about nature and a thinking about soul and spirit that, one might say, bore the character of the most intimate life, but also bore the character of which one might say shows how man is prepared, with his soul, to descend into all being and, in all being, first of all into nature, and then into the spirit, to seek life, the direct life. Under the influence of this way of thinking, knowledge becomes something very special: knowledge becomes inner experience, becoming part of the experience of things.

I have said it again and again: It is not important to place oneself today in some dogmatic way on the ground of what these spirits have said in terms of content. One does not even have to agree with what they said in terms of content. What matters is the way of striving, the way in which they seek the paths into the spiritual world. Schelling felt so intimately connected — even if he expressed it one-sidedly — with what lives and moves in nature that he could once utter the saying, “To know nature is to create nature.” Certainly, in the face of such a saying, the shallow superficial will always be right in comparison to the genius who, like Schelling, utters such a saying from the depths of his being. Let us give the shallow superficialist the right, but let us be clear: even if nature can only be recreated in the human soul, in Schelling's saying, “To recognize nature is to create nature,” means an intimate interweaving of the whole human personality with natural existence. And for Schelling this becomes the one revelation of the divine-spiritual, and the soul of man the other revelation. They confront each other, they correspond to each other. The spirit first created itself in soulless nature, which gradually became ensouled from the plant kingdom to the animal kingdom and to man, as it were, creating the soil in which the soul can then flourish. The soul experiences the spiritual directly in itself, experiences it in direct reality.

How different it appears, when rightly understood, from the spiritual knowledge of nature which is striven for as the outcome, let us say, of Romance popularism. In the development of the German spirit there is no need to descend to the level of tone which the enemies of Germany have now reached when they wish to characterize the relation of the German spiritual life to other spiritual lives in Europe. One can remain entirely on the ground of fact. Therefore, what is to be said now is not said out of narrow national feelings, but out of fact itself. Compare such a desire to penetrate nature, as present in Schelling, where nature is to be grasped in such a way that the soul's own life is submerged in that which lives and moves outside. Compare this with what is characteristic of the Western world view, which reached its highest level with Descartes, Cartesius, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but has been continued into our days and is just as characteristic of Western culture as Fichte's and Schelling's striving is for German culture. Like Fichte and Schelling later on, Cartesius also takes up a position in relation to the world of nature. He starts by taking the standpoint of doubt. He also seeks within himself a central point through which he can arrive at a certainty about the existence of the world and of life. His famous “Cogito, ergo sum” is well known: “I think, therefore I am.” What does he rely on? Not, like Fichte, on the living ego, from which one cannot take away its existence, because it is continually creating itself out of the world-will. He relies on thinking, which is supposed to be there already, on that which already lives in man: I think, therefore I am — which can easily be refuted with every night's sleep of man, because one can just as well say: I do not think, therefore I am not. Nothing fruitful follows from Descartes' “I think, therefore I am”. But how little this world view is suited to submerging into nature with one's own soul essence can best be seen from a single external characteristic. Descartes tried to characterize the nature surrounding the soul. And he himself sought to address the animals as moving machines, as soulless machines. Only man himself, he thought, could speak of himself as if he had a soul. The animals are moving machines, are soulless machines.

So little is the soul out of this folklore placed in the possibility of immersing itself in the inner life of the external thing that it cannot find inspiration within the animal world. No wonder that this continued until the materialism of the eighteenth century and continued - as we will mention today - until our own days, as in that materialism of the eighteenth century, in that material ism that conceived of the whole world only as a mechanism, and which finally realized, especially in de Lamettrie in his book “L'homme-machine”, even came to understand man himself only as a moving machine. All this is already present in germinal form in Cartesius.

Goethe, out of his German consciousness, became acquainted with this Western world view, and he spoke out of his German consciousness: They offer us a world of moving atoms that push and pull each other. If they then at least wanted to derive the manifold, the beautiful, the great, the sublime phenomena of the world from these atoms that push and pull each other. But after they have presented this bleak, desolate image of the world, they let it be presented and do nothing to show how the world emerges from these accumulations of atoms.

The third thinker who should be mentioned among those minds that, as it were, form the background of the world view from which everything that the German mind has achieved in that time through Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on has sprung, is Hegel. In him we see the third aspect of the German mind embodied at the same time. In him we see a third way of finding the point in the soul through which this human soul can feel directly one with the whole world, with that which, in a divine-spiritual way, pulses, weaves and permeates the world. If in Fichte we see the will grasping directly in the innermost part of man, and in Schelling, I might say, the mind, then in Hegel we see the human thought grasped. But in that Hegel attempts to grasp the thought not merely as human, but in its purity, detached from all sensual sensations and perceptions, directly in the soul, Hegel feels as if, in living in the living and breathing and becoming of pure thought, he also lives in the thought that not only lives in the soul, but that is only meant to appear in the soul, because it reveals itself in it, as divine-spiritual thinking permeating all of the world. Just as the divine spiritual beings scatter their thoughts throughout the world, as it were, thinking the world and continually fashioning it in thought, so it is revealed when the thinker, alone with himself, gives rise to pure thinking, thinking that is not borrowed from the external world of the senses but that the human being finds as thinking that springs up within him when he gives himself to his inner being. Basically, what Hegel wants, if one may say so, is a mystical will. But it is not an unclear, dark or nebulous mysticism. The dark, unclear or nebulous mysticism wants to unite with the world ground in the darkest feelings possible. Hegel also wants the soul to unite with the ground of the world, but he seeks this in crystal clarity, in the transparency of thinking; he seeks it in inner experience, he seeks it in the world of thoughts. In perfect clarity, he seeks for the soul that which is otherwise only believed in unclear mysticism.

All this shows how these three important minds are endeavoring from three different sides to bring the human soul to experience the totality of reality by devotion to the totality of reality, how they are convinced that something can be found in the soul that experiences the world in its depths and thus yields a satisfying world view.

Fichte speaks to his Berlin students in 1811 and 1813 about attaining such a world picture in such a way that it is clear that he is well aware that one must strive for certain powers of knowledge that lie dormant in the soul. Fichte then says to his Berlin students in the years mentioned: If one really wants to have that which must be striven for in order to truly and inwardly grasp the world spiritually, then it is necessary that the human being finds and awakens a slumbering sense, a new sense, a new sense organ, within himself. Just as the eye is formed in the physical body, so a new sense organ must be developed out of the soul in Fichte's sense, if we are to look into the spiritual world. That is why Fichte boldly says to his listeners in these years, when, as far as he could achieve it in his relatively short life, his world view has reached the highest peak: What I have to say to you is like a single seeing person entering a world of blind people. What he has to say to them about the world of light, the world of colors, initially affects them, and at first they will say it is nonsense because they cannot sense anything.

And Schelling - we can already see it in the saying that Schubert made about him - has drawn attention to intellectual intuition. What he coined in his words, for which he coined a wisdom, he sought to explore in the world by developing the organ within him into an “intellectual intuition”. From this intellectual intuition, Schelling speaks in such a way that he could have the effect that has just been characterized.

From his point of view, Hegel then opposed this intellectual view. He believed that to assert this intellectual view was to characterize individual exceptional people, people who, through a higher disposition, had become capable of looking into the spiritual world. Hegel, on the contrary, was thoroughly convinced that every human being is capable of looking into the spiritual world, and he wanted to emphasize this thoroughly.

Thus these minds were opposed to each other not only in the content of what they said, but they were also opposed to each other in such profound views. But that is not the point, but rather the fact that they all basically strive for what can truly be called spiritual science: the experience of the world through that which sits in the deepest part of man. And in this they are united with the greatest spirit who created out of German folkhood, with Goethe, as Fichte, Hegel and Schelling have often said.

Goethe speaks of this contemplative power of judgment in a beautiful little essay entitled “Contemplative Power of Judgment”. What does Goethe mean by this contemplative power of judgment? The senses initially observe the external physical world. The mind combines what this external physical world presents to it. When the senses observe the external physical world, they do not see the essence of things, says Goethe; this must be observed spiritually. In this process, the power of judgment must not merely combine; the concepts and ideas that arise must not merely arise in such a way that they seek to depict something else; something of the world spirit itself must live in the power that forms concepts and ideas. The power of judgment must not merely think; the power of judgment must look at, look spiritually, as the senses otherwise look. Goethe is completely at one with those who have, as it were, provided the background for the world view, just as they feel at one with him. Just as Fichte, for example, when he published the first edition of his seemingly so abstract Theory of Science, sent it to Goethe in sheets and wrote to him: “The pure spirituality of feeling that one sees in you must also be the touchstone for what we create.

A wonderful relationship of a spiritual kind exists between the three world-view personalities mentioned and minds such as Goethe; we could also cite Schiller, we could also cite Herder, we could cite them all, who in such great times drew directly from the depths of German national character.

It must be said that all that was created in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and in the others, contains something that is not fully expressed in any of them: Fichte seeks to recognize the spiritual world by experiencing the will as it flows into the soul; Schelling turns more to the mind, Hegel to the thought content of the world, others to other things. Above all of them, as it were, like the unity that expresses itself in three or so many different ways, hovers that which one can truly call the striving of the German national spirit itself, which cannot be fully expressed by any single personality, but which expresses itself as in three shades, for example, in relation to a world view in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Those who do not stand as dogmatic followers or opponents to these personalities – one could be beyond such childishness today, that one wants to be a follower or opponent of a spirit if one wants to understand it in its greatness – but have a heart and a mind and an open feeling for their striving, will discern everywhere, in all their expressions, something like the German national soul itself, so that what they say is always more powerful than what is directly expressed. That is the strange and mysterious thing about these minds. And that is why later, far less important personalities than these great, ingenious ones, were even able to arrive at more significant, more penetrating spiritual truths than these leading and dominant minds themselves. That is the significant thing: through these minds something is expressed that is more than these minds, that is the central German national spirit itself, which continues to work, so that lesser minds, far less talented minds, could come, and in these far less talented minds the same spirit is expressed, but even in a more spiritual scientific way than in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel themselves. They were the ones who first, I might say, set the tone and for the first time communicated something to the world, drawing it from the source of spiritual life. Even for geniuses, this is difficult. But once the great, powerful stimulus had been provided, lesser minds followed. And it must be said that these lesser minds in some cases captured the path into the spiritual worlds even more profoundly and meaningfully than those on whom they depended, who were their teachers.

Thus we see in Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, how he strives in his own way for a spiritual science, and in such a way that he seeks a higher human being in the sensual human being who stands before us, who is grasped by the outer senses and outer science , whom he calls an etheric human being, and in whom lie the formative forces for this physical human being, which are built up before the physical body receives its hereditary substance from the parents, and which are maintained as the sum of the formative forces when the physical body passes through the gate of death. Immanuel Hermann Fichte speaks of an ethereal human being, of an ethereal human being who is inwardly strengthened and filled with strength, who belongs to the eternal forces of the universe just as the human being here belongs to the physical forces of the hereditary current as a physical human being, probably because of his association with his father, who was a good educator for him.

And one would like to say: How carried to higher heights we find the Fichtean, the Schellingian striving in a man who has become little known, who almost belongs to the forgotten spirits of German intellectual life, but in whom is deeply rooted precisely what is the essence of the German national spirit - in Troxler. Troxler - who knows Troxler? And yet, what do we know of this Troxler? Under the influence of Schelling, in particular, he wrote his profound > Blicke in das Wesen des Menschen in 1811 and then gave his lectures on philosophy in 1834. These lectures are certainly not written in a piquant way, to use the foreign word for something foreign, but they are written in such a way that they show us: A person is speaking who does not just want to approach the world with the intellect, with which one can only grasp the finite, but one who wants to give the whole personality of the human being with all its powers to the world, so that this personality, when it immerses itself in the world's phenomena, brings with it a knowledge that is fertilized by the co-experience, by the most intimate co-experience with the being of the world. And Troxler knows something about the fact that among those powers of the soul that are initially turned towards external nature and its sensuality, higher spiritual powers live. And in a strange way, Troxler now seeks to elevate the spirit above itself. He speaks of a super-spiritual sense that can be awakened in man, of a super-spiritual sense that slumbers in man. What does Troxler mean by that? He means: The human spirit otherwise thinks only in abstract concepts and ideas that are dry and empty, mere images of the external world; but in the same force that lives in these abstract concepts and ideas, there also lives something that can be awakened by man as a spiritual being. Then he sees in supersensible images the way one can see external reality with the eyes. In ordinary cognition, the sensory image is present first, and the thought, which is not sensory-pictorial, is added in the process of cognition. In the spiritual process of cognition, the supersensible experience is present; this could not be seen as such if it did not pour itself through a power that is natural to the spirit into the image, which brings it to a spiritual-descriptive sensualization. For Troxler, such knowledge is that of the super-spiritual sense. And what this super-spiritual sense bypasses, Troxler calls the supersensible spirit, the spirit that rises above mere observation of the sensual, and which, as spirit, experiences what is out there in the world. How could I fail to mention to those esteemed listeners who heard a lecture like the one I gave on Friday two weeks ago that in this supersensible sense and supersensible spirit of Troxler, the germs — if only the germs, but nevertheless the germs — lie in what I had to characterize as the two paths into spiritual science,

But there is another way in which Troxler expresses it wonderfully. He says: When the human being is first placed in his physical body with his soul, with his eternal self, when he stands face to face with the moral, the religious, but also with the outer, immediate reality, then he develops three forces: faith, hope and love. These three forces, which he continues to develop, he develops in life within the physical-sensual body. It simply belongs to the human being, as he stands in the physical-sensual world, that he lives in faith, in love, in hope. But Troxler says: That which is proper to the soul of man here within the physical body as faith, as justified belief, is, so to speak, the outer expression of a deeper power that is within the soul, which, through this faith, shines into the physical world as a divine power. But behind this power of faith, which, in order to unfold, absolutely requires the physical body, lies supersensible hearing. This means that faith is, in a sense, what a person makes out of supersensible hearing. By making use of the sensory instrument for supersensible hearing, he believes. But if he frees himself from his sensory body and experiences himself in the soul, then the same power that becomes faith in the sensory life gives him supersensible hearing, through which he can delve into a world of spiritual sound phenomena through which spiritual entities and spiritual facts speak to him.

And the love that a person develops here in the physical body, which is the flowering of human life on earth, is the outer expression of a power that lies behind it: for spiritual feeling or touching, says Troxler. And when a person delves deeper into this same power, which lives here as the blossom of the moral earthly existence, of the religious earthly existence, when he delves deeper into this love, when he goes to the foundations of this love, then he discovers within himself that the spiritual man has organs of feeling through which he can touch spiritual beings and spiritual facts just as he can touch physical facts with his sensory organs of feeling or touching. Behind love lies spiritual feeling or touching, as behind faith lies spiritual hearing.

And behind the hope that a person has in this or that form lies spiritual vision, the insight through the spiritual sense of seeing into the spiritual world.

Thus, behind what a person experiences as the power of faith, love and hope, Troxler sees only the outer expression of higher powers: for spiritual hearing, for spiritual feeling, for spiritual beholding or seeing. And then he says: When a person can give himself to the world in such a way that he gives himself with his spiritual hearing, spiritual feeling, spiritual seeing, then not only do thoughts come to life in him that so externally and abstractly reflect the external world, but, as Tro “sensible thoughts”, thoughts that can be felt themselves, that is, that are living beings, and ‘intelligent feelings’, that is, not just dark feelings in which one feels one's own existence in the world, but something through which the feelings themselves become intelligent. We know from the lecture just mentioned that it is actually the will, not the feelings; but in Troxler there is definitely the germ of everything that can be presented in spiritual science today. When a person awakens to this seeing, to this hearing and sensing of the spiritual world, when in this feeling a life of thought awakens through which the person can connect with the living thought that weaves and lives in the spiritual world, just as thought lives in us essentially, not just abstractly. Troxler feels his striving for spiritual science so deeply. And I would like to read a passage from Troxler from which you can see just how profound this striving was for Troxler. He once said:

"In the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body, or assumed that the soul was a kind of covering for the face within this body, that the soul had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and that the soul was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously dreams, in jest, an entire inward, spiritual man who carries all the limbs of the outward on his spirit body."

Troxler then draws attention to others who have more or less sensed this other side of the nature of the world from the depths of German spiritual endeavor. Troxler continues:

"Lavater writes and thinks in the same way, and even when Jean Paul makes humorous jokes about Bonnet's undergarment and Platner's soul corset, which are said to be , we also hear him asking: What is the purpose and origin of these extraordinary talents and desires within us, which, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cut our earthly shell? Why was I stuck to this dirty lump of earth, a creature with useless wings of light, when I was supposed to rot back into the birth clod without ever wriggling free with ethereal wings?"

Troxler draws attention to such currents in German intellectual life. And then he comes up with the idea that a special science could now arise from this, a science that is a science but that has something in common with poetry, for example, in that it arises from the human soul, in that not a single power of the soul, but the whole human soul, surrenders itself in order to experience the world together with others.

If you look at people from the outside, Troxler says, you get to know anthropology. Anthropology is what arises when you examine with the senses and with the mind what the human being presents and what is revealed in the human being. But with this one does not find the full essence of the human being. What Troxler calls in the characterized sense, spiritual hearing, spiritual feeling, spiritual seeing, what he calls supersensible spirit, superspiritual sense, that is part of it, in order to see something higher in the human being. A science stands before his soul, which does not arise out of the senses, not out of mere intellect, but out of this higher faculty of knowledge in the human being. And Troxler speaks very characteristically about this science in the following way. He says - Troxler's following words were written in 1835 -:

"If it is highly gratifying that the newest philosophy, which we have long recognized as the one that founds all living religion and must reveal itself in every anthroposophy, thus in poetry as well as in history, is now making headway, it cannot be overlooked, that this idea cannot be a true fruit of speculation, and that the true personality or individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts with as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

In the 1830s, Troxler became aware of the idea of anthroposophy, a science that seeks to be a spiritual science based on human power in the truest sense of the word. Spiritual science can, if it is able to correctly understand the germs that come from the continuous flow of German intellectual life, say: Among Western peoples, for example, something comparable to spiritual science, something comparable to anthroposophy, can indeed arise; but there it will always arise in such a way that it runs alongside the continuous stream of the world view, alongside what is there science, and therefore very, very easily becomes a sect or a sectarianism. , but it will always arise in such a way that it runs alongside the continuous stream of world view, alongside what is science there, and therefore very, very easily tends towards sectarianism or dilettantism. In German spiritual life — and in this respect German spiritual life stands alone — spiritual science arises as something that naturally emerges from the deepest impulses, from the deepest forces of this German spiritual life. Even when this German spiritual life becomes scientific with regard to the spiritual world and develops a striving for spiritual knowledge, the seeds of what must become spiritual science already lie in this striving. Therefore, we never see what flows through German intellectual life in this way die away.

Or is it not almost wonderful that in 1856 a little book was published by a pastor from Waldeck? He was a pastor in Sachsenberg in Waldeck. In this little book – as I said, the content is not important, but the striving – an attempt is made, in a way that is completely opposed to Hegel, to find something for the human soul, through which this human soul, by awakening the power slumbering in it, can join the whole lofty awakening spiritual world. And this is admirably shown by the simple pastor Rocholl in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck in his little book: 'Contributions to the History of German Theosophy' — a small booklet, but full of real inner spiritual life, of a spiritual life in which one can see that one who has sought it in his solitude finds everywhere the possibility of rising from the lonely inner experience of the soul to broad views of the world that are hidden behind the sensual one and yet always carry this sensual one, so that one has only one side of the world when one looks at this sensual life. One does not know what one should admire first in such a little book, which must certainly make a fantastic impression today – but that is not the point; whether one should admire more the fact that the simple country pastor found his way into the deepest depths of spiritual endeavor, or whether one should admire the foundations of the continuous flow of German intellectual life, which can produce such blossoms even in the simplest person. And if we had time, I could give you hundreds and hundreds of examples from which you would see how, admittedly not in the field of outwardly recognized, but more in the field of forgotten spiritual tones, but nevertheless vividly surviving spiritual tones, are present everywhere in such people who carry forward to our days what can be called a spiritual-scientific striving within the development of German thought.

As early as the first edition of my World and Life Views, which appeared more than a year and a half ago under the title of Riddles of Philosophy, I called attention to a little-known thinker, Karl Christian Planck. But what good did it do to call attention to such spirits, at least initially? Such spirits are more tangible as an expression, as a revelation of what is now alive, what is not expressed in the scientific activity in question, but nevertheless supports and sustains this scientific activity in many ways. Such spirits arise precisely from the deepest depths of the German character, of which Karl Christian Planck is one. Planck has written a book entitled 'Truth and shallowness of Darwinism', a very important book. He has also written a book about the knowledge of nature. I will mention only the following from this book, although basically every page is interesting:

When people talk about the earth today, they talk, I would say, in a geological sense. The earth is a mineral body to them, and man walks on it as an alien being. For Planck, the Earth, with everything that grows on it and including man, is a great spiritual-soul organism, and man belongs to it. One has simply not understood the Earth if one has not shown how, in the whole organism of the Earth, the physical human being must be present in that his soul is outwardly embodied. The earth is seen as a whole, all its forces, from the most physical to the most spiritual, are grasped as a unity. Planck wants to establish a unified world picture, which is spiritual, to use Goethe's expression. But Planck is aware – in this respect he is one of the most characteristic thinkers of the nineteenth century – of how what he is able to create really does emerge from the very depths of the German national spirit. He expresses this in the following beautiful words in his essay 'Grundlinien einer Wissenschaft der Natur' (Foundations of a Science of Nature), which appeared in 1864:

“He is fully aware of the power of deeply rooted prejudices against his writing, stemming from previous views. But just as the work itself, despite all the unfavorable circumstances that arose from the author's overall situation and professional position,” namely, he was a simple high school teacher, not a university professor — “a work of this kind was opposed, but its realization and its way into the public has fought, then he is also certain that what must now first fight for its recognition will appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German views of nature and spirit.

What our medieval poetry has already unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation in the maturity of the times. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which has been afflicted with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram von Eschenbach describes it in his “Parzival”)” - this was written in 1864, long before Wagner's ‘Parsifal’! “Finally, in the strength of its unceasing striving, it attains the highest, it gets to the bottom of the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which is attained by its hero, conversely receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the lasting knowledge of nature and of spirit itself.

Thus speaks he who then gave the summary of his world picture under the title “The Will of a German”, in which an attempt is really made, again at a higher level than was possible for Schelling, to penetrate nature and spirit. In 1912, this “The Will of a German” was published in a new edition. I do not think that many people have studied it. Those who deal with such things professionally had other things to do: the books by Bergson, by that Bergson — his name is still Bergson! who has used the present time not only to revile but also to slander in the truest sense what has emerged from German intellectual life; who has managed to describe the entire current intellectual culture of the Germans as mechanistic. I have said here before: when he wrote that the Germans have descended from the heights on which they stood under Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Schelling and Hegel, and that now they are creating a mechanical culture, he probably believed that the Germans, when they march up with cannons, would declaim Novalis or Goethe's poems to their opponents! But from the fact that he now only sees—or probably does not see—guns and rifles, he makes German culture into a completely mechanistic one.

Now, just as the other things I have been saying during this period have been said again and again in the years before the war, and also to members of other nations – so that they must not be understood as having been prompted by the situation of war – I tried to present Bergson's philosophy in the book that was completed at the beginning of the war, the second edition of my “Weltund Lebensanschauungen” (World and Life Views). And in the same book I pointed out how, I might say, one of the most brilliant ideas in Bergson's work, infinitely greater, more incisive and profound — here again we have such a forgotten 'tone of German intellectual life' — had already appeared in 1882 in the little-known Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss. At one point in his books, Bergson draws attention to the fact that when considering the world, one should not start with the mineral kingdom and then the plant and animal kingdoms, and only then include man in them, but rather start with man; how man is the is original and the other entities in the continuous flow, in which he developed while he was the first, has rejected the less perfect, so that the other natural kingdoms have developed out of the human kingdom.

In my book Rätseln der Philosophie (Mysteries of Philosophy), I pointed out how the lonely, deep thinker, but also energetic and powerful thinker, Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, in his book Geist und Stoff (Mind and Matter), and basically in fact, even earlier than 1882, this idea in a powerful, courageous way, - the idea that one cannot get along with Darwinism understood in a purely Western sense, but that one has to imagine: if you go back in the world, you first have the human being. The human being is the original, and as the human being develops further, he expels certain entities, first the animals, then the plants, then the minerals. That is the reverse course of development.

I cannot go into this in detail today – I have even dealt with this idea several times in lectures from previous years – but I would like to mention today that this spiritual worldview is fully represented in the German spiritual movement of the 1880s in the book by Preuss, 'Geist und Stoff' (Spirit and Matter). I would like to read to you a key passage from my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” so that you can see how a powerful world view, which is part of the whole current that I have characterized for you today, flows into the spiritual life of humanity in weighty words. Preuss says:

The center of this new doctrine is man, the only species on our planet that recurs: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers started with natural objects and then went so astray that they could not find the way to man, which Darwin only managed in the most miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory way by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals, while the naturalist should start with himself as a human being, and thus gradually return to humanity through the whole realm of being and thinking! It was not by chance that human nature emerged from the evolution of all earthly things, but by necessity. Man is the goal of all telluric processes, and every other form emerging alongside him has borrowed its traits from his. Man is the first-born being of the whole cosmos... When his germs had emerged, the remaining organic residue no longer had the necessary strength to produce further human germs. What emerged was animal or plant...

In 1882, what the human soul can experience spiritually, presented within German intellectual life! Then Bergson comes along and by no means presents the thought in such a powerful, penetrating way, connected with the innermost life of the soul, but, one might say, in a slightly pursed, mincing, more and more indeterminate way. And people are overwhelmed by Bergson and do not want to know about Preuss. And Bergson apparently knows nothing about Preuss. But that is about as bad for someone who writes about worldviews as it would be if he knew about it and did not say anything. But we do not want to examine whether Bergson knew and did not say, or whether he did not know, now that it has been sufficiently proven that Bergson not only borrowed ideas from Schopenhauer and expressed them in his own words, but also took ideas from the entire philosophy of German idealism, for example Schelling and Fichte, and seems to consider himself their creator. It is indeed a special method of characterizing the relationship of one people to another, as Bergson now continually does to his French counterparts, by presenting German science and German knowledge as something particularly mechanical, after he has previously endeavored - which is probably not a very mechanical activity - to describe these German world-view personalities over pages. After a while, one realizes that Bergson could have kept silent altogether if he had not built his world view on the foundations of the German world view personalities, which is basically nothing more than a Cartesian mechanism, the mechanism of the eighteenth century, warmed up by a somewhat romantically understood Schellingianism and Schopenhauerianism.

As I said, one must characterize things appropriately; for it must be clear to our minds that when we speak of the relationship of the German character in the overall development of humanity, we do not need to adopt the same method of disparaging other nationalities that is so thoroughly used by our opponents today. The German is in a position to point out the facts, and he will now also gain strength from the difficult trials of the present time to delve into the German soul, where he has not yet succeeded. The forgotten sides of the striving for spiritual science will be remembered again. I may say this again and again, after having endeavored for more than thirty years to emphasize another side of the forgotten striving of German knowledge.

From what has emerged entirely from the British essence of knowing directed only at the outside world, we have the so-called Newtonian color theory. And the power of the British essence, not only externally but also internally, spiritually, is so great that this Newtonian color theory has taken hold of all minds that think about such things. Only Goethe, out of that nature which can be won from German nationality, has rebelled against Newton's theory of colours in the physical field. Certainly, Newton's theory of colours is, I might say, in one particular chapter, what de Lamettrie's L'Homme-Machine can be for all shallow superficial people in the world. Only the case with the theory of colours is particularly tragic. For 35 years, as I said, I have been trying to show the full significance of Goethe's Theory of Colours, the whole struggle of the German world-view, as it appears in Goethe with regard to the world of colour, against the mechanistic view rooted in British folklore with Newton. The chapter 'Goethe versus Newton' will also come into its own when that which lives on in a living, active way, even if not always consciously, comes more and more to the fore and can be seen by anyone who wants to see. And it will come to the fore, precisely as a result of the trials of our time, the most intimate awareness of the German of the depth of his striving for knowledge.

It is almost taken for granted, and therefore as easy to grasp as all superficially taken for granted things, when people today say: science is of course international. The moon is also international! Nevertheless, what individuals have to say about the moon is not at all international. When Goethe traveled, he wrote back to his German friends: “After what I have seen of plants and fish near Naples and in Sicily, I would be very tempted, if I were ten years younger, to make a journey to India, not to discover anything new, but to look at what has been discovered in my way.” Of course, science is international. It is not easy to refute the corresponding statements, because they are self-evident, as everything superficial is self-evident. But as I said, it is also international like the moon. But what the individual nations have to say about what is international from the depths, from the roots of their national character, that is what is significant and also what is effective in furthering the development of humanity from the way in which the character of each individual nation relates to what can be recognized internationally. That is what matters.

To this day, however, it cannot be said that precisely that which, in the deepest sense, represents the German character has made a significant impression on the path of knowledge in the period that followed. Within the German character itself, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel initially had such a great effect that posterity was stunned and that it initially produced only one or the other, one or the other side, that even un-German materialism was able to gain a foothold within the German spiritual life. But it is particularly instructive to see how that which is primordially German works in other nationalities when it is absorbed into them. And Schelling, for example, is primordially German. Schelling has had a great effect, for example within Russian spiritual life. Within Russian spiritual life, we see how Schelling is received, how his powerful views of nature, but especially of history – the Russian has little sense of the view of nature – are received. But we also see how precisely the essentials, what matters, cannot be understood at all in the east of Europe. Yes, it is particularly interesting – and you can read more about this in my writing “Thoughts During the Time of War” – how this eastern part of Europe in the nineteenth century gradually developed a complete rejection of precisely the intellectual life not only of Central Europe, but even of Western Europe. And one gets an impression of German intellectual life when one sees how this essential, which I have tried to bring out today, this living with the soul in the development of nature and the spirit, cannot be understood in the East, where things are accepted externally. In the course of the nineteenth century, consciousness has swollen terribly in the East, especially among intellectuals – not among the peasants, of course, who know little about war even when they are waging it. The intellectual life of the East is, however, a strange matter. I have already explained it: Slavophilism appears in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the 1830s, precisely fertilized by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel; but it appears in such a way that Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are only taken superficially , quite superficially, so that one has no inkling of how Fichte, Schelling and Hegel — the tools of the will, of the soul, of thinking — actually live objectively together with what outwardly interweaves and lives through the world. And so it could come about that this Russian element, which in terms of its sense of knowledge still lived deeply in medieval feeling, took up Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in such a way that an almost megalomaniacal view of the nineteenth century, which in literary and epistemological terms is really a kind of realization of Peter the Great's Political Testament, whether falsified or not.

What did they know about the German world view over there! In one of my recent lectures, I showed how Goethe's “Faust” truly grows out of what we, once again, can allow to affect our souls as a German world view. But we have only to hear Pissarew — who as a Russian spirit is deeply influenced by Goethe — speak about Goethe's Faust, and we shall see how it is impossible not to understand what is most characteristic and most essential to the German national soul. Pissarew says, for example: “The small thoughts and the small feelings had to be made into pearls of creation” - in “Faust he means the small thoughts, the human feelings that only concern people! “Goethe accomplished this feat, and similar feats are still considered the greatest victory of art; but such hocus-pocus is done not only in the sphere of art, but also in all other spheres of human activity."

It is an interesting chapter in the history of ideas that in the case of minds such as Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky or Khomyakov, for example, precisely that which lives great and significant as inwardness, but as clear inwardness, dark and nebulous sentimentalism, has continued to live in such minds and we could cite a long line right up to the present day, precisely from Russian ideological minds - how in this Russian ideological mind the conviction has generally formed: that which lives to the west of us is an aged culture, a culture that has outlived itself; it is ripe for extinction. The Russian essence is there, that must replace what is in Central Europe and they also meant Western Europe in the nineteenth century, especially England - what is in England.

This is not something I have picked out at one point or another, but it is a consistent feature of Russian intellectual life, which characterizes those who matter, who set the tone. In Kireyevsky's work, this intensifies around 1829 to a saying that I will read in a moment, and one will see from such a saying that what is heard today from the East did not just arise today, but that it is deeply rooted in what has gradually accumulated in this East.

But before that, I want to cite something else. The whole thing starts with Slavophilism, with a seemingly scientific and theoretical focus on the importance of the Russian people, who must replace an old and decrepit Europe, degenerating into nothing but abstract concepts and cold utilitarian ideas. Yes, as I said, this is something that is found again and again in Russian intellectual life. But where does this Slavophilism actually come from? How did these people in the East become aware of what they later repeated in all its variations: the people in Central and Western Europe have become depraved, are decrepit; they have managed to eliminate all love, all feeling from the heart and to live only in the mind, which leads to war and hatred between the individual peoples. In the Russian Empire, love lives, peace lives, and so does a science that arises from love and peace. Where do these people get it from? From the German Weltanschauung they have it! Herder is basically the first Slavophile. Herder first expressed this, which was justified in his time, which is also justified when one looks at the depth of the national character, which truly has nothing to do with today's war and with all that has led to this war. But one can point out that which has led to the megalomania among the so-called intellectuals: We stand there in the East, everything over there is old, everything is decrepit, all of it must be exterminated, and in its place must come the world view of the East.

Let us take to heart the words of Kirejewski. He says in 1829: “The fate of every European state depends on the union of all the others; the fate of Russia depends on Russia alone. But the fate of Russia is decided in its formation: this is the condition and source of all goods. As soon as all these goods will be ours, we will share them with the rest of Europe, and we will repay all our debts to it a hundredfold.”

Here we have a leading man, a man repeatedly lionized by the very minds that have more often than not rejected the ongoing development of Russian intellectual life. Here we have it stated: Europe is ripe for destruction, and Russian culture must replace it. Russian culture contains everything that is guaranteed to last. Therefore, we are appropriating everything. And when we have everything, well then we will be benevolent, then we will share with the others in a corresponding manner. That is the literary program, already established in 1829 within Russian humanity by a spirit, in whose immaturity, in whose sentimentality even Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have worked.

There is a remarkable conception in the East in general. Let me explain this in conclusion. For example, in 1885 an extraordinary book was published by Sergius Jushakow, an extraordinary book, as I said. Jushakow finds that Russia has a great task. In 1885, he finds this task even more directed towards Asia. Over there in Asia, he believes, live the descendants of the ancient Iranians – to which he also counts the Indians, the Persians – and the ancient Turanians. They have a long cultural life behind them, have brought it to what is evident in them today. In 1885, Yushakov said that Westerners had intervened in this long cultural life, intervening with what they could become from their basic feelings and from their worldview. But Russia must intervene in the right way.

A strange Pan-Asiaticism, expressed by Yushakov in a thick book in 1885 as part of his program! He says: “These Asiatic peoples have presented their destiny in a beautiful myth—which is, however, true. There are the Iranian peoples over there who fought against Ahriman, as Jusakhov says, against the evil spirit Ahriman, who causes infertility and drought and immorality, everything that disturbs human culture. They joined forces with the good spirit Ormuzd, the god of light, the spirit that gives everything that promotes people. But after the Asians had received the blessings of Ormuzd within their spiritual life for a while, Ahriman became more powerful. But what did the European peoples of the West bring to the Asians, according to Jushakow? And that is quite interesting. Yushakov argues that the peoples of the West, with their cultural life, which in his view is degenerate and decrepit, have crossed over to Asia to the Indians and the Persians, and have taken from them everything that Ormuzd, the good Ormuzd, has fought for. That is what the peoples of the West were there for. Russia will now cross over to Asia – it is not I who say this, but the Russian Yushakov – because in Russia, rooted in a deep culture, is the alliance between the all-fertility-developing peasant and the all-chivalry-bearing — as I said, it is not I who say it, Yushakov says it — and from the alliance of the peasant and the Cossack, which will move into Asia, something else will arise than what the Western peoples have been able to bring to the Asians. The Western peoples have taken the Ormuzd culture from the Asians; but the Russians, that is, the peasants and the Cossacks, will join forces with poor Asia, which has been enslaved by the Westerners, and will fight with it against Ahriman and will unite completely with it. For what the Asians, under the leadership of Ormuzd, have acquired as a coming together with nature itself, the Russians will not take away from them, but will join with them to fight against Ahriman once more.

And in 1885, this man describes in more detail how these Western peoples actually behaved towards the Asian people plagued by Ahriman. He does not describe the Germans, for which he would have had little reason at the time, but he, Yushakov, the Russian, describes the English. And he says of the English that, after all they have been through, they believe that the Asian peoples are only there to clothe themselves in English fabrics, fight among themselves with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English baubles. And further, in 1885, Yushakov said: “England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland – I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as glorious as it is sad.”

It is likely that these sentiments, which were not only expressed by Jushakow in 1885, but also by many others, led to Russia initially not allying itself with the Asians to help them against Ahr Ahriman, but that it first allied itself with the “so brilliant as it is sad state” of England in order to trample the “aged”, “marshy” Europe into the ground.

What world history will one day see in this ring closing around Central Europe can be expressed quite simply. One need only mention a few figures. These few figures are extremely instructive because they are reality. One day, history will raise the question, quite apart from the fact that this present struggle is the most difficult, the most significant, the greatest that has occurred in the development of human history, quite apart from the fact that it is merely a matter of the circumstances of the figures: How will it be judged in the future that 777 million people are closing in on 150 million people? 777 million people in the so-called Entente are closing in on 150 million people and are not even expecting the decision to come from military valor, but from starvation. That is probably the better part of valor according to the views of 777 million people! There is no need to be envious about the soil in which a spiritual life developed as we have described it, because the figures speak for themselves. The 777 million people live on 68 million square kilometers, compared to 6 million square kilometers on which 150 million people live. History will one day take note of the fact that 777 million people live on 68 million square kilometers, ring-shaped against 150 million people on 6 million square kilometers. The German only needs to let this fact speak in this as well as in other areas, which prevents one from falling into one-sided national shouting and ranting and hate-filled speech, into which Germany's enemies fall.

I do not want to talk now about those areas that do not belong here and that will be decided by weapons. But we see all too clearly how, today, what one wants to cherish and carry as German culture is really enclosed, lifted up above the battlefield of weapons, enclosed by hatred and slander, by real slander , not only hatred; how our sad time of trial is used to vilify and condemn precisely that which has to be placed in world history, in the overall development of mankind, in this way. For what is it, actually, that confronts us in this German intellectual life with all its conscious and forgotten tones? It is great because it is the second great flowering of insight and the second great flowering of art in the history of humanity. The first great flowering of art was Greek culture. At the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the development of Germany produced a flowering of which even a mind like Renan said, when, after absorbing everything else, he became acquainted with the development of Germany in Goethe and Herder: “I felt as if I were entering a temple, and from that moment everything that I had previously considered worthy of the divinity seemed to me no more than withered and yellowed paper flowers.” What German intellectual life has achieved, says Renan, comparing it with the other, is like differential calculus compared to elementary mathematics. Nevertheless, on the same page on which he wrote these words to David Friedrich Strauß, Renan points to that current in France which, in the event of the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, called for a “destructive struggle against the Germanic race”. This letter was written in 1870.

This German intellectual life has been recognized time and again. But today it must be misunderstood. For how else could the words be found that are spoken in the ring that surrounds us!

If we look across, not with Yushakov's eyes, but with unbiased eyes, to Asia, we see a human culture that has grown old, that also strove for knowledge, but that strove for knowledge according to an old, pre-Christian way. There, the ego is sought to be subdued in order to merge into the universe, into Brahman or Atman, with the extinction of the ego. This is no longer possible. Now that the greatest impulse in human history, the Christ impulse, has become established in human history, the ego itself must be elevated, strengthened, not subdued as in Oriental spiritual life, but on the contrary, strengthened in order to connect as an ego with the spiritual-divine in the world, which pulsates and weaves and lives through the world. That is the significant thing, how this is again shining forth in the German spiritual striving. And this, which is unique and which must be incorporated as one of the most essential tones in the overall development of humanity, is what is coming to life in the 6 million square kilometers, compared to the 68 million square kilometers. This fact must be obscured from those who, as I said, do not fight with weapons, but who fight with words and slander this Central European spiritual life. They must cover this fact with fog. They must not see it. But we must admit it to ourselves, we must try to explain to ourselves how it is possible that these people can be so blinded as to fail to recognize the very depth of this connection of one's own soul with the spiritual life outside in the world.

Boutroux, who traveled around here in Germany for a short time before the war and even spoke at universities about the spiritual brotherhood of Germany and France, now tells his French audience how the Germans want to grasp everything inwardly. He even makes a joke: if a Frenchman wants to get to know a lion or a hyena, he goes to the menagerie. If an Englishman wants to get to know a lion or a hyena, he goes on a world tour and studies all the things related to the lion or the hyena on the spot. The German neither goes to the menagerie nor on a journey, but withdraws into his room, goes into his inner self, and from that inner self he creates the lion or the hyena. That is how he conceives of inwardness. It is a joke. One must even say that it is perhaps a good joke. The French have always made good jokes. It's just a shame that this joke is by Heinrich Heine, and Boutroux has only repeated it.

But now, when you see how these people want to cloud their minds, you come up with a few things. You wonder: How do these people, according to their nationality, seek to delude themselves about what German nature actually is? For the Russians, it must always be a new mission. I have also described this in my booklet: “Thoughts during the time of war”. They must be given the opportunity to replace Western European culture, Central European culture, because it is the destiny of the Russian people – so they say in the East, anyway – to replace the abstract, purely intellectual culture built on war with a Russian culture built on the heart, on peace, on the soul. That is the mission.

The English – one would not want to do them an injustice, truly, one would like to remain completely objective, because it really does not befit the Germans to speak in a one-sided way based solely on national feelings. That should not happen at all; but when one hears, as in the very latest times in England, declaiming that the Germans live by the word: “might is right,” then one must still remind them that there is a philosophy by Thomas Hobbes, an English philosophy, in which it is first proved in all its breadth that law has no meaning if it does not arise from power. Power is the source of law. That is the whole meaning of Hobbes's doctrine. After it has been said from an authorized position - there is also an unauthorized authorized position, but it is still an authorized position in the outside world - that the Germans live by the rule “might makes right”, that they have have come far by acting according to the principle “might is right,” I do not believe that one is being subjective when one objects that this is precisely an English principle that has become deeply ingrained in the Englishman. Yes, one can well say: they need a new lie. And that will hardly be anything other than a terminus technicus.

The French – what are they deluding themselves with? They are the ones we would least like to wrong. And so let us take the word of one of their own poets, Edmond Rostand. The cock, the crowing cock, plays a major role in Edmond Rostand's play. He crows when the sun rises in the morning. Gradually, he begins to imagine that the sun could not rise if it were not for him crowing, causing the sun to rise. One has become accustomed – and that is probably also Rostand's idea – to the fact that nothing can happen in the world without France. One has only to recall the age of Louis XIV and all that was French until Lessing, Goethe, Schiller and others emancipated themselves from it, and one can already imagine how the conceit arises: Ah, the sun cannot rise if I do not crow for it. Now, one needs a new conceit.

Italy – I heard a not insignificant Italian politician say before the war: Yes, our people have basically reached a point, so relaxed, so rotten, that we need a refresher, we need something to invigorate us. A new sensation, then! This is expressed in the fact that the Italians, in order to dull their senses, have invented something particularly new and unprecedented: a new saint, namely, Sacro Egoismo, Holy Egoism. How often has it been invoked before Italy was driven into the war, holy egoism! So, a new saint, and his hierophant: Gabriele d'Annunzio. Today, no one can yet gauge how this new saint, Sacro Egoismo and its hierophant, its high priest, Gabriele d'Annunzio, will live on in history!

On the other hand, we can remain within the German spirit and consider what is truly interwoven with this German spirit and what was unanimously felt by the Germans of Austria and Germany, on this side and on the other side of the Erz Mountains, as the German people's – not in the Russian sense of mission, but in the very ordinary sense – world-historical mission. And here I may well conclude with the words to which I have already drawn attention when, speaking of the commonality of Austrian intellectual culture with German, I also spoke of Robert Hamerling. In 1862, when he wrote his “Germanenzug”, the future of the German people lay before Robert Hamerling, the German poet of Austria, which he wanted to express by having the genius of the German people express it, when the Germanic people move over from Asia as the forerunners of the Germans. They settle on the border between Asia and Europe. Robert Hamerling describes the scene beautifully: the setting sun, the rising moon. The Teutons are encamped. Only one man is awake, the blond youth Teut. A genius appears to him. This genius speaks to Teut, in whom Robert Hamerling seeks to capture the representative of the later Germans. Beautifully he expresses:

To whom will the word break out of the depths of the soul
As your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the strings
His innermost being? To whom do the senses draw so magnificently
Into the blue of heaven, granite hieroglyphics
Of the soul's upsurge and the narrowness of life?
Who finally ties the strands
of the searching thought to the stars
so boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Whom leads so high, so deep his urge, his foreboding?
Who grasps the near and the far so faithfully?
Where does every earthly and heavenly zone
reflect itself as in your thinking, O Teuton?

And what once lived over there in Asia, what the Germans brought with them from Asia like ancestral heritage, it stands before Robert Hamerling's soul. It stands before his soul, what was there like a looking into the world in such a way that the ego is subdued, the corporeality is subdued, in order to see what the world is living through and weaving through, but what must emerge in a new form in the post-Christian era, in the form that it speaks out of the fully conscious ego, out of the fully conscious soul. This connection with the ancient times in the striving of the German people for the spirit, how beautifully Robert Hamerling expresses it:

But however proudly you aspire, high above other swarms, you will always keep the ancient, sacred fire: the dream-filled, drunken rapture of God, the blessed warmth of heart of the ancient Asian homeland. This holy ray, a temple fire of This holy ray, a temple fire
Of humanity, free of smoke, with pure flame
Glow away in your chest and soul mate
You remain and pilot your rudder!
You only strive because you love: your boldest thinking
Will be devotion that wants to sink into God.

Thus the German-Austrian poet connects the distant past with the immediate present. And indeed, it has emerged from this beautiful striving of the German soul, which we have tried to characterize today, that all knowledge, all striving wanted to be what one can call: a sacrificial service before the Divine-Spiritual. Even science, even the recognition of the spiritual, should have the effect of a sacrificial service, should work in such a way that Jakob Böhme could say: When one searches spiritually, it is so that one must bring it to go its way:

Walking in God – And striving in God –
And dying in God – And being buried in God.

Hamerling expresses this by having the German Genius say to Teut:

You strive only because you love: your most daring thought
will be devotion, sinking into God.

The affinity of the German soul with God is so beautifully expressed here. This shows us how deeply rooted true spiritual striving is in the German national character. But this also clearly gives rise to the thought in our soul, the powerful thought, that one can ally oneself with this German national spirit, for in that which it has brought forth in spiritual achievements - one current guides the other - this German national spirit is at work. It finds expression in the great, immortal deeds that are being accomplished in the present. In conclusion, let me summarize in the four lines of the German-Austrian Robert Hamerling what emerges as German faith, German love, German hope of the past, present and future, when the German unites with what is the deepest essence of his people. Let me summarize what is there as a force – as a force that has confidence that, where such seeds are, blossoms and fruits must develop powerfully in the German national character despite all enemies, in the German national character – let me summarize what is there as a force in his soul, in the words of the German-Austrian poet Robert Hamerling:

And if ever the German name
should prove a hostile day,
From ocean to ocean will run
The course of the German spirit!

Shortly before the beginning of the present century, Rudolf Steiner arrived in Berlin to assume the post of editor of the well-known Magazin für Litteratur which had been established by Joseph Lehmann in 1832, the year of Goethe's death. Steiner was well qualified for this position, having already edited and written commentary on the natural scientific writings of Goethe for the Kurschner and the Weimar Editions of Goethe's works, a task for which he had been originally recommended by the celebrated Goethe scholar, Karl Julius Schröer, under whom Steiner had studied at the University of Vienna. Steiner also had edited the works of Schopenhauer and Jean Paul Richter for the well-known Cotta Library of World Literature series. Steiner's work as a writer for various periodicals in Vienna, Weimar and Berlin included observations on current affairs, reviews of books and plays, and comment on scientific, social, and philosophical developments.

As an author in his own right, Steiner had already produced his Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, Theory of Knowledge in Goethe's Conception of the World, in 1886 at the age of twenty-five. In this book he revealed his comprehensive grasp of the deeper implications of Goethe's way of thinking. During his Weimar residence while working at the Goethe-Schiller Archives as a free collaborator on the Weimar Edition of Goethe, Steiner developed lines of thought which he later expressed in his Goethes Weltanschauung, Goethe's Conception of the World, published in 1897. These two works, together with his introductions and commentary on Goethe's scientific writings, established Steiner as one of the outstanding exponents of Goethe's methodology.

In 1891 Steiner received his Ph.D. at the University of Rostock. His thesis dealt with the scientific teaching of Fichte, and is evidence of Steiner's ability to evaluate the work of men whose influence has gone far to shape the thinking of the modern world. In somewhat enlarged form this thesis appeared under the title Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Truth and Science, as the preface to Steiner's chief philosophical work, Philosophy of Spiritual Activity as the title of the English translation of this book.

Steiner's contact with the circle of Friedrich Nietzsche led to his work in the Nietzsche Archives and Library. Out of the profound impression the ideas of Nietzsche made upon him, he wrote his Friedrich Nietzsche, Ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit, now published for the first time in English translation as Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, as a part of the Centennial Edition of the Major Writings of Rudolf Steiner, 1861–1961.

With Steiner's arrival in Berlin, his lecturing activity which had begun years before in Vienna, and had been continued in Weimar, was extended and increased. Eventually this work was to occupy the major portion of his time, and was to take him on repeated lecture tours throughout Western Europe. These journeys extended from Norway, Sweden, and Finland in the north to Italy and Sicily in the south, and included several visits to the British Isles. From about the turn of the century until his death in 1925, Steiner gave well over 6,000 lectures before audiences of most diverse backgrounds and from every walk of life.

Steiner's written works, which eventually included over fifty titles, together with his extensive lecturing activity, brought him into contact with increasing numbers of people in many countries. The sheer physical and mental vigor required to carry on a life of such broad, constant activity is sufficient to mark him as one of the most creatively productive men of our time.

The present book, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, is a fruit of Steiner's lecturing activity. The substance of it was contained in a series of lectures he gave in Berlin beginning just after Michaelmas in 1900, when he was thirty-nine. Steiner wrote later, “By means of the ideas of the mystics from Meister Eckhart to Jacob Boehme, I found expression for the spiritual perceptions which, in reality, I decided to set forth. I then summarized the series of lectures in the book, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age.”

The term mysticism, as Steiner uses it in this book, is a further development of what Goethe indicated in his aphoristic description of mysticism in relation to poetry and philosophy. “Poetry,” said Goethe, “points to the riddles of nature, and tries to solve them by means of the image. Philosophy directs itself to the riddles of reason, and attempts to solve them by means of the word. Mysticism considers the riddles of both nature and reason, and seeks to solve them through both word and image.”

This book is significant in the life-work of Rudolf Steiner because it is a first result of his decision to speak out in a direction not immediately apparent in his earlier, more philosophical writings, mentioned above. Here—particularly in Steiner's Introduction—is to be found a vitally fundamental exposition of the science of the spirit, embracing the path of spiritual knowledge suited to the needs and capacities of modern men and women. This subject occupied Steiner increasingly during the whole of the first quarter of this present century, and to it he devoted his entire talents as lecturer and writer.

Rudolf Steiner indicated that the present book is not intended to be a history of mysticism. It deals with a problem that had occupied him for decades, and which today has become a cardinal concern of all mankind: the impact of modern scientific thinking upon the experiences of man's inner, spiritual life. In the conflict between reason and revelation which reached its climax in the nineteenth century, but which had its origins in much earlier times, Steiner saw the seed of a still greater conflict to come, a conflict which involves humanity's struggle against the sub-human in modern technical developments.

It is now generally realized that the impact of the atomic age challenges man's inner convictions, his spiritual striving, and ultimately his ability to live a truly satisfying life.

In this book Steiner tells how eleven men whose lives bridge the four centuries from the Gothic time to the mid-seventeenth century, solved the conflict between their inner spiritual perceptions and the world of individual freedom, invention, and discovery then coming to birth. He explains the positive contribution of their ideas to an understanding and preservation of the humanity of modern men and women in face of contemporary events.

In order that the reader may better appreciate Steiner's presentation of the leading thoughts of these men, a brief sketch of their times and their life stories is given in the following pages.

The period covered by the lives of the men whose ideas are discussed in this book links such diverse personalities as Dante Alighieri, who expressed the strivings of the Age of Faith in his Divina Commedia, and George Fox, whose experience of the inner light established the spiritual path of the Society of Friends in a century of skepticism and growing materialism. Great changes in human thinking took place in these four hundred years. The world of chivalry and knighthood, of pious hermit and wandering minstrel, of religious pilgrimage and miracle play, so characteristic of the medieval time, gave way to the new learning, the humanism, the centralized governments, the scientific investigation, the expanding horizons, both physical and mental, of the Renaissance. And no single part of human life was untouched by the change. In the political, religious, social, intellectual spheres the Renaissance worked its wonders, and the dream of the Middle Ages awakened to the glorious colors of the dawn of a new world.

The transformation in men's minds included a break with their former way of looking at the earth beneath their feet, at their fellow-men, and at the blue vault arching over their heads. From a conception of nature that saw the animate in everything—even in stones—new systems of classification, ways of analysis, of explanation, based more and more upon the evidence of the physical senses, and less and less upon folk-lore and tradition, came into being. The new cosmopolitanism, the recovery of the art and philosophy of ancient Greece, the breaking up of old parties and practices in the social and political life led ultimately to man's growing consciousness of himself, and of his intrinsic worth as a being among other beings. The discovery of the shape of the earth, the rebirth of geographic learning lost in the dimness of forgotten ages, finally brought men to think of the possibility of worlds beyond this world, of whole solar systems beyond ours, and the word infinite began to assume a new importance. In the genius of language is revealed the momentous change that took place in these centuries. One need only recall that to the medieval mind the word reality referred exclusively to spiritual, heavenly things, to see how far-reaching was the change that occurred at the dawn of the modern world.

Today, when modern technical developments have extended their sphere of activity to include interstellar space, and space travel is regarded as a rapidly approaching accomplishment, one can recall that to men of the Middle Ages even the high places of the earth itself were regarded with reverence as dwelling-places of Divinity. Medieval man disliked even to approach high mountains, and to climb them would have required a daring inconceivable to him. As Ruskin said, “Men of the Middle Ages believed that mountains were agreeable things enough, so long as they were far away.”

With the rise of the new thinking of the Renaissance, however, men began to lose their awe of high mountains, and one of the pioneer mountain climbers was Petrarch, the Italian poet. With his brother Gherado, Petrarch climbed Mount Ventoux, a six thousand foot peak near Avignon, on April 26, 1336. All seems to have gone well until at the summit Petrarch discovered that the very clouds of heaven were beneath his feet. Overcome with excitement not unmixed with concern, he took out of his pocket a copy of Augustine's writings he always carried with him. Opening the book at random his eye fell upon a sentence which struck through him like lightning, for it sternly warned man never to lift his head out of the dust of earth, but always to remember his entire subservience to his Maker. Deeply moved, Petrarch descended the mountain filled with secret shame that he had had the temerity to trespass upon a place denied man by the teaching of the Church Fathers.

As men of the Middle Ages believed the mountains to be sacred, so they also regarded the human body as something set apart as the dwelling-place of man's immortal soul. Therefore to them the anatomical studies practiced by Renaissance investigators like Leonardo da Vinci would have seemed blasphemous in the highest degree.

As Renaissance man learned to take possession of the earth with his thinking, he reached out to embrace its far places physically as well. The age of discovery and exploration was followed by a period of conquest and colonization.

Parallel with the humanistic impulses of the Renaissance ran the current of the Reformation, with the accompanying strife and violence of the Counter-Reformation. Finally, as the four centuries covered by the lives of the men considered in this book drew to a close, strong national states emerged, with cultural, political, and social activities closely interrelated.

The year Meister Eckhart was born, Louis IX, known to posterity as Saint Louis of France, leader of the last Crusade, died. When Angelus Silesius died, the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV, destined to rule France for seventy-two years, was thirty-nine years of age, in the full strength of his manhood.

From the foregoing can be seen that the period covered by the lives of these men is the time when humanity, particularly in the Western world, evolved into a condition of consciousness in which the things of the sense world dominate all other considerations, in contrast to the preceding age, when the things of the spirit prevailed to such an extent that no sacrifice of earthly things was considered too great if, for example, it would enhance the miraculous, heaven-aspiring glory of a rising Gothic cathedral.

1.

In year 1260 while Marco Polo was on his way to China thus giving birth to new East–West relationships, and Niccolo Pisano was calling deathless beauty to life in his sculpture in Pisa, Johannes Eckhart was born in the little Thuringian village of Hochheim near Gotha, in Germany. His father was a steward in a knight's castle, hence Johannes' boyhood was passed in the midst of the then fading pageantry of medieval life.

Eckhart was born in the time of transition between the end of the Hohenstaufen rule and the beginning of the reign of the Austrian Hapsburgs in Germany. The one hundred and sixteen years of Hohenstaufen rule (1138–1254) was probably the most interesting period in medieval Germany, and its influence was still active during Eckhart's boyhood, though the last Hohenstaufen had died six years before Eckhart's birth.

This was an age of great contrasts. On the one hand were men of strong, vigorous mind, filled with love for all that the world contained of beauty and adventure. On the other were men whose character was equally strong, but whose lives were spent in a continual struggle of rejection of the world and all its gifts. These were the years when these two opposed attitudes toward the world began a conflict which was to lead to the Renaissance in Germany, and at last to the Reformation. Typical of the Hohenstaufen rulers was Frederick II, considered the most brilliant of all German kings. He was a lover of poetry, art, literature, and was a most capable ruler as well. Crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle in July, 1215, Frederick combined the traditional knightly ideals with worldly activity. The rule of the Hohenstaufens corresponded with the golden age of the German Minnesinger, and was a time of architectural development, which included many beautiful churches as well as the famous castle of the Wartburg.

At about the age of fifteen, around the year 1275, Eckhart entered the Dominican monastery at Erfurt, where he remained for nine years in preparation for the priesthood. He completed his studies in the year that Philip IV, known as “the Fair” began his fateful reign in France.

From Erfurt, Eckhart went to Cologne to take the studium generale at the Dominican institution where the eminent scholastic, Albertus Magnus was a leading teacher until his death in 1280. Through his instructors at Cologne, Eckhart came under the influence of Albertus Magnus' ideas, as well as those of Thomas Aquinas, whose work had advanced Scholasticism to a place of first importance within the Dominican Order.

The year 1300 was famous as the Year of Jubilee proclaimed by Boniface VIII, whom Dante criticized by placing him in the Inferno during the Pope's lifetime. In this same year Eckhart is mentioned as “Brother Eckhart, Prior of Erfurt, Vicar of Thuringia” in Dominican records. He was now in his fortieth year, and about this time he produced a little book which bears the charming title, Daz sint die rede der unterscheidunge, die der Vicarius von Düringen, der prior von Erfort, bruoder Eckehart predier ordens mit solichen kinden hete, diu in dirre rede frâgten vil dinges, dô sie sâzen in collationibus mit einander, These are the Instructions which the Vicar of Thuringia, Prior of Erfurt, Brother Eckhart of the Preaching Order, gave for those of his flock who asked him about many things as they sat together at the evening meal.

At this time Eckhart was sent to one of the colleges in Paris, where he frequently entered into disputation with Franciscans in defense of Dominican points of view in theology. In his disputations he had to defend the writings of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus against any charges of heresy which the Franciscans chose to bring forward against them.

Thirteenth century Paris was a place of great attraction for scholars, and was the center of European cultural life. Over one hundred fifty years before, Pierre Abèlard had written of his intense desire to visit Paris, the city where logical argumentation, beloved by the medieval scholarly mind, had been raised to the level of a fine art. John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, eminent as a humanist long before the Renaissance, the secretary and counsellor of Thomas Becket of Canterbury, whose assassination he witnessed and whose life he recorded, loved Paris for its generous supply of food, the gaiety of its inhabitants, their appreciation of culture and religion, and the atmosphere of scholarship he found there. He summed up his feelings about Paris in the exclamation, “Indeed the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!”

Years later Eckhart described his Paris activities in terms which perhaps explain why the Franciscans cherished no particular liking for him. With regard to his disputations with the Franciscans, Eckhart said, “When I preached at Paris, I said, and I dare repeat it now, that with all their learning the men of Paris are not able to conceive that God is in the very least of creatures, even in a fly!”

Words like these help one to understand Eckhart's popularity with the public of his time. For above all, Eckhart wished to reach the man in the street, the humble peasant, the shepherd from the mountains, the charcoal burner from the forest, the simplest of the simple, rather than the scholar in the cloister. Therefore he used colloquial German in all his writings and discourses rather than the usual theological Latin. Thus the German language was enhanced by the writings of this Dominican, just as the Italian language was enriched by his contemporary, Dante Alighieri.

Eckhart was always conscious of his indebtedness to the other great Dominicans who had preceded him, and although he did not follow their learned forms in his sermons and books, he never failed to recognize their superiority in learning. For example, his frequent quotations in his oral and written discourse were invariably introduced by the words, “A Master says,” and the “Master” almost always meant Thomas Aquinas, whom he looked upon as a spiritual father. Though his genius for adapting learned, subtle arguments to simple, aphoristic form resulted in his being understood by the every-day mind, nevertheless this ultimately led to the condemnation of his teaching as heretical.

In 1302, the year after the famous Duns Scotus became professor of theology at Oxford, Eckhart received the Licentiate and Master's degree from the University of Paris. Ever since then he has been known as Meister Eckhart.

At this time Boniface VIII, who had been informed of the brilliant preaching of this Thuringian Dominican, invited Eckhart to Rome to defend the cause of the papacy against the attacks of the French king, Philip the Fair, which were soon to result in the “Babylonian Captivity” of the Popes at Avignon.

In 1304, the year of the birth of Petrarch, Eckhart was appointed provincial of the Dominicans for Saxony. Three years later he was appointed vicar-general for Bohemia, at the moment the arrest and terrible persecution of the Order of the Knights Templar began in France under the direction of Philip the Fair, and with the passive agreement of the French-born Pope, Clement V, who in the meanwhile had succeeded Boniface VIII in the papacy.

This was a busy period in the life of Meister Eckhart. His burden of administrative work in the service of the Church and of his Order was increased by his activity as a writer. At this time he composed one of his best-known works, Das Buch der Göttlichen Tröstung, The Book of Divine Comfort, supposedly written to bring consolation to Agnes, daughter of the King of Hungary, whose mother and sister-in-law died and whose father was murdered—all within the space of a few years.

The Book of Divine Comfort opens with an enumeration of the three kinds of tribulation Eckhart conceives may happen to one: damage to external goods, to friends near one, to oneself, bringing “disgrace, privation, physical suffering, and mental anguish” in their train. As “comfort” in the midst of such tribulation, Eckhart sets forth “certain doctrines” from which he derives “thirty teachings, any one of which should be enough to comfort.” Whether the suffering of the Queen of Hungary was assuaged by Eckhart's effort in her behalf is not known, but the book brought Eckhart himself considerable tribulation, for it is his one work most strenuously attacked by the Inquisition. This book is evidence of Eckhart's careful study of the famous classic born in the twilight of the ancient Roman world, De Consolatione Philosophiae, The Consolations of Philosophy, by Boethius, loved by Alfred the Great, who translated it into Anglo-Saxon; by Chaucer, who was to translate it into English before 1382; by Queen Elizabeth, who rendered it in the English of her time, and by many others. Aside from its theological teachings, his Book of Divine Comfort shows Eckhart's appreciation of Boethius and other classical writers.

The constant travel necessitated by his administrative work brought Eckhart into contact with people and events in central, southern and western Germany, in France, and in Italy. As a result, it is natural that the heads of the Order felt that Meister Eckhart was the ideal man to assume the post of Superior of the entire Dominican Province in Germany. However, a certain conservatism within the Order itself, apparently based on fear of Eckhart's skill as an orator and disputant, his broad knowledge of places, and familiarity with the ways of men in all walks of life prevailed, and his nomination was never finalized.

In 1318, the year that Dante completed his Divina Commedia, Eckhart seems to have reached the summit of his development as a preacher. He was in Strassburg at this time, where he served as a preacher and prior. Two years later, in 1320, at the age of sixty, Eckhart received a most important honor: he was called by the Franciscan, Heinrich von Virneberg, Archbishop of Cologne, to assume a professorship in the college there. However, the brightness of this distinction was not long to remain undimmed. Already in the shadows the agents of the Inquisition waited, listening, watching, preparing for the day when this eloquent preacher of the Gospel, this scholar and author, so beloved by the common people who flocked to his sermons, would overstep the limits of prescribed dogma. And it was not long before they believed that they had evidence sufficient to convict him of heresy.

By 1325 several charges had been brought against Meister Eckhart in letters addressed to the Superiors of the Dominican Order at its headquarters in Venice. A few months later, the Archbishop of Cologne who already had had sufficient trouble with so-called “mystical societies” which had sprung up along the Rhine in areas under his jurisdiction, decided that heresy certainly could not be allowed to set foot within the precincts of the college itself. Therefore he agreed that the moment had arrived when charges against this too-popular preacher should be laid before the Inquisition. However, a Dominican managed to obtain the task of investigating Meister Eckhart, and naturally it did not take long for the former to report that he found his fellow-Dominican entirely without guilt or taint of heresy.

But the matter did not stop there. Perhaps sensing that if Franciscans had undertaken the examination things might have turned out differently, the Archbishop called in two experts in heresy, the Franciscans Benherus Friso and Peter de Estate. They were given the task to thoroughly examine Eckhart's writings and the reports of his sermons. It was not long before an extensive list of “errors” in doctrine had been assembled, and Eckhart in turn replied by means of his famous Rechtferigungsschrift, Defense.

On January 24, 1327 Eckhart was required to answer the charges brought against him before the court of the Archbishop of Cologne. About three weeks later he preached in a Cologne church in defense of his ideas, and said that if there were any errors of faith in his writings or sermons, he would retract them gladly, for he certainly considered himself no heretic, and he appealed to Rome, as he was entitled to do under the rights of his Order. However, on February 22, Eckhart was informed that his application to Rome had been refused.

On March 27, 1329 Pope John XXII issued a bull describing certain of Meister Eckhart's teachings as contrary to church dogma. But Eckhart was no longer alive to know of his condemnation as one who had been led astray “by the father of lies, who often appears as an angel of light.” This official fiat would doubtless have seriously shaken the soul of one whose life had been devoted to a defense and practise of the tenets from which that organized power had drawn its life-breath.

2.

When Meister Eckhart was forty years of age, Johannes Tauler was born in the city of Strassburg in the Papal Jubilee year of 1300, two years before the death of the painter, Cimabue. At the age of fifteen he entered the Dominican monastery where Eckhart was professor of theology. One can imagine the effect of the older Dominican teacher upon the impressionable mind of the young student, who well may have listened to those evening mealtime conversations Eckhart brought together in the little book mentioned above. Eventually Tauler entered the Dominican college in Cologne not long before Eckhart was named professor in that institution.

The year 1324 saw the climax of a struggle between Louis IV, king of Germany, and Pope John XXII, which had been increasing steadily for nearly a decade. Fearing that the German king's policy of personal ambition would lead to a weakening of the papal position in France as well as Germany, the Pope called upon the German ruler to abdicate, saying that no one could rightfully wear the German crown who did not have the Pope's express approval to do so. Louis angrily refused, with the result that the Pope declared him deposed and excommunicate. Therefore, in this year 1324, Strassburg, along with other cities and towns of Germany, was placed under a papal interdict.

But the times were against the Pope and his French ally, Charles IV, whom he hoped to see on the German throne. The German princes condemned in no uncertain terms the papal interference in German affairs, and the Electors sided with the princes. This attitude was also shared by many of the clergy in Germany, for despite the papal ban, church services continued in some places, and the sacraments were administered to the people.

Johannes Tauler was among those in Strassburg who refused to discontinue their priestly functions of celebrating the Mass and preaching to their congregations. With great courage, in defiance of both papal ban and agents of the Inquisition, he said, “While the Church can refuse us the sacrament externally, nobody can take away the spiritual joy of our oneness with God, and nobody can rob us of the privilege of taking the sacrament spiritually.”

In 1339, the year before the birth of Geoffrey Chaucer in London, Tauler left Strassburg for a journey which was to have important results for his life work. On his travels he came into contact—particularly in Basel—with Swiss and German members of the famous group of mystics called the Gottesfreunde, The Friends of God.

The struggle for power between rival rulers in Germany, together with the interdict of the Pope, brought great hardship to the people. Some areas of the country were not freed from the papal ban for as much as twenty-six years, and the people were in great distress for lack of spiritual help and consolation.

Abnormal natural phenomena also began to appear, as though the forces of Nature had joined with spiritual and temporal rulers to make the lot of men as hard as possible. Torrential rains repeatedly destroyed the crops, just before harvest time. The rivers rose in devastating floods several years in succession, making spring planting difficult if not impossible. The winters were severely cold, so that men and animals suffered exceedingly. As a consequence, a series of famines swept the countryside, taking, dreadful toll of human life.

Convinced that they were living in the “last days” of the earth, men saw in all the events around them the fulfillment of prophecies of the Apocalypse of John. During these years southern Germany and Switzerland were visited by repeated earthquakes, one of which shook Basel with such force that the city was reduced to a heap of ruins. In the heavens appeared “signs and wonders” prophesied by the Scriptures: mysterious lights flashed upon the skies, men reported strange conditions of cloud and mist, and the stars seemed about to cast themselves upon the earth.

Visited by these dire external events, harassed by doubt and insecurity on every side, men withdrew more and more into themselves, seeking the sources of piety and devotion in their hearts. Lacking spiritual consolation from the church, suffering the desolation wrought by food and famine, sword and fire, the people sought the essential truths of life in their personal experience. And in their search for the verities of existence, men reached out to one another in fraternal love and a spirit of true humanity.

Thus the Friends of God came into being. It was a free association of human beings in the sense that it was not a sect, had no dogma, no common form of religious devotion or practice, no common political outlook. The only desire the Friends of God shared in common was to strengthen one another in their living relationship with God and the spiritual world. They established “brotherhood houses” as retreat centers in certain areas where a number of the Friends of God were living.

One of the outstanding figures among the Friends of God was the wealthy banker of Strassburg, Rulman Merswin. His story is somewhat typical of that of many another layman who found himself drawn to the Friends of God. Born of a good family of Strassburg in 1307, Rulman Merswin was a man of business and high moral and ethical principles. By the time he was forty, due to his business acumen he had amassed a considerable fortune, and had married the daughter of one of the leading families of Strassburg. But although he had everything to give him pleasure, he was far from happy, and just after his fortieth birthday he decided that the time had come for him to take leave of the world, to devote himself and his wealth to the service of God, and to live as a celebate. His wife joined him on his mystical path. A few months later, on the day of Saint Martin, November 1l, 1347, Merswin was walking in his garden in the evening, meditating on the way he and his wife had chosen, when suddenly he experienced a tremendous feeling of exaltation so that, as he later described it, it was as though he was whirled round and round his garden for sheer joy. But as quickly as the mood of exaltation came upon him, it left, and he slipped into a condition of despondency bordering upon despair. He began severe ascetic disciplines with the thought that these might relieve his inner struggle, but no light came.

At this time Johannes Tauler became his confessor, and Merswin told him of his suffering and his ascetic practices. Tauler at once forbade him to continue his self-imposed tortures, saying, “We are told to kill our passions, not our flesh and blood.” Merswin obeyed, and only a short while later a Friend of God came to him and led him forward on the road to the spirit. He learned to depend quietly upon the guidance of the spirit alone, to subject himself to no code or rule of conduct, but to cultivate true humility, to seek anonymity, to cease self-assertion, to regard himself as a “captive of the Lord,” to preserve the calmness of his soul like a stainless mirror, to attach less and less importance to himself in a worldly sense, and to think of himself only as “a hidden child of God.”

On October 9, 1364 Rulman Merswin had a dream in which he was told that a most important man would shortly visit him, and that in three years he would purchase land which would make a home of peace and rest for the Friends of God in Strassburg. Not long after this, Merswin was visited by a mysterious man whose name is most intimately connected with the whole story of the Friends of God. Called simply, “The Friend of God from the Oberland,” he was long identified with the famous Nicholas of Basel, a noted Friend of God, who suffered martyrdom at the stake in Vienna for his convictions. Others have identified him with Rulman Merswin himself, as a sort of “double,” while others believe that he never lived at all, but was a kind of ideal portrait of what the true Friend of God should be.

In any case, The Friend of God from the Oberland visited Merswin and told him that he had had a dream that Merswin would establish a retreat for the Friends of God at Strassburg. Merswin told him that he himself had had the same dream, and the Friend of God from the Oberland told him to wait quietly, to listen for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that at the end of three years he would know what was to be done.

In the Ill River near Strassburg was a little island called daz Grüne Woerth, The Green Island. In the twelfth century a convent had been established there, but had long since been deserted and had fallen into ruins. Early in October, 1367, just three years after his dream and his talk with the Friend of God from the Oberland, Merswin was walking by the river and saw the little island. Suddenly the realization flashed through him that this was the place he was to buy, that here he was to establish a house for the Friends of God. He promptly sought out the owner, paid him five hundred ten silver marks as the purchase price, and soon the convent building was repaired and a little chapel was constructed. Finally, on November 25, 1367 Merswin opened the house of the Friends of God on the Green Island, which became the center of a group of laymen who wished to live a purely mystical, religious life but without subjecting themselves to any external rule or official religious Order. Five years later Merswin completed arrangements whereby the group was acknowledged as a branch of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, and the place became known as “The House of Saint John of the Green Island.” Not long after this Merswin's wife died, and he spent his remaining years on the Green Island, devoting himself to the Friends of God who came there from far and near. Rulman Merswin died in the House of St. John of the Green Island on July 18, 1382. Four days after his death a sealed chest was opened which had been discovered in his room. Inside was a collection of manuscripts and letters, many of them in an unknown handwriting, giving details of instructions and advice by the Friend of God from the Oberland.

One of these manuscripts contained The Story of the Master of Holy Scripture, later included in a collection titled, The Great Memorial. According to the Story of the Master of Holy Scripture, the Friend of God from the Oberland one day arrived at a great city where a famous preacher was expounding the Bible to crowded and enthusiastic congregations. The Friend of God attended the sermons each day for five days. At the conclusion of the fifth day, he sought out the preacher and asked, “Reverend Sir, will you preach tomorrow on a theme I would suggest to you?” The clergyman agreed, and asked what the subject should be. The Friend of God from the Oberland replied, “How to attain the highest degree of spiritual life.”

The preacher delivered a brilliant exposition the next morning. Starting from the Gospels he branched out into the Church Fathers, dipped deep into Dionysius, and concluded with a tremendous display of erudition. The congregation was enthralled by his words, but at the end of the service the theologian saw the Friend of God walk away silently and alone, with head bowed as though in deep thought.

The next day the Friend of God went to the clergyman and gave him a scathing criticism of the sermon, even saying that if that was the best he could do, then he was not capable of teaching about the spiritual life at all. The preacher's anger knew no bounds, but suddenly an inner voice told him to calm himself and to listen to the stranger's words. Having regained possession of himself once more, he quietly asked the Friend of God what help he could give him. Then the layman gave the Master of the Holy Scriptures twenty-three sentences, saying, “These are the ABC of religion; master these, and events will show their worth.” The theologian withdrew from active service and spent a long time in meditation and prayer. His power of preaching left him, so that he could hardly speak an intelligible sentence, let alone deliver a whole sermon. His congregations deserted him; everywhere he was scorned and ridiculed.

After two years he was led by an inner voice which told him to enter the pulpit to preach during the service. Quietly he did so, noting the scorn and derision on the faces of the people as he faced them. For a long moment there was silence, then suddenly without any premeditation at all he gave out as his text, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him!” And the spiritual power which flowed with his words was so great that it is said that forty persons fainted from sheer excitement and joy.

Tradition has long connected the “Master of Holy Scripture” with Johannes Tauler, and indicates that this is the account of his meeting with the Friend of God from the Oberland. Tauler became intimately acquainted with leading Friends of God in many places on his travels, and was deeply impressed with their way of life. As he said in a sermon at about this time, “The theologians of Paris study great tomes and turn over many pages, but the Friends of God read the living Book where everything is life.”

Among the Friends of God whom Tauler met were Henry of Nordlingen, one of the outstanding representatives of the mysticism of the time, Hermann of Fritzlar, and two pious nuns, Christina Ebner, prioress of the Engelthal Convent near Nuremberg, and Margaretha Ebner, of the Convent of Maria Medingen in Swabia. One of the letters from the famous correspondence between Henry of Nordlingen and Margaretha Ebner is dated 1348, and asks that she “Pray for Tauler, who lives as a matter of course in the midst of great trial and testing because he teaches the truth and lives in conformity with it as perfectly as a preacher can.”

Having visited Friends of God in many places during his seven years' absence from Strassburg, Tauler was convinced that a layman has tasks to perform which basically are as spiritually important as those of the clergy. In one of his sermons Tauler reflects the religious-social spirit he had found in the way of life of the Friends of God: “One can spin, another can make shoes, and all these are gifts of the Holy Ghost. I tell you, if I were not a priest, I would esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and I would try to make them so well that they would be a model to all.”

One of the documents which has come down to us from the Friends of God is a public announcement which probably originated in Strassburg, and may have been written by Rulman Merswin himself. It was copied and recopied, and was circulated very widely in southern and western Germany during Tauler's lifetime. It is of interest because it gives a picture of the kind of appeal which was made to the public by the Friends of God in the latters' search for others who might be minded to join them:

“All those in whom the love of God or the terror brought about by the dreadful calamities of the present wakens a wish to begin a new and spiritual life, will discover great advantage in withdrawing into themselves every morning when they waken, in order to consider what they will do during the day. Should they find any evil thought in themselves, any purpose which is contrary to the divine will, let them give it up and cast it aside, to the glory of God. In the evening, upon going to bed, let them consider how they have spent the day. Let them recall what deeds they have done, and in what spirit they have performed them. If they discover that they have done any good, let them thank God, and give Him the glory. If they discover they have done evil, let them take the blame for it themselves, and lay the fault on nobody else, and let them deeply repent before God, saying to Him, ‘O Lord, be merciful to me, and forgive all my sins of this day, for I sincerely repent, and I firmly intend from now on with Thy help, to avoid sinning.’”

In 1348 Strassburg was visited by the Black Death. All who could leave the city fled before the dread disease, and soon few except the sick were left behind. Even relatives, nurses and physicians left for fear of the pestilence. But among those who stayed in the city to care for the sick, to comfort the dying, and to bury the dead, was Johannes Tauler.

Week after week, month after month, this fearless Dominican stood in his pulpit in defiance of papal ban and the Black Death and bore witness to the truth that was in him. In one of his sermons He pointed out that “In all the world God desires and requires but one thing: that He find the noble ground he has laid in the noble soul of man bare and ready, so that He may do His noble divine work therein.” Hence it is necessary that men “let God prepare their ground, and give themselves wholly to God and put away the self in all things.”

But Tauler had no illusions about the trials that await man on his path of purification, on his way to the spirit: “When our heavenly Father determines to grace a particular soul with spiritual gifts, and to transform it in a special way, He does not purge it gently. Instead, He plunges it into a sea of bitterness, and deals with it as He did with the prophet Jonah.”

He knew that “No teacher can teach what he has not lived through himself,” and he continued his work at Strassburg against all odds, encouraging others by his Christianity in action. He had said, “Never trust a virtue which has not been put into practice.” Now he was practicing the virtue of a Friend of God, the virtue of devotion to his fellow-men. It is no wonder that Luther was to write of him, “Never in either the Latin or German language have I found more wholesome, purer teaching, nor any that more fully agrees with the Gospel.” Tauler's words were tried and purified in the fire of personal experience.

It is related that the Friend of God from the Oberland gave Tauler two prayers which he was to use every morning and evening. They are significant examples of the spirit which animated the mystical striving of the Friends of God. “In the morning you are to say, ‘O Lord, I wish to keep from all sin today. Help me to do everything I do today according to Thy divine will and to Thy glory, whether my nature likes it or not.’ In similar fashion every evening you are to say, ‘O Lord, I am a poor, unworthy creature. Be merciful to me, forgive my sins, for I repent of them and sincerely desire Thy help that I may commit no more.’”

Tauler's writings have great appeal even today because of their freshness, their closeness to everyday life, their common sense. They are not primarily Scholastic speculations like much of Eckhart's writing, but are nearer to the vigorous directness of the Reformers. Although Tauler loved, as he described it, “to put out into the deep and let down the nets” into the world of study and meditation, at the same time he cautioned that such “spiritual enjoyments are food of the soul, and are only to be taken for nourishment and support to help us in our active work.” This thought was echoed in the spirit of the Reformation.

In the years following the Black Death and the papal ban, Tauler continued to make Strassburg the center of his work. He kept up his correspondence with many of the Friends of God, especially with Margaretha Ebner. His services were crowded, and his sermons were held in the highest regard by his congregations.

On the fifteenth of June, 1361 in the Convent of Saint Nikolaus in Strassburg, Johannes Tauler died at the age of sixty-one. Tradition relates that for him the moment of death was an experience of pure joy, for as he said in one of his last sermons, “Eternity is the everlasting Now.”

3.

Linked with the name of Johannes Tauler as a Friend of God and a continuer of the work of Meister Eckhart is that of yet another Dominican, Heinrich Suso. Suso was born in 1295, five years before the birth of Tauler, in the town of Ueberlingen on the Lake of Constance. When he was still a small boy his parents decided he should study for the Church, and his preparatory education began at Constance, and was continued at Cologne, where he came under the influence of the teaching of Meister Eckhart.

Suso has revealed himself in his autobiography as a deeply emotional man, with a very unusual gift of expression. In his “glowing, vivid language,” as it has been described, Suso pictures his mystical experiences in great detail, in contrast to the silence in which many other mystics have shrouded their strivings.

At about the age of eighteen, in 1313, the year Boccaccio was born in Florence, Suso entered a monastery in Constance. There he voluntarily subjected himself to the most severe ascetic ordeals. He centered his affection in an ideal which he personified under the name of the Eternal Wisdom. He relates how this figure appeared before him and said, “My son, give me your heart.” He took a knife and cut deep into his chest the letters of the name Jesus, so that the scar-traces of each of the letters remained all his life, “about the length of a finger-joint,” as he says.

Suso once saw a vision of angels, and asked them in what manner God dwelt in his soul. The angel told him to look within. He did so, and as he gazed he saw that “his body over his heart was as clear as crystal, and in the center sat tranquilly, the lovely form of the Eternal Wisdom. Beside her sat, filled with heavenly longing, the servitor's own soul, which, leaning lovingly toward God's side, and encircled by His arms, lay pressed close to His heart.” Suso wrote his autobiography in the third person, and referred to himself as “the servitor of the Divine Wisdom,” much as Swedenborg in a later century was to refer to himself in his writings as “the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Heinrich Suso took the expression, “No cross, no crown,” with terrible literalness. He imposed fearful penances upon himself, and consumed sixteen long years in cruel austerity. For example, he relates how he donned a hair shirt, and bound himself with a heavy iron chain, but at length he had to give these up, since the loss of blood they occasioned was too much for his strength to bear. Instead he fashioned a crude night-shirt which he wore next to his skin this garment he sewed a series of leather straps in which sharp tacks were fitted to that they pierced his skin with his slightest movement. Later he made a cross of wood as tall as himself, and the cross-beam the length of his outstretched arms. Into this he drove thirty nails, and wore the cross fastened to his bare back, the nails pointing into his flesh. He bore this instrument of torture for some eight years, day and night. Finally, after sixteen years of agony, Suso had a vision at Whitsuntide in which he was assured that God no longer wished him to continue his austerities. Only then did he abate the severity of his asceticism, and threw his instruments of self-torture into a running stream near the monastery.

In his autobiography Suso relates that one time he prayed that God would instruct him how to suffer. In response, he had a vision of Christ on the cross in the likeness of a seraphic being with six wings. On each pair of wings the legend was inscribed, “Receive suffering willingly; Bear suffering patiently; Learn suffering in the way of Christ.”

The result of this almost unbelievable “receiving, bearing, learning” of suffering was a man whose gentleness and calm, lyric beauty of speech won hearts to his teaching. The fires of affliction had nearly consumed him to ashes, yet, phoenix-like, his spirit rose anew in a sweetness of expression and a grandeur of soul which one could scarcely resist. In 1335, the year Giotto began his work on the Cathedral at Florence, Suso set out on his wanderings through Swabia as a traveling preacher. He advanced the spiritual teachings of Eckhart, but through his mystical fervor they were permeated by a newness, a spontaneous grace and a transcendent beauty. And something of this spirit which was reborn in Suso comes down to us today in his autobiography, issued in 1365, which has established itself as a unique work of its kind, and as “one of the most interesting and charming of all autobiographies.” Suso's preaching was especially popular among the nuns of the convents he visited. Their hearts were deeply impressed by the obvious, overwhelming sincerity and fervor of his manner and words.

Heinrich Suso's writings are among the classics of mysticism. His first work, Das Büchlein der Wahrheit, The Little Book of Truth, was written in Cologne in 1329, and springs directly from the mystical teachings of Meister Eckhart. Somewhat later, in Constance he wrote of the more practical aspects of mysticism in his Das Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom. This book has been called “the finest fruit of German mysticism.”

Something of the romanticism of the troubadour of the Ages of Faith, the charm of days gone by, the sad evanescence of the dream of chivalry and the heroic ideals of knighthood lives in the mystical expressions of Suso. He develops a mood of gentleness, of tender, delicate imagery which sets him apart from all the other men whose lives we are considering here.

Concerning his books, Suso wrote, “Whoever will read these writings of mine in a right spirit can hardly fail to be stirred in his heart's depths, either to fervent love, or to new light, or to longing and thirsting for God, or to detestation and loathing of his sins, or to that spiritual aspiration by which the soul is renewed in grace.” These words gain “fearful symmetry,” to use Blake's phrase, when we recall that they were written by one who, for example, had practiced such abstinence in eating and drinking, that often as he stood with his brother monks in choir at Compline, when the holy water was sprinkled over the group during the service, he opened his parched mouth toward the aspergillum in the hope that even a single drop of water might cool his burning thirst. Such a man can write about “longing and thirsting” as very few who have walked this earth have been able to do.

About 1348, his wandering in central and southern Germany having come to an end, this love-inspired Swabian poet-knight of the spirit, singer of the glories of Eternal Wisdom, settled at last in Ulm on the river Donau. There he died on the Day of Damascus, the anniversary of St. Paul's first mystical vision of the Risen Christ, January 25, 1366, at the age of seventy-one.

Through the Dominican stream the Scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas came to Meister Eckhart in the form of ideas which he shaped and fashioned into aphoristic expression by means of his remarkable powers of thinking; in the hands of Johannes Tauler Scholasticism was transformed into Christian action, into practical deeds of will; in the golden warmth of his loving, devoted heart Heinrich Suso bathed Scholasticism in a lyric splendor of poetic imagery so that it became a thing of transcendent, eternal beauty.

4.

Jan van Ruysbroeck was born in the little village of Ruysbroeck on the Senne between Brussels and Hal in 1293, the year after the death of the English Franciscan philosopher and scientist, Roger Bacon. When Jan was eleven years old he decided to run away from home in order that he might more completely dedicate himself and his life to God. He went to the house of his uncle, Jan Hinckaert in Brussels, and asked if the latter would undertake to educate him to the service of God. The uncle, who was a Canon of the Church of Saint Gudale in Brussels, arranged that the boy would live in his home and study with his friend, the learned priest, Franc van Coudenberg, and himself. Eventually Jan took the four year course in the Latin School of Brussels, and from there he attended the well-known theological school in Cologne.

At the age of twenty-four Jan van Ruysbroeck was ordained a priest, and was appointed chaplain to his uncle in Brussels. His life for the next two decades seems to have been that of a dedicated pastor, who served his congregation to the best of his ability, but was not otherwise particularly distinguished, at least externally.

However, as Jan van Ruysbroeck's fiftieth birthday approached, he had a remarkable experience. He felt that the time had come when he was to withdraw from active work in the world, and that he was called to devote himself entirely to spiritual matters. At about the same time his uncle was deeply confused and depressed one day, and an inner voice directed him to go into the church. As he did so, he saw that a visiting missionary priest had just mounted the pulpit to preach to the congregation. Now the uncle knew that this priest had a serious speech defect. To the uncle's astonishment, as the missionary opened his mouth, the words flowed out in a river of eloquence! At this, the preacher turned to where the uncle was standing and said, “This miracle has happened for the sake of that man standing there, in order that he will repent and turn to God.”

In similar manner, van Coudenberg also had a spiritual experience, and was filled with the deep desire to live a more dedicated life.

At Easter, 1343 the three men resigned their work in Brussels and went deep into the forest of Soignes where they found a deserted hunting-lodge called Grönendal, The Green Valley. The place had not been used for over a generation, and the men set to work to make a home for themselves there, and soon had built a chapel. Others joined them, and before long a small community had developed.

After about six years the community decided to take on the rule and habit of the Augustinian canons. And the moving spirit was Jan van Ruysbroeck himself, who was as devoted to practical tasks as he was to spiritual matters. Whether it was necessary to repair a stove, load a manure cart, discuss deep problems of theology, or nurse the sick, he was always ready and cheerfully willing to do whatever was to be done.

The fame of the little forest community spread, and visitors came from far places to see the life that was being lived there. One day two young priests, theological students from the University of Paris, arrived and asked to speak with Jan van Ruysbroeck. They wished his advice concerning their spiritual development, and begged that he would help them to find the way to the spirit, and would speak with them about the condition of their souls. His reply was to the point: “You are as spiritual as you have the desire to be, that is all.” They were somewhat annoyed at the abruptness of his words, and turned away. At once he spoke to them in a loving tone: “My very dear children, I said your spirituality was what you wish it to be so that you would understand that your spirituality is entirely in proportion to your good will. Then enter into yourselves; don't ask others about your progress. Examine your good will, and from that alone you will discover the measure of your spirituality.”

One of the guests at Grönendal was Johannes Tauler, who was much impressed with the life he saw there. In turn, Tauler doubtless told Jan van Ruysbroeck about his experiences with the Friends of God.

In 1378, the year after Gregory XI condemned John Wycliffe, translator of the Vulgate into English, as a heretic, the famous lay-preacher, Gerard Groote visited the community of Grönendal and had many conversations with Jan van Ruysbroeck.

Gerard Groote was born in the town of Deventer, about sixty miles from Amsterdam in 1340. His parents were wealthy, and at the age of fifteen Gerard was sent to the University of Paris. In three years he was given his Master's degree, and then was called to teach at Cologne, where he was soon advanced to the position of professor of philosophy, and also received important appointments of a civil nature.

One day Groote was standing with a crowd watching a game in a Cologne square when a modestly dressed stranger, with a serious, sincere face approached him and spoke to him softly: “Why are you standing here? You ought to become another man.” Soon after this incident Groote fell seriously ill, and his life was despaired of. However, when matters were at their worst, he recalled the words of the stranger, and at once promised Heaven that he would do everything in his power to become “another man” if he was allowed to regain his health. Groote recovered, and not long after was sought out by his former teacher from the University of Paris, Henry de Kalkar, who for some years had been the prior of a Carthusian monastery near Deventer. This dedicated man had come to Groote, impelled by an inner urge to call the latter to a new life.

Groote retired from the world, and dedicated himself to the pursuit of spiritual things. Eventually the time came when his studies entitled him to be ordained a priest. This he refused, and refused repeatedly to the end of his life.

In 1379 Groote sensed a spiritual call to go out into the countryside as an itinerant lay-preacher. The Bishop of Utrecht granted him a license as a preacher, allowing him to speak anywhere in his diocese.

According to all accounts Groote was a speaker of marked excellence. He differed radically from other preachers of his time in that he never threatened his hearers with punishments of hell nor sought to bribe them with the bliss of heaven. He spoke simply and directly to them of the love of God, the great way of salvation, the search for the good, and always about the wonderful possibilities of a life lived in consonance with God. He spoke only from his personal experience, never used any Latin phrases in his discourses, and employed only the simplest, most direct forms of expression. The result was that for five years people flocked to hear him wherever he went.

In the course of his wanderings Groote visited Grönendal, and was deeply impressed by everything he saw, and most of all by the entirely practical attitude toward life which Jan van Ruysbroeck manifested. The result was that Groote was inspired to form a community, a kind of Christian brotherhood, which would be bound by no permanent vows as were monks, but would consist of individuals who freely chose to live together in poverty, chastity, obedience, simplicity and piety, holding all possessions in common as the early Christians had done, and working together to earn their own livelihood.

Groote was soon surrounded by a group of men who enthusiastically wished to take up this life, and who took the name, “The Brotherhood of the Common Lot” or “the Common Life.” The first community house was established at Deventer, and was called a “brother house.” Soon “sister houses” for women were also established. Groote loved books, and therefore he freely gave his fortune for the purchase of rare books which the brothers and sisters copied by hand—this of course was before the invention of the printing press—and the money received from the sale of these volumes was used for the maintenance of the communities. The Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life mingled freely with the world, and soon came to be recognized everywhere in Holland, Belgium and in the German Rhine valley by their plain grey habit and their simple, unassuming manners. Their life was devoted to the care of orphan children, the spreading of knowledge through the sale of books that they copied, and in the teaching of reading and writing to adults. Their method of instruction of children was based on practical life, and was directed toward moral and spiritual improvement. They taught the children under their care to earn a living, but never encouraged them to enter a profession which would give them undue wealth.

Jan van Ruysbroeck's last days were spent quietly in the community at Grönendal, and many stories were told of his remarkable spiritual development. For example he was missing one day, and at last was found sitting beneath a tree in the forest, sunk in deep meditation, while according to the tale, the tree itself was surrounded by a heavenly brightness of shimmering colors.

He knew the force of directness in conversation. A man once tried to draw him out on the subject of the dreadful wickedness in the world. His only remark was, “What we are, that we behold; and what we behold, that we are.”

Like all mystics, he loved animals and flowers, and his greatest earthly joy was in the song of the birds of the forest. His death took place in 1381, the year of the outbreak of the Peasant Revolt in England under the leadership of Wat Tyler, and the priest, John Ball. Stories tell how at the moment of his death, the bells of the churches in neighboring villages began to toll all by themselves, and how after several years when his corpse was exhumed it showed no decomposition, but gave off a sweet odor which healed the sick who were brought near.

Gerhart Groote survived Jan van Ruysbroeck by three years Meanwhile, a young man had joined the circle of the Brotherhood of the Common Life who is known as the author of one of the most important books of devotion in the world. His name was Thomas a Kempis, and his Imitatio Christi, Imitation of Christ, is a classic which has inspired men throughout the centuries since it first appeared. Thomas also was the biographer of Gerhard Groote, and his impression of the Brotherhood of the Common Life was, “I never before recall having seen men so devout, so full of love for God and their fellow-men. Living in the world, they were altogether unworldly.”

At the conclusion of Thomas' Life of Gerhard Groote is a collection of aphorisms which he attributes to the latter as among the basic teachings of the Brotherhood of the Common Life: “Conquer yourself. Turn your heart from things, and direct your mind continually to God. Do not for any cause allow yourself to lose your composure. Practice obedience, and accept things that are difficult. Continually exercise yourself in humility and moderation. The further one knows himself to be from perfection, the closer he is to it. Of all temptations, the greatest is not to be tempted at all. Never breathe so much as a word to display your religion or learning. Nothing is a better test of a man than to hear himself praised. Above all, and first of all, let Christ be the basis of your study and the mirror of your life.”

Years after the deaths of Jan van Ruysbroeck and Gerhard Groote, a twelve-year old boy was brought to the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer, and was placed in the school there. Destined to be one of the most important figures of the Reformation period, Desiderius Erasmus, became famous for his modesty, his temperance and wisdom. These qualities are no doubt traceable to the early training he received at the hands of the Brethren of the Common Life. Erasmus of Rotterdam advised moderation and tolerance, even when the opposite qualities ran high, as for example in his famous letter in reply to the Pope's invitation to come to Rome in order to advise him on how to deal with Luther and his followers: “You ask me what you should do. Some believe there is no remedy but force. I do not believe this, for I think there would be dreadful bloodshed ... If you intend to try prison, lash, stake and scaffold, you do not need my help ... Discover the roots of the disease and clean them out first of all. Punish nobody, but let what has happened be considered as a visitation of Providence, and extend a general amnesty to all.” Had the moderation counselled in this letter, typical of the spirit of the Brotherhood of the Common Life, been followed, how different might the course of history have been!

5.

In 1401, when Ghiberti's Baptistry doors, “worthy to be the gates of Paradise,” were first shown to the admiring eyes of his fellow Florentines, and the English Parliament decreed that all proven heretics were to be burned at the stake, Nicolas Chrypffs was born at Cusa on the Moselle River. Nicolas was to be known as “the last great philosopher of the dying Middle Ages,” and was to fling wide the doors of men's minds to the concept of a universe which is infinite. As a student he made a brilliant record in his study of law and mathematics at the renowned University of Padua, and followed this with a course in theology at Cologne where, as we have seen, he was preceded by Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, van Ruysbroeck, and Groote. Eventually Nicolas became Archdeacon of Liege at about the time that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen.

The Council of Basel, which had convened intermittently since 1417, was beginning its last ten years of existence when Nicolas attended its sessions in his official capacity as Archdeacon of Liege, in 1437. These sessions took place at the time when Cosimo de Medici was making preparations for the opening of his famous Platonic Academy in Florence, the institution renowned as a center of the revival of the learning of the classical world.

Shortly after his attendance at the Council of Basel, Nicolas was sent to Constantinople to try his efforts toward the solution of one of the most vexing problems of the time, the reunion of the churches of East and West. His work at Basel and Constantinople attracted the attention of the Pope, so that in 1440 Nicolas was sent to Germany as papal legate at a very critical moment in the relations between Germany and the Church of Rome.

When Nicolas arrived in Germany, Frederick, Duke of Styria was chosen king to rule as Frederick IV. Just at that time the Council of Basel had appointed an “anti-pope,” called Felix V, in opposition to Pope Eugenius IV. In the fact that soon after his election, Frederick decided to extend his influence to the support of Eugenius in opposition to the Council of Basel, one perhaps can see the fruit of the work of Nicolas of Cusa as papal legate in Germany.

It also seems something more than coincidence that in 1448, when Frederick IV and Pope Nicolas V signed the Concordat of Vienna, by which the German church was firmly rebound to Rome, Nicolas of Cusa was raised to the rank of Cardinal. Two years later he was appointed Bishop of Britten.

The reactionary character of the Concordat of Vienna made impossible any reform of conditions within the German church. The clergy in Germany who had hoped for some easing of the repressive measures of the papacy, were doomed to disappointment. On the other hand, the Concordat of Vienna was one of the principal links in the chain of events that finally culminated on All Saints' Day, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, and the German Reformation became a fact.

The sixteen years (1448–1464) of the Cardinalate of Nicolas of Cusa coincide with remarkable developments in the social and cultural life of the Western world. The year 1452 is notable as the year of the birth of two men of marked divergence of outlook. The first was Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican monk, leader of the reaction against the Renaissance, the dogmatic eschatologist from Ferrara, who as “dictator of Florence” held a brief sway over the minds and bodies of men of his time. Also in 1452 was born the genius of the Renaissance, the archetype of the “new man,” the very incarnation of the spirit of progress, of universality, of investigation, of freedom from traditionalism and conservatism—Leonardo da Vinci. At this same time a host of the world's most famous Greek scholars left Constantinople in fear of the advancing Turks under Mohammed II, who finally took the city the following year, which also marked the end of the Hundred Years' War in Western Europe.

In 1454, as a kind of picture of things to come in the field of technical development and invention, Johannes Gutenberg issued his first texts printed with movable type, and before two more years were completed, published his edition of the Vulgate Bible at Mainz. 1456 is notable as the year the Turks captured Athens and subsequently all Greece, thus marking the end of the last vestiges of classicism remaining in that country.

Pico della Mirandola, famous Renaissance scholar and writer, collector of precious books and manuscripts, master of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic, student of the mysticism of the Kabbalah and other mystical writings, was born in 1463. The following year, on the 11th of August, Nicolas of Cusa died, renowned as a distinguished prince of the Church, and as a diplomat traveling in the service of the Pope.

Today Nicolas of Cusa is remembered for his cosmological conceptions, his originality and breadth of thought, and his courage as a thinker at a time when the rationalized dogmatic system of Scholasticism was breaking down in face of the impact of the new age. As the famous French mathematician and philosopher, Renè Descartes was to write nearly two hundred years after Nicolas' death, “The Cardinal of Cusa and several other theologians have supposed the world to be infinite, and the Church has never condemned them for it. On the contrary, it is thought that to make His works appear very great is one way to honor God.” Nicolas of Cusa's work was appreciated by such men as Giordano Bruno, philosopher, poet, and martyr, Johannes Kepler, the astronomer, and Descartes, to name but a few. The courage necessary for a thinker to grasp the implications of the new age was present in Nicolas of Cusa, and the scope of his investigations in the world of thought is evidence of his importance and stature.

6.

The year 1487 is regarded by some as the year of the beginning of the Renaissance. By others it is remembered as the time the Portuguese navigator, Bartholomeu Diaz, sailing along the African coast on a voyage of exploration, discovered the Cape of Good Hope and thereby opened the passage to India and China. Still others recall that this was the year of the birth of one Henry Cornelius, generally known as Agrippa of Nettesheim, in the city of Cologne on September 14, 1487. His family was honored for its service to the royal house of Hapsburg, but little is known of his childhood and youth.

Like others whom we have considered, Henry Cornelius studied at the University of Cologne. He also learned eight languages, and passed some time in France while still a young man.

In 1486, the year before Henry Cornelius was born, the son of Frederick IV, whom Nicolas of Cusa had supported in signing the Concordat of Vienna, came to the throne of Germany as Maximilian I. The latter was heir to great areas of Austria, was administrator of the Netherlands, and not long after he came to the throne of Germany he united the country, and through the marriage of his son Philip to the heiress of the Spanish kingdoms, his influence soon spread to that country as well. Thus Maximilian exercised a power in Europe as had no German ruler for centuries.

While he was still a young man, Henry Cornelius was appointed secretary in the service of Maximilian, and his life of travel and adventure began almost at once. However, the life of the battlefield and he court did not suit him, and not long afterward we find him at the University at Dôle as a lecturer on philosophy. This appointment was made in 1509, the year that Erasmus wrote his Chiliades adagiorum, by which his reputation as an author was established.

But Henry Cornelius' lectures did not long escape the attention of the Inquisition, and he went to England on a diplomatic mission for Maximilian as the result of an attack made upon him by the monk, John Catilinet who was lecturing at Ghent. In London Henry Cornelius was a welcome guest in the home of Dr. John Colet, friend and later the patron of Erasmus, student of the teachings of Savonarola, former lecturer at Oxford, at that time dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. In his later life, Colet was to preach on the occasion of Wolsey's installation as Cardinal, and was to become chaplain to Henry VIII. He did much to introduce the humanist teachings of the Renaissance into England, and was an outspoken opponent of auricular confession and the celibacy of the clergy of the Catholic Church.

After his return to the Continent, Henry Cornelius went to Italy with Maximilian on one of the latter's expeditions against Venice. During his stay in Italy in 1512, the year the Medici were recalled to Florence, and Martin Luther was made a Doctor of Theology, he attended the Council of Pisa as a theologian. This council had been called by a group of Cardinals in opposition to militaristic plans of Pope Julius II who had laid the cornerstone for the new basilica of St. Peter's in Rome six years before.

In all, Henry Cornelius remained in Italy about seven years, and they were a very eventful time, for they coincided with some of the most important events of the Renaissance period. In these years the Aldine edition of Plato appeared in Venice, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a landmark in the history of political thought, and Erasmus published his New Testament in Greek. Julius II died during this period, and Giovanni de Medici, made Cardinal at fourteen, now became Pope Leo X, whose famous exclamation, “Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it,” set a pattern for the Renaissance, while his permission to sell indulgences for the benefit of the construction of St. Peter's led to the upheaval of the Reformation.

Henry Cornelius was active as a physician during his first years in Italy, first in the household of the Marquis of Monferrato, later in that of the Duke of Savoy. In 1515 he accepted an invitation to lecture at the University of Pavia on one of the works of the ancient world beloved by the adherents of the new learning of the Renaissance, the Pimander of Hermes Trismegistus. This was the year when Sir Thomas More wrote his Utopia, and Leonardo da Vinci left Rome for the last time enroute to his three year exile and death in France.

The university lectures on the Pimander were suddenly broken off as a result of the victorious advance into Italy by the armies of Francis I of France. Henry Cornelius returned to Germany, and in 1518, the year Zwingli began the Reformation among the Swiss, he was appointed town advocate of Metz. But he was not left in peace for long. First, the death of Maximilian at the beginning of 1519 and the subsequent election of Charles V, King of Spain, Naples, Sicily, ruler of the Netherlands, Austria, Burgundy, and of dominions in the New World, to be ruler of Germany brought changes in the life of Henry Cornelius. Second, a woman was tried in Metz for witchcraft. In his position as town advocate Henry Cornelius went to her defense, with the result that he became involved in a serious controversy with one of the most dreaded agents of the Inquisition, the notorious Nicholas Savin. Finally, in 1520, the year of Magellan's voyage around the world, of the death of the painter, Raphael, and of Luther's burning of the papal bull, Henry Cornelius quietly left Metz for Cologne, where he remained in discreet retirement for about two years.

He appeared in public life once more, first in Geneva, afterward in Freiburg, where he practiced as a physician. In 1524, a year before Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament appeared, he went to Lyons to accept a post as physician to Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I. But the unsettled times—now accentuated by the terrible sack of Rome by the armies of Constable Bourbon in 1527—caused him to relinquish the position in favor of some post further north which might offer greater security for his study and work.

That Henry Cornelius was considered an able scholar is evidenced by the fact that at about this time he was offered the opportunity to participate in a disputation concerning the legality of the divorce action between Henry VIII of England and Catherine of Aragon, which was then taking place. However, he accepted an offer to be archivist and historian to Charles V, which Louise of Savoy obtained for him.

The death of Louise of Savoy in 1531 weakened his position, and in addition to all of the other ferment of the time, the news that Henry VIII had declared himself “Supreme Head of the Church of England” only increased the uncertainty of conditions. Henry Cornelius also had published several works which had attracted the attention of the Inquisition, and for a time he was imprisoned in Brussels. However, despite the publication of his De occulta philosophia, Concerning Secret Science, written about 1510, printed in Antwerp 1531, which the Inquisition did their best to prevent, Henry Cornelius was able to live for some time at Cologne and Ronn under the personal protection of the great Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne, who recognized and appreciated his remarkable qualities as a scholar and man.

At the very end of his life, while he was visiting Paris, Francis I had him arrested on the strength of a report that he had spoken badly of the reputation of the queen mother. The charge was proven false and he was released after a brief imprisonment, but the strain of the experience was too great for him to bear, and he died suddenly at Grenoble on February 18, 1535 at the age of forty-nine. His death took place in the same year as that of Sir Thomas More, and five years after that of Erasmus.

Henry Cornelius was married three times, and was the father of a large family of children. His memory—despite attacks on his reputation and teachings by the Inquisition long after his death—has been kept alive through the years because of his writings, mainly his De occulta philosophia. A man of unusual courage and in some ways a kind of universal genius, Henry Cornelius was typical of the men whose lives spanned the period that opened the way to the modern age.

7.

Columbus had reached America on his western voyage; Lorenzo de Medici had died in Florence; the Spaniard, Rodrigo Borgia, along with his mistress and children now inhabited the Vatican as Pope Alexander VI, whose frankly pagan orgies were more fitting to the later Roman emperors than to the Vicar of Christ upon earth; and in the little Swiss town of Einsiedeln in Canton Schwyz, the local physician, illegitimate son of a Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, was in turn the father of a son whom he named Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. Later the son himself chose the name by which he is known to history—Paracelsus.

The boy's early education was in the hands of his father; at the age of sixteen he entered the University of Basel. However, his restless nature and his independent thinking made formal study most unattractive to him, and he determined to seek an education in his own way.

About this time he heard of the great Benedictine scholar, Johannes Trithemius, originally Abbot of the Monastery of Wurzburg, later of Sponheim near Kreuznach. The Abbot of Sponheim was celebrated for the remarkable library he had collected, for his studies in cryptography, for his writings on history, and for his researches in alchemy and related sciences. This same Abbot of Sponheim had greatly influenced Henry Cornelius in the latter's work on his De occulta philosophia.

Paracelsus decided to apply to the Abbot of Sponheim for the opportunity to study science with him. He was accepted, but the association did not last very long. Led by a desire to learn more about the nature and properties of minerals first-hand, he went to the Tyrolean mines owned by the famous merchant-administrators and bankers to the German Emperors, the Fuggers.

Paracelsus felt at home among the miners. He soon came to the conviction that what he gained through direct observation was the best education of all. He learned about the processes involved in mining operations, the nature of ores, the properties of mineral waters, and the stratification of the rocks of the earth. Meanwhile he came to know the home life of the miners, studied their illnesses and the types of accidents to which they were most prone. In brief, from his experiences in the mines he concluded that formal schooling is not education in the mysteries of nature. He was convinced that only by reading the book of nature first-hand and through personal contact with those who work with nature can one come to anything like truly natural scientific knowledge.

This point of view followed Paracelsus throughout his life, and colored his relationships with those scholars with whom he came into contact. He based his work entirely on the results of his own observation and experience, and not on theories acquired from others.

Paracelsus wandered over a great part of central Europe in order that he might come to a direct personal knowledge of things. He once said that the physician must read the book of nature, and that to do so he must “walk over its pages.” He came to the conclusion that since the temperaments, constitutions and activities of different peoples are different, the diseases from which they suffer must also be different. Therefore he believed that it was incumbent upon the physician to know other peoples as the key to understanding his own.

The summation of Paracelsus' method of study is contained in his questions, “From where do I obtain all my secrets, from what authors? It would be better if one asked how the animals have learned their skills. If nature can teach irrational animals, can it not much more teach men?”

In all, Paracelsus spent nearly a full decade in his wanderings in search of knowledge. At the end of his travels, while the mass of information he had gathered lacked order and coherence, there is no doubt that here was a man whose experiences, observations of peoples, places and events, as well as knowledge of the elements and processes of nature gave his words and deeds the weight of direct evidence. His superiority to his contemporaries was unquestionable.

When Paracelsus returned to Basel in 1527 he was appointed city physician, and also was made professor of physic, medicine, and surgery at the University. He undertook to give a course of lectures in medicine, but the latter provoked a storm of protest because they were so unconventional, as might have been expected from one holding his views on education. First of all, Paracelsus lectured in German, not Latin, which was unheard of in academic circles of the time. Then his lectures were composed of statements derived from his experience, and presented his own methods of cure, based upon his personal points of view. But worst of all to the traditionalists, Paracelsus' lectures dealt with cure of the diseases current among the peoples of Europe in the year 1527, and not only did not include comment on the classic medical texts of Galen or Avicenna, an accepted part of every medical lecture worthy of the name, but they attacked these sacrosanct authorities and ridiculed those who followed their teachings. Above all, Paracelsus plead for a medical practice which met the needs of the time, which followed the results of direct observation, and which did away with the ignorance and greed of physicians which hid behind a mask of pompousness and reliance upon the dicta of men who had been dead for centuries.

Paracelsus also was hard at work proving the practical worth of his knowledge in curing the sick. His success was phenomenal. Maladies previously considered incurable were healed quickly and efficiently by his methods. Case after case which had been given up by other physicians of Basel and the surrounding towns, was brought to him and cured. For two or three years Paracelsus' reputation spread far and wide. Never before had such a physician practiced in Basel!

But this success did not last. At first, his learning, derived from his practical experience, his appeal to the common sense of his hearers, captured the imagination of his students. His successful practice was proof of the correctness of his teaching, and all opposition based on traditionalism was pushed aside.

Slowly, however, the tide began to turn; the waters of opposition gathered their strength. No single detail escaped the vigilant eyes of his enemies; nothing was too insignificant to throw into the scale against him. There was the matter of his having no degree; the conservatives demanded that he be forced to prove his qualifications before continuing his teaching and practice. And his prescriptions were a source of annoyance to the pharmacists of Basel, for Paracelsus had worked out his own system of drug compounding, which differed radically from that generally employed by other physicians. Therefore the apothecaries attacked Paracelsus, because he did not use their products as did the Galenists. On the other hand, Paracelsus requested the city authorities to keep close watch on the purity of the drugs sold in Basel, to be certain that the apothecaries really knew their work, and, above all, to be watchful of the commercial relationships between the apothecaries and physicians.

At last the day came for which the enemies of Paracelsus had long been waiting. Among his patients was one Canon Cornelius von Lichtenfels, who had called upon Paracelsus for professional aid when his own physician had given up his case. Although he had promised to pay Paracelsus' fee in the event of a cure, von Lichtenfels now refused to do so. Eventually the matter was taken into a court of law, where the judges found in favor of von Lichtenfels. Noted for his quickness of temper and outspokenness, Paracelsus candidly told the judges his opinion of them, their conduct of the case, and their method of administering the law. When he left the court, Paracelsus' friends advised him to leave Basel without delay, for his enemies would surely see to it that he be severely punished for his speech before the justices. Paracelsus took this advice, and departed from Basel in haste.

Once again Paracelsus resumed his wandering life. For a brief time he remained in Esslingen, then went to Colmar, but the pinch of poverty drove him from town to town in search of work. Twelve years were passed in these journeyings, Paracelsus never remaining in one place for more than a year.

Finally, in 1541 when Paracelsus was forty-eight, he received an invitation which seemed to be the fulfillment of his longing for a permanent home where he could pursue his work undisturbed and in peace. Archbishop Ernst of Salzburg offered Paracelsus his protection if the latter would come to that city and take up his professional activities there.

But Paracelsus was in Salzburg only a few months when he died at almost the same time Michelangelo completed his painting of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel at Rome.

Even the reports of Paracelsus death reflect the efforts of his enemies to defame him. One tale recounts that his death was caused by a drunken brawl in which he was a participant. A report with sinister implications tells that Paracelsus did not die a natural death, but was thrown over a steep cliff at night by assassins in the employ of the apothecaries and physicians, whose vengeance followed him through all his years of exile.

One of Paracelsus' most far-reaching concepts is that of Signatures, that is, the idea that each single part of the microcosmic world of man corresponds with each single part of the macrocosmic world outside man. This leads directly to his teaching concerning Specifics. He realized that the latter were not to be discovered in the labyrinth of often fantastic nostrums and combinations of substances prescribed in the writings of the Galenists. Through careful observation extending over many years, Paracelsus concluded that mineral, plant and animal substances contain within themselves what he called “active principles.” It was his conviction that if a method of purification and intensification could be discovered whereby these substances could be caused to release their “active principles,” the latter would be infinitely more efficacious and safer in producing a cure than would their crude and often dangerous originals.

Paracelsus died before he could discover the method which could unlock the potency, the healing power latent in mineral, plant and animal substances. This problem was not solved until two and a half centuries later when another physician, Samuel Hahnemann, discovered a method of so handling mineral, plant and animal substances that their innate healing powers were enhanced and made available to a medical practice in line with the highest ideals of cure envisioned by Paracelsus. This method of preparation of substances and the manner of their selection and administration to the sick, Hahnemann called Homeopathy.

The first of Paracelsus' extensive works was published in Augsburg in 1529, memorable as the year when the Reformers' presentation of a protest to the Diet of Spires won them the name of Protestants. Throughout the extensive writings of Paracelsus, repeated again and again in every one of the more than two hundred separate publications of his works which appeared between 1542 and 1845, a single theme is to be observed: The life of man cannot be separated from the life of the universe; therefore, to understand man, understand the universe; to understand the universe, understand man. Only upon such an understanding—universal in its scope—Paracelsus believed a medical art worthy of the name could be built. To the proclamation of such a goal of medicine he devoted his life.

In one of his writings, Paracelsus says, “There is a light in the spirit of man ... by which the qualities of each thing created by God, whether it be visible or invisible to the senses, may be perceived and known. If man knows the essence of things, their attributes, their attractions, and the elements of which they consist, he will be a master of nature, of the elements, and of the spirits.”

Robert Browning expressed Paracelsus' thoughts in the well-known lines:

“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, what'er you may believe.
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth,
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.”

8.

Eight years before the death of Paracelsus, Valentine Weigel was born at Naundorff, near Grossenheim in the district of Meissen. This year 1533 was also the year of the birth of Montaigne, the skeptic, of the completion of the rape of Peru by the most notorious of all Spanish conquistadores, Francisco Pizarro, of the proclamation of Anne Boleyn, soon to be the mother of Elizabeth, as Queen of England by Henry VIII, and of the final preparation of Luther's complete German Bible which was published the next year.

The details of Weigel's childhood are obscure, but in course of time he received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees at the University of Leipzig. He continued his studies at the University of Wittenberg until 1567, three years after the death of Michelangelo. In that year he was ordained a Lutheran pastor and was called to the church at Zschopau, not far from Chemnitz in eastern Germany. His life was passed entirely in this place, and he continued as pastor of this church until his death in 1588, the year the English defeated the Spanish Armada.

While the external events of Weigel's life are few and somewhat unimpressive when compared with some of the biographies discussed thus far, his inner development and his dedication to his pastoral tasks are very remarkable. He is remembered as a loving, devoted man, a true shepherd of his flock, a man whom all his parishioners loved, and who loved them in return.

Twenty-one years after the death of their pastor, his parishioners came to know that in addition to the Valentin Weigel they knew, another man, as it were, had been active all the years in Zschopau. This was Valentin Weigel, student, mystic, and author.

Weigel had long been a close student of the writings of Paracelsus, whose work he deeply admired, but whose fate he was determined not to share. Therefore while he studied and wrote a great deal during his lifetime, he never revealed his interest in mysticism to anyone, and left instructions that his writings were not to be published until sometime after his death. So while Pastor Weigel stood in his pulpit and preached to his flock Sunday after Sunday without interruption for twenty-one years, he never shared his most cherished interests and convictions with them.

Weigel was well acquainted with the works of Eckhart and Tauler and also with such classical mystics as Dionysius and the Neo-Platonists. But with all his study he recognized that the ultimate truth of things is not acquired from without, but is to be found within each man. He wrote, “Study nature, physics, alchemy, magic, and so on, but it is all in you, and you become what you have learned.”

In 1609, twenty-one years after Weigel's death, the year Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name, Weigel's book that was to greatly influence English mystics after its translation into English in 1648, was published. It bore the title, Von den Leben Christi, das ist, vom wahren Glauben, Of the Life of Christ, that is, of True Faith, and one of its outstanding passages is, “Faith comes by inward hearing. Good books, external preaching, have their place; they testify to the real Treasure. They are witnesses to the Word within us. But faith is not tied to books; Faith is a new birth, which cannot be found in books. The one who has the inner Schoolmaster would lose nothing of his salvation, even though all the preachers should die and all books be burned.”

When one considers the theological ideas prevailing in his time, one of Weigel's interesting concepts deals with the location of heaven and hell. In an age when basically materialistic descriptions of heavenly wonders were contrasted with equally materialistic portrayals of hellish tortures, and men were assured by their pastors that these were definite places, Weigel's conviction, which probably he never voiced from his pulpit, is surprisingly modern. He wrote that “Heaven and Hell are in the soul of man, after all; both Trees of the Paradise, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, as well as the Tree of Life, flourish in the human soul.” (See Weigel's Erkenne dich Selbst, Know Thyself)

Like Luther and others, Weigel prized and edited the little book, Theologia Germanica, or The Golden Book of German Theology, as Henry More called it, and spoke of it as “A precious little book, a noble book.” Weigel also loved the sermons of Johannes Tauler because “they testify to the experience of the Heavenly Jerusalem within us.”

For Weigel, the immanence of the spiritual world was a profound conviction, born of his personal experience. His expression of this is one of the classic statements of mysticism: “God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.”

9.

Jacob Boehme was born on April 24, 1575 in the little German village of Alt Seidenberg on a hillside south of Goerlitz, near the Bohemian border. Jacob was the fourth child of his parents, of old German peasant stock, noted for their honesty and devoutness. The Boehme family were staunch Lutherans, and the children were brought up according to the family faith. Jacob was a sickly child, and was not thought strong enough to work in the fields. Therefore his childhood summers were spent watching the herds, and in winter he received the rudiments of reading, writing, simple arithmetic and a little Latin. His favorite reading was his Bible, which he carried with him in the fields, and came to know as few other men have.

When he was fourteen, his father apprenticed him to the village cobbler for three years, since it was clear that Jacob's health would never permit him to be a farmer. In 592 Jacob Boehme began his journeyman's wanderings.

Abraham von Franckenberg, whom we shall meet again as the friend of Johannes Scheffler (Angelus Silesius), knew Jacob Boehme, and described the latter's appearance in these years: “Jacob's body was worn and plain. He was short, with low forehead, wide temples, his nose slightly crooked, his eyes grey, lighting up at times like the windows of Solomon's Temple. He had a short beard, somewhat thin, a slight voice, but very gentle in conversation. His manner was modest, mild and humble. He was of patient heart, and his spirit was lightened by God beyond anything to be found in nature.”

In the chapter in this book dealing with Jacob Boehme, Rudolf Steiner relates the famous story of the stranger and the pair of shoes, which took place during Boehme's apprentice days, sometime before 1599. In May of that year Boehme was officially made a citizen of Goerlitz, became established as a master shoemaker there, and soon afterward married Catherina Kuntzsch, daughter of a butcher of Goerlitz, by whom he had four children.

In the year 1600, when Jacob Boehme was twenty-five, he had the remarkable spiritual experience which Rudolf Steiner mentions in this book. Boehme saw the sunlight reflected on the surface of a polished pewter dish, and it was suddenly as though he could penetrate into the most secret depths of the universe, could probe the secrets of nature, and could fathom the essential being of everything in creation. This is comparable to Paracelsus' observation: “Hidden things which cannot be perceived by the physical senses may be discovered by means of the sidereal body, through whose organism we can look into nature just as the sun shines through a glass.”

Boehme later explained his spiritual experience or “illumination” in the introduction to his book, Aurora: “In a quarter of an hour I observed and knew more than if I had attended a university for many years. I recognized the Being of Beings, both the Byss and Abyss the eternal generation of the Trinity, the origin and creation of this world and of all creatures through the Divine Wisdom. I saw all three worlds in myself: first, the Divine World; second, the dark world and the source of fire; third, the external, visible world as an outbreathing of the inner or spiritual worlds. I also saw the fundamental nature of evil and good, and how the pregnant Mother, the eternal genetrix, brought them forth. My experience is like the evoking of life in the presence of death, or like the resurrection from the dead. My spirit suddenly saw all created things, even the herbs and grass, in this light. I knew who God is, what He is like, and the nature of His Will. Suddenly in that light my will was seized by a mighty impulse to describe the Being of God.”

For ten long years after this spiritual experience, to which Boehme referred repeatedly throughout the remainder of his life, he meditated on his vision. He came to believe that what he had to tell others was entirely unique with him, and that his mission was to purify Christianity, which he thought had become corrupt once again. He had no use for theology born of reason, nor for creeds and dogmas established on purely intellectual foundations. He was convinced that only one's personal experience of the reality of the spiritual world can enable one to overcome evil and advance into genuine knowledge of the spirit.

In 1610, the year when Galileo discovered the satellites of Jupiter by means of the newly-invented telescope, Jacob Boehme knew that the moment had come when he could write down an account of what he had seen a decade before: “To write these things was strongly urged upon my spirit, however difficult they might be for my outer self to understand, and for my pen to express. Like a child beginning school I was compelled to start my work on this very great Mystery. Within myself I saw it well enough, as in a great depth, but the describing and explaining of it seemed impossible.”

Boehme wrote in the early morning before he went to his cobbler's bench, and in the evening after he returned home from his work. And at last, after two years of diligent effort, Jacob Boehme produced his Aurora one of the masterpieces of mystical literature.

That Boehme knew that the twenty-six chapters of his Aurora are not easy to read, and are not for everyman, is clear from his words: “If you are not a spiritual overcomer, then let my book alone. Don't meddle with it, but stick to your old ways.” “Art was not written here, nor did I find time to consider how to set things down accurately, according to rules of composition, but everything followed the direction of the Spirit, which often hastened so that the writer's hand shook. As the burning fire of the Spirit hurried ahead, the hand and pen had to follow after it, for it came and went like a sudden shower.”

Handwritten copies of the manuscript were made by Carl Ender von Sercha, Boehme's friend and student. Sercha believed that in Boehme's work a prophecy of Paracelsus had been fulfilled, which announced that the years between 1599 and 1603 would bring about a new age for mankind, a time of “singing, dancing, rejoicing, jubilating.” Therefore many who heard of Boehme's remarkable spiritual experience when he had, to use his own words, “wrestled in God's presence a considerable time for the knightly crown ... which later, with the breaking of the gate in the deep center of nature, I attained with much joy,” believed that in him the words of Paracelsus had come true.

Their enthusiasm, however, was not universally shared. A copy of the manuscript of Aurora fell by chance into the hands of the Lutheran Pastor Primarius Gregorius Richter of Goerlitz. After the clergyman read the pages that John Wesley was later to describe as “sublime nonsense, inimitable bombast, fustian not to be paralleled,” and the celebrated English Bishop Warburton characterized as something that “would disgrace Bedlam at full moon,” he went to his pulpit the next Sunday and poured out his indignation upon Boehme's work. Among the congregation that morning sat Jacob Boehme himself, listened quietly and without a shadow of emotion to the stern denunciations of his pastor. Afterward he went to Richter and attempted to explain the passages of Aurora to which the latter took most violent exception. But the clergyman would have neither Boehme nor his book, asked the town council to expel Boehme from Goerlitz. His effort failed, but the justices warned Boehme that since he was a shoemaker, he must abandon writing and stick to the trade for which he was licensed. Boehme, who had said, “In Yes and No all things consist,” accepted their injunction, and entered upon still another time of silence. This period lasted from 1612, the year the King James Version of the English Bible was issued, until 1619, when a Dutch ship landed in Jamestown, Virginia, with the first African slaves to be sold in North America.

Meanwhile, Boehme's fame was spreading as more and more people read the manuscript copies of his Aurora, which were circulated by his admirers. Among the latter were the physician of Goerlitz, the learned Dr. Tobias Kober, the director of the Elector of Saxony's chemical laboratory at Dresden, Dr. Balthazar Walther, the nobleman Carl Ender von Sercha, and the Paracelsus student, who was to be Boehme's biographer, Abraham von Franckenberg.

Again and again these men urged Boehme to ignore the order of the magistrates of Goerlitz, and to continue his writing, but he consistently refused. However, early in 1619 their urgings met with success, and Boehme resumed his writing, and continued with increasing zeal during the following years. As he wrote, “I had resolved to do nothing in future, but to be quiet before God in obedience, and to let the devil with all his host sweep over me. But with me it was as when a seed is hidden in the earth. Contrary to all reason, it grows up in storm and rough weather. In the winter, all is dead, and reason says, ‘Everything is ended for it.’ But the precious seed within me sprouted and grew green, oblivious of all storms, and, amid disgrace and ridicule, it has blossomed into a lily!”

Through all the following years Boehme remained faithful to his original conviction that everything he wrote was not the fruit of his own intellectual creativeness, but was the gift of the spiritual world. In 1620, the memorable year of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth, he said, “I did not dare to write other than as I was guided. I have continued writing as the Spirit directed, and have not given place to reason.”

Boehme was one of those people who suffer much from the enthusiasm and admiration of their friends The latter were responsible for the attack by Pastor Primarius Richter, because of their circulating copies of Aurora, as we have seen. Again, toward the end of 1623, Boehme's friend, Sigismund von Schweinitz published three small works of Boehme, the first of the latter's writings to appear in print. Immediately the enemy in the person of clergyman Richter attacked Jacob Boehme, and once again complained to the magistrates of Goerlitz. This time, since he had broken their injunction against his writing, they ordered Boehme to leave town.

Before receiving the sentence of the magistrates, however, Boehme had been invited to visit the Court of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden. Therefore, early in May the shoemaker, exile from Goerlitz arrived in Dresden to attend “a conference of noble people,” as he described it.

Boehme was fast becoming famous. The second attack upon him by Pastor Primarius Richter was known widely, and the sale of his writings, which were rapidly appearing in print, steadily increased. He was convinced that in only a short time “the nations will take up what my native town is casting away.” He regarded the invitation to the Elector's Court as an opportunity to defend his works before some of the leading theologians and scholars of his time, and he was right.

His devoted student, Dr. Balthazar Walther, had arranged that Boehme was to be a guest in the home of Dr. Benedict Hinckelmann, Walther's successor as director of the Elector's laboratory, and the court physician. Boehme's reception in Dresden was all that his most devoted friends could have desired. He was entertained with consideration and appreciation, and found that important members of the court circle had studied his writings, and welcomed this opportunity to discuss them with him. One of the prominent noblemen of the Elector's household, Joachim von Loss, invited Boehme to visit his castle in order that they might have conversation together. Major Stahlmeister, chief master of horse to the Elector, did everything possible to inform the Elector favorably concerning Boehme's work.

Finally, at the request of the Elector, Boehme was examined orally by six eminently learned doctors of theology, and by two mathematicians. As a contemporary account describes it, “The illustrious Elector found great satisfaction in Boehme's answers. He asked Boehme to come to him privately, spoke with him, extended many favors to him, and gave him permission to return to his home in Goerlitz.”

At the conclusion of his visit, which lasted nearly two months, Boehme left Dresden, his teachings at least partly accepted. He did not return directly to Goerlitz, but visited three of his noblemen friends on the way. At the home of one of them he was taken ill, and as soon as possible, he hastened home to Goerlitz, where his friend and physician, Dr. Tobias Kober undertook his care. It was not long, however, before Dr. Kober, realizing that Jacob Boehme's death was near, arranged that he should receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper after he had made a confession of faith. This was done on November, 15 1624.

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning of the following Sunday that Jacob Boehme asked his son, Tobias, “Do you hear that beautiful music, my son?” Tobias replied that he did not. Then Boehme said, “Open the door then, so we can hear it better.” He inquired as to the hour, and when he was told that it was not yet three o'clock, he replied, “Then my time has not yet come.”

With the first faint touches of Aurora on the eastern sky, Jacob Boehme spoke words of farewell to his wife and children, and with a smile of joyful expectancy on his face, breathed out his spirit with the words, “Now I go to Paradise.”

A great crowd of the everyday people of Goerlitz, the shoemakers, tanners, craftsmen, along with devoted students of Boehme's writings, attended his funeral. The pall-bearers were shoemakers of Goerlitz, and the funeral service was conducted by the Lutheran clergyman who succeeded Richter. On the tombstone of porphyry are inscribed the words, “Jacob Boehme, philosophus Teutonicus.”

Jacob Boehme once described life as “a curious bath of thorns and thistles,” and his experience witnessed the truth of his words. But all the difficulties of his comparatively short life of forty-nine years were more than compensated by his vision of the greatness of man and of man's destiny. As he wrote, “Man has a spark of the spirit as a supernatural gift of God, to bring forth by degrees a new birth of that life which was lost in Paradise. This sacred spark of the divine nature within man has a natural, strong, almost infinite longing for that eternal spirit of God from which it came forth. It came forth from God, it came out of God; therefore it is always in a state of return to God. All this is called the breathing, the quickening of the Holy Spirit within us, which are so many operations of this spark of life, tending toward God.”

10.

In 1548, the year Michelangelo was made chief architect of St. Peter's in Rome, Giordano Bruno was born beneath the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in the little village of Cicala near Nola. His boyhood was passed in the midst of earthquakes, plagues and famine, while robbers and outlaws frequented the hills and fields of his native countryside. His father was a soldier, and the boy was named Philip.

At the age of fifteen he was enrolled in the Dominican monastery in Naples, the same cloister where Thomas Aquinas had lived three hundred years before. There he was given the name Giordano, which had been the name of one of the intimate companions of St. Dominic himself.

For nearly thirteen years he studied in this monastery, and became learned in the works of the ancient philosophers, particularly of Plotinus and Pythagoras. He was of an independent spirit, and gave considerable concern to his censor on this account. For example, he removed the saints' pictures from his cell, leaving only the crucifix on the wall. When he discovered a monk reading The Seven Joys of Mary, he advised him to read something more rational. He also questioned points in the Church dogma such as the Transsubstantiation, the Trinity, and the Immaculate Conception. At an early age he was deeply impressed with the scientific writings of Copernicus, and after some twenty years of reading them recalled that the force of their teaching still worked strongly upon him.

The teachings of the Neo-Platonists and of Nicolas of Cusa formed the basis of his own philosophy, and during his early years he wrote considerable poetry as well.

In 1572, when Bruno was twenty-four, he took holy orders, read his first Mass, and began to perform the other priestly functions. About this time he took some of his companions into his confidence, and frankly told them some of the questions he entertained on matters of Church dogma. They lost no time in informing their superiors, and soon the Holy Office of the Inquisition reprimanded Bruno sharply. Plans were made to bring him before a court of the Inquisition, but Bruno secretly left Naples and went to Rome, where he stayed in the Della Minerva Monastery.

However, he was not long left in peace. Fra Domenico Vito, provincial of the Order, charged him with heresy, and orders for his arrest were sent to Rome. Letters from friends informed Bruno that soon after his departure from Naples his books which he had hidden, had been discovered, including works by Chrisostom and Hieronymous, with notes by Erasmus. Bruno's situation was very serious, and he left the monastery, divested himself of his Dominican habit, and wandered over the Campagna in the vicinity of the ruins of Hadrian's villa dressed as a poor beggar, which indeed he was. These events occurred in 1576–1577, at about the time of the birth of the painter, Peter Paul Rubens.

Now began Bruno's years of wandering, during which he sought to make known the new teachings about the universe as set forth by Copernicus. He also continued his own writings, creating philosophical masterpieces and poetic works of unusual mystical depth and content. He took passage in a ship bound for Genoa, but was unable to land because of the plague and civil war. Therefore he stopped at Noli, on the Riviera, where he taught boys grammar and delivered lectures on the work of Copernicus, the plurality of worlds, and the shape of the earth. But this was too much for the local clergy, and once again Bruno wandered to Turin, where he hoped to obtain an opportunity to lecture in the University through the celebrated patron of scholars, Duke Emmanuele Filberto. However, the latter was under the influence of the Jesuits, and once again Bruno was denied the post he sought.

Bruno reached Venice after traveling across northern Italy from Turin, but here too he found that the deadly plague had done its work as in Genoa, and a large part of the inhabitants—including the painter Titian at the age of ninety-nine—had died. However, Venice was the center of the publishing activities of Italy, and Bruno braved the plague in order to have some of his work printed there. Shortly afterward he visited the Dominicans at Padua, and “they persuaded me to wear the habit again, even though I would not profess the religion it implied, because they said it would help in my travels to be thus dressed. And so I put on the white cloth robe and the hood which I had kept by me when I left Rome.”

When Bruno arrived in Geneva, the Marchese Galeazzo Carraciola, nephew of Pope Paul IV, also a refugee from persecution by the church, and a member of the Calvinist Protestant religion, befriended him. The Marchese asked him to cease wearing the Dominican habit and to assume the usual dress of the lay scholar, and Bruno did so, never again wearing a religious habit. During his stay in Geneva, Bruno found himself in trouble with Antoine de la Faye, a member of the Academy, because he took exception to one of the latter lectures, and attacked some twenty points in it. Bruno was arrested and imprisoned for a short time, and after his release was informed that he must either adopt Calvinism or leave the city.

Shortly after this Bruno entered France, visiting Lyons and afterwards Toulouse. In the latter place he received his Doctors degree, and held the position of professor of philosophy in the university for two years, lecturing to appreciative hearers on astronomy and general philosophical subjects. But again the clergy interfered with his work, and he left Toulouse for Paris, where he arrived in 1581.

Henry III, king of France, had heard of Bruno's great gifts as a lecturer, and of his unusual learning, eloquence and memory. Therefore he wished to appoint Bruno to the faculty of the Sorbonne, but before doing so, it was necessary for Bruno to confess and attend Mass as a professing Catholic. Bruno fearlessly and uncompromisingly refused, and so greatly did his honesty and sincerity impress the king that the latter allowed him to assume the position without regard to his scruples concerning religion.

The Paris lectures of Giordano Bruno were based on his study of the famous treatise, the Ars Magna, which Raimon Lull, the eminent Majorcan author, Arabic scholar, mystic, educational reformer, and traveler, had written in 1275. In addition, Bruno discussed logic, general philosophy, astronomy, the symbolism of Pythagoras, and the teachings of Copernicus.

After two years' teaching in Paris, Bruno was offered the post of secretary to Michel de Castelnau, sieur de Mauvissiere, ambassador to England. Bruno found London in a ferment of excitement, since attempts had recently been made on the life of Queen Elizabeth. Added to this were constant rumors that the Spanish were preparing to launch a massive invasion attempt against the coasts of England, and after Bruno had been in England for about a year, these rumors were confirmed by accurate information that a great Armada was gathering in the Tagus with designs upon England.

But politics, rumors of invasion, and tales of military exploit did not interest Bruno. He visited Oxford, and was disappointed with what he found there. From the time he first landed in the country, he had been repelled by what he considered the brutality of English manners in contrast with those he had known in Italy and France. In Protestant Oxford Bruno found a narrowness and sectarian dogmatism entirely foreign to the ideas of objective freedom he believed should prevail among scholars. The presence of the distinguished Polish Prince Johann a Lesco at Oxford was the occasion for a debate in which Bruno defended his new cosmology based on the teachings of the Polish Copernicus, against a group of theologians. Bruno won easily, but was soon forbidden to continue his lectures in Oxford.

While Bruno found the manners of the British distasteful, and the attitude of the Oxford scholars hopelessly bigoted, in the person of the Queen he found something to admire. He was frequently invited to private conversations with Elizabeth, who was always happy when she could display her knowledge of Italian, and who appreciated Bruno's learning and charm. In London, Bruno met the brilliant statesman, Sir Philip Sydney, to whom he dedicated one of his works, Lord Bacon of Verulam, and other prominent figures of the Elizabethan court. Bruno's duties at the embassy apparently were not arduous, since he seems to have had time to mingle with the court, to form acquaintances with the leading men of the time (there is a tradition that he met Shakespeare in the printing shop of Thomas Vautrollier), to hold lectures at Oxford, and, most important for posterity, to devote himself to writing.

In 1584 while Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition in Virginia was taking place, and the plot involving Mary Queen of Scots was fast coming to a head, Bruno wrote his two most famous metaphysical works, De la Causa, Principio, ed Uno, and D l'Infinito, Universo, e Mondi.

Early in 1585, with the plans for an English invasion of the Netherlands taking shape, and the raids on the Spanish American coasts by Sir Francis Drake making certain a crisis with Spain, the French ambassador decided he should return to France for a time. Therefore Bruno left England, probably not too unwillingly, though the years of his English residence were among the most productive and happiest of his life.

Bruno's ideas were found acceptable to the superiors of the college of Cambrai, and he found a temporary place among the lecturers there. However, his outspokenness brought him into trouble, for he prepared a thesis of one hundred twenty articles, in which he attacked the philosophy of Aristotle. His works and teaching evoked enthusiasm such as had not been witnessed in academic circles in France since the times of Abèlard. Bruno's theses were printed by permission of the censor, and the debate on them was held on May 5, 1588, at Whitsuntide.

At once after his triumph, Bruno left France for Germany, where he hoped to find freedom to lecture. In Marburg he was disappointed, but in Wittenberg he was welcomed, and found the atmosphere congenial to his creative activity. There he produced several more written works.

In 1588, with Europe ablaze with the tale of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and with it the hope of Philip II to crush English Protestantism under the tread of invading Spanish Catholic armies, Bruno decided to visit Prague. From there he went to the university at Helmstadt where he remained for a year, but at the end of that time was driven out by the attacks of Boethius, Lutheran Rector of Helmstadt. Bruno decided to go to Frankfort, where he hoped to prepare and publish several works, but he was not allowed to enter the city. Instead he found refuge in a Carmelite cloister just outside the city, through the kind assistance of the famous publishers, Wechel and Fischer. In the cloister he worked with feverish haste, and produced a number of works which were published. The Prior of the monastery recalled Bruno as “a man of universal mind, skillful in all sciences, but without a trace of religion.”

During this period—when he wrote his Seven Liberal Arts—the Frankfort Fair took place, and many publishers from foreign countries were present. There Bruno met the Venetian booksellers, Bertano and Ciotto, and it was the latter who took Bruno's writings to Venice. There these were found by a young nobleman, Giovanni Mocenigo, who read them with great interest, and inquired for details about the author.

Sometime later, when Bruno was in Zurich a letter reached him from the young Mocenigo, inviting him to visit him in Venice, promising him safe conduct for the journey. As soon as Bruno's friends heard of the invitation, they urged him not to accept it, for they feared for his safety at the hands of the Inquisition. But Bruno brushed their fears aside. He had confidence in this young nobleman, a member of one of the finest and most honorable families of Venice. Therefore, Bruno crossed the Alps and descended into Italy, arriving in Venice in October, 1591.

The first months after Bruno's arrival were filled with scholarly activity. He began to tutor the young Mocenigo, and also lectured privately to German students at Padua, where he was soon to be followed by Galileo. Bruno frequented the Venetian philosophical and literary societies, and was welcomed in the home of Andrea Morosini and of his student Mocenigo. Finally, after some time Bruno decided that he would like to return to Frankfort in order to publish some of his works there. But this was not to be.

From the moment he had arrived in Italy the spies of the Inquisition were on his track, and Giovanni Mocenigo cooperated with them. And now that Bruno wished to leave the country, Mocenigo had him arrested, and thrown into the prison of the Inquisition. He was charged with many heresies, most serious being his teaching of the infinity of the universe.

Bruno was kept in the prison at Venice for nine months, and at the end of that time was taken in chains to the Bridge of Sighs, and was conveyed through the lagoons to Ancona, where he remained until he was taken to Rome. After torture and solitary confinement at Ancona, Bruno was turned over to the Roman Inquisition, and for seven years he experienced the terrors of the prison of the Holy Office. To the last he refused to give up his beliefs, and defied his opponents in all they brought against him. On February 9, 1600 Bruno was excommunicated with the cries of “Anathema.”

On February 6th in the Campo dei Fiori, a Roman flower market, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. He was hardly fifty years of age, and his body showed signs of dreadful torture. With his head erect, his eyes showing full consciousness, he walked unassisted to the stake.

Rudolf Steiner said in a lecture on January 12, 1923, “The flaming pyre in which Giordano Bruno was put to death in the year 1600 was an outer sign of a most significant phase of inner development ... The flames in Rome are a glorious memorial in history, as Giordano Bruno himself indicated. While he was burning, he said, Something will come into being. And what was destined to come into being, what drew forth the cry, You can put me to death, but not through centuries will my ideas be able to be put to death,—that is precisely what must live on.”

11

Shortly after the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, in the year Virginia became a royal colony, with governor and council appointed by the British crown, and two years after New Netherlands was established as a Dutch colony in America, Johannes Scheffler was born in the German city of Breslau in Silesia, in 1624, the year Jacob Boehme died. When Johannes was five, his mother enrolled him and his brother at the Elizabeth Gymnasium in Breslau, shortly before her death. At the age of nineteen Johannes Scheffler matriculated at the University of Strassburg, where he intended to study medicine and law. After a year at Strassburg, he entered the University of Leyden and remained there two years. While he was at Leyden Scheffler discovered the works of Jacob Boehme, which had been published at Amsterdam in 1642. As he expressed it, “When one is in Holland, all sorts of things come one's way.”

From Leyden, Scheffler went to the greatest medical school at that time, the University of Padua, where he received his degree of Doctor of Medicine and Philosophy in 1648.

At about this time he wrote in the album of one of his fellow students, Mundus nihil pulcherrimum, The world is a very beautiful Nothing. In 1649 Johannes Scheffler was appointed Court physician to the strict Lutheran Duke Sylvanus Nimrod at Oels in Württemberg. Shortly before Scheffler arrived in Oels, the town of four thousand inhabitants had been reduced to less than two thousand, due to an action which had been fought there in the Thirty Years' War. The cattle had been killed, crops destroyed, houses ruined, and even the castle of the Duke was slightly damaged.

At the same time that Scheffler came to Oels, an older man also arrived in the town. He had been born there fifty-six years before, and was destined to play an important role in the life of Scheffler. This man was Abraham von Franckenberg, whom we have already met as the friend and biographer of Boehme; as Scheffler's friend he was to guide the latter on his spiritual path.

Years before, von Franckenberg had given over his estate to his eldest son, and had reserved only two small rooms in the house for himself, where he studied and lived. During the plagues which swept over the district from time to time, he was of great help to the sick. It was at a time of plague that he met Jacob Boehme, and eventually printed the latter's writings at his own expense. Von Franckenberg studied Kaballa, alchemy, the works of Giordano Bruno and Copernicus, with the single aim of solving the secrets of the science of nature. Because of his studies von Franckenberg was attacked by the Lutheran clergy, and finally left Oels in 1641, and went to Danzig where he lived for eight years as the guest of the famous astronomer, Helvelius. From Danzig he returned to Oels in 1649. When he was asked by the Duke if he was a Catholic, a Lutheran, or a Calvinist, von Franckenberg answered, “I am the heart of all these religions.”

Johannes Scheffler was attracted to von Franckenberg at their first meeting, and soon the young physician became the devoted student of the older scientist. Long hours were spent by the two of them in von Franckenberg's little rooms discussing Boehme, alchemy, astronomy, the mystics of medieval times, and so on. Two and one-half years after their meeting, von Franckenberg died, and bequeathed many of his precious books and manuscripts to Scheffler. Among these works, which Scheffler referred to as “a real pharmacy of the soul,” were the Theologia Germanica, the writings of Boehme, Weigel, Paracelsus, Bruno, Tauler and Rulwin Merswin. One volume of this collection is preserved, and bears the date 1652 inscribed on the flyleaf, and in the handwriting of Scheffler, the words, “From my faithful friend, Abraham von Franckenberg.” Another volume from this collection also contains extensive notations in Scheffler's handwriting.

Shortly after von Franckenberg's death, Scheffler decided to write a book composed of passages from his favorite mystical authors. This he intended to issue as a New Year gift volume. As a matter of course the printer submitted the book to Christoph Freytag, court chaplain and censor. Freytag struck out long passages, and not only refused to give his imprimatur, but also declined to so much as speak with Scheffler about it. This was a turning-point in Scheffler's spiritual life. He realized that the Lutheran church could no longer be his religious home. He resigned his post, left Oels immediately, and returned to Breslau.

Among the writers whom Scheffler had quoted in his book, many were Catholic. Now he began to read Catholic books more and more, spending some months in Breslau in thorough study of them. On June 12, 1653 Johannes Scheffler embraced the Roman Catholic faith.

As Abraham von Franckenberg had been a strong influence in Scheffler's life at one point, now a second man exerted a powerful effect upon him. This was Sebastian von Rostock, born the son of a poor ropemaker, now the vicar general of the diocese of Breslau. As a simple parish priest in the village of Niesse he had witnessed the hardships of the Thirty Years' War. For example, when the Lutheran armies rounded up many Catholics and imprisoned them in buildings, he risked his life by climbing in the windows to give them spiritual consolation. One day while he was walking through the forest, he was set upon by a Lutheran cavalryman. He drew his sword, which all men, clergymen or not had to wear at that time for self-protection, returned the attack, and killed his opponent. However, the instant the cavalryman fell from his horse, von Rostock rushed to him in order to give him absolution that he might die in a state of grace. In the Catholic Counter-Reformation of 1653–1654, von Rostock was extremely severe on the Lutherans, with the result that over two hundred fifty churches were returned to Catholic use in Silesia alone.

At this point, however, von Rostock wished to have some proof that Lutherans were finding it possible to embrace the Catholic faith without pressure or force. Therefore the free conversion of the celebrated former court physician, Johannes Scheffler, was precisely the example he was looking for. He sought out Scheffler, who by this time had decided to change his name. First he adopted the name of Johannes de Angelis, a Spanish mystic of the sixteenth century, calling himself Johannes Angelus. But he discovered that there existed a certain Protestant doctor of theology, Johannes Angelus of Darmstadt, so he added “Silesius” from his birthplace, calling himself Johannes Angelus Silesius, by which he is known to posterity.

Sebastian von Rostock invited Angelus Silesius to his palace, and after talking with him arranged that the Austrian Emperor, Frederick III would give him the title of Court physician, but without either duties or salary. Nevertheless the title alone gave Angelus Silesius good reputation in Catholic circles particularly. More important, however, is the fact that von Rostock give his imprimatur to Angelus Silesius' Geistreiche Sinn und Schlussreime, Witty Sayings and End-Rhymes, which, when it was reprinted in 1674 was given the name by which it has since become famous, Cherubinischer Wandersmann, The Cherubinean Wanderer. The book was approved in July, 1656, but was not published until 1657, the year before the birth of the English composer, Henry Purcell. In 1674 Angelus Silesius' collection of some two hundred poems was published under the title, Heilige Seelenlust, oder geistliche Hirtenlieder der in ihren Jesum verliebten Psyche, Holy Ecstasies, or Sacred Shepherd Songs in Adoration of Jesus. From this collection, several poems were eventually included in the Lutheran hymnal, and today are among the best-loved hymns of the Protestant church.

Angelus Silesius became extremely zealous in developing the activities of the Catholic church in Breslau. Now a Franciscan priest, he organized the first Catholic procession held in Breslau for well over a century. And to drive the lesson home to observers, Angelus Silesius himself carried the cross and wore the crown of thorns in the procession. The next twelve years were a period of intense controversy, for in that time Angelus Silesius wrote and published some fifty-five attacks on Protestantism, most of them extremely bitter. Finally he was persuaded to give up this activity by the superior of his Order.

In 1664 Angelus Silesius was appointed marshal and counsellor to Sebastian von Rostock, who meanwhile had become Prince-Bishop of Breslau. Seven years later the Prince-Bishop died suddenly, and a sadness settled upon Angelus Silesius which did not leave him until death.

Just as Sebastian von Rostock had appeared after the death of Abraham von Franckenberg, now a third man befriended Angelus Silesius. This was Bernard Rose, Abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Grüssau, and Vicar General of the Cistercians in Silesia. Abbot Rose was a man of great strength, kindness of heart, a stern disciplinarian in his monastery, and a firm supporter of the Counter-Reformation. The monastery of Grüssau was located about fifty miles from Breslau, and was noted for its hospitality to all who knocked at its gates.

Angelus Silesius was received with warmth and kindliness at Grüssau. He found understanding, support, and comfort, of inestimable value to him, since now he was a dying man. The months he lived at Grüssau were spent in writing, meditation, and prayer. There he completed his last work, the Ecclesiologia, which he dedicated to Abbot Bernard Rose, his friend. The last three months of Angelus Silesius' life were marked by severe suffering, but through it all he was able to maintain an attitude of inner calm, of lofty spiritual vision, and of clear consciousness. He died on July 9, 1677, and to the last moment of his life he never ceased to manifest the spirit of love and peace which had settled upon him during his severe illness. In his last days Angelus Silesius repeated again and again, “Tranquillity is the best treasure that one can have.”

In the Loggia di San Paolo on the south side of the square, opposite the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence is a famous terra cotta relief created by Andrea della Robbia sometime around 1492. Influenced by a work of Fra Angelico, it depicts the historic meeting between St. Francis and St. Dominic. When one contemplates what is represented there, one is reminded of the Scripture, “Mercy and truth are met together.” An Italian, whose life-work was centered in a love which is ever merciful, embraces a Spaniard, whose striving for truth was expressed in knowledge of the eternal spirit.

Rudolf Steiner once observed that “External events, which at first glance seem to be trifling occurrences in the course of history, are deeply and inwardly rooted in the evolution of mankind.”

In this sense, this artistic creation, fashioned at the moment of emergence of the modern world, portraying the meeting of the founders of two great streams of spiritual aspiration which arose in the Middle Ages, bearing the classic Platonic and Aristotelian impulses into later times, expresses their significance in the development of mankind.

The series of eleven men around whom this book is created, begins with Meister Eckhart, a Dominican, and concludes with Angelus Silesius, a Franciscan. Midway between the two Rudolf Steiner places Henry Conelius, Agrippa of Nettesheim, typical of the “new man” of the Renaissance: scholar, courtier, diplomat, physician, master of the “new learning” which came to the fore at the dawn of the modern age. Between the Dominicans, for whom the ideal picture of the world was embodied in the word Order, and the Franciscans, for whom the essence of creation was expressed in the word Love, Rudolf Steiner has placed the figure whom he calls “a protagonist for a genuine science of nature.”

In the lives of these eleven men is united the progressive unfoldment of ideas and events at a moment of supreme importance in the course of man's life on earth. Their struggles, tensions, and resolutions epitomize the historical process as it unveiled itself in the important development then taking place in the evolution of humanity. In their life-experiences we see the birth-pangs of the appearance of a new stage in the life of mankind—the dawn of the modern age.

Translator Unknown, revised

I should like to respond to the kind invitation to lecture this evening by telling you how, by means of direct investigation, it is possible to acquire the spiritual knowledge which we are proposing to study here in its application to education. I shall be dealing today with the methods whereby super-sensible worlds may be investigated and on another occasion it may be possible to deal with some of the actual results of super-sensible research. But apart from this, let me add by way of introduction that everything I propose to say will refer to the investigation of spiritual worlds, not to the understanding of the facts yielded by super-sensible knowledge. These facts have been investigated and communicated, and they can be grasped by healthy human intelligence, if this healthy intelligence will be unprejudiced enough not to base its conclusions wholly on what goes by the name of proof, logical deduction, and the like, in regard to the outer sense world. On account of these hindrances it is frequently stated that unless one is able oneself to investigate super-sensible worlds, one cannot understand the results of super-sensible research.

We are dealing here with what may be called initiation-knowledge—that knowledge which in ancient periods of human evolution was cultivated in a somewhat different form from that which must be fostered in our present age. Our aim, as I have already said in other lectures, is to set out along the path of research leading to super-sensible worlds by means of the thinking and perception proper to our own epoch—not to revive what is old. And precisely in initiation-knowledge, everything depends upon one being able to bring about a fundamental reorientation of the whole human life of soul.

Those who have acquired initiation-knowledge differ from those who have knowledge in the modern sense of the word, and not only by reason of the fact that initiation-knowledge is a higher stage of ordinary knowledge. It is, of course, acquired on the basis of ordinary knowledge, and this basis must be there. Intellectual thinking must be fully developed if one wishes to reach initiation-knowledge. But then a fundamental reorientation is necessary; for he who possesses initiation-knowledge must look at the world from an entirely different point of view from one without initiation-knowledge. I can express in a simple formula how initiation-knowledge principally differs from ordinary knowledge. In ordinary knowledge, we are conscious of our thinking, and of all those inner experiences whereby we acquire knowledge, as the subjects of this knowledge. We think, for example, and we believe that we are understanding something through our thoughts. When we conceive of ourselves as thinking beings, we are the subject. We seek for objects, in that we observe nature and human life, and in that we make experiments. We seek always for objects. Objects must press against us. Objects must yield themselves to us so that we may grasp them with our thoughts and apply our thinking to them. We are the subject; that which comes to us is the object.

An entirely different orientation is brought about in a man who is reaching out for initiation-knowledge. He has to realize that, as man, he is the object, and he must seek for the subject to this human object. Therefore the complete reverse must begin. In ordinary knowledge we feel ourselves to be the subject and we seek the objects that are outside us. In initiation-knowledge we ourselves are the object and we seek for the subject—or rather in actual initiation-knowledge the subject appears of itself. But that is then a matter of a later stage of knowledge.

So you see, even this rather theoretical definition indicates that in initiation-knowledge we must really take flight from ourselves, that we must become like the plants, the stones, the lightning and thunder which, to us, are objects. In initiation-knowledge we slip out of ourselves, as it were, and become the object which seeks for its subject. If I may use a somewhat paradoxical expression—in this particular connection in reference to thinking—in ordinary knowledge we think about things; in initiation-knowledge we must discover how our being is “thought” in the cosmos. These are nothing but abstract principles, but these abstract principles you will now find pursued everywhere in the concrete data of the initiation method.

Now firstly—for today we are dealing only with the form of initiation-knowledge that is right and proper for the modern age—initiation-knowledge takes its start from thinking. The life of thought must be fully developed if one wishes to attain initiation-knowledge today. And a good training for this life of thought is to give deep study to the growth and development of natural science in recent centuries, especially in the nineteenth century. Human beings proceed in different ways when they embark upon the quest for scientific knowledge. Some of them absorb the teachings of science with a kind of naiveté, hearing how organic beings are supposed to have evolved from the simplest, most primitive forms, up to man. They formulate ideas about this evolution but pay little heed to their own being, to the fact that they themselves have ideas and in their very perception of outer processes are themselves unfolding a life of thought.

But there are some who cannot accept the whole body of scientific knowledge without turning a critical eye upon themselves, and they will certainly come to the point of asking: “What am I myself really doing when I follow the progress of beings from the imperfect to the perfect stage?” Or again, they must ask themselves: “When I am working at mathematics I evolve thoughts purely out of myself. Mathematics in the real sense is a web which I spin out of my own being. I then bring this web to bear upon things in the outer world and it fits them.” Here we come to what I must say is the great and tragic question that faces the thinker: “How do matters stand regarding thinking itself—this thinking that I apply with all knowledge?”

Not for all our contemplation shall we discover how matters really stand regarding thought itself, for the simple reason that thinking there remains at the same level. All that we do is to revolve around the axle which we have already formed for ourselves. We must perform something with thinking, by means of what I have described as meditation in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.

One should not have any “mystical” ideas in connection with meditation, nor indeed imagine that it is an easy thing. Meditation must be something completely clear, in the modern sense. Patience and inner energy of soul are necessary for it, and, above all, it is connected with an act that no man can do for another, namely, to make an inner resolve and then hold to it. When he begins to meditate, man is performing the only completely free act there is in human life. Within us we have always the tendency to freedom and we have, moreover, achieved a large measure of freedom. But if we think about it, we shall find that we are dependent for one upon heredity, for another upon education, and for a third upon our life. And ask yourself where we would be if we were suddenly to abandon everything that has been given us by heredity, education, and life in general. If we abandoned all this suddenly, we would be faced with a void. But suppose we undertake to meditate regularly, in the morning and evening, in order to learn by degrees to look into the super-sensible world. That is something which we can, if we like, leave undone any day; nothing would prevent that. And, as a matter of fact, experience teaches that the greater number of those who enter upon the life of meditation with splendid resolutions abandon it again very soon. We have complete freedom in this, for meditation is in its very essence a free act. But if we can remain true to ourselves, if we make an inner promise—not to another, but to ourselves—to remain steadfast in our resolve to meditate, then this in itself will become a mighty force in the soul.

Having said this, I want to speak of meditation in its simplest forms. Today I can deal only with principles.

We must place at the center of our consciousness an idea or combination of ideas. The particular content of the idea or ideas is not the point, but in any case, it must be something that does not represent any actual reminiscences or memories. That is why it is well not to take the substance of a meditation from our own store of memories but to let another, one who is experienced in such things, give the meditation. Not, of course, because he has any desire to exercise “suggestion,” but because in this way we may be sure that the substance of the meditation is something entirely new for us. It is equally good to take some ancient work which we know we have never read before, and seek in it some passage for meditation. The point is that we not draw the passage from the subconscious or unconscious realms of our own being which are so apt to influence us. We cannot be sure about anything from these realms because it will be colored by all kinds of remains from our past life of perception and feeling. The substance of a meditation must be as clear and pure as a mathematical formula.

We will take this sentence as a simple example: “Wisdom lives in the light.” At the outset, one cannot set about testing the truth of this. It is a picture. But we are not to concern ourselves with the intellectual content of the words—we must contemplate them inwardly, in the soul, we must repose in them with our consciousness. At the beginning, we shall be able to bring to this content only a short period of repose, but the time will become longer and longer.

What is the next stage? We must gather together the whole human life of soul in order to concentrate all the forces of thinking and perception within us upon the content of the meditation. Just as the muscles of the arm grow strong if we use them for work, so are the forces of the soul strengthened by being constantly directed to the same content, which should be the subject of meditation for many months, perhaps even years. The forces of the soul must be strengthened and invigorated before real investigation in the super-sensible world can be undertaken.

If one continues to practice in this way, there comes a day, I would like to call it the great day, when one makes a certain observation. One observes an activity of soul that is entirely independent of the body. One realizes too that whereas one's thinking and sentient life were formerly dependent on the body—thinking on the nerve-sense system, feelings on the circulatory system, and so on—one is now involved in an activity of soul and spirit that is absolutely free from any bodily influence. And gradually one notices that one can make something vibrate in the head—something which remained before totally unconscious. One now makes the remarkable discovery of where the difference lies between the sleeping and waking states. This difference lies in the fact that when one is awake, something vibrates in the whole human organism, with the single exception of the head. That which is in movement in the other parts of the organism is at rest in the head.

You will understand this better if I call your attention to the fact that as human beings we are not, as we are accustomed to think, made up merely of this robust, solid body. We are really made up of approximately ninety per cent fluid, and the proportion of solid constituents immersed and swimming in these fluids is only about ten per cent. Nothing absolutely definite can be said about the amount of solid constituents in man. We are composed of approximately ninety per cent water—if I may call it that—and through a certain portion of this water pulsates air and warmth.

If you thus picture man as being to a lesser extent solid body and to a greater extent water, air, and the vibrating warmth, you will not find it so very unlikely that there is something still finer within him—something which I will now call the etheric body. This etheric body is finer than the air—so fine and ethereal indeed that it permeates our being without our knowing anything of it in ordinary life. It is this etheric body which in man's waking life is full of inner movement, of regulated movement in the whole of the human organism, with the exception of the head. The etheric body in the head is inwardly at rest.

In sleep it is different. Sleep commences and then continues in such a way that the etheric body begins to be in movement also in the head. In sleep, then, the whole of our being—the head as well as the other parts of the organism—is permeated by an inwardly moving etheric body. And when we dream, perhaps just before waking, we become aware of the last movements in the etheric body. They present themselves to us as dreams. When we wake up in a natural way we are still aware of these last movements of the etheric body in the head. But, of course, when there is a very sudden waking, it cannot be so.

One who continues for a long time in the method of meditation which I have indicated is gradually able to form pictures in the tranquil etheric body of the head. In the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, I have called these pictures Imaginations. And these Imaginations, which are experienced in the etheric body independently of the physical body, are the first super-sensible impressions that we can have. They enable us, apart altogether from our physical body, to behold, as in a picture, the actions and course of our life back to the time of birth. A phenomenon that has often been described by people who have been at the point of drowning, namely that they see their life backwards in a series of moving pictures, can be deliberately and systematically cultivated so that one can see all the events of the present earthly life.

The first thing that initiation-knowledge gives is the view of one's own life of soul, and it proves to be altogether different from what one generally supposes. One usually supposes in the abstract that this life of soul is something woven of ideas. If one discovers it in its true form, one finds that it is something creative, that it is that which, at the same time, was working in our childhood, forming and molding the brain, and is permeating our whole organism and producing in it a plastic, form-building activity, kindling each day our waking consciousness and even our digestive processes.

We see this inwardly active principle in the organism of man as the etheric body. It is not a spatial body but a time-body. Therefore you cannot describe the etheric body as a form in space if you realize your doing so would be the same thing as painting a flash of lightning. If you paint lightning, you are, of course, painting an instant—you are holding an instant fast. The same principle applies to the etheric body of man. In truth, we have a physical space-body and a time-body, an etheric body which is always in motion. We cannot speak intelligently of the etheric body until we have discovered in actual experience that it is a time-body which comes before us in an instant as a continuous tableau of events stretching back to birth. This is what we can first discover in the way of the super-sensible abilities in ourselves.

The effect of these inner processes upon the evolution of the soul, which I have described, manifests itself above all in the complete change of mood and disposition of soul in the man who is reaching out for initiation-knowledge. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that he who is approaching initiation suddenly becomes an entirely transformed person. On the contrary, modern initiation-knowledge must leave a man wholly in the world, capable of continuing his life as when he began. But in the hours and moments dedicated to super-sensible investigation, man becomes, through initiation-knowledge, completely different from what he is in ordinary life.

Above all, I would like now to emphasize an important moment which distinguishes initiation-knowledge. The more a man presses forward in his experience of the super-sensible world, the more he feels that the influences from his own corporeality are disappearing, that is to say regarding those things in which this corporeality takes part in ordinary life. Let us ask ourselves, for a moment, how our judgments occur in life. We develop as children, and grow up. Sympathy and antipathy take firm root in our life: sympathy and antipathy with appearances in nature, and, above all, with other human beings. Our body takes part in all this. Sympathy and antipathy—which to a large extent have their basis actually in physical processes—enter quite naturally into all these things. The moment he who is approaching initiation rises into the super-sensible world, he passes into a realm where sympathy and antipathy connected with his bodily nature become more and more foreign to him. He is removed from that with which his corporeality connects him. And when he wishes again to take up ordinary life he must, as it were, deliberately invest in his ordinary sympathies and antipathies, which otherwise occurs quite as a matter of course. When one wakes in the morning, one lives within one's body, one develops the same love for things and human beings, the same sympathy or antipathy which one had before. If one has tarried in the super-sensible world and wishes to return to one's sympathies and antipathies, then one must do it with a struggle, one must, as it were, immerse oneself in one's own corporeality. This removal from one's own corporeality is one of the signs that one has actually made headway. Wide-hearted sympathies and antipathies gradually begin to unfold in one who is treading the path to initiation.

In one direction, spiritual development shows itself very strongly, namely in the working of the memory and the power of remembering during initiation-knowledge. We experience ourselves in ordinary life. Our memory, our recollection, is sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse, but we earn these memories. We have experiences, and we remember them later. This is not so with what we experience in the super-sensible worlds. This we can experience in greatness, in beauty, and in significance—it is experienced, then it is gone. And it must be experienced again if it is again to stand before the soul. It does not impress itself in the memory in the ordinary sense. It impresses itself only if one can first, with all effort, bring what one sees in the super-sensible world into concepts, if one can transfer one's understanding to the super-sensible world. This is very difficult. One must be able to think there, but without the help of the body. Therefore one's concepts must be well grounded in advance, one must have developed before a logical, orderly mind and not always be forgetting one's logic when looking into the super-sensible world. People possessed of primitive clairvoyant faculties are able to see many things; but they forget logic when they are there. And so it is precisely when one has to communicate super-sensible truths to others that one becomes aware of this transformation in the memory in reference to spiritual truths. This shows us how much our physical body is involved in the practice of memory, not of thought but of memory, which indeed always plays over into the super-sensible.

If I were to say something personal, it would be this: when I give a lecture, it is different from when others give lectures. In others, what is said is usually drawn from the memory; what one learns, what one thinks, is usually developed out of the memory. But he who is really unfolding super-sensible truths must at that very moment bring them to birth. I can give the same lecture thirty, forty, or fifty times, and for me it is never the same. Of course this may happen in other cases too; but at all events the power to be independent of ordinary memory is very greatly enhanced when this inner stage of development is reached.

What I have now related to you concerns the ability to bring form into the etheric body in the head. This then makes it possible for a man to see the time-body, the etheric body, stretching back to his birth, bringing about a very particular frame of mind vis-à-vis the cosmos. One loses one's own corporeality, so to speak, but one gradually becomes accustomed to the cosmos. The consciousness expands, as it were, into the wide spaces of the ether. One no longer contemplates a plant without plunging into its growing. One follows it from root to blossom; one lives in its saps, in its flowering, in its fruiting. One can steep oneself in the life of animals as revealed by their forms, but above all in the life of other human beings. The slightest trait perceived in other human beings will lead one into the whole life of the soul, so that during these super-sensible perceptions one feels not within but outside oneself.

But one must always be able to return. This is essential, for otherwise one is an inactive, nebulous mystic, a dreamer—not a knower of the super-sensible worlds. One must be able to live in these higher worlds, but at the same time be able to bring oneself back again, so as to stand firmly on one's own two feet. That is why in speaking of these things I state emphatically that for me as for a good philosopher a knowledge of how shoes and coats are sewn is almost more important than logic. A true philosopher should be a practical human being. One must not be thinking about life if one does not stand within it as a really practical human being. And in the case of one who is seeking super-sensible knowledge this is still more necessary. Knowers of the super-sensible cannot be dreamers or fanatics—people who do not stand firmly on their own two feet. Otherwise one loses oneself because one must really come out of oneself. But this coming-out-of-oneself must not lead to losing oneself. The book, Occult Science, an Outline, was written from such a knowledge as I have described.

Then the question is whether one can carry this super-sensible knowledge further. This occurs through further cultivating one's meditation. To begin with, one rests with the meditation upon certain definite ideas or a combination of ideas and thereby strengthens one's life of soul. But this is not enough to enter the super-sensible world fully. Another exercise is necessary. Not only is it necessary to rest with definite ideas, concentrating one's whole soul upon them, but one must be able, at will, to drive these ideas out of one's consciousness again. Just as in material life one can look at some object and then away from it, so in super-sensible development one must learn to concentrate on some idea and then to drive it entirely away.

Even in ordinary life this is far from easy. Think how little a man has under his control, to be always impelled by his thoughts. They will often haunt him day in and day out, especially if they are unpleasant. He cannot get rid of them. This is a still more difficult thing to do when we have accustomed ourselves to concentrate upon a particular thought. A thought content upon which we have concentrated begins finally to hold us fast and we must exert every effort to drive it away. But after long practice we shall be able to throw the whole retrospective tableau of life back to birth, this whole etheric body, which I have called the time-body, entirely out of our consciousness.

This, of course, is a stage of development towards which we must bring ourselves. We must first mature. By the sweeping away of ideas upon which we have meditated, we must acquire the power to rid ourselves of this colossus, this giant in the soul. This terrible specter of our life between the present moment and birth stands there before us—and we must do away with it. If we eliminate it, a “more wakeful consciousness”—if I may so express it—will arise in us. Consciousness is fully awake but is empty. And then it begins to be filled. Just as the air streams into the lungs when they need it, so there streams into this empty consciousness, in the way I have described, the true spiritual world.

This is Inspiration. It is an in-streaming not of some finer substance but of something that is related to substance as negative is to positive. That which is the reverse of substance now pours into a human nature which has become free from the ether. It is important that we can become aware that spirit is not a finer, more ethereal substance. If we speak of substance as positive (we might also speak of it as negative, but that is not the point; these things are relative)—then we speak of spirit as being the negative to the positive. Let me put it thus: suppose I have the large sum of five shillings in my possession. I give one shilling away and then have four shillings left. I give another away—three shillings left, and so on until I have no more. But then I can make debts. If I have a debt of a shilling, then I have less than no shilling!

If, through the methods that I have described, I have eliminated the etheric body, I do not enter into a still finer ether, but into something that is the reverse of the ether, as debts are the reverse of assets. Only now I know through experience what spirit is. The spirit pours into us through Inspiration; the first thing that we now experience is what was with our soul and with our spirit in a spiritual world before birth, or rather before conception. This is the pre-existent life of our soul-spirit. Before reaching this point we saw in the ether back to our birth. Now we look beyond conception and birth, out into the world of soul and spirit, and behold ourselves as we were before we came down from spiritual worlds and acquired a physical body from the line of heredity.

In initiation-knowledge these things are not philosophical truths that one thinks out: they are experiences, but experiences which have to be earned by means of the preparations I have now indicated. The first truth that comes to us when we have entered the spiritual world is that of the pre-existence of the human soul and the human spirit respectively, and we learn now to behold the eternal directly.

For many centuries European humanity has had eyes for only one aspect of eternity—namely, the aspect of immortality. Men have asked only this: what becomes of the soul when it leaves the body at death? This question is the egotistical privilege of men, for men take an interest in what follows death from an egotistical basis. We shall presently see that we can speak of immortality too, but at all events men usually speak of it from an egotistical basis. They are less interested in what preceded birth. They say to themselves: “We are here now. What went before has only worth in knowledge.” But one will not win true worth in knowledge unless one also directs one's attention to existence as it was before birth, or rather, before conception.

We need a word in modern parlance with which to complete the idea of eternity. For we should not speak only of immortality; we should speak also of Ungeborenheit—Unborn-ness—a word difficult to translate. Eternity has these two aspects: immortality and unborn-ness. And initiation-knowledge discovers unborn-ness before immortality.

A further stage along the path to the super-sensible world can be reached if we now try to make our activity of soul and spirit still freer of the support from the body. To this end we now gradually guide the exercises in meditation and concentration to become exercises for the will.

As a concrete example, let me lead you to a simple exercise for strengthening the will. It will help you to be able to study the principle here involved. In ordinary life we are accustomed to think with the course of the world. We let things come to us as they happen. That which comes to us earlier, we think of first, and that which comes to us later, we think of later. And even if we do not think with the course of time in more logical thought, there is always in the background the tendency to keep to the outward, actual course of events. Now in order to exercise our forces of spirit and soul we must get free of the outer cause of things. A good exercise—and one which is at the same time an exercise for the will—is to try to think back over our day's experiences, not as they occurred from morning to evening, but backwards, from evening to morning, entering as much as possible into details.

Suppose in this backward review we come to the moment when, during the day, we walked up a staircase. We think of ourselves at the top step, then at the one before the top, and so on, down to the bottom. We go down that staircase backwards in thought. To begin with we will only be in the position to visualize episodes of the day in this backward order, say from six o'clock to three o'clock, or from twelve to nine, and so on to the moment of waking. But gradually we shall acquire a kind of technique by means of which, in the evening or the next morning, we are actually in a position to let a retrospective tableau of the experiences of the day or the day before pass before our soul in pictures. If we are in the position—and we will arrive at it—to free ourselves completely from the kind of thought which follows three-dimensional reality, we will see what a tremendous power our will becomes. We will reach this also if we can arrive at the position where we can experience the notes of a melody backwards, or visualize a drama in five acts, beginning with the fifth, then the fourth, and so on, to the first act. Through all such exercises we strengthen the power of will, for we invigorate it inwardly and free it from its bondage to events in the material world.

Here again, exercises I have indicated in previous lectures can be appropriate if we take stock of ourselves and realize that we have acquired this or that habit. We now take ourselves firmly in hand and apply an iron will in order within two years or so to have changed this particular habit into a different one. To take only a simple example: something of a man's character is contained in his handwriting. If we strain ourselves to acquire a handwriting bearing no resemblance to what it was before, this takes a strong inner force. Now this second handwriting must become quite as much a habit, just as fluent as the first. That is only a trivial matter but there are many things whereby the fundamental direction of our will may be changed through our own efforts. Gradually we bring it to the point where not only is the spiritual world received in us as Inspiration, but actually our spirit, freed from the body, is submerged in other spiritual beings outside of us. For true spiritual knowledge is a submerging in spiritual beings who are spiritually all around us when we look back at physical phenomena. If we would know the spiritual, we must first, as it were, get outside ourselves. I have already described this. But then we must also acquire the ability to sink ourselves into things, namely into spiritual things and spiritual beings.

We can do this only after we also practice such initiation exercises as I have described, bringing us to the point where our own body is no longer a disturbing element but where we can submerge ourselves in the spirituality of things, where the colors of the plants no longer merely appear to us, but where we plunge into the colors themselves; where we do not only color the plants, but see them color themselves. Not only do we know that the chicory blossom growing by the wayside is blue, when we contemplate it; but we can submerge ourselves inwardly in the blossom itself, in the process whereby it becomes blue. And from that point we can extend our spiritual knowledge more and more.

Various symptoms will indicate that these exercises have really been the means of progress. I will mention two, but there are many. The first lies in the fact that we receive a way of viewing the moral world completely different from before. For pure intellectualism, the moral world has something unreal about it. Of course, if a man has abided by the laws of decent behavior in the age of materialism, he will feel it incumbent upon him to do what is right according to well-worn tradition. But even if he does not admit it, he thinks to himself: when I do what is right, there is not so much taking place as when lightning strikes through space or when thunder rolls across the sky. He does not think it real in the same sense. But when one lives within the spiritual world one becomes aware that the moral world-order not only has the reality of the physical world, but has a higher reality. Gradually one learns to understand that this whole age with its physical constituents and processes may perish, may disintegrate, but that the moral influences which flow out of us strongly endure. The reality of the moral world dawns upon us. The physical and the moral world, “being” and “becoming,” become one. We actually experience that the world has moral laws as objective laws.

This increases responsibility in relation to the world. It gives us a totally different consciousness—a consciousness of which present-day humanity stands in sore need. For modern mankind looks back to the earth's beginning, where the earth is supposed to have been formed out of a primeval mist. Life is thought to have arisen out of the same mist, then man himself, and from man—as a Fata Morgana—the world of ideas. Mankind looks ahead to a death of warmth, to a time when all that mankind lives within must become submerged in a great tomb, and they need a knowledge of the moral world-order which can only be received fundamentally through fully obtaining spiritual knowledge. This I can only indicate.

But the other aspect is that one cannot reach this Intuitive knowledge, this submerging in outer things, without passing through intense suffering, much more intense than the pain of which I had to speak when I characterized Imaginative knowledge, when I said that through one's own efforts one must find the way back into one's sympathies and antipathies—and that inevitably means pain. But now pain becomes a cosmic experiencing of all suffering that rests upon the ground of existence.

One can easily ask why the Gods or God created suffering. Suffering must be there if the world is to arise in its beauty. That we have eyes—I will use popular language here—is simply due to the fact that to begin with, in a still undifferentiated organism, the organic forces were excavated which lead to sight and which, in their final metamorphosis, become the eye. If we were still aware today of the minute processes which go on in the retina in the act of sight, we should realize that even this is fundamentally the existence of a latent pain. All beauty is grounded in suffering. Beauty can only be developed from pain. And one must be able to feel this pain, this suffering. Only through this can we really find our way into the super-sensible world, by going through this pain. To a lesser degree, and at a lower stage of knowledge, this can already be said. He who has acquired even a little knowledge will admit to you: for the good fortune and happiness I had in life, I have my destiny to thank; but only through pain and suffering have I been able to acquire my knowledge.

If one realizes this already at the beginning of a more elementary knowledge, it can become a much higher experience when one becomes master of oneself, when one reaches out through the pain that is experienced as cosmic pain to the stage of “neutral” experience in the spiritual world. One must work through to a point where one lives with the coming-into-existence and the essential nature of all things. This is Intuitive knowledge. But then one is also completely within an experience of knowledge that is no longer bound to the body; thus one can return freely to the body, to the material world, to live until death, but now fully knowing what it means to be real, to be truly real in soul and spirit, outside the body.

If one has understood this, then one has a picture of what happens when the physical body is abandoned at death, and what it means to pass through the gate of death. Having risen to Intuitive knowledge, one has foreknowledge, which is also experience, of the reality that the soul and spirit pass into a world of soul and spirit when the body is abandoned at death. One knows what it is to function in a world where no support comes from the body. Then, when this knowledge has been embodied in concepts, one can return again to the body. But the essential thing is that one learns to live altogether independently of the body, and thereby acquires knowledge of what happens when the body can no longer be used, when one lays it aside at death and passes over into a world of soul and spirit.

And again, what results from initiation-knowledge on the subject of immortality is not a philosophical speculation but an experience—or rather a pre-experience—if I may so express myself. One knows what one will then be. One experiences, not the full reality, but a picture of reality, which in a certain way corresponds with the full reality of death. One experiences immortality. Here too, you see, experience is drawn into and becomes part of knowledge.

I have tried now to describe to you how one rises through Imagination to Inspiration and Intuition, and how one finally through this becomes acquainted with one's full reality. In the body one learns to perceive oneself, so long as one remains within that body. The soul and spirit must be freed from the body, for then one becomes for the first time a whole man. Through what we perceive through the body and its senses, through the ordinary thinking which, arising from the sense-experiences, is bound up with the body, especially with the nerve-sense system, one becomes acquainted with only a limb of man. We cannot know the whole, full man unless we have the will to rise to the modes of knowledge which come out of initiation-science.

Once again I would like to emphasize: if these things are investigated, everyone who approaches the results with an unprejudiced mind can understand them with ordinary, healthy human reason—just as he can understand what astronomers or biologists have to say about the world. The results can be tested, and indeed one will find that this testing is the first stage of initiation-knowledge. For initiation-knowledge, one must first have an inclination towards truth, because truth, not untruth and error, is one's object. Then one who follows this path will be able, if destiny makes it possible, to penetrate further and further into the spiritual world during this earthly life. In our day, and in a higher way, the call inscribed over the portal of a Greek temple must be fulfilled: “Man, know thyself!” Those words were not a call to man to retreat into his inner life but a demand to investigate into the being of man: into the being of immortality = body; into the being of unborn-ness = immortal spirit; and into the mediator between the earth, the temporal, and the spirit = soul. For the genuine, the true man consists of body, soul, and spirit. The body can know only the body; the soul can know only the soul; the spirit can know only the spirit. Thus we must seek to find active spirit within us in order to be able to perceive the spirit also in the world.

When the conversation turns to what is lacking in society today, there is scarcely anyone who does not have something really significant to contribute, from his own particular position in life. My purpose here, however, is not to draw up a list of all the various deficiencies that a survey would reveal. It is rather to direct attention to some of the antecedents of a phenomenon that has, quite justifiably, attracted comment on many sides and has led a large part of mankind into a mood of extraordinary pessimism and hopelessness.

One of the most extreme expressions of this hopelessness came from a man of whom it might perhaps have been least expected—a man, moreover, who belonged to a period for which such an opinion cannot help striking us as something out of the ordinary. In one of his last books, the influential art-historian Herman Grimm, who did not live to experience the most fearful war in history, but died at the turn of the century, makes this surprising statement: “When we survey the international situation today, and observe, with the `mind's eye' I would say, how the various nations of the civilized world behave to one another, how they attack one another, and how they hold within them the seeds of further conflicts, then we feel ready to set a date for mass suicide, since we cannot envisage where all these things that bring men and nations into conflict, strife and combat, are to lead, if not to the utter collapse of civilization.” I regard this statement as striking precisely because it comes from Herman Grimm—since his philosophy of life was in itself a joyous one; throughout his life, he kept his eyes fixed on all the things that can elevate mankind and that exist in man as creative and productive forces. It is striking, moreover, that he did not make this statement under the influence of the sense of gloom that was to be experienced in the years just before the outbreak of the Great War, or during it. His observation sprang entirely from the spirit of the nineteenth century, at the end of which it was made. Nothing that has happened since then seems likely in any way to cushion the impact on us of such a statement.

Yet at the same time it can never be the business of mankind to get bogged down in mere hopelessness; we must rather be on the look-out for anything that can lead to revival, to reconstruction, to a new dawn. This being so, it is necessary for us to look more deeply into the causes of the extraordinarily difficult situation that has gradually developed inside European civilization. Even if we believe that these causes can only be economic ones, we shall still have to look to the spiritual life of modern civilization for the main reason underlying this economic decline.

In my lectures here, I have pointed out more than once how our present temper of soul—together with all the soul-powers we can acquire at present—is affected by historical forces, and to understand these we have to go back a long way in human development. Specifically, I pointed out yesterday how at the threshold of the spiritual life of the West, looked at historically, there stands a figure who still has one eye on Asia, whilst the other is already directed at the perspectives of Europe. I mean Plato.

When we examine Plato's social theories, they appear to our modern consciousness extraordinarily alien in many respects. We find that he sees the ideal social system in the creation of a community even at the expense of the development of individual human beings who have been born into this earthly life. Plato thinks it quite feasible that children who appear unfit for life should simply be abandoned, so that they may not occupy a place in the community and thus disturb the social organism. He also manages to regard as an ideal social organism one in which only members of a certain caste enjoy the full privileges of citizenship. Apart from the fact that slavery appears quite natural to him, he would also grant those responsible for trade and commerce only a precarious position within his social system. All those who are not fixed within this system by virtue of having been born—by right, as he sees it—into its fabric, are not in fact completely accepted into the organization. Much else might be said, too, on the question: How does Plato's ideal relate to the individual human being? And here, from the standpoint of modern consciousness, we must conclude that there is present as yet little understanding of this human individuality. Attention is still directed entirely to the community, which is seen as primary. The man who is to live in it is regarded as secondary. His life is accepted as justified only in so far as he can match the social ideal that exists outside his own personality.

To discover what led Plato to this concept of community, we must look once more at Oriental civilization. And when we do so, we realize how, in the last analysis, the historical development of Europe's spiritual life is like a small peninsula jutting out from a great continent.

When we look at Asia, we find that there the idea of community is the primary one, and that Plato simply took it over from the East. To what has been said already about this idea, one thing must be added, if the social situation throughout the world is to be illuminated.

When we come to examine the basic character of spiritual life in the Orient, we find that it embraced a humanity quite different in type from the Europeans of later civilization. In many psychic and spiritual matters, indeed, we can say that there prevailed in Asia a high level of civilization, one to which many Europeans, even, long to return. I have already mentioned the often-quoted expression: Light comes from the East. What is most striking of all, however, is that these men of different type did not have the feature that has been typical of Europeans since they first began to play a civilized part in the world's development. What we observe there in Asia is a subdued sense of self, a sense of personality that is still quiescent in the depths of the soul. The European's awareness of personality is not as yet found in Asia. If on the other hand this high level of Asian civilization is adopted by an individual who still lacks this sense of personality—and it is a civilization suited for adoption by a human community—then he experiences it as in a dream, without sense of personality.

Obviously, in an age when human individuality had not yet attained its full development, communities were more receptive to and capable of a high level of culture than were individuals. In communal life, human capacities for absorbing this civilization increased not simply in an arithmetical but in a geometrical progression. Meanwhile, the particular ideal that Oriental civilization had set before itself, as it gradually passed over into Europe, was minted by European spirits in a simple formula—the Apolline dictum: “Know thyself!”

We can, in a sense, regard the entire Ancient East as developing towards the realization in Greece, as the ultimate intention of Oriental self-less civilization, of that sentence: “Know thyself!”—a sentence which has since survived as a spiritual and cultural motto to direct mankind. Yet we can also see, there in the East, that it is regarded as desirable, for the attainment of a higher stage of development in mankind, to penetrate to the self after all. On the spiritual side, I have already indicated this in characterizing yoga. On the social side, it reveals itself when we look at the theories current in the East with regard to leadership of the masses. Everywhere we find that the man who was the teacher and the leader was at the same time, in the spiritual sphere, the priest, but also at the same time the healer. We find in the East an intimate connection between all that mankind sought as knowledge and as higher spiritual life, on the one hand, and healing, on the other. For early Oriental civilization, the doctor cannot be separated from the teacher and the priest.

This is, of course, connected with the fact that Oriental civilization was dominated by a feeling of universal human guilt. This feeling introduces something pathological into human development, so that the cognitive process itself, and indeed every effort to reach a higher spirituality, is regarded as having the function of healing man as nature made him. Education to a higher spirituality was also healing, because man in his natural state and thus uneducated was regarded as a being who stood in need of healing. Connected with this were the early Oriental mysteries.

The cult of mysteries sought to achieve, in institutions that were, I would say, church and school and source of social impulses combined, the development of the individual to a higher spiritual life. They did this in such a way that, as I have already indicated in my previous lectures, religion, art and science were combined: in performing the ritual actions, men were religious beings; and here what mattered was not the articles of faith, still less the dogmas, that occupied the soul, but the fact that the individual was participating in a socially organized rite, so that man's approach to the divine was made principally through sacrifice and ritual act. Yet the ritual act and its foundations in turn involved an aesthetic element. And this combination of aesthetic and religious elements gave to knowledge its original form.

The man who was to attain this unified triad of religion, art and science, however, had not merely to accept something that represented a step forward in his development; he had also to undergo a complete transformation as a man, a kind of rebirth.

The description of the preparations that such a student of the higher spiritual life had to undertake makes it clear that he had consciously to undergo a kind of death. He experienced, that is, something that set him apart from life in the ordinary world, as death sets men apart from this life. Then, when he had left behind everything in his inner experience that appertained to earthly life, he would, after passing through death, experience the spiritual world in a complete rebirth. This is the old religious form of catharsis, the purification of man. A new man was to be born inside the old. Things that man can so experience in the world as to arouse in him passions and emotions, desires and appetites, notions that are of this world—all these he was to experience within the mysteries in such a manner that they were left behind and he emerged as one purified of these experiences. Only then, as a man reborn, was he credited with being capable of exerting any social influence on his fellow-men. Even the academic scholarship of our time has quite correctly observed that the surviving remnants of this cult have been of enormous importance for social life, and that the impulses aroused in those who have experienced such a catharsis in these very secret places have exerted the greatest conceivable influence on social life outside. As I say, this is not merely a pronouncement of spiritual science, it is something that even academic scholarship has arrived at. You can see this by looking at Wilamowitz. What we find is that, in Oriental civilization, the aim was to cure man by knowledge and by all the efforts to achieve a spiritual education.

What existed in the East passed over in another form to Greece and thus to Europe, and it has continued to affect Europe to the extent that Greek culture itself has influenced European spiritual life and civilization. Let me mention a point that is not usually emphasized. In his study of Greek tragedy, from which the West has derived so much of artistic importance for its spiritual life, Aristotle produced a description that is usually taken far too much at its face value. People are always quoting the familiar sentence in which Aristotle says that the aim of tragedy is to arouse fear and pity, so that the excitation of these and other emotions shall bring about a purification, or catharsis, of them. In other words, Aristotle is pointing to something in the aesthetic sphere—the effect that tragedy should produce. Armed for the interpretation of Aristotle's dictum, not with academic philology, but with an understanding of Oriental spiritual life—with a knowledge, that is, of its roots in the past—we can interpret what

Aristotle means by pity and fear more extensively than it is usually interpreted. He means in fact, as we come to perceive, that the spectator is brought by tragedy to mental participation in the sorrow, pain and joy of others, and that in this way the spectator in his mental life escapes from the narrow confines that he naturally occupies. Through the contemplation of the suffering of others, there is aroused in the spectator—for here man goes outside his physical existence, if only vicariously—that fear which always arises when a human being is confronted with something that takes him outside himself, and creates in him a transport of faintness and breathlessness. We can say, therefore: Aristotle really means that, in looking at tragedy, man enters a world of feeling that takes him out of himself; that he is overcome by fear; and that a purification or catharsis ensues. In this way he learns to bear what in the natural state he cannot bear; through purification he is strengthened for the sympathetic experience of alien sorrow and alien joy; he is no longer overcome by fear when he has to go outside himself and into social life. In ascribing a function of this kind to tragedy, Aristotle, we perceive quite clearly, is really demonstrating that tragedy also educates man towards a strengthening of his sense of self and his inner security of soul.

I am well aware that to introduce the aesthetic element into social life in this way strikes many people today as a devaluation of art, as if one were trying to attribute some kind of extrinsic purpose to it. Objections of this kind, however, often really betray a certain philistinism, resting as they do on the belief that any attempt to assimilate art into human life as a whole, into all that the human soul can experience, implies its subordination to a merely utilitarian existence. This is not what it meant for the Greeks; it meant rather the inclusion of art in the life that carries man above himself, not just beneath himself into mere utility.

If we can look beyond the mere utility that typifies our time, we shall be able to understand the precise significance of the Greek view of art: that the Greeks saw in tragedy, side by side with its purely artistic aspect, something that brought man face to face with himself, drawing him away from a dream, a half-conscious perception of the world, nearer and nearer to a complete awareness of himself. We may say: in the social sphere, tragedy was certainly intended to make its contribution to the all-important precept: “Man, know thyself!”

If, moreover, from this extension of art into the social sphere we pass on to a consideration of the position of the individual vis-à-vis society, and from this perspective look back at the Orient, we find that, in the mysteries too, what was sought through therapeutic treatment—the rebirth of man as a higher being—represented a strengthening of the sense of self. From an awareness that the soul was not then attuned to a sense of self, and that such a sense still remained to be developed, the mysteries attempted a rebirth in which man emerged to individuality. For this ancient society, therefore, experience of self was really something that had still to be attained. It was seen as a social duty to foster the birth of this sense of self in individuals who could become leaders in the social sphere. Only when we comprehend this can we gain an understanding of the strong sense of community persisting in Plato's ideal state, and of his belief that man is entitled to develop his individuality fully only if he does so through the rebirth that was accessible to the wisdom of the time. This shows that humanity at that time had no awareness of the claims of individuality in the fullest sense.

What grew out of this kind of society in Asia then established itself in Europe, combined with Christianity, passed over into the Middle Ages and even survived here for a long period. The manner of its survival, however, was determined by the fact that the hordes which, mainly from Northern and Central Europe, streamed into this civilization—South European now, but inherited from Asia—were endowed by nature with a strong sense of self. These tribes acquired the important historical task of carrying over what Oriental man had achieved with a still subdued sense of self, into complete self-consciousness and a full sense of self. For the brilliant civilization of the Greeks, “Know thyself!” was still an ideal of human cognition and society. The peoples who descended from the North during the Middle Ages brought with them, as the central feature of their being, this sense of self. It was theirs by nature. Though they lived in groups, they none the less strove to incorporate into their own personality what they absorbed in the cognitive and social sphere. It was in this way, then, that there came to be established the contrast between community life and individual life. The latter only appeared in the course of history, and did so, I would say, with the assistance of man-made institutions.

In thus making its appearance in human development, the sense of self was bound to link up with something else, with which it certainly has an organic connection. Looking back once more at the features of Oriental-Greek civilization even as it appeared to Plato, we are nowadays very much aware that this whole civilization was in fact built on slavery, on the subjugation of large numbers of people. A great deal has been said from various standpoints about the significance of slavery in earlier times, and if we are willing to sift this properly, we shall naturally find a great deal that is significant in it. But the point that above all others is still relevant for our life today is precisely the one that I said has actually received little attention. For community life—and also for the social life which sprang from the mysteries, and for the development of which the Greek regarded his art as providing an impetus—the full significance of human labour within the social order was quite unrealized. In consequence, they had to exclude human labour from their discussion of the ideal image of man.

When we describe Oriental-Greek man, with the dignity that gave him his authority, we are describing something that was in fact constructed over the heads of the masses, who were actually doing the work. The masses merely formed an appendage to the social system, which developed within a society that had not absorbed labour into its being, since it regarded labour and those who performed it as a natural datum. Human society really only began where labour left off. At a higher level, in a higher psychic sense, man experienced something that also finds expression in the world of animals. In their world, the food supply, which with us forms part of the social organization, is provided by nature. The animal does not calculate; it does what it does out of its inmost being; and specialization is unnecessary for animals. Where apparent exceptions occur, they must be regarded as proving the rule. We can therefore say: in transplanting itself to Europe and entering further and further into the demands of individuality, Oriental civilization also took on the task of integrating human labour into the social system. When man's awareness of self is fully wakened, it is quite impossible to exclude labour from that system.

This problem—which did not exist as yet in Greece—became the great social question round which countless battles were fought in Rome. It was felt instinctively that only by integrating labour into the social system can man experience to the full his personality. In this way, however, the entire social organization of humanity took on a different aspect. It has a different appearance in civilized Europe from what it had in civilized Asia. Only by looking back at the development of individuality in Europe shall we understand something of what has repeatedly, and rightly, been emphasized as significant when we come to describe the source of the deficiencies of our time.

It is rightly pointed out here that the specific shape of the social order in our time was actually only decided with the emergence of modern technology and division of labour. It is also pointed out that modern capitalism, for instance, is merely a result of the division of labour. What the traditional teaching of modern Western civilization has to say in this respect, in characterizing division of labour and its consequences in the social deficiencies of our time, is extraordinarily significant. But when something like this is said, and from one point of view rightly said, the unprejudiced observer cannot help looking at, say, ancient Egypt or Ancient Babylon, and observing that these states contained cities of an enormous size, and that these achievements too were only made possible by a division of labour. I was able yesterday to show that, as early as the eleventh century, a kind of Socialism existed in China, yet that similarity of surface features is not what really matters. In the same way, I must point out that division of labour, too, which in modern times has rightly been seen as the central social problem, was also found in earlier epochs of human development; it was in fact what made the Oriental social systems possible, and these in turn have since affected Europe. In Europe, division of labour, after being less common at first, gradually evolved. I would say: division of labour in itself is a repetition of something that also occurred in earlier times; but in the Oriental civilizations it bore the stamp of a society in which individuality was still dormant. The modern division of labour, which makes its appearance along with technology, on the other hand, impinges on a society of men who are now seeking to expand their individuality to the full. Once again, then, the same phenomenon turns out to have a quite different significance in different ages.

For the Oriental social order, the first consideration was thus to allow man to grow clear of social restrictions and of communal life. If he was to move up to a higher spiritual life, man really had to find his individuality. The European of a later age already had this sense of self, and needed to integrate it into the social order. He had to follow precisely the opposite path from that followed in the East.

Everywhere in Europe we find evidence of the difficulty men experience in accommodating their individuality to the social order, whereas at one time the social system had been such that men sought to rescue their individuality from it. This difficulty still faces us on every side today as an underlying social evil.

When, some years ago, I was often called upon to lecture to audiences of working men, I saw a good deal of evidence that there did exist in men's souls this problem of articulating the ego into the general social order. Men are unable to find the way from a highly developed sense of self into the social order. And in attempting repeatedly to show proletarian audiences, for instance, what this way would need to be like—how it would have to be different from the ways that Socialist or Communist agitators commonly offer nowadays—one came across very curious views in the ensuing discussions. They might appear trivial; but a thing is trivial no longer when it provides the motive power for innumerable people in life. Thus, I once attempted to talk about social problems in a working men's club. A man came forward and introduced himself straight away as a cobbler. Naturally, it can be extremely pleasant to hear what such a man thinks; in this case, however, what he was unable to think was much more revealing than what he did think. First of all he set forth, in marked opposition to my own views, his conception of the social order; and then he reiterated that he was a simple cobbler: in the social order that he had outlined, therefore, he could never rise to be a registrar of births, marriages and deaths. Underlying his outlook, however, was the quite definite assumption that he might perfectly well be a Cabinet Minister! This shows the kind of bewilderment that ensues when the question arises: How is the ego, strengthened within spiritual life, to articulate itself into a social order?

In another working men's association (I am giving one or two examples, which could be multiplied indefinitely), someone said: “Oh, we don't really want to be foremen; we don't want to manage the factory; we want to remain what we are, simple workmen; but as such we want all our rights.” Justified as such a statement may be from one point of view, it displays, in the last analysis, no interest in social organization, only an interest in the strongly developed self.

I am well aware that many people today will not consciously admit that this particular discrepancy between the experience of self and the social order lies at the root of many, indeed almost all of our social deficiencies and shortcomings. But anyone who looks at life with unclouded vision cannot escape the conclusion: We have certainly managed to develop the feeling of self, but we cannot connect it with a real insight into man. We say the word “I;” but we do not know how to relate this “I” to a human personality that is fully comprehended and fully self-determining.

We can experience this once again when we come across views that are very much of the present, as opposed to what, on the basis of spiritual science, we regard as necessary for the health of humanity. A leading figure in present-day educational circles once said something very curious to me during a visit to the Waldorf School. I showed our visitor round personally, and explained to him our educational methods and their social significance. I pointed out that, with a sound educational method of this kind, education of the spirit and the soul must be linked with that of the body. Anyone wishing to teach and educate must first of all know the effect of this or that action on the forces of recovery or decline in the human organism, the human body; he must know how the exercise or neglect of memory expresses itself later in life in physical symptoms, and how, simply by treating the life of the soul, we can gradually bring about an improvement in physical ailments. The teacher, I concluded, must certainly understand the body's association with the soul and the spirit in health and sickness. And the reply I got was that, to do this, the teacher would have to be a doctor!

Well, up to a certain point it would indeed be desirable if this were the case. For when we look at our social system, with the difficulty of integrating the self into it, we are reminded once more of what I have touched on today in connection with the civilization of two regions: the Orient, where the doctor was also the teacher and leader of the people; and Greece, where, as I have shown, art had an educative influence. The art of medicine was associated with every aspiration of the spirit, because at that time man was regarded, if only instinctively, as a physical, mental and spiritual whole; in the treatment that was then applied to the soul, forces were brought into play which yielded knowledge for a general therapy of man.

The leaders at that time told themselves: I must attempt to cure man by leading him to true spirituality. To do this, I must bring healing forces to bear on a fairly normal life. Once I understand these forces thoroughly and can follow out their effects, this knowledge will tell me what to do when a man is ill.

From observation of the healthy man, I learn what forces to employ when confronted by the sick man. The sick man is simply one whose organism has deviated further in one direction or the other than it does in everyday life. Knowing how to bestow health on man in his normal state, I also know how to cure him when sick. Knowing which drink, which cordial affords me this or that insight into connections between man and nature—knowing, that is, the effect of a natural product in the sphere of knowledge—I shall also know what effect it has on a sick man, if used in greater strength.

The intimate association of medical art with education and development towards spirituality in general, which was the goal of the Ancient Orient and had an important rôle there, appears once more as a spiritual residuum in the Greek experience of art. Here, the aim is that the soul should be healed through art. Armed with this knowledge, we can still perceive in the use of the word “catharsis” in connection with tragedy how—because the same word was used in connection with the early mysteries, for the complete purification of man on entry to a new life—something of this sense is taken over. We are, however, also reminded that, for Greek doctors in the early period, knowledge and medicine still went together, and that in education, but also in popular culture in general, people saw something on a more spiritual level that was related to medicine, something that in a sense sprang from medicine.

We need to examine these phenomena of a bygone age, if we are to gain a strength of soul such that, when we contemplate the social systems in our own age, we can keep in view the whole man, and also such that, when we meet our fellow-men, we not only unfold a strong sense of self, but also connect this with a perception of the whole man in body, soul and spirit. If by an advance in spiritual science we can do this, there will become available, simply through the temper of soul that ensues, ways and means of integrating this whole man, but also all men, into the social order, thus annexing labour for society in the way that historical evolution in any case makes necessary. For this is what we are still suffering from today: the need to fit labour properly into the social order.

It is true that people often regard labour as something that goes into the article produced, being crystallized in it, so to speak, and giving it its value. Those who look more closely, however, will observe that what matters is not simply that a man should work, devoting to society his physical strength. The important factor in determining price and value is rather how the work fits into social life as a whole. We can certainly conceive of a man doing a job of work that is fundamentally uneconomic in the social order. The man may work hard and may believe that he is entitled to payment for his work; but when his work exists in the context of an inadequate social system, it often does more harm than good. And one ought to examine in this light a great deal of labour within society which, though exhausting, is really worthless. Consider how our literature is constantly accumulating; it has to be printed; a tremendous amount of work is involved in the manufacture of paper, the printing, etc., and then, apart from the tiny proportion that survives, it all has to be pulped once more: work is being done here which, I would say, disappears into thin air. And if you consider how much work has disappeared into thin air during the butchery of the recent war, you will gradually come to see that labour as such cannot lay claim to any absolute value, but derives its value from its contribution to the life of society.

The disease that most affects our age, however, is precisely the lack of this basic capacity to integrate labour into the social organism, taking account of the fact that everything men do, they really do for others. We need to win through to this by learning to integrate our own individual selves into the community. Only by achieving a true understanding between man and man, so that what the other man needs becomes part of our own experience and we can transpose our self into the selves of others, shall we win through to those new social groupings that are not given us by nature, but must be derived from the personality of man.

All our social needs certainly spring from the self. People sense what is lacking in the social order. What we need to find, however, is a new understanding of what human fellowship in body, soul and spirit really means. This is what a social order ought really to be able to bring forth out of the self.

The great battle that is being fought over the division of labour—fought quite differently from the way such battles have ever previously been fought under the influence of human individuality—is what underlies all our social shortcomings. Nowadays, we found associations for production; we participate in them, concerned not with their rôle in the social organism, but with our own personal position—and this is understandable. It is not my aim here to complain, pedantically or otherwise, about human egotism. My aim is to understand something for which there is considerable justification. Without this sense of self, we should not have advanced to human freedom and dignity. The great spiritual advances have been possible only because we have attained this sense of self. But this in turn must also find a way to imaginative identification with others.

There is a great deal of talk nowadays about the necessity of conquering individualism. This is not what matters. The important thing is to find society in man himself. The Oriental had to discover man in society. We have to discover society in man. We can do so only by extending on every side the life of the soul.

That is why I tried, at the close of one of my mystery-plays, to present a scene showing how a man wins through to an inner experience of the different forms of mankind. These differences exist outside us. In society, differentiation is necessary; we must each have our profession. If we find the right bridge between man and man, however, we can experience within us all that is separate in the social world outside—each individual profession. Once this social system comes into being within us, once we can experience the reality of society inside ourselves, we shall be able to follow that opposite way of which I have spoken: the way from the self to the social order. This will also mean, however, that everything connected with the individual—today we can point to labour; in the next two days we shall be looking at capital—is capable of finding its place in human society. In co-operatives, in the formation of trusts and combines, in the trade union movement, everywhere we feel a need to find a way out of the self into association with others. But here precisely is the great struggle of the present day: to enable what exists around us really to take root within us.

As already indicated, there was a time, not so very far behind us—we need only go back to the thirteenth century—when man had a bond with the product of his labour, and the making of every key and every lock gave pleasure, because the maker poured into it something of his own substance. The legacy of an earlier social order still made its mark upon the product. With their individuality as yet not fully awakened, people still accepted society. Since then, individuality has reached its zenith with the advance of technology. In the last analysis, the man of today is often extraordinarily remote from the product of his labour, even when his work lies in the spiritual sphere. What we perform in the outside world needs to take root in us and to link up with our individuality. This, however, will only happen if we develop the life of the soul on every side in the way I have described in the last few days. For if we do develop the life of the soul, our interest in all that has its being around us will be fired once more.

You encounter many people in this purely intellectual age who find their own profession uninteresting. It may have become so, perhaps. There must come a time, once more, when every detail of life becomes of interest. Whereas formerly what was interesting was the nature of objects, in the future the interest will lie in our knowing how our every activity is articulated into the social organization of mankind. Whereas formerly we looked at the product, we shall now look at the man who requires the product. Whereas formerly the product was loved, the love of man and the brotherhood of man will now be able to make their appearance in the soul that has developed, so that men will know the reason for their duties.

All this, however, needs to take hold of the soul before people try to reach an understanding about the particular social deficiencies of our time. From this standpoint, too, we must consider that Europe is still engaged in its battle for human individuality against the forces in its spiritual tradition that continue to flow from Asia—from foundations quite unlike those that exist today, foundations that took root in the souls of men, but at a time when full individuality had not yet been attained.

Thus the present time occupies a position not only between abstract concepts of individuality and community, but also in the centre of something that pervades man's soul and brings every individual human being today into action in defence of his individuality. We are only at the beginning of the road that leads to the discovery of the right relationship between self and community. It is from this fact that the shortcomings of the time, which for this reason I do not need to enumerate, derive.

Perceiving this psychological basis, this spiritual foundation, we shall be able to view in their proper light many of the needs, deficiencies and miseries that confront us in society today. To win our way through to this light, we need courage. Only then shall we know whether the pessimism that Herman Grimm expressed in so extreme a form is justified, and whether people are justified in saying: There remain only forces of decline in

European civilization, one can only be pessimistic, even: The date for mass suicide ought to be fixed.

That is, indeed, the question: whether all the Asiatic features that Europe had to conquer have in fact been conquered, so that after finding itself Europe can now, from the centre of the world's development, also reach an understanding with the East.

It is from a standpoint such as this that we must consider whether what we ought to see is the kind of thing Herman Grimm had in mind, or whether we are not justified in thinking that mankind can still, through the development of what lies dormant in its soul, prove capable of choosing a time when understanding shall be achieved, and that what faces us is not the death of this European civilization, but its rebirth.

Whether and how far this is possible will be examined, at least in outline, in the remaining lectures.

If you are seeking, within the present social system, forces that inspire confidence, you will have to look in hidden places. Social distresses and deficiencies are only too evident; prospects, genuine ones at any rate, rather less so.

There are, of course, self-deceivers, on a greater or lesser scale, who even in face of the grave difficulties of the present seek salvation in this or that recipe; they devise all kinds of social institutions in which they claim that mankind, or at any rate a section of mankind, would prosper better than it ever has before. It seems to me, however, that nowadays we have become so clever, if I may so express it, that it is relatively easy to work out, on a would-be national basis, any kind of social system. It is possible today to be familiar with quite a lot of social systems advocated by the various shades of party opinion, wthout finding anything really bad about them; and yet, we do not expect anything very much from them, either. Certainly, anyone who considers the society of today, not simply as raw material for sociological theories, but from the standpoint of a knowledge of man, can only talk of the emergence of social prospects when man is able once again to come close to his real self.

The most important thing at this stage is not the excogitation of institutions, but the possibility of discovering man and including him in the social institutions we inhabit. And at this point it must even be admitted that, when it does become possible to discover man within the social order—or, at the present day, within the social chaos—then any given institution can serve the same purpose, more or less. The fact is that mankind can prosper socially in all kinds of different ways, within the most varied institutions.

What matters today is human beings, not just institutions. For this reason, I evoked a certain amount of satisfaction, particularly in circles where they feel the social problem more than they think about it, with my book The Threefold Commonwealth, by not merely showing how a given institution might be different. Instead, I argued that a great deal nowadays depends on whether the man who has to run a business, for instance, is able to bring his whole personality to bear, either directly or through assistants, on his work-people, so that he comes close to them by really discussing with them, as man to man, everything that goes on in the business, from the purchase of the raw material to the marketing of the finished product and the means by which it reaches the consumer. If you repeatedly discuss this chain of production with your employees, in a way that is attuned to human considerations, you establish a basis on which you can build the other things that are socially desirable and worth striving for today.

Yet it is still not enough to talk to people technically, in this way; something further is needed. What is needed, if we are to have hope in the prospects of society once more, is what I want to talk about today.

For a long time, the view has been widespread that the man who is a leader in the social sphere must first and foremost establish contact with the masses. Efforts in this direction were made throughout the nineteenth century. And as the social problem became more and more of a burning question, you could see people working in factories for months on end, in an attempt to get to know the life of the workers. There have been senior civil servants who, after reaching the retiring age and so completing their work in society, have gone among the working people and been astonished to discover what it is really like there. In short, there have long been efforts to get to know the common man, and in particular the proletariat. We may say, too, that the achievements of our literature and art in this respect have been considerable. The mode of existence of the workers and the masses in general, often impressively presented through works of art and literature, certainly deserves full recognition. With the major problems of the present, however, the most important point is not really that the leaders should know what goes on among the workers or the masses in general. Fundamentally, very little depends on our artistic depiction, from the inside, of the life of the masses: the miseries and cares that beset them, their struggles, their ideas and goals, and so on. I would say:

What we need today is not so much a way of understanding the masses, as a way of being understood by them; of going into the factory and business, whatever its kind, and being able to speak in such a way that we are not felt to be academic or “educated” or theoretical, but are taken as men who have something to say that appeals to men's souls.

For a long time now there have been laudable attempts to establish institutions for adult education, up to university level. What is made available to the people in this way does, it is true, interest them for a while by virtue of the piquancy of many scientific results; there is some excitement if the lecture is illustrated by lantern slides, or if we take people to zoos and the like. But we ought not to be under any illusion that this really appeals to their souls or touches their hearts. To do this, we must have something to say about man's relation to existence as a whole. On this point, it is true, leading personalities today still have rather odd opinions. They consider that the masses are not really interested in “philosophical questions,” as they call them. But they are! If you can only find the right language to express it, then eyes light up and hearts unfold. For example, if you start with quite simple scientific facts, and know how to handle them in such a way that, out of your reflections, human essence and human destiny ultimately emerge; and if you show people that what you say is well founded, and at the same time that it is not fragmentary knowledge that at best can occupy us in our moments of leisure, but something a man can absorb as nourishment for his soul—only if you succeed in doing this will you have made a start on the creation of confidence between the people, as they are called, and the leaders. It is possible today to speak from a party viewpoint, to provide the people with concepts such as “capitalism,” “labour,” “surplus value” and the like: the people will gradually assimilate these concepts, and then you can talk on party lines. But by doing so you will not provide men with systems in which they can participate with all their humanity, or enable them to co-operate in the creation of the society we must hope for if the forces of advancement, and not those of decline, are to prevail.

If you want to, you can soon see what the real situation is today, and where the real obstacles and restrictions occur. I was for some years a teacher at a workers' educational college, where I had to teach all kinds of subjects. I never kowtowed to any party dogma; at the same time, I never encountered any resistance on the part of a worker to understanding, when I presented history, for example, in such a way as to reveal at every point that it is not something that can be comprehended by a historical materialist interpretation, but something in which spiritual forces and spiritual impulses are operative. I was even able to evoke some understanding of why it was that Marx, whose ideas were thoroughly familiar to the members of my audiences, arrived at the view that is called “historical materialism,” the view that regards all spiritual phenomena as merely the effect of mechanistic and economic factors and the like. I was able to show them that this is because in fact, from about the sixteenth century onwards, there have increasingly come into play the forces that have made economic life dominant and decisive. In consequence, art and science and the rest really seem like—and in a sense even are—the results of economic life, mechanistic life. Marx made the mistake he did because he was only familiar with modern history.

It is not my wish to argue for one view or the other, however, but simply to observe that even this point was understood. It was not a lack of confidence on the part of the audiences that made my kind of popular instruction impossible, but the fact that one day the authorities noticed: the teaching here is not in accord with party dogma; instead, what is presented by way of illustration is drawn, to the best of the teacher's knowledge and judgment, from what appeals to human nature. And they grew anxious lest the audience should increase. One day, their emissary appeared at a meeting that was summoned for the purpose, to investigate whether I was fit to be a teacher at the workers' educational college. One of the workers' leaders appeared. And when I commented that, if the principle of progress was to be established in these circles, then the teacher must at least have freedom to teach as he wished, the representative replied: “Freedom is something we don't recognize! We recognize only a proper compulsion.”

This was the attitude that led to my expulsion from the teaching staff of that workers' educational college. From my point of view, however, it was really an illuminating experience. Not so much the expulsion itself, as the preceding acquaintance with the wide variety of people that make up the modern proletariat. An illuminating experience, because you could see that, if only you will speak out of your full humanity, so that your hearers

feel you are saying something to them that reaches into their hearts and affects their human and earthly being, they will regard thinking, when it springs from a philosophy of life, as the most important thing they can be offered. There exists today a feeling that enlightenment—not in any party sense, but in a general human sense—must spread among the masses. People long, more or less unconsciously, for something that springs from a really far-reaching philosophy of life.

And how should it be otherwise? For, after all, vast sections of mankind today are employed in such a way that their work cannot conceivably interest them. They perform it as if faced with something that has no relationship whatever with their humanity. Hence, although the clubs, guilds and unions that tend to be formed in these circles are indeed organized on the basis of the various trades—there are metal workers' unions, printers' unions, and so on—fundamentally they have surprisingly little to do with the business of production. They are primarily concerned with the element in the material sphere of life which is of general human interest—with consumption and the satisfaction of human needs. Mankind has had to become resigned about production, but not to anything like the same extent about consumption. And so large numbers of people are faced at present with work that turns them back upon themselves. Their environment cannot interest them, nor what they do from morning till night, unless it be so presented to them that they can find it interesting; what interests them first and foremost—and this is where we must begin—is what confronts a man when he is alone with himself after work and can simply concentrate his attention on his own humanity. We must also admit that, when we examine the social chaos of our time, we can see quite clearly that there are also many people in executive positions who are cut off from a direct interest in and relationship with what they are doing. It should be, not just an open secret, but something known to the widest possible circles, that even people whose work is intellectual often have so little interest in their profession that they too are reduced to waiting until after working hours in order to pursue their genuine and human interests. For that very reason it is obvious that we must provide human beings with things of human significance, if we wish to establish a basis for social optimism.

In the intellectual sector of civilization, we have accomplished an extraordinary amount. Today, we can point to all the things that human intelligence has achieved. And undoubtedly, people can learn an enormous amount when we acquaint them with the results of man's achievements in science and art. But that is not the point; the point is that we should be capable not only of disseminating intellectual culture, as a foundation for social structures, but also of exciting people, of inspiring them—not by producing grandiose utterances or well-rounded periods, but by having something to say, something that makes men feel: This touches my humanity.

If, on the other hand, we go to people with a philosophy of life derived from what is now popular and from what is recognized as true by our excellent natural sciences, you can see at once how impossible it is really to grip men's hearts with it and give them something that touches their humanity. Men will always regard the sort of thing they are usually given, as something superficial. In particular, what a man will say if he is willing to speak freely—because you have gained his confidence in other ways—is: “That's all very well: but in the first place we can't really understand what you say, because so much of it needs special preparation; and secondly it isn't straightforward enough for us; there is something that says to us: No thoroughfare!” I have heard many people talk like this about adult education colleges, public libraries and the like, as they are today. If now we seek to base on this experience an approach to society, we must look more deeply for the causes of the difficulty. And here once more I am compelled to introduce—in parenthesis, so to speak—part of a philosophy of life.

When, as we have often done during the last few days, we look at the Asiatic civilizations, so many legacies from which survive in our schools (even our secondary schools and universities), we find there, at any rate where the culture was at its height, something that must still be of inestimable value to us today. Its characteristic feature is that the knowledge of the world and philosophy of life discovered there were apprehended by the human spirit; and this in turn developed into the intellect, which I have described as the specific force of modern times. Our modern highly-developed intellect is, fundamentally, a late development of what, in the East, was dream-like clairvoyance. This dream-like clairvoyance has cast off its direct insight into the outside world and evolved into our inner logical order—into the great modern means of acquiring knowledge of nature.

And in the last analysis we must recognize, in the medium of philosophical communication in Europe today, yet another legacy from the Orient. It is not only the medieval schoolmen who still made use of words and concepts and ideas imbued with powers of the soul which derived from the East; we ourselves, however much we may deny it, speak, even in chemistry and physics, in language that we should not use if our education, right up to university level, were not conditioned by something derived from the Orient.

But in becoming intellect, this early clairvoyance has thrown off at the same time another shoot, which has affected the outlook on life of the masses in many ways. It has given rise to views which for the most part have already died out in Europe today, views which have been eradicated by modern elementary school education, and of which only vestiges survive among the most uneducated classes. While on the one hand the intellect has been developing to amazing heights, there has also developed deep down among the people (and far more than present-day psychology has yet revealed) something that projected certain subjective experiences, quite involuntarily, on to the outside world. These assumed the most varied forms, but they can all be covered by the single word “superstition.” Superstition, which signifies the projection of subjective experiences outwards into space and time, played a much greater rôle in mankind's development than is thought today. Even people who are only half-educated can now recognize the belief in ghosts as a superstition; yet there still persist in us, atavistically, many of the feelings that developed under the influence of this belief. In so far as we are the descendants of Oriental humanity in this respect too, we operate in our art and in other branches of life with at least the feelings that spring from this current in human development.

It is possible to examine what is emerging from the depths of social humanity, so to speak, at the present time; to look at the man who has developed out of the technical and mechanical world of modern times; to look into his heart and his quality of soul. And anyone who does so will see that this man—who has not gone through the process that makes the intellect supremely valuable to us today, the process of secondary and university education—has no genuine personal interest in all that can be achieved within the sphere of intelligence; what he has is something quite different. I would say: Something elemental reveals itself in such a man, welling up from depths that are rising to the surface in our social order—something elemental which, in Europe today, is quite inadequately understood, because fundamentally it is something new. But, when it is understood, it can show us the right way to bring a philosophy of life to the masses.

Anyone today who, growing up within mankind, has no contact with our inheritance from the Orient and is thus thrown back upon himself, as the working-man is and very many members of the upper classes too, is not interested first and foremost in the intellect. For him, it is above all the will that he is interested in—and will is something which rises up into the soul from deep below, something which emerges exclusively from man himself. Since this fact has, of course, been noticed in a superficial way, there exists today a certain longing to regard man as a being of will. Many people, indeed, believe that they can speak to the masses in terms of philosophy only if they deal primarily with the element of will in man. As a result of hankerings of this kind, it has come about—as frequently happens—that people have described to the masses “primitive culture,” in which man is still a creature of instinct. They describe to the working-man how these primitive people lived in simple circumstances, and then attempt to draw inferences about what the social order should be like today. In primary education today, a great deal of time is spent in describing the living conditions of these primitive, instinctive people. And there is a good deal of other evidence for the existence of a certain instinctive tendency to put forward the element of will, when people are called upon to expound a philosophy of life.

Out of a certain appetite for the sensational, the man of today does, it is true, accept these descriptions; to some extent, too, he feels in his own being, which has not advanced to a higher level of education, something akin to this instinctive element in human nature. But if you want to warm people, if you want to preserve their souls from desiccation, if you want to make contact with the whole man, then accounts of this kind will not help you.

Why is this? It is because, when you have scaled the peaks of science and acquired what science currently accepts as true, you develop, simply by doing so, something that really constitutes a modern superstition. Admittedly, it is not yet recognized as such; but just as the educated man of more recent times has learnt to regard the old belief in ghosts as a superstition, so to some extent the masses today—as it were prophetically, looking into the future—regard as a kind of superstition the ideas and concepts and notions that we assert about these primitive conditions of humanity.

What do we assert? We assert that mankind was originally governed by instinctive drives. These are something quite obscure, operating in unconscious regions that people are unwilling to define more precisely; they include the instincts, which are also found in animals, and all that is indefinite in man's feelings and expressions of will. People point to the element of natural creature active in man. Many thinkers today regard it as an ideal to depict man in such a way that what is inside him is presented as far as possible in terms of material processes, only elevated into those indefinite concepts that we call drives or instincts.

Let us, however, remember the view of man's inner make-up that I have developed in the last few days. I have shown how the exercises of spiritual science, by developing man, enable him to really see inside himself. He thereby reaches the stage of contemplating his inner organism, not as does the modern physiologist or anatomist from without, but in such a way that the parts of the organism can be inwardly experienced. When you have broken through the reflector of memory, you can look down upon the lungs, heart, etc., as something whose physical structure is merely the outward expression or manifestation of the spiritual—of that spiritual element which I have been able to represent as a world-memory linked with the great cosmos.

This can be sensed by the very man who today is thrown back by his work on to himself. Everywhere he longs to attain an understanding of it. But we achieve this understanding only when we clearly perceive what we are actually doing, when we perceive in its spiritual essence the element of spirit and soul which lies within us—which is not even our property and does not belong to our human personality, but which is the gulf, so to speak, that the cosmos sends into us as human beings. Man can come to know man only when, looking into himself, he finds as the basic substance of his physical being a spiritual element. Once we realize this, however, we also know that to speak of drives, instincts, and all the other things that people are always speaking of nowadays, is to interpose something in front of our real inner nature, just as superstition formerly interposed ghosts in front of external nature. When we speak of drives, instincts and the like in man, we mean only the psyche obscured, so to speak, by our own outlook. In speaking of our human make-up as it really is, we must ignore these spectres that we call instinctive drives, passions and the like, and see through them to reality. We must leave behind the spectres within us, represented by all these definitions of drives, lusts, passions, will and the like, in the same way as we have left behind the ghosts in the sphere of the external, natural order. With those ghosts, we interposed something from within us in front of external nature, and so projected what was subjective on to the objective sphere. Nowadays, we are setting up something that is, objectively, of a spiritual nature, as if it were something material; our drives and instincts, as usually defined, are materialized and internalized ghosts that obscure the true spiritual sphere. This is something which, as a matter of cognitive fact, is little understood nowadays, although it is felt when, with a true knowledge of man, we seek to approach anyone who, from the depths of his unconscious—and in the depths of this unconscious lies the spiritual sphere—instinctively feels: Don't talk to me about your materialized ghosts! You ought to be telling me something about the way in which man and the cosmos have grown up together.

If you have a feeling for society, you will rejoice over experiences like the one I had a few weeks ago, when I was lecturing to a group of working-men. I was originally supposed to speak about political economy. But I always arrange for the audience to choose the subject themselves; before the lecture begins, I let them hand it up to me or tell me, so that the knowledge imparted to them is of a kind that they themselves determine. On this occasion, a working-man took out a copy of our periodical The Three. He said he had read an article of mine in it, but couldn't quite understand what the planet was actually like which preceded the earth, subsequently went over into darkness, and eventually gave rise to the earth. I was able to lay before this man, in a straightforward and simple manner, an explanation in terms of spiritual science. And you could see that, whereas if you speak drily, in abstract concepts, they may feel: There's nothing much for us here! Yet when you speak of this kind of thing, their eyes light up, because they feel that here is something their souls can feed on, just as their bodies feed on what they eat. How their eyes light up when you give them something that grips their whole personality, their heart and soul—something that is not simply a concept of life, but an outlook, a philosophy of life in the sense that it really contains life and can excite enthusiasm, even when the worker comes straight from the machine.

And I certainly believe that social influence of this kind must be exerted first, before we can win men over in any other way—and they must be won over—to establish the appropriate social structures. How long this will take depends on men's determination. I know that many people say: “Oh, you are fobbing us off with something that will only be realized in four or five hundred years time.” To this I always reply: “Quite true, if not enough people want it; but in affairs of this kind, the important thing is not to calculate how long it may take for men to reach these social structures, but to forsake calculation and put our trust in the will.” If the will is present in a sufficiently large number of men, we may hope to attain, in not too great a length of time, what we might otherwise intellectually suppose would take centuries. Nothing is more of an obstacle to our reaching these social configurations than the hesitation that derives from such calculations. You should start, not by worrying about the results of intellectual calculation, but by attempting to come close to man. Then, you will see that, with a philosophy of life that does not interpose materialized ghosts before people's souls, but reveals to them man's link with the cosmos, you will soon meet with an appreciative reception.

Today, the usual reception you will get is as follows: If you take this kind of philosophy of life to those who are professionally qualified to judge it, they will compare it with what is already in existence, and will then take the view that it is amateurish, dilettante and so forth. Or the converse will happen: You wish to speak about these things, which so affect man's innermost self that drives, instincts and the like become spiritualized, and you feel obliged to adopt the scientific forms of expression customary today; otherwise what you have to say will be rejected before you start. But if you do adopt them, you are then told that you are speaking a language that is not for the people. You already knew this. That was why, when speaking to people who expect a great deal from those with scientific education, you set it in quite different contexts of ideas. What is said, however, is exactly the same. And that is how you come to realize that the man whose intellect has not been taught to run along a few particular lines by his specific intellectual training, will understand it. We shall, it is true, first have to leave behind an age in which, for doing this, a man can be thrown out of workers' educational colleges by those who regard themselves as the authentic leaders of the people.

I have had to demonstrate to you, then, that because of the very nature of the masses of humanity, there must exist today a philosophy of life in the form of an anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. For only out of such a philosophy, which can really talk about the spiritual sphere in speaking of man, can there arise any hope of attaining a social understanding. And then, from this social understanding, with people understanding one another, we can go forward to other things.

We can hope for this. This hope is native to us in Central Europe where, throughout the nineteenth century, the best minds sought a method of education by which it would be possible to lay hold of the child, so to speak, in the sphere of the will. They had perceived that a modern human being must be taken hold of in his will. They had not, of course, seen this as clearly as it can be seen with the aid of the philosophy of life I am propounding. But they had a notion of it. That is why they exerted themselves to find intellectual methods which would enable them to reach the child's will by way of his ideas, to lay hold of his will through his thought-forces. And an enormous amount of good was achieved in Central Europe, as a result of the German spirit—this is fully acknowledged in the West, or was at least until the Great War. Attention has always been drawn, in England, to the way in which, in Central Europe, people tried to take hold of the will indirectly, via a pedagogic method, and how this has been transplanted to England. This has always been recognized and described.

When we go still further West, to America, however, we find that, by the circumstances of spiritual geography, they have developed over there a distinct form of primitive philosophy of life—if I may so put it without offence—which yet carries within itself striking potentialities for the future. We find, for example, that in America, when educated people sum up what they think about human beings, they will say: What a man works out intellectually depends on the political party into which circumstances have led him, and on the church he belongs to. In reflecting the opinions of his church, his class, or his party, he does of course make use of his intellect; the real source, however, is not the intellect but the will. Again and again we can see American writers pointing to man's will as his primary substance. Present-day Americans like to quote writers who say: The intellect is nowadays nothing but a minister of state, and the will is the ruler—even though, as Carlyle said, the intellect may be an expensive minister.

This view, moreover, is not an invented abstraction, but something that is in the bones of educated Americans. Even the physiologists there talk in these terms. Anyone who has an ear for such things can perceive a marked difference between the language of physiologists in Europe and that of physiologists in America. Over there, people explicitly discuss how a man's brain is shaped by his situation in the world. They consider the brain to be a mechanism which is dependent, even down to its speech-centres, on the company a man keeps, the extent to which he gets on in life, and so forth. They therefore see the development of the will within the world as the primary aspect of man, and regard all the products of the brain as subordinate, as something which, fundamentally, has very little to do with a man's individuality. These people say: If you want to discover a man's individuality, you must examine his will and see how it developed in his childhood, in the context of his family, his church, his political allegiance, etc.; and then consider how he acquires an intellect which—as an American has said—has about as much to do with his essential being as the horse you ride has to do with the rider.

Although the legacy of the East has also extended as far as America, then, we have there, emerging directly from educated circles, something that in Europe lies in the subterranean depths of human existence. Our own America so to speak, the America that is within Europe, is the instinctive direction of humanity towards the will, and thus towards a very large class of people here. This also gives us the ground on which Europe must in fact reach an understanding with America, if a world-wide social rapprochement is to come about.

We do indeed find that a good deal of what the Americans have developed represents a primitive form of the exercises by which a spiritual vision is attained. Thus, we find Americans repeatedly commending self-control, self-discipline, self-education as all-important: what matters is not having learned something, but implanting it in your will by the constant repetition of a given exercise. We know the effect of rhythmically repeating concepts, and we know how the influence thus brought to bear on man's true centre in turn affects the will. It sometimes takes curious forms, this conscious direction to what, for modern man, must represent the innermost kernel of his being.

And precisely from a rapprochement of this kind we shall be able to develop the further recognition that we must pass through contemplation of the will to reach the spiritual element of man. There follows the prospect of a philosophy of life which (even though the working man cannot help being materialistic at present) can yet be such as I have expounded here—a power that can be developed from the social conditions themselves, so to speak, precisely through a rapprochement between Europe and America.

It was in Central Europe that the finest minds sought for intellectual topics that would be capable of taking hold of the temperament, the volitional side of children. Central European educators in the nineteenth century tried to discover the art of capturing the will by starting from the intellect. But they did not get beyond abstract thinking, which had not then advanced to the living thought. They were still caught up in the Oriental world and its legacy, and on the basis of this early Oriental heritage they sought to take hold of the will.

Then came a great mass of humanity who made will sovereign everywhere. And today we live in a period that contrasts with an earlier age when forces existed to uphold the social order. Even those of us whose outlook is not reactionary cannot help understanding that, in earlier times, a prince attended the same sermon as the lowest peasant in the district; and the man who spoke from within the spiritual life, on behalf of all, had something to say that affected everyone. A perfectly clear public image of the consolidation of the social orders by means of the spirit was definitely there in those earlier periods. It was a definite legacy from the Orient, this image which is apprehended by the head and only later sinks down into the heart. Now something else, something that springs from the will, has appeared. We must find once more a way of speaking philosophically out of a spirit that embraces us all, from the most uneducated to the most educated. Only in this way can we work together, think, feel and will together, so as to establish, in the present, social prospects for the future.

This will come about if we can create a rapprochement between the embryonic beginnings in Europe, as they have been described in the last few days, and what has emerged in America, at a higher level of civilization, so to speak, among educated people in general. A rapprochement aimed at moving westwards will create a basis for an understanding of the development of spirit in the West.

Only if we as Western men show that we are able, out of what we can apprehend within ourselves, to summon up something spiritual and to counter the Oriental spirit, which today is in a state of decadence, with a European-American spirit, will a world economy and a world commerce, such as exists only externally today, be possible, in a framework of genuine confidence between men. Today, even though the Asiatic trades in one form or another with us Western men, in his heart there is still the feeling: Your machines do not impress us! With them, you are turning yourselves into intellectualized machines; that is the kind of men you are, inside. Even X-rays do not impress them. The Oriental will say: With their aid, you can look inside man physically; but what is really important requires no apparatus, it arises from our clairvoyant inner self. Whether legitimate or not, this is the attitude of the Orient. They have a profound belief in the spirit in human nature, and look down with contempt on anything that accepts the constraint, as it seems to them, of technology and the machine, in such a way that man himself operates, in society, like a cog in a machine.

The gap between us and the Orient will be bridged only when we ourselves create a spiritual dimension in our philosophy of life, on foundations such as I have described, combining the spirit of Europe and America. This, however, will require the world to look more closely at Central Europe, which has gone furthest in the evolution of the intellect towards living thought. It is the men of the early part of the nineteenth century—Hegel, Fichte, Schelling—who have gone furthest in the evolution of thought towards life. At least they believed that in what they experienced as the substance of the world, albeit in thoughts that were still abstract, they had something vital and spiritual. What they had, of course, was only the germ of vital thought. That is why Central Europe itself forsook the paths it had been following. They need to be rediscovered by making thought genuinely vital. A rapprochement with Central Europe can bring this about.

When the West has brought forth spirit once again, and when the East not only sees its own spirit, but can also see, even in the trader and merchant, the representative of a spiritual philosophy of life, then the Oriental will no longer look down on us in arrogance; he will be able to reach an understanding. This is what we must seek if we are to have hopes for society. We cannot have them at all unless we realize what has to disappear.

There existed in Central Europe a spirit which proclaimed that everything ultimately collapses but that a new life springs up from the ruins. This is a hope we shall realize only when we look past the externals of society to its inner being. But then we must cease to try to maintain the old order at all costs, and instead have the courage to regard as expendable the things that must be overthrown. The old saying remains true: Nothing can come to fruition which has not first been cast into the earth as a seed, so that it may decay. Well, the word “decay” is not quite accurate here, but the image still holds. In discerning what we need to abandon as decayed, we must move forward to new impulses and to the new life that must blossom out of the ruins. Only in this way can we, in this age, have social hopes for the future.

Nowadays, anyone who lectures on the Christ runs into quite a variety of viewpoints. These fall roughly into two main groups, and a speaker must take them into account, especially if he plans to talk on the subject in the sense intended for this evening's lecture. That is, in the same sense in which other questions and other problems have been dealt with here before. I am referring, of course, to the spiritual scientific or anthroposophical viewpoint.

The first group of views is one that bases itself firmly on the premise that Christ is a real force in life. This might be called the religious viewpoint, which all the Christian confessions share in common. We will find on closer study however that no matter how liberal and tolerant it may seem in some respects, it has little use for any but its own view of the Christ. The various proponents of the religious standpoint are simply unwilling to grant that any progress in thinking about Christ is possible.

The other viewpoint is also one held by thoroughly dedicated modern searchers after truth. In accordance with a certain scientific trend, it maintains that a study of the Christ event, of what is reported to have taken place in Palestine at the beginning of the Christian era, if pursued with the same reliable historical methods that are applied to the study of other events, does not bear out the assumptions made about the Christ.

We realize that this way of looking at things has long been gaining favor. We also know that in the course of recent centuries increasing emphasis has been laid on comparing the Gospels, and that the discrepancies people have discovered in them have forced them to conclude that the Gospels could not be taken as historical documents. After a long period of trying to distill a somewhat reliable picture of Christ Jesus from the Gospel accounts, there have come to be many people today, both in Germany and elsewhere, who cannot reconcile speaking of a historical Jesus or of a historical Christ Event with their scientific consciences.

So we find present day positions ranging all the way from a separating out of those facts in the Gospels that can be historically proven, to out-and-out rejection of the historical Christ Jesus. This has given rise to the opinion that, though Christ may still live today for religious-minded people who feel that their faith lifts them to Him, for an ever more rigorously developing science the Christ idea, the concept of Christ, must vanish entirely. Many people are presently convinced that the Christ force will not continue to play any role at all in future, though these same people do not by any means believe that the day will ever come when religion will be lost to humanity.

Certain facts of the time, however, make it seem unlikely that the belief I have referred to will be proven true, for we can note a strange phenomenon. In our day, it is by no means only the religious-minded and people of feeling, for whom the Gospels have shown themselves a source of uplift and of schooling, who speak of something in the nature of a Christ idea. Earnest, educated, truth-loving men are putting their whole souls into pointing to something that can only be identified as Christ. It is characteristic that the modern American freethinker, Ferguson, voicing what many of his contemporaries feel, can say that Christ is again “the pioneer of a new age” who will unite Europe and America and look with profoundest understanding into the soul of every human being—that He is the one and only right man for the present. Ferguson, a person otherwise famed for his free-thinking views, speaks of Christ exactly as though He went about from one man to the next wielding direct influence upon us. Freethinking spirits are thus beginning to feel the Christ Being directly related to modern humanity. Even though little attention is paid to it as yet, we will find that this tendency, this searching for a force that can only be called the Christ, will make sure headway. John Fiske, a man who did his utmost to further Darwinism in America, stated that all religions assert two basic truths. The first is that all things are related. This is a truth proclaimed by every religion, one that no thoughtful person can deny. The second truth is that what we call good and evil derives from forces external to the human spirit.

I quote these men expressly because they are both personalities whose whole thinking and feeling are firmly rooted in the present, but they do not rest satisfied with an external view of things. Instead, they have worked their way through to deeper forces of existence. The forces at work in the world are not just physical and chemical: they are also spiritual in nature.

For one who takes his stand on a spiritual-scientific view of the world, the concept of Christ just characterized appears to be merely a first dawn glimmering, a preparation for something quite different still to come. I hope I will not be misunderstood in speaking as I have of this preparatory, Twentieth Century form of the Christ concept. Spiritual science has to steer clear of any taint of sectarianism and other such attitudes because they simply do not belong to this age. The spiritual scientist takes the same attitude in speaking of what is to come in human evolution as does the natural scientist who predicts an eclipse of the moon or a transit of Venus: he is not assuming a prophetic role. There are forces in life that can be spiritually investigated in exactly the same sense that natural forces operative in the physical world can be investigated.

It will be helpful to gain a perspective on the past history of the Christ idea, which has indeed undergone tremendous changes through the centuries. If we follow it back to its origin, we come upon a strange fact of the early days. We find popular Christianity spreading through the regions ruled by Rome in a way that enables us to say that, while the old Roman culture developed among the upper levels of the population and then grew decadent, we see those on whom life left its mark, those whose lot it was to suffer, slowly and gradually finding their way into popular Christianity. Jesus of Nazareth is increasingly idealized, to the point that he is looked on as divine. The various confessions that made up this popular Christianity tended more to feeling than to thoughts and concepts. But alongside this popular form we find those most enlightened spirits of the time who concerned themselves with Christianity devoting their loftiest ideas, their most significant concepts, to answering the question, “Who, actually, is this Christ?”

Let us single out, from the abundance of answers given by these illumined spirits, one or two for consideration here.

In Gnosticism, a form of thought to which anthroposophy by no means advises returning but simply studies as a phenomenon of past history, we find many different shadings of certain lofty concepts, all centering in an attempt to grasp the Christ idea. In the main, it can be characterized by saying that this Gnosticism, this longing to grasp the Christ idea with the help of the Ioftiest concepts, is a most marvelous form of spiritual development. Of course, those who adopt the modern view that every last facet of humanness gradually evolved from nature's lower orders, from animals, and rose by stages from the most primitive to ever higher animal forms, are bound to consider the Gnostic doctrine a fantastic dream. But Gnostics, too, traced evolution back even further than does the modern natural scientist. They said that we find a period in ancient times in which all animals, even the highest, were present on the earth, and man could have seen them if he too had been there at that time. The Gnostics, however, had in mind a period of evolution in which the human kingdom had not yet appeared, but they did not conclude from this that men developed out of animals, but rather that they descended later from the spiritual world. They maintained that animals. plants and minerals had also descended from the spirit. had materialized out of spiritual realms, so that we have to ascribe a spiritual origin to animals, plants and minerals as well. But there was a period when man had not yet taken on physical form, a time when he was still waiting in the spiritual world for the moment when the earth provided certain other conditions such as would make human life possible here.

This does not mean that man was not in existence at that time. Man did exist: not, however, as a visible entity, but as a spiritual one. He lived in the spiritual environment of the earth, but had not yet descended onto it, for the conditions of that ancient time were not such as would have made human development possible. Thus, the Gnostics assumed that there was a most important moment, later than that of the descent of the other kingdoms when titan descended to the earth. It was the Gnostic conviction that if man had incarnated with the other lesser kingdoms, one all-important facet of his being, that is the capacity we know as free, independent human thinking would not have developed. In short, man would lack his true human ego that works front a central focus outward into the world and develops between birth and death. The animal's development is kept within certain limits, but man is capable of progressing in an entirely different way as a result of education and experience. In order to achieve this, said the Gnostic, man entered into a more intimate connection with the element of matter than he would have done if he had remained an unfree being, dependent, as the other creatures around him were on his endowment at birth. Man plunged more deeply into matter in order to become less dependent on what he brought into existence with him. Gnosticism held that this deeper involvement in matter took place at a certain moment in very early times, that is, the moment the Bible pictures as the Fall, meaning thereby the fall into matter just described. But by no means every impulse inherent in human nature was believed to have joined in that descent; instead, something of a superhuman element remained in the spiritual world. While mankind was experiencing all this, something that was part of man but did not accompany him in his descent because he plunged so deeply into physical embodiment stayed on in spiritual worlds. Thus, there was still present in the world above a part of man that had dwelt there when all humanity still lived as one in realms of spirit.

On the basis of these assumptions the Gnostics then proceeded to study the Christ Event. A certain moment, described in the Bible as the baptism by John, was of special interest to them. They felt that the human being whose development brought him to that baptism was indeed a most extraordinary man, but nevertheless just a human being. After he had been baptized, something occurred that is hard for modern minds to grasp. Perhaps we can think of it in the sense that many a person has had something happen to him at a certain moment about which he could only say that his whole life was changed in consequence. Many people date their lives from such a moment, feeling it to have been one in which they were spiritually reborn. This is something that can happen to any and every human being. If one pictures this experience raised to a unique and ultimate peak, one understands how the Gnostics felt about the baptism by John in the River Jordan. That element of humanness that had been part of man front the earliest beginnings of his race but which had been waiting in the spiritual world, now left that realm and made its way down to earth, to take up its abode in the unique human being, Jesus of Nazareth. For the next three years Jesus of Nazareth was not just a changed human being. He was one in whom that reserved element of humanness, held over from the very beginning of man's earth life, had come to dwell for the eventual fructification of humanity. In other words, Jesus of Nazareth became the bearer of the superhuman being, Christ for the three years of His earthly life. So the Gnostics held that what had hitherto dwelt in the spiritual world had come into a human body, like a seed planted in the earth. Like a planted seed, which must decompose in order to germinate, this spiritual impulse entering the earth had to pass away in order to spring, seed-like, into hundred-arid thousand-fold fruitfulness. This spiritual element had to pass through death exactly as a seed dies. Far from failing to bear, it poured itself into earth's spiritual-evolutionary stream, where it will be found living on in many kinds of fruiting.

So we find in the Gnostic doctrine a pre-history of mankind leading up to the moment of Christ's coming and a post-history following upon the Event of Golgotha. It is history centered in the living action of the Christ impulse as Christ enters into human souls. To the Gnostic, the Christ impulse was history indeed history's whole content and the source of its ongoingness. If this view sounds alien to the contemporary mind, it must be stated that precisely modern natural science, whose ideas are colored by materialism only now at the outset, will press forward ever more vigorously to an understanding and eventual grasping of the reality that underlay the Gnostic concept.

In order to show how close the present is to taking up again what Gnosticism offered, let me just point out the following—something that is of course only an elementary first step. Science has thought for a long time that it stands on a solid footing. Basing itself on a truly impressive Darwinism, it felt impelled to assert that everything human developed out of animal origins, and that the driving force behind that development was the “struggle for survival.” It said that all the various creatures were launched into life together, but fell to fighting, with the not too surprising result that, as time went on, the more perfect species got the better of the less perfect. Man was the final product of this perfecting process. “The survival of the fittest” became the slogan of the Darwinists. Now, however, researchers are finding themselves forced to adopt quite a different concept in their honest searching of facts. They are now saying that as we study man afresh and compare him with the most developed animals, we can by no means assume that he evolved in straight-line descent from these species. Instead, we have to trace him back to a primeval form no longer to be found upon the earth. These researchers now believe that such a primeval form once existed and that while man and animal both evolved front it, they did so in two different directions. Outstanding investigators have brought forth a further fact. They put the question: How could man develop as differently as he has when all the while animals, too, were evolving? Strange to say, they have not hit upon a “fight for survival.” They assume that man and his form were in a specially protected place where he could continue under the same conditions which originally brought forth that form, whereas all other creatures were caught up in a downward trend. Thus, man today is being traced back to an invisible primeval form that developed as it did because it was protected in a realm where man did not have to take part in a struggle to survive. These researchers subscribe to only one remaining fiction. They believe the protecting realm to have been a physically perceptible locality.

Gnosticism, too. assumes just such a primeval form. But instead of picturing it as having existed on the physical plane, it assigns it to the spiritual world, which was, in fact, able to afford it protection.

If one can conceive the idea that man was a late-corner to the earth, one can also conceive the following thought. Tracing the course of history, we find that a hitherto undivided human race split up into various nations and races and that many different confessions came into being, each shaped in accordance with the feeling of a particular group. In earlier times humanity was so constituted that a person could develop only what was implanted in him by virtue of belonging to a certain tribe. The spiritual force, however, the spiritual being that made man human in the first place, enables him to find the human being in his fellow man instead of what heredity has made of him. Man had to have this capacity restored to him. It was an impulse that could be taken up again only when humanity grew ripe for it.

So we encounter lofty and remarkable concepts of evolution in the first Christian centuries. It must be said that what we are witnessing in present-day natural science as the beginning of something that must eventually outgrow the Chrysalis stage, was already anticipated by the Gnostics in the grandiose conceptions reached by them as they thought about these matters. This could happen only because there is such a thing as evolution in man's history.

If we look back to a period that lies still closer to the time of man's descent to earth, we come upon a wholly different kind of soul life. Comparing it with the soul life of the present we must say that the latter is oriented toward a sense-based and brain-conditioned way of experiencing, whereas earlier times brought us a marvelous heritage of knowledge in the form of pictures. The fact that this heritage exists proves what spiritual scientific research also discovers to be true that human souls did not always perceive their surroundings as they do today, but were once clairvoyant. At that time man did not feel himself so involved with his own ego. Instead, he felt that he was part and parcel of everything around him. A dreamlike state of consciousness brought him into profound contact with the world about. Primeval man's way of knowing things was through a dreamlike clairvoyance that revealed their mysteries to him. His was an experience akin to dreaming as we know it today. Thus, it was possible for a humanity recently descended from spiritual heights to experience the secrets of the spiritual world in what may be called a clairvoyant dream-state.

Evolutionary progress meant, however, an ever-deepening descent of man into physical existence, accompanied by an ever further loss of that ancient clairvoyant capacity, though this need not be thought of as a tragedy. For if man had not lost his old clairvoyance he could never have advanced to the stage of free self-awareness that alone provided the basis for conscious personal experience.

The loss of the old clairvoyant insight that once gave access to secrets of the spiritual world came about gradually. Even when mankind had become thoroughly at home in the physical world, clairvoyant knowledge was still kept alive in sanctuaries that preserved the heritage of the ancient Mysteries, the treasure of wisdom that had come down to them through the ages. After the Christ Event had taken place and entered the stream of earth-evolution, the Gnostics still hoarded that age-old treasure of wisdom won by humanity's clairvoyant insight, and they formed their idea of Christ in accordance with it. Their concept may, therefore, be described as a reminiscence of knowledge gleaned in olden times, not as the product of free, conscious selfhood. They simply applied what men of ancient days had known to explain the Christ phenomenon. The period during which Gnosticism flourished coincided with the dimming of clairvoyant insight. This made it impossible for those who followed after. in the Middle Ages, to go on working with the heritage of Gnostic wisdom as a means of understanding Christ.

Instead, something else took the place of Gnosticism. We find people who lived in the centuries after its demise just as eager to grasp the Christ phenomenon, but wanting henceforth to rely on their own human powers of understanding, on a scientific approach. And we see the most enlightened spirits of the Middle Ages turning from Gnosticism to the teachings of Aristotle for the basis of their understanding of the Christ.

They found themselves forced to say that Aristotle's world conception brought them to a standstill at a certain point, that true spiritual understanding of the Christ was out of reach of human knowledge.

In one respect, however, the view of the world held in the Middle Ages rests on one of Aristotle's main ideas. Aristotle would never have thought of going as far as modern materialism has gone. When we look into his idea of the way soul and body work together, we do not find him subscribing to any such belief as that a man's inner life is conditioned by the heredity that comes to him from parents, grandparents, etc. His view was rather that every person born into the world is given a drop out of the ocean of divinity to unite with his body, that a soul-spiritual core always detaches itself front the universal spirit and enters human beings at their birth. But Aristotle, who was distinguished by a quality seldom met with in our day, that is, the habit of drawing the real consequences of his musing and investigating, does not stop at this point. He goes on thinking, and comes to believe that when a soul passes through the gates of death it does so as a now well- established entity, and as such ascends into the spiritual world. Though prior to birth it did not exist as a separate being, after death it lives on in the world of the spirit as an individual.

What kind of after-death experience does this soul now undergo, as Aristotle sees it? None whatever, since it lacks a body to make that possible. Now its sole content is the memory of its life on earth. It lives on in eternity looking back on its earth-life with the good and evil it has done, wholly given up to memory pictures.

Here, in Aristotle, may be found the origin of the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell. lt began in his concept and made its way into Catholic dogma during the Middle Ages. But let me say at once that it was not possible for Aristotle as a man of his time to do other than picture the soul as an unchanging entity doomed to gaze forever at its earthly deeds.

Modern spiritual science, anthroposophy, recognizes, of course, that the soul can do more after death than just look back as though in memory-pictures on its previous earth-life. It knows that the soul does not have to stay forever in that state. Instead, it sees man taking with him into the spiritual world as the finest fruit of his earth experience the possibility of transforming or building further on the good and bad deeds he committed here: nor does he stay forever in the spiritual world. Rather is he born again into a new incarnation and has opportunities to work out some karmic compensation for what he did or failed to do in previous lives. The soul passes through the gates of death taking with it the impulse to seek further incarnations for the sake of working out a balance. Aristotle could not accept such an idea because he had always thought that every birth meant a detaching of spiritual substance to form the soul. But spiritual science bears witness to the fact that our present lives derive from past incarnations.

So Aristotle may be said to have stood in the way of his own insight. He whom wise men of the Middle Ages called “the precursor of Christ in understanding nature,” did not get as far as the reincarnation concept. We see how he stopped short of the mark in regard to the question of immortality and how for him life's fruit was just eternal contemplation. The inevitable outcome of this was that people could not see into the spiritual world or gain any understanding of the nature of the Christ. For the thinking of the Middle Ages, Christ disappeared into the realm of belief which is closed to knowledge. The age-old tradition of Gnosticism was finally lost. Aristotle could not serve spiritual understanding of the Christ. Thus, a line came to be drawn between what can be known and what must remain a matter of belief. One consequence of Aristotelian thought that lived on was the idea of eternal suffering in hell.

It remained for people of more recent times to take the third step in a gradual weakening of faith. They have come to rely more and more on what can be grasped with the physical senses. The effect of this on the Christ concept has been to make Christ an ever less important figure and to render the prevailing idea of Christ more and more materialistic. Where Gnostics once assumed a spiritual principle, and where the Middle Ages in their turn experienced Christ in a mood of purest faith and devotion, the present sees at the beginning of the Christian era not a human being ensouled with a cosmic element but, increasingly, “the simple man of Nazareth,” a man more or less like any other human being. Nobody remembers anything of what the Gnostics had divined. People want to think of Christ in the same materialistic way they think about other historical events. The fact that they regard Him as a mere human being makes it necessary to apply the same methods to the study of His appearance that are generally applied in ordinary historical research.

It might have been recognized that the historical approach to the whole question is the easy way out because what could possibly be easier than to take the Gospels and show how they contradict each other! This reduces things to simplest terms. But then wouldn't the researchers have had to assume that their predecessors were the greatest dunces ever for having failed even to notice such obvious contradictions?

At any rate, the Gospels were certainly not taken as a schooling, a schooling that enables the soul to lift itself to spiritual perception of the Christ. So it is not surprising that history was pressed into service as a yardstick and that a movement has grown up, associated here in Germany with the theologian, Drews, that denies Christ completely. This happened at the very moment when spiritual science entered the contemporary scene.

Spiritual science bears witness to the fact just referred to, that human beings and what they carry within them are not products of a single life, but of many past lives. Man once lived wholly in the spiritual world. Then he left it to descend to earth, but he was to have more than one life in a physical body. When he had digested the fruits of an incarnation during an interval spent in the spiritual world, he descended again into physical embodiment. The law that pertains here has often been the object of our study. It teaches us how deeply involved man is in the whole ongoing process we call history. Life only begins to make real sense when we assume that we have all been living on the earth in order to take what was given us in the beginning, make it our own, and then go on developing with the march of the centuries toward ever greater perfection. A closer study of these matters brings something quite remarkable to light, to be described here as man's mission on the earth.

I must stress again today, as I have so often done before, that the consciousness that man has thus far developed has by no means reached its final form. Man can really take his development in hand: the right spiritual training can lift him to spiritual perception. That is quite within the realm of possibility if he schools his soul in meditation. Just as one can put oneself, by staring intently at a shining object, into a state where one is aware of nothing else (though this is not a recommended practice!), so do we achieve a single-minded, but in this case quite free condition, when we deliberately concentrate all our attention on some soul-spiritual content to the exclusion of all else. Then forces begin to ray out in our souls through which we attain what may be called a body-free condition. Such a person is then really able to say from experience, “I am no longer perceiving with my eyes or thinking with my brain. I am experiencing as a spiritual being, independent of a body, I perceive what lives and has its being in the spiritual world.”

This elevation to the level of spiritual perception can be achieved with proper schooling. The rigorous discipline that leads to it has been described in several of my books.

It is easier to enter the spiritual world if one has trained one's feeling life to avoid all sorts of over-excited and emotional states and reactions. A person who confronts the world with calmness and equanimity keeps unsquandered reserves of feeling alive within him. The spiritual light, which meditation kindles in us, radiates into such reserves. A person full of selfish demands will never make a disciplined spiritual investigator. But those who achieve real empathy with their fellow-men, who know what selfless love is, who are not absorbed exclusively in their own feelings, have a soul-surplus that can be charged with forces garnered from spiritual schooling. The light of clairvoyance is engendered in feeling that keeps itself free of egotism.

When a person has progressed to the point of being able to live in the spiritual world he can gradually learn to clothe his experiences in ordinary concepts. Handed on in that form, any healthy mentality can grasp them. It is no more necessary for everyone to be a spiritual investigator than for each of us individually to make laboratory tests to see whether what science says is true or not. Those charged with communicating the results of spiritual-scientific research do not shy away from commonsense thinkers. Really healthy minds readily see the truth of statements made by the spiritual investigator. The only people who dispute his findings are those who approach them filled with prejudice. This holds true in the case of spiritual science, which is the fruit of clairvoyant research. It enables human beings to gain access to a world of spiritual experience.

The insight that spiritual scientists can presently achieve by means of a heightened consciousness will—to some degree at least, and in certain fields f be attainable by all men in future. It will fall to the lot of Twentieth Century humanity to realize that the soul develops, that it passes through life after life in the course of earth's evolution, and in so doing absorbs from the various cultural epochs what each such epoch has to offer.

If one looks nowadays with a more than ordinarily perceptive eye at the human race all over the earth, one becomes aware that it possesses two human qualities that were simply not present in antiquity. This is a fact susceptible of proof. The two new qualities are commission and conscience, and they will go on developing more and more fully as man submits his soul-life to spiritual schooling. Compassion and conscience were new acquisitions at a certain point in evolution.

Much that is called compassion is not worthy of the term. True compassion is the capacity to forget oneself and enter another's being so completely that one feels his suffering as he feels it. One's own ego is quite forgotten in such fellow-feeling; one lives entirely in the other's experience. Suppose for a moment that nature were so to arrange matters that at the moment when a person freed himself from narrow self-concern he had the same experience morally that comes to him every day when he falls asleep. When he can no longer maintain control of his body and his brain ceases to serve his soul as its instrument and he goes to sleep, consciousness disappears. A person can, of course, also fall unconscious from compassion. But that would be egotistical in the extreme, for then he could not surrender himself wholly to another's feelings. In that sense, falling unconscious would amount to a moral failing, whereas compassion is one of the two means whereby a person breaks free of himself without losing consciousness. Conscience is the other. It speaks to our innermost being; the listener follows the bidding of a voice that penetrates to where his ego lives. He subjects the self to something larger than itself. Compassion and conscience are thus forces that man is presently engaged in developing. Consciousness will build further on the foundation of the forms that compassion and conscience have thus far taken, going on to develop the spiritual vision that was previously attainable only in abnormal states of consciousness. To say this is not to make a prophecy but to state a fact determined by strictly scientific means.

As he realizes what effect compassion and conscience have upon the human soul. Twentieth Century man will have a certain direct experience in a perfectly ordinary state of consciousness. He will understand something that might be put in the following way. We see that at birth man inherits something from his ancestors. Spiritual being though he is, he must incarnate physically in a given family and clothe himself in hereditary qualities. Long before we had such a thing as science, people were familiar with heredity, but they gave it an entirely different name. Their term for it was “original sin.” Anyone who understands what the Old Testament meant by original sin knows that the term conveyed a much fuller meaning than science has as yet ascribed to it because it applies to moral as well as physical qualities. Those in whom compassion and conscience have borne fruit will say, however, that although birth saddles us with predispositions that cannot be thrown off, we are also endowed with something that is not bound up with matter and that enables us to rise above ourselves and enter the spiritual world. There is one realm—the realm of one's own soul—where there will be direct spiritual vision. Human beings will affirm that although they are tied on the one hand to physical matter, on the other the soul harbors a radiant helper capable of lifting us beyond ourselves, it is a feeling that suggests the following comparison. Suppose there were someone who found it hard to believe that air everywhere surrounds us and fills every empty space. All he has to do to convince himself is to create a vacuum and observe how the air rushes into it. Just such an empty space is created in the soul by compassion and conscience, both of which detach us from our ego. Into that vacuum streams the spiritual entity whom we know as the Christ. This gives us personal experience of the fact that we can receive Christ into ourselves. Christ Who is present in the spiritual atmosphere just as air is present in the physical atmosphere and flows into every Space it finds empty.

On this high level, normal consciousness can indeed become spiritual vision, and no one who has this experience will consider it subjective. He will instead recognize that there must be such a possibility. He will realize that there was a time when it was still unknown and a moment when it became possible for the first time. He will be aware that what he is experiencing made its way down to earth from spiritual realms and united with it as the Christ impulse. This Christ impulse will inevitably come to be looked upon by Twentieth Century man as a force that entered earth evolution at a particular moment in time as a real historical event. That will usher in a period when it will no longer make sense to say that Christ is merely an idea. Instead, people will say that the Christ experience can be conceived as taking place only in this or that individual soul, just as philosophers maintain that there could be no such thing as color without eyes to perceive it. But colors do not owe their existence to perceiving eyes; the truth is rather that eyes are created by the light-world. The fact ought therefore to be stated thus: “No eyes without light.” It is equally true that without the historical Christ human beings could not experience Christ or the Christ-power within them. So they will know Christ to be a spiritual being and realize that this Being once actually lived on earth as a fact of history and sacrificed Himself to become one with the earth. They will be able to make their way into the spiritual world and discover Christ there.

Goethe often found just the right way of putting some fact or other, and perhaps we might borrow one of his sayings to express what we have been discussing here; it can serve us as a pointer. Goethe said that the eye was built by light to perceive the light: the eye was conjured forth by light from organs that were originally indeterminate. He goes on to make a further statement that calls attention to the impulse we harbor to discover God within us:

“Were not our eyes profoundly of the sun
How could they behold the light?
Were not our strength from God's own being won.
How could we feel so in Things divine delight.”

Just as the eye is conjured forth by light, so man's power to see God is conjured forth by God Himself as He lives and moves within and all about us. Those whose own Christ-likeness enables them to experience the Christ in beauty of feeling and insight will know that this is possible only because Christ once descended to earth and lived here, an historic figure. Just as the sun's light conjures forth eyes in human bodies so does the historic Christ conjure forth Christ-life in the souls of men.

“Unless the soul of man were Christ-like, how indeed could it experience the Christ? lf Christ had not lived as an historic figure how could man's soul ever come to know that most glorious feeling: feeling for the Christ?” Such will be the tenor of Twentieth Century comment. At the very moment when orthodox science reaches the point of denying Christ any historical reality, spiritual science will say without relying on documents that because man can experience Christ he knows that Christ did indeed live historically as a life-giving force, as the sun in that spiritual realm whence human evolution draws its nutriment.

Already eight days ago, I have drawn your attention to the fact that just someone who stands within spiritual science is not surprised at all, if this spiritual science finds opposition and lack of understanding from the most different viewpoints of the present. Now I will not consider it as my task to discuss single oppositions or single viewpoints from which such misunderstandings and oppositions result; since there is another viewpoint, which one can take up as position considering this matter. This is to try to uncover the roots of any possible opposition against spiritual science. If one understands these roots, some opposition also becomes explicable. Now I would not like to define what I communicate as spiritual science as identical with that what one calls “theosophy” from this or that side. Since this offers little incentive to agree anyhow with it. However, not from the viewpoint of the contemporary prejudice that occupies the name theosophy but from ajustified viewpoint, spiritual science represented here can be called theosophical. With it, the topic of this evening justifies itself which shall explain the relation between theosophy and that what rebels in the human nature against this theosophy. One can call it a mood in the human soul that one can find easily, that turns against theosophy because of passions, of emotions, often, however, also because of a certain faith that I call antisophy here.

If you contemplate what I have said eight days ago, you remember that spiritual science or theosophy attains its knowledge if the human soul simply does not stop where it stands in the everyday life, but if it goes through a development by its own impulse and activity. From the indications which I have done in the first talk we have realised that the human soul comes by such a development to an inner constitution, different from that of the everyday life that its feeling and position in the world are different from that in the everyday life. Something is born as it were in the human soul by the development meant here that is like a higher self in the usual self that is equipped with higher senses that perceive a real spiritual world. The theosophical knowledge can only attained by developing the corresponding soul condition. However, one realises at once that a certain requirement forms the basis of the just said, a requirement that remains no big requirement for someone who practises the specified way really. What appears as a requirement becomes a real experience, an experienced fact for him. It appears as requirement what lives strictly speaking in every human soul as longing; it appears as requirement that the human being if he descends only deeply enough in his soul finds something in it that connects him with the divine-spiritual primordial ground of existence. Nevertheless, it is the goal and the longing of any self-conscious soul to find the point in its own self where it is rooted in the divine-spiritual primordial ground. Theosophy consciously confesses to this goal. One could grasp “antisophy” accordingly very easily in an idea, in a concept. It would be the opposition against everything that lives in the longing with the goal to grasp that deep point in the human soul where this human soul is connected with the everlasting primordial sources of existence.

How can such antisophy develop in the human soul? One could believe at first that it is paradoxical that an opposition may get up against that what one would have to appreciate as the noblest pursuit of the human soul. However, lo and behold, just spiritual science shows that antisophy is not anything quite arbitrary in the human soul, but on the contrary, it belongs to its nature in a certain respect. The human being is not theosophically minded from the start; he is antisophically minded from the start. One must go into some knowledge of spiritual science if one wants to appreciate this apparently paradoxical dictum properly.

If the spiritual researcher attains the other constitution of his soul, he enters into a real spiritual world. Then before his spiritual view, the outer nature is extinguished as it were. It still exists only as memory, and a real spiritual world appears in which the human soul is to be recognised not only in the time between birth or conception and death, but also it is to be recognised in the time between death and the next birth. I have already drawn your attention to the repeated lives on earth in the last talk. The human being is referred to that existence in which he is a spirit among spirits in which he is after death. This world is experienced as for the outer senses the outer nature is experience; in this world is the soul with those forces which face the human being not only in the usual consciousness, but compose this usual consciousness. Yes, this world builds up the tools of the usual consciousness and the complete corporeality with the whole nervous system. It becomes true for the spiritual researcher that we are built up as human beings not only by the force of inheritance, but also by that which intervenes in the system of these physical forces which descends from spiritual-mental regions. It is a system of spiritual forces that seize the physical organisation, and develops what we should become according to our former lives on earth. Spiritual science extends the memory about which I have spoken last time. It goes beyond the present earth existence to regions of spiritual experience.

If we consider the world and the human development in such a way, a certain border faces the soul in particular. The separating line lies in the first childhood of the human being. There we see the human being living in the very first childhood like in a dreamlike life that only must appropriate the full clearness of self-awareness, of remembering experiences. A vague consciousness is that of the first childhood. The human being sleeps or dreams, so to speak, into existence, and that by which we feel, actually, as human beings, our developed inner life with its distinct centre of self-consciousness only appears only at a certain turning point of our childhood. What presents itself in the sense of spiritual science before this turning point?

If the spiritual researcher looks at the child, before it has come to this turning point, he beholds the spiritual forces working that have descended from the spiritual world and have seized the organism to form it plastically in accordance with the former lives on earth. Because all spiritual forces that constitute the human soul pour forth into everything that lives in the organism that forms the organism, constructs, and organises it that way, it can become later the tools of the self-conscious being. Because all soul forces are used for the construction of this organism, nothing remains that could deliver a clear self-consciousness anyhow in the very first childhood. All soul forces are used for the construction of the organism; and a consciousness that uses itself for the construction of the organic being can be only dreamlike, however, is in a large part a sleeping consciousness.

What happens now with the human being at that turning point about which I have spoken?

There more and more resistance comes up from the organism, from the body gradually. One could characterise this resistance in such a way that one says that the body hardens gradually; in particular the nervous system hardens, the soul forces can no longer process it completely plastically, it offers resistance. That means that only a part of the soul forces is able to work in the human organisation; the other part is rejected as it were, cannot find working points to work on this human organisation. I may use a picture to show what goes forward there. Why can we see ourselves in the mirror standing before it? Because the beams of light are reflected by the shining surface. In the bare glass, we cannot see ourselves because the beams of light go through. The same applies to the child in its first age: it can develop no self-consciousness because all soul forces go through as the beams of light pass the glass. Only when the organism has hardened, a part of the soul forces is rejected, as well as the beams of light are thrown back by the reflecting glass. There the soul life reflects in itself; and the self-reflective soul life that experiences itself in itself is the emerging self-consciousness. This constitutes our real human experience on earth. Thus, we live if we arrive at the marked turning point in this reflected soul life. What does mean the development of the spiritual researcher now compared with this soul life?

This development is really a leap over an abyss. It is in such a way that the spiritual researcher must leave the region of the rejected soul life, and he must penetrate into those creative, formative soul forces that are before this turning point. The spiritual researcher has to immerse himself with the full consciousness in that which he has developed in the reflected soul life. There he submerges in those forces that build up the human organism in the tenderest infancy that one can no longer perceive because the organism transforms into a mirror. Indeed, the development of the spiritual researcher must overcome this abyss. From that soul life that is rejected by the organic nature, he must enter into the creative spiritual-mental life. He must advance from the created to the creative. Then he perceives something particular, if he submerges in those depths that are as it were behind the organic mirror.

Then he perceives that point where the soul unites with the creative origin of existence. However, besides, he still perceives that this rejection is meaningful. If the turning point had not taken place, the rejection would not happen; then the human being could never have attained the complete development of the clear self-consciousness. In this respect, the life on earth is the development of self-consciousness. The spiritual researcher can penetrate into the region, which, otherwise, the human being experiences only as a dream, by the fact that he has only got the preconditions of it within the life on earth that he has educated himself to self-consciousness, and then he penetrates into that region with this self-consciousness which one experiences, otherwise, without self-consciousness. However, it is evident from that that the most valuable that the human being can obtain for the life on earth is the awake self-consciousness that is normally secluded from the experience of the roots of existence. In the everyday life and in the usual science the human being lives within that what interweaves his soul life after this turning point. He must live in it, so that he can arrive at his goal on earth. One does not say with it that he is not allowed as spiritual researcher to leave it and to look around in the other region where his roots are. — I would like to express myself in such a way: the human being must leave the region of the creative nature to face and to find himself in his nature rejected in itself compared with the spiritual-mental nature that is connected with the sources of existence.

Because of this task on earth, the human being is really put outside of that region in which he must find as a spiritual researcher what can be found within spiritual science. If the human being — without the spiritual-scientific training — confused one day what he can experience in the one or in the other region, he would never be able to stand firmly in the world. The whole sensory existence of the human being is based on the fact that he is just put out of that where the sources and roots of existence where the spiritual world is to be found in their intimacy. The more the human being wants to live in the sensory world, the more he must leave the higher world. Our usual practical knowledge has just its strength because the human being has left this world.

Is it surprising on the other hand that the human being also learns to appreciate at first what he has, while he is expelled from the spiritual world? He does not stand in the spiritual world during his life. He had to put out this to live his earth existence suitably. He appreciates everything quite naturally at first that is not connected with the source of existence. Thus, it is natural that he refuses immediately to hear anything of the spiritual world within which he is not at first. Because of his life, he is not attuned to acknowledge what connects him with the core of the world but to acknowledge what holds him together in himself, as far as he stands beyond this spiritual-mental world. The human being is antisophical in the usual life, he is not attuned theosophically, and it would be naive to believe that the usual life could not be tuned antisophically. It can only be tuned theosophically if like a memory of a lost native country the longing in the soul emerges at first — and then more and more the desire originates to penetrate into the origin of the spiritual-mental world independently.

One must attain the theosophical attitude from the antisophical attitude at first. This is internally rather contrary to many souls. In our age where the outer civilisation has such wondrous achievements, a natural propensity has developed for the outer experience that forces back this longing. Just in our time, it is very comprehensible that the human soul is tuned antisophically. However, one must really acknowledge the necessity of a theosophical deepening of humanity on one side in the whole nature of the human development and on the other side just in that what presents itself today. Since so many things face the beholder of the human spiritual development. I would like to point to one thing that can show that in our time an antisophical attitude is natural.

Diogenes Laertius (Greek biographer, third century AD, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers) tells that once Pythagoras who was considered as a very wise man by the ruler of Phlius, Leon, was asked by him how he positioned himself in life, how he felt in life. Pythagoras is said to have said the following: life seems to me like a festival. People come who take part as fighters in the games; others come to make profit as traders; but there is a third sort of people, they come only to look at the thing. They come neither to participate personally in the games, nor to make profit, but to look at the thing. Life appears that way to me: the ones follow their pleasure, the others follow their profit; however, there are those like me who call myself a philosopher as a researcher of truth. They look at life; they feel transferred as from a spiritual home onto earth, they look at life to return to this spiritual home.

Now one must take such a quotation as a comparison, as a picture, of course. One would probably get the entire view of Pythagoras first if one added something without which this quotation very easily could be interpreted as if the philosophers were only the gazers and good-for-nothings of life. Since Pythagoras thinks of course that the philosophers can be useful with their looking not only for their fellow men, while they stimulate them to look, but while they search what is not directly useful for life. However, this leads to the roots of existence, so that that what is considered as “of no avail” leads to the everlasting in the human soul. One would have to add this. However, Pythagoras believed to express something particular, namely that one finds the impulse to immerse oneself in the forever imperishable in that what does not deliver anything useful in the development of the human soul in the outer use but in himself; and that one must develop something in the soul that can be applied not in the outer life directly, but that the human soul develops due an inner desire. The recognition of such a pursuit is found with Pythagoras in olden times.

We glance now at a phenomenon of the modern time which I do not mention in order to mention philosophical oddities, but because it is typical for the way of the cultural life of our time.

A worldview has spread from America to Europe that one calls pragmatism. This worldview appears rather weird compared with that what Pythagoras demands from a worldview. Whether something that the human soul expresses as its knowledge is true or wrong for others, this worldview of pragmatism does not ask at all, but only whether a thought that the human being develops as a worldview is fertile and useful for life. Pragmatism does not ask whether something is true or wrong in any objective sense, but, for example, it asks for the following. We immediately take one of the most significant concepts of the human being: should the human being think that a uniform self is in him? He does not perceive this uniform self. He perceives the succession of sensations, mental pictures, and ideas and so on. But it is useful to understand the succession of the sensations, mental pictures and ideas in such a way as if a common self exists; the internal conception is arranged thereby, the human being thereby accomplishes what he accomplishes from the soul like from a downpour; life is not fragmented thereby. We go to the highest idea. For pragmatism, it does not depend on the truth content of the God concept at all, but it asks, should one conceive the thought of a divine being? It answers, it is good that one has the thought of a divine being, if one did not believe the thought that the world is ruled by a divine old being, the soul would remain hopeless; it is good for the soul accepting this thought.— There one interprets the value of the worldview in a quite contrary sense as Pythagoras did. With him, the worldview should interpret what is not for the benefit of life. However, presently a worldview spreads out, and one can expect that it will seize many heads, which almost says — and in practice it has already done it: valuable is what is thought as if it exists, so that life proceeds most profitably for the human being!

We realise that the human development took place in such a way that one almost considers the opposite of a worldview as correct that one regarded as right, so to speak, at the beginning of the European philosophy. The human attitude developed from the Pythagorean theosophy to the modern pragmatic antisophy. Since this pragmatism is absolutely antisophy because it considers mental pictures of something supersensible under the viewpoint of practical value and benefit for the sensory world. It is significant that towards our time the antisophical mood penetrates the human souls. That is widespread today what once Du Bois-Reymond, a brilliant representative of natural sciences, explained on a naturalists' meeting in Leipzig (1872) in his ignorabimus speech! Du Bois-Reymond (Emil Heinrich Du B. R., 1818-1896) admits explaining it brilliantly that science has only to deal with the principles of the outer world of space and time, and never even with the slightest element of the soul life as such. Later Du Bois-Reymond even spoke of “seven world riddles” —the nature of matter and energy, the origin of motion, the origin of life, the apparently teleological arrangements of nature, the origin of simple sensations, the origin of intelligent thought and language, and the question of freewill. He says that science cannot grasp them because it must rely on “naturalism.” At that time, Du Bois-Reymond finished his explanations quite typically, while he meant that one would have to penetrate into something else if one even wanted to understand the slightest element of the soul life: may they attempt it with the only way out, with that of supra-naturalism. He added the meaningful words, not as an argument, but as something that he asserts out of his mood quite dogmatically: save that science ends where supra-naturalism begins.

What does such an addition mean compared with the other sentence that one must recourse to supra-naturalism, save that science ends where supra-naturalism begins? One can do a peculiar discovery if one looks around in the scientific life of the present. In order to prevent misunderstandings from the start, I note that these talks are intended here in no way as opposition against the contemporary science, but that I hold them in full recognition of this science, — in so far as it remains in its limits. I must say this because some people assert repeatedly that I hold these talks here in an anti-scientific sense.

However, this is not the case. Although an entire recognition of the great results of modern science forms the basis of all that I say here, nevertheless, I must draw your attention to the fact that one can strictly prove the following: one cannot find the smallest justification in science for the statement that science ends where supra-naturalism begins. You find no justification. One discovers that such a statement is done without any justification, out of a mood, out of an antisophical mood. Why does one make such a statement? Again, spiritual science can give information about that. One can externally understand such a mood due to everything that I have explained today. However, I have to assume something. There are many subconscious experiences in the human soul. There are depths of the human soul life that do not become concepts, mental pictures, acts of volition, at least not conscious ones, but only in the character of the human soul life. There is a subconscious soul life; and everything is there that can be in the conscious soul life. However, emotions, passions, sympathies and antipathies which we feel in the usual life consciously can also be in the subconscious regions, they are not perceived in it, but have an effect in the soul like a natural force, — save that they are mental and not physical. There is a whole region of the subconscious soul life.

The human being asserts, believes, and means many things not because he is completely aware of their premises; but he believes and means them from the subconscious soul life because unconscious emotions, inclinations urge him. Today even the empiric psychology already gets the idea that that what the human being asserts does not completely lie in the mere reason, in that what the human being consciously surveys. A whole branch of modern experimental psychology deals with it. Stern (presumably William S., 1871-1938, psychologist) is a representative of this direction which shows how the human being has something even in the most scientific statements that is coloured by his sympathies and antipathies, by his inclinations and emotions. The outer psychology will prove gradually that it is a prejudice if anybody believes that he could really survey everything in the everyday life or in the usual science that induces him making his statements. It is no longer an absurd statement today if one characterises the just mentioned discovery: where supra-naturalism begins, science ends. Indeed, this Du Bois-Reymond pronounces it as a basic mood, but it is also a basic mood of countless souls that know nothing about it. That is not surprising if one understands it as emerging from the subconscious soul life. Nevertheless, how does it emerge? What urges the soul to allege the sentence as a dogma: science ends where supra-naturalism begins?

What worked in the subconscious soul life of Du Bois-Reymond at that time, and what works today in the subconscious soul lives of many people who have the greatest say in life if the sentence is felt, as if it forms the basis of them subconsciously? Spiritual science gives the following answer.

We know an emotion very well which we call fear, fright, or timidity. Any human being knows when fear appears in the usual life. There are quite interesting scientific investigations about such emotions like fear; so, for example, I recommend to everybody to have a look at the excellent investigations of the Danish researcher Lang (Carl Georg L., 1834-1900) about the emotions; among them are also those about fear, timidity and so on. If we experience fear in the usual existence, something occurs — in particular if the fear reaches a certain level — that dazes the human being so that he does no longer control his organism completely. One becomes “frozen in shock,” one has a particular countenance, but all kinds of particular concomitants of fear also appear in the bodily life. Science has already described these concomitants quite well, as for example the mentioned researcher. Such fear has an effect down to the vessels of the person and presents itself symptomatically. Bodily changed conditions and the need in particular to hold fast onto something appear with fear. Many a man who was frightened said, I fall over. This points deeper to the nature of frightening than one normally thinks. This is because the organism suffers changes if the soul experiences fright. The forces of the organism are concentrated convulsively upon the nervous system; this is overloaded as it were with soul strength; certain vessels thereby tense up, and then this tension cannot have any effect.

However, spiritual research investigates the human soul when it is thinking and imagining, given away to the outer nature. One can investigate the nature of that activity in which a soul is which leaves the remaining body alone, in certain state and turns the outwardly directed thinking to the outer experiment, to the outer observation. If one faces the picture of such a human being spiritual-scientifically, it is just the same as that of a human being who is in light fright. As paradoxical this sentence sounds, it is in such a way that the distraction of the soul forces from the whole organism causes something quite similar as fright, as numbing fright. That “coolness” of thinking which one must generate in the scientific observation, as paradoxical it sounds, is related to the fright, in particular to the fear. A concentrated researcher who really lives in his scientific thoughts is in a state that is related to fear if his thoughts are directed outwardly or if he reflects about something that is in the outside world. This dedication to the outside world differs from the spiritual-scientific development as far as the latter is based on the fact that the soul activities are detached from the brain. Thus, that does not happen what is caused by a one-sided convulsive effort of the soul activity and letting one part of the body activity flow at the expenses of the other. This state, related to fear, produces what I have characterised just now. Of course, everybody can deny this fear, because it appears in the subconscious. However, it exists even more certainly there. In a certain respect, the researcher who turns his eye upon the outside is perpetually in such a mood that in the subconscious regions of his soul life the same prevails that consciously prevails in a soul that is in fear. I say something now that sounds simple that is not meant simply that can lead to an agreement because of its simplicity.

If anybody is frightened, he can come very easily to the mood that one can call with the words: I must hold fast onto something, because, otherwise, I fall over! This is the mood of the scientific researcher as I have described it just now. He must concentrate upon the one-sided thinking; he develops fear subconsciously and needs the outer sensory matter to which he can stick, so that he does not sink into the subconscious fear which — if it does not advance to theosophy —finds nothing to which it can stick and which, otherwise, sticks to the matter. Give me something that is in the outer material to which I can stick! This mood lives in the sub-consciousness of the usual scientist. This leads to the subconscious emotions to accept as science only what allows no fear because one holds fast onto the materialistic creation of the world. This gives the antisophical mood: where supra-naturalism begins, science ends — ends to which one can stick.

However, with it I have characterised something that must exist understandably in an age where one demands to be taken up in the outer observation and in the outer nature in many a respect. I indicate something with it that lives not in the single human beings personally. However, it lives in all who develop an antisophical mood now whether one says that theosophy is something that flies over science, that it leaves the reliable ground of science, or whether one says: theosophy leads only to inner or outer nonsense; nothing is scientifically reliable in these fields. One has to develop a mere faith which comes from here or there.

Whether anybody says, my family arrangement is torn if a family member confesses to theosophy, or whether another says, if I dedicate myself to theosophy, the fun of life is spoilt, —both views are not correct, of course, but one says something like that out of a certain mood. They dress the antisophical mood up. This antisophical mood is comprehensible. Since nothing is more comprehensible than the antisophical mood to the theosophically feeling human being who knows that the human soul must always search the coherence with the world for the sake of its welfare and health with which it is connected in its deepest roots. Any kind of opposition, any kind of misunderstanding is comprehensible. Someone who alleges such misunderstandings should consider always that he says nothing surprising —no matter how angry he may be against theosophy —to the theosophical feeling human being because the theosophist can understand him. He differs from the theosophical feeling human being only by the fact that that who rages in such a way normally does not know, why he does it because the origins are in his sub-consciousness which stimulates the antisophical mood of its own accord. The theosophically minded person can know at the same time that this antisophical mood is the most natural of the world as long as one has not understood the noblest pursuit of the human soul. One does not show that one has well judged, that one has thought logically, if one is in the antisophical mood, but only that one has not yet taken the step to understand that theosophy speaks out of the sources of existence.

Someone who is not a spiritual researcher can also understand this theosophy, can fully accept it and make it the elixir of his soul life. Why? Because that what the spiritual researcher experiences beyond the usual sensory experience can be expressed in the same language in which the experiences of the everyday life and science are expressed. I take care just in these talks that I use the same language for the spiritual regions —not the outer language, but the language of the thoughts-, as the outer science uses it. Indeed, one can experience the weirdest things, for example, that one cannot recognise the language with the adversaries of theosophy, which they accept for the outer life and science if they hold forth about the spiritual field.

Theosophy can give the human being a coherence with the primary source of his existence; it can make him aware of that point where the depths of his soul are connected with the depths of the world. Because the human being grasps the divine-creative forces in theosophy that organise him, he stands with theosophy within that world power which can give health and strength, assurance and hope and everything that it needs for life. As the human being penetrates with theosophy into the creative source of existence, he also penetrates into the creative source of existence concerning his moral life. Existence is increased in the best sense. The human being feels his determination, his value in theosophy, however, he feels his tasks and duties in the world too because he finds himself connected with that in which he is, otherwise, an unaware member only. The life beyond this source, the life in antisophy obliterates the existence of the soul. Strictly speaking, any barrenness of the soul, any pessimism, any scruples on existence, any incapability to manage his duties, any lack of moral impulses arise from the antisophical mood. Theosophy is there not to give any admonitions and the like but to point to the truth content of life.

Someone who recognises this truth content finds the impulses of life in the outer and moral fields. Theosophy raises the human soul to that level which it must have. Since it gives the soul that by which it really feels as transported into a foreign land to which it had to come. Since theosophy is not hostile to earth. If the human being understands himself with it, he understands himself in such a way that he must ascend again to the world where he has his roots where his home is in which he must be to attain his full human development. From this knowledge of its home that theosophy can give, optimism, life knowledge, clarity about its duties, about the impulses of life can flow to the soul— which always remain dark under the antisophical mood even if one believes that they are bright and clear. Theosophy creates that mood which can become a monistic mood, a feeling one with the spirit living and interweaving in the world. Theosophy means being in the spirit, so that one knows: the spirit penetrating any existence invigorates and pulsates through that what lives and weaves in me.

The best human spirits still felt one with this theosophyeven if they did not always ascend to that what can be given in the beginning of the twentieth century as world knowledge. If Fichte (Johann Gottlieb F., 1762-1814, German philosopher) tries to outline the nature of the human ego with sharp lines of thought, he gets a mood from quite different lines of thought as they are explained here which crystallised in the words: the human being who experiences himself in his ego really experiences himself in the spiritual world. This is the theosophical mood. This is something that has coined the nice words from this theosophical world consciousness just in Fichte. These words appear as a necessary consequence of the theosophical world consciousness. It is brilliant how Fichte coined some sentences in his lectures The Vocation of the Scholar (1794). There he summarises again that about which he had thought very much and that appears like a theosophical mood in the words: if I have recognised myself in my ego, being within the spiritual world, then I have also recognised myself in my vocation! We would say, I have found the point where it is connected in its own being with the roots of the world being. Fichte continues saying: “I lift my head boldly up to the menacing rocky mountains, and to the raging water fall and to the crashing clouds swimming in a fire sea and say: I am everlasting and resist your power! Everything shall fall down onto me, and you earth and you heaven intermingle in the wild tumult, and you all elements foam and rave and grind the last solar mote of the body which is mine —my will with its steady plan shall hover over the leftovers of the universe boldly and coldly. Since I have grasped my vocation, and it is more permanent than you are; it is everlasting and I am everlasting as it is.” This word comes from a theosophical mood. On another occasion, when he wrote the preface of his Vocation of the Scholar he spoke the meaningful words against the antisophical spirit: “We know the fact that ideals cannot be shown in the real world, we know it maybe as well as they do, maybe better. We state only that reality is assessed by them, and must be modified by those who feel the strength in themselves. Assuming that they could also not convince themselves of it, they lose very little, because they are what they are; and, besides, humanity loses nothing. It becomes only clear that one does not count on them in the plan of improving humanity. This will continue its way without doubt; the benevolent nature may rule and give them rain and sunshine, digestible food and undisturbed circulation of their juices, and, besides — clever thoughts!”

One feels united in the theosophical mood, even if spirits of the past times could not speak about the spiritual world in such a concrete way as it is possible today, one feels united with these human beings who had this theosophical mood. Therefore, I feel always in harmony with every word, with every sentence with Goethe and particularly with the theosophical mood that vividly penetrates everything that he thought and wrote. Thus, he could also say an appropriate word with reference to the theosophical and antisophical mood, a word with which I would like to finish this consideration about Theosophy and Antisophy. Goethe had heard a rather antisophical word which originated from a brilliant, significant spirit, from Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777, Swiss naturalist and poet). However, Albrecht von Haller lived in an especially antisophical mood, although he was a great naturalist of his time; nevertheless it is an antisophical word when he says:

No created mind penetrates

Into the being of nature.

Blissful is that to whom

She shows her appearance only.

Goethe felt this as antisophical mood, even if he did not use the words theosophical and antisophical. He characterises the impression somewhat drastically which Haller's antisophical words made on him. He expressed the fact that the soul has to lose itself under such an approach, so to speak. It would have to lose the strength and dignity that are given to it to recognise itself:

Indeed

To the Physicist

“No created mind penetrates

Into the being of nature.”

O you Philistine!

Do not remind me

And my brothers and sisters

Of such a word.

We think: everywhere we are inside.

“Blissful is that to whom she shows

Her appearance only!”

I hear that repeatedly for sixty years,

I grumble about it, but covertly,

I say to myself thousand and thousand times:

She gives everything plenty and with pleasure;

Nature has neither kernel nor shell,

She is everything at the same time.

Examine yourself above all,

Whether you are kernel or shell.

Our recent considerations have, on the one hand, referred to human evolution as a whole, in so far as this has been affected by the Mystery of Golgotha. We have concerned ourselves to some degree with the loftiest, the most significant aspects of universal and human evolution. On the other hand, it is surely understandable that we have gone into the events of the moment. It was especially necessary to do this because a large proportion of our friends had expressed the wish to hear something about these current events. We have to admit that the gravity of the times encourages us to link the concrete experiences of the day with the nerve centre, the inmost impulse, of our spiritual-scientific striving. For after much investigation we can surely say that the reasons for the catastrophe we now see all around us in human evolution are buried very deeply indeed, and that it is superficial to look at current events solely by taking account of only the most external ramifications.

Looking only at these we would never reach a fruitful view of present events. A fruitful view would be one which would give us the possibility of finding thoughts on how to extricate ourselves from the catastrophe in which the world now finds itself. So let us look at some more details. I then intend tomorrow to show an important connection revealed by spiritual science, a connection which will touch our souls in a way which will enable us to gain an active and understanding grasp of these things. So let us now prepare for this with some more details.

First, let me stress once again that nothing is further from my intention than to put forward political considerations. This is most certainly not our task. It is our task to use our considerations to gain knowledge, knowledge of how things are linked together. For this we have to look at the details. And for this very reason our considerations are very far removed from any form of taking sides. Especially in this respect I beg you not to misunderstand me. Whatever point of view one or other of us might have in relation to national aspirations must not be allowed to interfere in any way with the deeper foundations of our spiritual-scientific striving. My intention is solely to make suggestions on which a judgement might be based. In no way do I want to influence anyone's opinion.

Misunderstandings can easily arise in this field, and it seems to me that some of the things I have said recently have indeed been open to misunderstanding. Let me therefore say immediately—since anyone can be misunderstood in this way—that, for instance, when I have spoken about the question of Belgian neutrality and events connected with it, I have had absolutely no intention of defending or attacking anything but merely wanted to state facts. Indeed, the first time I mentioned this I was simply quoting Georg Brandes who, so it seems to me, has expressed a truly neutral judgement.

It has not been my concern to criticize politically one measure or another taken by one side or another. My intention has been to stress the importance of the principle of truth in the world, to stress that the karma which has fulfilled itself in mankind has often come about because the attention paid to facts, the attention paid to historical and other connections of life in our materialistic age, is not permeated with the truth. When truth is not at work, when that extraordinary opposite of truth, namely, the lack of inclination to seek the truth, is at work, when there is little yearning for truth—all this is connected with the karma of our time. This is what we must study.

When we see what is being said during these years in which mankind is living, through what is today called war, we cannot object that such things are said only by the newspapers. What matters is the effect. These things have powerful effects. When we pay attention to what is said and to how these things are said, we find that it is just in this ‘how’ that something works which truly does not run concurrently with the truth. Do not believe that thoughts and statements are not objective forces in their own right! They are objective, actual forces! It is inevitable that they are followed by consequences, even if these are not translated into external deeds. What people think is far more important for the future than what they do. Thoughts become deeds in the course of time. We live today on the thoughts of past times; these are fulfilled in the deeds committed today. And our thoughts which flood through the world today will flow into the deeds of the future.

I am now coming to something which has easily led to misunderstandings, so let me say in advance: I am using the following as a model for the manner in which one may seek the truth. I said some days ago that peace would have been preserved if Sir Edward Grey had replied in the affirmative to the question from the German ambassador in London as to whether England would remain neutral if Germany respected Belgian neutrality. This statement may be disputed. I maintain, however, that it cannot be denied that things would certainly have taken a different course if Sir Edward Grey had answered in the affirmative; for then the violation of Belgium's neutrality would not have taken place.

If you recall everything I have said—and please consider that what matters here are the nuances—you will see that with not a single word have I anywhere defended the violation of Belgian neutrality. I certainly have not done this. But neither do I need to brand it as a violation of the law. To do so would be to carry coals to Newcastle, as the saying goes. Right at the beginning of the war the German Chancellor himself admitted that it was a violation of the law. It cannot be my task to add anything to this or to excuse anything about it. It has been admitted by those competent to judge that it was a violation of the law.

The fact remains—and I beg that we should understand one another properly today, my dear friends—the fact remains that on 1 August the English Foreign Minister was asked: Would England remain neutral if Germany refrained from violating Belgian neutrality? And he gave an evasive answer! The way the question was framed leaves no doubt that, if the answer had been affirmative, Belgium's neutrality would not have been violated.

You could say that the neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed since 1839, and that as matters stood there was no need to ask, since Germany was obliged to respect the neutrality of Belgium. Therefore Germany had no right to demand that England should remain neutral if Germany were to respect the law, since it was her duty to do so. The respecting of Belgium's neutrality ought not to have been made dependent on England's neutrality. You could say that the German ambassador merely asked: Will England remain neutral if Germany keeps her promise?

So if someone maintains that it was formally correct of Sir Edward Grey to answer evasively, he is absolutely right. He is so right that it is pointless to go into it any more. But legally formal judgements are never what matters in world evolution. Such judgements never conform to reality! World history proceeds in ways which cannot be encompassed by formal judgements. A formal judgement is foreign to reality. But someone who makes a formal judgement will, if only he shouts loudly enough, always be in the right because, of course, sensible people do not object to the rightness of formal judgements. Formal judgements are also very easily understood; but they do not encompass the realities.

May I remind you that in my recent book Vom Menschenrätsel I stressed that it is not only the formal correctness of a judgement that matters but also the degree in which it conforms to reality. The important thing is that judgements must encompass reality. Nobody can have any objection to the formal correctness of Sir Edward Grey's answer. There is nothing to discuss, for it is perfectly obvious. But it is the facts we must look at, although the way we look at the facts must be such as to show how we ought to judge external matters if we want to prepare ourselves to win correct perceptions about spiritual matters also. Spiritual matters must be comprehended in all their reality; and for this, formal judgements are insufficient. So we must accustom ourselves to keep the facts together as well as we possibly can in external matters also.

I could argue for a long time on this, for we could speak for days solely about this question. First of all, if it were a matter of establishing a legal basis—for if neutrality is to be violated, it must first exist—we should have to discover whether Belgium's neutrality did, in fact, exist at the time when it was supposed to have been violated. I am not referring here to documents which have been found during the war. There is no point in discussing these since they are questionable and various opinions are possible. But if the matter were being discussed, and if everything relevant were being scrutinized and assessed in the way other things are also judged in ordinary life, then this point would have to be raised too: Surely the old neutrality formalized in 1839 lost its validity when Belgium occupied the Congo. If a state creates new circumstances by entering into international relations at a level where it could give away or sell territories as extensive as those of the Congo—or do anything else with them in relation to other states—then, surely its neutrality must be suspect.

I know that in 1885 the Congo was declared neutral as well; but it would be a matter of deciding whether or not this was contestable. But I do not want to decide anything. I merely want to draw your attention to the difficulties which exist and to the fact that it is not so easy to form a truly objective judgement about such things. A number of other things of equal calibre could be brought into the argument, so this is where the difficulties begin. Neither shall we discuss how far the old agreement of 1839 could still be valid, since Germany was not founded until 1871. All these things would have to be considered. For into the objective progress of events there flow not only fantastic ideas which we formalize, but also actual facts, without any contribution from human beings; actual facts also play their part.

Now, is it really true that the German ambassador formulated a question about something that should have been a matter of course? The question he asked was: Would Great Britain remain neutral if Germany kept the promise of 1839, even though Germany did not exist at that time! Earlier on, Belgian neutrality was not taken as a matter of course either. When, in 1870, war broke out between Prussia—together with the German principalities allied with her—and France, an agreement was reached between Great Britain under Foreign Minister Gladstone and Germany on the one hand, and between Great Britain and France on the other hand. In each case it was agreed that Great Britain would remain neutral if the other two respected the neutrality of Belgium.

So, in the year 1870, Great Britain was in exactly the same situation. Yet she did not take the attitude that the old agreement of 1839 was definitely valid. Instead, in case anything should happen, she balanced the neutrality of Belgium against her own. If a prejudgement such as this occurs, it cannot afterwards be said that similar steps should not be taken at a later date. So let us refer once more to something I have stressed several times: There is continuity in the life that runs through history; things are linked together. Just as an individual cannot do something to undo what has once been done, so it is with nations. You cannot take something for granted if it has not previously been taken for granted.

So this, too, must be taken into consideration. Even if the matter had been so simple that it could have been said: The agreement of 1839 was obviously valid, and so there was no need to request Great Britain for an additional commitment—even if this could have been said—then the counter argument is: that in 1870 Great Britain herself took the initiative. It was Great Britain who asked France, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other, whether they would respect the neutrality of Belgium. So at that time discussions took place about neutrality. And when discussions take place, others can follow from them at a later date.

The following can also be said. You know that it is not my task to defend the violation of neutrality, but I can say: If an affirmative answer from Great Britain had led to non-violation of Belgium's neutrality, then everything in the West would have taken a different course. But this was not my final word, for I added expressly: In addition, Germany offered to respect France and her colonies if England were to remain neutral. When no positive answer was forthcoming to this question either, the further question was asked: Under what conditions would England remain neutral? England was actually invited to name the conditions under which she would remain neutral. This was all over and done with on 2 August, for it happened on 1 August. England declined. Great Britain did not want to give any answer to questions on this subject. So you can really say: If Great Britain had given any kind of an answer, everything would have taken a different course in the West; even the external course of history shows this.

But I did not stop here either, for I said to you that I knew from other circumstances that even the whole war with France could have been avoided if Great Britain had given a suitable answer. The fact that there were other, more profound, reasons why this did not happen is something that weighs down the scales on the other side. But everything must be carefully considered if we want to form a judgement about the opinion that has been buzzing around the world for the last two and a half years. For there are still many people who believe that England entered the war because of the violation of Belgian neutrality, when in fact this very thing could have been avoided if she had not entered the war!

Now you might say: The whole war situation in the West would have been different if Germany had not violated the neutrality of Belgium. But then you are not distinguishing between what is formally and legally correct and all that is connected with the tragedy of world history. It is very important to distinguish between what is tragic and what is formally correct. Of course, things would have been different. What would have been different? Without, I beg you, bringing moral aspects into the discussion, let us now see what would have been different.

Let us assume that Belgium's neutrality had been respected despite Great Britain's refusal to make a commitment, which meant that at any minute she could be expected to enter the war. As things stood, the attitude of Great Britain made it absolutely inevitable that war would break out in the West. This must be obvious to anyone who really studies the matter, not only the Blue Paper but all the other documents as well. Whether it could have been avoided with the mood in France being as it was at that time is another question—hardly, perhaps! But let us assume that war broke out in the West because of Great Britain's attitude. What would have happened if Belgium's neutrality had nevertheless been respected? As I have said, I am not leading up to a moral judgement in any direction.

The following would have happened: By far the greatest part of the German army, which has been accused of so much, would have been entangled in France's defences and used up on the western side. Despite all the talk of Prussian militarism, the French army is hardly less powerful than the German—the figures are virtually identical—and this was the case before the war as well. Therefore, obviously the German army would have been used up in the West, and the invasion from the East which began in August and September, would have commenced with a vengeance. For the experts said that it would have been impossible to wage war in the West without engaging almost the whole of the German army all the time. Germany would have been totally exposed to the invasion from the East.

This was the situation. It might have been said that this was a wrong strategic judgement. This was arguable during the early months of the war, but not any longer. For since the failed attempt at Verdun, those who said that the whole German army would be used up if it was deployed solely in the West have been proved to be right.

So there was a choice between passing the death sentence on Germany or taking the tragic step of breaking in through Belgium, which was the only alternative if war in the West could not be avoided; for in the East it certainly could not be avoided! Anyone who says today that it could have been avoided must have the effrontery to say Yes and No at the same time. People today are hardly capable of considering what might be true and what false, but given that some might have the effrontery to say Yes and No at the same time, this is what they would maintain: We have been attacked by the Central Powers; we are not to blame for the commencement of the war; but we shall not end the war until we have attained our war goal, namely, to conquer this one or that one!

There you have Yes and No in the same breath! We are not the ones who want anything, it is the others who want something; they want to conquer, that is why they have attacked us; we, however, shall not end this war till we have achieved our long-standing aim of this or that conquest! It is really unbelievable that people exist who have the effrontery to say Yes and No in the same breath. Perhaps in the next few days you will discover that there is indeed a person who is capable of saying Yes and No in the same breath. Here is probably the most appalling document ever to have been published in recent times, for it depicts a logic riven beyond all meaning. This is indeed something that belongs to the karma of our time.

So what we have to do is distinguish between what is logical and formally legal and what is purely tragic. We must not succumb to the peculiar misconception that it could be possible in maya—that is, in the world of the physical plane—for real events to take place solely in accordance with what is merely formal and logical. But let us look further: We did not set out to defend or attack anything. Our intention was to show that it is not justifiable—especially while those accused are not in a position to defend themselves—to trumpet abroad that this war is being fought by one of the sides because of the violation of Belgian neutrality, without also proclaiming that one possessed the possibility of preventing this violation. The only possibility of escaping the tragedy would have been the neutrality of England. For no statesman may proclaim in advance the death sentence on his own country.

Of course it is reasonable if all those who are satisfied with reasonable judgements say: Agreements must be kept. My dear friends, if you were to see a list of all the agreements in public and private life which are not kept, and if you were then to be shown what the breaking of these agreements has brought about in the world, you would begin to realize just what forces in maya are the really effective ones.

But was there really such a good conscience on the side which failed to answer in the affirmative? The facts seem to speak against the possibility. For when, at a later date, the question of this discussion between the German ambassador and Sir Edward Grey was once again placed on the agenda, and when it was said that England could have saved the neutrality of Belgium, the English government defended itself. It did so not by invoking the argument of mere formal and legal correctness—for this there were too many excellent statesmen in the the English government at that time. Although I do not withdraw the judgement of Sir Edward Grey—formed not by me but by his English colleagues—he was, nevertheless, too good a statesman to fall back on the pose of maintaining that since an agreement had been formulated in 1839, Germany was obliged to abide by it even if England had given an evasive answer. Instead of doing this the English statesmen excused themselves in a different manner. Grey said that Lichnowsky had indeed asked this question but that he had done so in a private capacity and not on the instruction of the German government. Had he done so on the instruction of the German government, this would have been different. Though Lichnowsky had acted from the best intentions of maintaining peace in the West, he had not had the German government behind him!

Do you not think that in any private situation this would be called a lame excuse, a perfectly ordinary lame excuse! For the whole world knows that when the ambassador of a country speaks with a Foreign Minister he must do so with the full power of his country behind him, and that his country cannot but ratify what her ambassador says, unless she wants to appear quite impossible in the eyes of the world. So this was a perfectly ordinary lame excuse, grasped at because no one wanted to withdraw to a position which would have to be defended by saying, simply: What we did was correct. They certainly felt the weight of the fact that England could have prevented the violation of neutrality, quite apart from whether the violation was justified from the point of view of the other side. If an avalanche is threatening to fall and the one at the top of the mountain refrains from holding it back because, for some reason—which may or may not be justified and may certainly be unjustified—he is forced to let it go, and then if someone further down also fails to hold it back, with the justification that the one at the top should have done it—no, you cannot argue in this way! But to form judgements about these things always entails weighing them up. So the following would also have to be taken into consideration:

When did it happen? We have now arrived at 2 August. On 2 August the King of Belgium requested the intervention of England, that is, he requested England to intervene with Germany. The Belgian King saw it as a matter of course that England should negotiate with Germany about the neutrality of Belgium. Initially, England did nothing. She waited a whole day while Sir Edward Grey spoke to his Parliament in London. In doing so he concealed the conversation he had had with the German ambassador. Not a word did he breathe about it. If he had mentioned it, the whole session in Parliament would have taken a different course!

So after the discussion with the German ambassador had taken place, and after the King of Belgium had requested the intervention of England, everything paused in England, nothing was done. What was everybody waiting for? They were waiting for the violation of Belgium's neutrality to be accomplished! As long as it remained unaccomplished, matters could still have taken a course along which it would not happen. Powerful forces were working against it happening and it was hanging by a silken thread. If the request of the Belgian King had been fulfilled quickly enough, if England had intervened, it is questionable whether the violation of neutrality would have taken place. But when did Grey intervene? On the fourth, when the German armies had already set foot on Belgian soil! Why did he wait, even after the request of the King of Belgium? These are questions which have to be asked.

Much could be added to all this if the documents were to be studied both forwards and backwards. But this is not necessary, for I believe I have made it clear to you that these things were very well prepared years in advance. So there is no need to be surprised that events took the course they did in recent years. Of course, if you study the documents forwards only, you will only come up with formal answers.

It has been my intention not to take sides one way or the other, but only to show what is necessary to come to a judgement on these things. For in accordance with the nerve centre of spiritual science, where we strive for a lofty viewpoint, I would rather refrain from light-heartedly making derogatory judgements about what happens in world history when states collide head-on; for do not forget: Not nations, not peoples, wage war; states wage war!

In this field we tend to consider too little that, in addition to the forces of growth and becoming, world events also need the forces of destruction and decay. Is it any different with the individual human being? As we develop our capacities during the course of our lifetime, we cause our body to decay and be destroyed. Tomorrow I shall show you what profound connection exists between our soul life and belladonna, jimson weed, and other poisons found outside in the world. These are truths which delve deeply down into things. One must have the courage to give these truths a validity in world history. Therefore it is much better to understand, rather than to judge in accordance with some so-called norm or other. Any condemnation of states or nations usually stands on insecure foundations. If we are at last to ascend towards the spiritual world and be able to understand anything there, we must accustom ourselves to simply looking at facts, without any criticism—which belongs to quite another realm. Only then shall we understand what forces are at work in world evolution.

From this point of view let us now look at certain events—without anger, but by studying them carefully—certain events which I have hitherto observed have so far been considered solely from a moral point of view. Such a point of view must, of course, be applied to the actions of individuals, although it is absurd to apply it to the lives of states. One or other of you might even find it strange that I should look at these events without judging them morally; yet they can certainly be considered without any moral undertones.

One of the chief elements in the mighty British Empire is its dominion over India. This dominion over India has undergone a number of earlier stages. It took its departure from the East India Company, a trading organization which, to begin with, enjoyed the privilege of being the sole company permitted to trade with India on England's behalf. Then, as time went on, there developed, inexorably and appropriately, out of the various privileges enjoyed by the East India Company, the dominion of England over India—indeed, the English Empire of India. From this, indeed also through the East India Company, there also developed England's trade with China. From the end of the eighteenth century there was a lively trading relationship between India and China, and the English East India Company was already involved at that time. You know that England then gradually grew to be the foremost merchant of the world.

Then, as the element of trade became established in the Orient, something else was brought to bear on it; it came into contact with something else. From the seventeenth century onwards the habit of smoking opium had become widespread in China. Probably it was the Arabs who taught the Chinese how to smoke opium, since before the seventeenth century they had not done so. For those who do it, smoking opium provides a questionable but powerful pleasure. The opium smoker creates for himself the most varied fantasies out of the astral world. In these he lives. It is truly another world, but reached by a purely material path.

When the people who conducted England's trade with China, in the manner described, noticed that the habit, the passion of opium smoking was spreading rapidly among the Chinese, they established vast poppy plantations in Bengal for the production of opium. Those who are familiar with the laws of commerce know that not only does demand stimulate supply, but supply also stimulates demand. Any economist will tell you that if a large amount of some article is put on offer there will soon be a great demand for it. The East India Company was granted the monopoly by England for the export of opium from India to China. And the more opium arrived in China, the more the evil habit spread. From 1772 onwards several thousand chests were imported annually, each to the value of about 4,800 marks.

I have chosen this example for it has a very profound cultural and historical background, if all factors are taken into account. Only consider that, by introducing opium, which works on the soul, you are interfering with the spiritual life of a whole nation or, at least, of those to whom you are supplying it. I can use this example because I have no intention of condemning anyone who wants to trade. Trade is something that must move freely in the world. This is a perfectly justifiable principle. I have no intention of condemning anyone who might grow poppies in Bengal in order to manufacture opium for China and take gold in exchange.

But the Chinese saw their pathetically wasted opium smokers. Opium smokers gradually deteriorate, and after a while it was noticed that the habit was causing the degeneration of wide sections of the Chinese population. When the Chinese noticed this they outlawed the smoking of opium in 1794. They wanted to prevent any more opium from entering the country.

But as is the way with such things, prohibitions do not necessarily prevent trade with the forbidden article. Ways and means are found to carry on trading. So it turned out that despite the formal prohibition, despite the law which forbade the import of opium, the opium trade flourished. There are all sorts of ways, of which bribery is only one. In short, the opium trade flourished and increased from a few thousand chests in 1773 to thirty thousand chests in 1837: that is, over only a few decades. The profits, about thirty million francs a year, flowed into British India.

Once things had got out of hand to this extent, the Chinese could think of no other measure than the confiscation of the opium consignments as they arrived. To Canton, which was the usual destination of the consignments, they sent a capable Chinese—an energetic man, Lin by name, who confiscated the chests as they arrived. The English also had a capable man in their consulate, Captain Elliot, who was very energetic and even succeeded on one occasion in breaking through the Chinese blockade with a warship.

Now there arose the question of how to get out of this fix. Mountains of chests filled with opium were waiting to be dealt with, but the Chinese would not relent. The situation was most awkward. So Elliot, who was in a position to do this, had 20,283 chests signed over to himself personally and then handed them to the Chinese Government. This was the way out for the moment.

However, this did not remove the opium trade from the face of the earth, for in some quarters there was no desire to rid the world of the opium trade. So the Chinese found there was nothing for it but to make new laws once again, very strict laws indeed. Lin decreed that anyone caught trading with opium would be condemned to death by the Chinese courts and that from now on all ships were to be confiscated. Thus the Chinese were now faced with the prospect of the death penalty if they traded with opium.

But the British would not consider the abolition of the opium trade, just because a few people might lose their heads. Instead they said—and I quote—‘With this demand, the Chinese Government has finally destroyed any sense of security.’ Then they ordered all British nationals living in China to leave, while armed assistance was requested from India. They, so to say, occupied the whole area. The Chinese meanwhile stood quite bravely by their decision to behead anyone caught trading in opium. So it appeared that the opium trade had ceased. Since the Chinese intended to confiscate any British ships carrying opium, there appeared to be no more British ships. What happened was that the opium was loaded in India on to American ships instead! So, just as much—indeed more and more—opium continued to arrive in China on American ships.

Elliot, the civil servant, said: The question underlying our conflict is quite simple. Does China wish to conduct honest and increasing trade with us, or does she want to accept responsibility for allowing her coastal waters to fall victim to open piracy and freebooting? The harbour at Canton was blockaded with help from India. In the skirmishing this involved, a Chinese was killed by an English sailor. Of course the Chinese Government demanded the extradition of the sailor. Every so often the Chinese tired of the whole affair, sometimes wanting to prove they were in the right and yet not wanting to prove the English wrong either. It is quite possible to do this! One day an English sailor drowned by accident. So Elliot, a very clever man, agreed with Lin, the representative of the Chinese Government, that they would confirm the drowned sailor to be the one who had killed the Chinese. The drowned sailor was handed over and the matter thus settled for the moment. But all these things led in the end, in 1840, to the war between England and China.

So the whole course of events was inexorable and could not have gone any other way. An incisive influence was exercised in a material way on the soul life of a people. Something took place which is connected with the whole process of world evolution. In England people ‘knew’ what it was all about! What did they know? In England people ‘knew’ that England had been ‘surprised’ by China—that is how they put it—and the reason given was that China could not tolerate England's cultivation of opium in India because the Chinese wanted to build up their own cultivation. This is what was said. Everybody ‘knew’ all about this, and another thing they knew was that the Chinese were barbarians! That is what people in England knew at that time. Lord Palmerston said: The protection of poppy cultivation in India must gain ground; it is a matter of protecting poppy cultivation in India; furthermore, the economists in China do not want to allow out of their country the money which should by rights be paid to India. All these were things well ‘known’ and understood in Europe!

War raged; and in war, inevitably, atrocities occur. Atrocities were committed, both by the Chinese and by the English. Whole villages were found in which the women lay in pools of blood in their houses; the Chinese men, having fought bravely, saw that they would have to kill themselves or surrender, so first they killed their wives and children. This war of 1840 was a sad war. Strange rumours began to circulate about Elliot, who had observed it throughout and who actually had it on his conscience. The rumours—perhaps they were true—said that he was inclined to initiate peace negotiations with the Chinese. So he was overthrown. Then—no, not Lloyd George!—a certain Pottinger was given the position of Elliot who had wanted to initiate peace negotiations. The war was to be fought to its bitter end, that is, until the island of Chusan and the cities of Ningpo and Amoy had been taken, until the English had advanced as far as Nanking and until, in 1842, China had become totally demoralized. Hong Kong was made over to England, five ports in China were opened for unlimited opium trade, and British consuls established. In addition to the earlier twenty-five million extorted—I do not quite mean extorted, there is another word which I can't find for the moment—in addition to the earlier twenty-five million extorted from the Chinese, a further demand was now made for ninety-seven and a half million war damages.

As I have said before, I would not dream of interpreting this process as anything other than a historical necessity. I would not dream of accusing anybody. Those who understand necessities of this kind, those who understand how things take place on the physical plane, know that such things are perfectly possible in the normal physical way of world evolution. The profits made from opium are now absorbed into the English national economy, and the English national economy includes a good part of English culture. Just as it would be nonsense to underestimate English culture, so is it also nonsense to doubt the necessity of such events, though perhaps the trifling satirical epilogue to the whole affair might be excluded from that necessity:

When the first instalment of the ninety-seven and a half million war damages was received, certain people came forward claiming they had been the first to have chests of opium confiscated and that the compensation they had received had been minimal. Now, they said, we have seen that our country regards the opium trade with China as legitimate, so we demand full compensation, since we were merely doing something over which our country has since been waging war. The minister whose task it was to decide the matter drew from his pocket a note he had given Captain Elliot at the time, stating that so long as Chinese law forbade the opium trade, the English Government would never agree to pay compensation to anyone who might suffer losses as a result of carrying on this trade. Since this Chinese law was in force at the time, he said, your demand has no foundation because you were contravening this law which was only later nullified by the war.

We need not decide whether this epilogue was also one of the historical necessities. But what is a necessity is that we should look at the facts. When this Anglo-Chinese war started in 1840, mankind stood at the beginning of a time about which we have often spoken. I have mentioned this very year to you as that in which materialism attained its zenith. It is good to understand how such things develop. As I said, just as it would be nonsense to underestimate English culture or English life—English civilization—so would it be nonsense to believe that something of this nature could have been avoided in the overall context of English evolution. It belongs to it. So it is entirely wrong to form any kind of moral judgement about it. If we did, we would be making the mistake of judging whole nations, whole groups in the manner which is only appropriate when we judge individuals. This is the very thing which it is impossible to do.

Yet again and again it is maintained that such a thing is possible. I have just received another pamphlet—there are so many peacemaking pamphlets to be had at the moment—which says: States have their own thinking, feeling and willing, just as do human individuals. Of course this is utter nonsense because you cannot, by analogy, transfer something which has reality on a higher plane to the level of the human being who has his thinking, feeling and willing in the physical sphere. Of course the folk spirits, the folk souls, also have their characteristics, but these are as I have described them in the lecture cycle I mentioned the other day. But to speak of the thinking, feeling and willing of nations is simply nonsense.

My dear friends, today I have introduced you to certain matters, for the simple reason that it was necessary to add some striking examples to our basic material. Tomorrow we shall continue to link this to more far-reaching viewpoints.

I am very glad to be able to speak here again after a comparatively long absence. Those of you who were present at our meeting in Munich earlier this year¹ or have heard something about my Mystery Play, The Guardian of the Threshold, will have realised what the attitude of the soul must be if an adequate conception is to be acquired of the content of Spiritual Science or, let us say, of Occultism.

A great deal has been said previously about the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. The aim of The Guardian of the Threshold was to show that the essential nature of these beings can be revealed only by studying them very gradually and from many different aspects. It is not enough to form a simple concept or give an ordinary definition of these beings—popular as such definitions are. My purpose was to show from as many different sides as possible, the part played by these beings in the lives of men. The Play will also have helped you to realise that there must be complete truthfulness and deep seriousness when speaking of the spiritual worlds. This, after all, has been the keynote of the lectures I have given here. It must be emphasised all the more strongly at the present time because there is so little recognition of the seriousness and value of genuine anthroposophical endeavours. If there is one thing that I have tried to emphasise in the lectures given over the years, it is that you should embark upon all your anthroposophical efforts in this spirit of truthfulness and earnestness, and become thoroughly conscious of their significance in world-existence as a whole, in the evolutionary process of humanity and in the spiritual content of our present age. It cannot be emphasised too often that the essence of Anthroposophy cannot be grasped with the help of a few simple concepts or a theory briefly propounded, let alone a programme. The forces of the whole soul must be involved. But life itself is a process of Becoming, of development. Someone might argue that he can hardly be expected to ally himself with an Anthroposophical Movement if he is immediately faced with a demand for self-development and told that he can only hope to penetrate slowly and gradually to the essence of Anthroposophy; he may ask how he can decide to join something for which he can prepare only slowly. The rejoinder to this would be that before a human being can reach the highest stage of development he already has in his heart and in his soul the sense of truth which has led mankind as a whole to strive for such development, and he need only devote himself open-mindedly to this sense of truth, with the will for truth which lies in the depths of his soul unless prejudices have led him astray. He must avoid empty theories and high-sounding programmes. Man is able to sense truth where it genuinely exists. Honest criticism is therefore always possible, even if someone is only at the very beginning of the path of attainment. This, however, does not preclude him from attributing supreme importance to anthroposophical endeavour.

In our present age there are many influences which divert men from the natural feeling for truth that is present in their souls. Over the years it has often been possible to indicate these misleading influences and I need not do it again today. My purpose is to emphasise how necessary it is—even if there is already some knowledge of occult science—to approach and study things again and again from constantly new sides. One example of what I mean is our study of the four Gospels. This autumn I brought these studies to a provisional conclusion with a course of lectures on the Gospel of St. Mark. These studies of the Gospels may be taken as a standard example of the way in which the great truths of existence must be approached from different sides. Each Gospel affords an opportunity to view the Mystery of Golgotha from a different angle, and indeed we cannot begin really to know anything essential about this Mystery until we have studied it from the four different viewpoints presented in the four Gospels.

In what way have our studies over the last ten or twelve years demonstrated this? Those of you who want to be clear about this need only turn to my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, the content of which was first given in the form of lectures, before the foundation of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. Anyone who seriously studies this book will find that it already contained the gist of what I have since said in the course of years, about the Mystery of Golgotha and the four Gospels. Nothing, however, would be more unjustified than to believe that by knowing the contents of that book you would ipso facto have an adequate understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. All the lectures given since the book appeared have been the natural outcome of that original spiritual study; nowhere are they at variance with what was then said. It has furthermore been possible to open up new ways for contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha, thus enabling us to penetrate more and more deeply into its significance. The attempt has been made to substitute direct experience of the spiritual facts for concepts, theories and abstract speculations. And if, in spite of it all, a feeling of a certain lack still exists, this lack is due to something that is inevitable on the physical plane, namely, the time factor. Hence I have always assumed that you would have patience and wait for matters to develop gradually. This is also an indication of how what I have to say to you during this coming winter should be understood.

In the course of years we have spoken a great deal of the life between death and a new birth. The same subject will, however, be dealt with in the forthcoming lectures, the reason being that during this last summer and autumn it has been my task to undertake further spiritual research into this realm and to present an aspect of the subject which could not previously be dealt with. It is only now possible to consider certain matters which bring home the profound moral significance of the super-sensible truths pertaining to this realm. In addition to all other demands to which only very brief reference has been made, there is one which in this vain and arrogant age is a cause of offence to numbers of individuals. But we must not allow it to deter us from the earnestness and respect for truth that are due to our Movement. The demand will continue to be made that by dint of earnest, intimate efforts we shall learn to be receptive to knowledge brought from the spiritual world.

For some years now the relationship of human beings living on the physical plane to the spiritual worlds has changed from what it was through almost the whole of the nineteenth century. Until the last third of that century men had little access to the spiritual worlds; it was necessary for evolution that only little of the content of those worlds should flow into the human soul. But now we are living in an age when the soul need only be receptive and duly prepared and revelations from the spiritual worlds will be able to flow into it. Individual souls will become more and more receptive and, being aware of their task in the present age, they will find this inflow of spiritual knowledge to be a reality. Hence the further demand is made that anthroposophists shall not turn deaf ears to what can make its way into the soul today from the spiritual worlds. Before entering into the main theme of these lectures I want to speak of two characteristics of the spiritual life to which special attention must be paid.

Between death and the new birth a human being experiences the realities of the spiritual world in a very definite way. But he also experiences these realities through Initiation; he experiences them too if his soul is prepared during his life in the physical body in a way that enables him to participate in the spiritual worlds. Hence it is true to say that what takes place between death and the new birth—which is, in fact, existence in the spiritual world—can be revealed through Initiation.

Attention must be paid to two points which emerge from what has often been said here; they are essential not only to experience of the spiritual worlds but also to the right understanding of communications received from these worlds. The difference between conditions in the spiritual world and the physical world has often been emphasised, also the fact that when the soul enters the spiritual world it finds itself in a sphere in which it is essential to become accustomed to a great deal that is the exact opposite of conditions in the physical world. Here is one example: If, on the physical plane, something is to be brought about by us, we have to be active, to use our hands, to move our physical body from one place to another. Activity on our part is necessary if we are to bring about something in the physical world. In the spiritual worlds exactly the opposite holds good. I am speaking always of the present epoch. If something is to happen through us in the spiritual worlds, it must be achieved through our inner calm, our inner tranquillity; in the spiritual worlds the capacity to await events with tranquillity corresponds to busy activity on the physical plane. The less we bestir ourselves on the physical plane, the less we can bring about; the more active we are, the more can happen. In the spiritual world, the calmer our soul can become, the more all inner restlessness can be avoided, the more we shall be able to achieve. It is therefore essential to regard whatever comes to pass as something bestowed upon us by grace, something that comes to us as a blessing because we have deserved it as the fruit of inner tranquillity.

I have often said that anyone possessed of spiritual knowledge is aware that 1899 was a very significant year; it was the end of a period of 5,000 years in human history, the so-called Lesser Kali Yuga. Since that year it has become necessary to allow the spiritual to come to men in a way differing from what was previously usual. I will give you a concrete example. In the early twelfth century, a man named Norbert² founded a religious Order in the West. Before the idea of founding the Order came to him, Norbert was a loose-living man, full of sensuality and worldly impulses. One day something very unusual happened to him; he was struck by lightning. This did not prove fatal, but his whole being was transformed. There are many such examples in history. The inner connection between Norbert's physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego was changed by the force contained in the lightning. It was then that he founded his Order, and although, as in so many other cases, it failed to fulfil the aims of its founder, in many respects it did good at the time. Such ‘chance’ events, as they are called nowadays, have been numerous. But this was not a chance happening; it was an event of world-karma. The man was chosen to perform a task of special importance and to make this possible, particular bodily conditions had to be created. An outer event, an external influence, was necessary.

Since the year 1899 such influences on the souls of men must be purely inner influences, not exerted so definitely from outside. Not that there was an abrupt transition; but since the year 1899, influences exerted on the souls of men must more and more take effect inwardly. You may remember what I once said about Christian Rosenkreutz—that when he wishes to call a human soul to himself, it is a more inward call. Before 1899 such calls were made by means of outer events; since that year they have become more inward. Intercourse between human souls and the higher Hierarchies will become more and more dependent upon inner exertions, and men will have to apply the deepest, most intimate forces of their souls in order to maintain this intercourse with the Beings of the Hierarchies.

What I have just described to you as an incisive point in life on the physical plane has its counterpart in the spiritual world—visibly for one who is a seer—in much that has taken place between the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. At this time there were certain tasks which it was incumbent upon the Beings of the Hierarchies to carry out among themselves, but one particular condition must be noted. The Beings whose task in the spiritual worlds was to bring about the ending of Kali Yuga, needed something from our Earth, something taking place on our Earth. It was necessary that in certain souls who were sufficiently mature there should be knowledge of this change, or at least that such souls should be able to envisage it. For just as man on the physical plane needs a brain in order to develop consciousness, so do the Beings of the Hierarchies need human thoughts in which their deeds are reflected. Thus the world of men is also necessary for the spiritual world; it co-operates with the spiritual world and is an essential factor—but it must co-operate in the right way. Those who were ready previously or are ready now to participate in this activity from the human side, would not have been right then, nor would they be right now, to agitate in the way that is customary on the physical plane for the furtherance of something that is to take place in the spiritual world. We do not help the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies by busy activity on the physical plane, but primarily by having some measure of understanding of what is to happen; then, in restfulness and concentration of soul, we should await a revelation of the spiritual world. What we can contribute is the inner quietude we can achieve, the attitude of soul we can induce in ourselves to await this bestowal of grace.

Thus, paradoxical as it may seem, our activity in the higher worlds depends upon our own inner tranquillity; the calmer we can become, the more will the facts of the spiritual world be able to come to expression through us. Hence it is also necessary, if we are to participate effectively in a spiritual Movement, to be able to develop this mood of tranquillity. And in the Anthroposophical Movement it would be especially desirable for its adherents to endeavour to achieve this inner tranquillity, this consciousness of Grace in their attitude to the spiritual world.

Among the various activities in which man is engaged on the physical plane it is really only in the domain of artistic creation, or where there is a genuine striving for knowledge or for the advancement of a spiritual Movement, that these conditions hold good. An artist will assuredly not create the best work of which his gifts are capable if he is perpetually active and is impatient to make progress. He will produce his best work if he can wait for the moment when Grace is vouchsafed to him and if he can abstain from activity when the spirit is not speaking. And quite certainly no higher knowledge will be attained by one who attempts to formulate it out of concepts already familiar to him. Higher knowledge can be attained only by one who is able to wait quietly, with complete resignation, when confronted by a problem or riddle of existence, and who says to himself: I must wait until the answer comes to me like a flash of light from the spiritual worlds. Again, someone who rushes from one person to another, trying to convince them that some particular spiritual Movement is the only genuine one, will certainly not be setting about this in the right way; he should wait until the souls he approaches have recognised the urge in themselves to seek the truths of the spiritual world. That is how we should respond to any illumination shining down into our physical world; but it is particularly true of everything that man can himself bring about in the spiritual world. It may truly be said that even the most practical accomplishments in that realm depend upon the establishment of a certain state of tranquillity.

I want now to speak of so-called spiritual healing. Here again it is not the movements or manipulations carried out by the healer that are of prime importance; they are necessary, but only as preparation. The aim is to establish a condition of rest, of balance. Whatever is outwardly visible in a case of spiritual healing is only the preparation for what the healer is trying to do; it is the final result that is of importance. In such a case the situation is like weighing something on a pair of scales: first, we put in the one scale what we want to weigh; in the other scale we put a weight and this sets the beam moving to right and left. But it is only when equilibrium has been established that we can read the weight. Something similar is true of actions in the spiritual worlds.

In respect of knowledge, of perception, however, there is a difference. How does perception come about in everyday life on the physical plane? Everyone is aware that with the exception of certain spheres of the physical plane, objects present themselves to us from morning until evening during the waking life of day; from minute to minute new impressions are made upon us. It is in exceptional circumstances only that we, on our side, seek for impressions and do with objects what otherwise they do to us. This, however, is already near to being a searcher for knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is a different matter. We ourselves must set before our soul whatever is to be presented to it. Whereas we must be absolutely quiescent if anything is to come about, to happen through us in the spiritual world, we must be uninterruptedly active if we really desire to understand something in the spiritual world. Connected with this is the fact that many people who would like to be anthroposophists find that the knowledge we are trying to promote here is too baffling for them. Many of them complain: in Anthroposophy one has to be always learning, always pondering, always busy! But without such efforts it is not possible to acquire any understanding of the spiritual worlds. The soul must make strenuous efforts and contemplate everything from many sides. Mental pictures and concepts of the higher worlds must be developed through steady, tranquil work. In the physical world, if we want to have, say, a table, we must acquire it by active effort. But in the spiritual world, if we want to acquire something, we must develop the necessary tranquillity. If anything is to happen, it emerges from the twilight. But when it is a matter of knowing something, we must exert every possible effort to create the necessary Inspirations. If we are to ‘know’ something, effort is essential; the soul must be inwardly active, move from one Imagination to another, one Inspiration to another, one Intuition to another. We must create the whole structure; nothing will come to us that we have not ourselves produced in our search for knowledge. Thus conditions in the spiritual world are exactly the opposite of what holds good in the physical world.

I have had to give this introduction in order that we may agree together, firstly, as to how certain facts are discovered, but secondly, how they can be understood as more is said of them. In these lectures I shall deal less with the life immediately following death—known to us under the name of Kamaloka—the essential aspects of which are already familiar to you. We shall be more concerned to study from somewhat new points of view those periods in the life after death which follow the period of Kamaloka.

First of all it is important to describe the general character of that life. The first stage of higher knowledge is what may be called the ‘Imaginative’ life, or life filled with true, genuine visions. Just as in physical life we are surrounded by the world of colours, sounds, scents, tastes, mental pictures which we form for ourselves by means of our intellect, so in the spiritual world we are surrounded by ‘Imaginations’—which can also be called ‘visions’. But we must realise that these Imaginations or visions, when they are true in the spiritual sense, are not the imagery of dream but realities. Let us take a definite case.

When a human being has passed through the Gate of Death he comes into contact with those who died before him and with whom he was connected in some way during life. During the period between death and the new birth we are actually together with those who belong to us. Just as in the physical world we become aware of objects by seeing their colours, hearing their sounds and so on, in the same way we are surrounded after death, figuratively speaking, by a cloud of visions. Everything around us is vision; we ourselves are vision in that world just as here on Earth we are flesh and bone. But this vision is not a dream; we know that it is reality. When we encounter someone who is dead and with whom we previously had some connection, he too is ‘vision’; he is enveloped in a cloud of visions. But just as on the physical plane we know that the colour ‘red’ comes, let us say, from a red rose, on the spiritual plane we know that the ‘vision’ comes from the spiritual being of someone who passed through the gate of death before us. But here I must draw your attention to a particular aspect, especially as it is experienced by everyone who is living through this period after death. Here on the physical plane it may, for example, be the case that at least as far as we can judge, we ought to have loved some individual but have loved him too little; we have, in fact, deprived him of love or have hurt him in some way. In such circumstances, if we are not stony-hearted, the idea may occur to us that we must make reparation. When this idea comes to us it is possible to compensate for what has happened. On the physical plane we can modify the previously existing relationship but during the period immediately following Kamaloka, we cannot. From the very nature of the encounter we may well be aware that we have hurt the person in some way or deprived him of the love we ought to have shown him; we may also wish to make reparation, but we cannot. During this period all we can do is to continue the relationship which existed between us before death. We perceive what was amiss but for the time being we can do nothing to make amends. In this world of visions which envelops us like a cloud, we cannot alter anything. The relationship we had with an individual who died before us remains. This is often one of the more painful experiences also associated with Initiation. A person experiences much more deeply the significance of his relation to the physical plane than he was able to do with his eyes or his intellect, but for all that he cannot directly change anything. This, in fact, constitutes the pain and martyrdom of spiritual knowledge, in so far as it is self-knowledge and relates to our own life. After death, relationships between individuals remain and continue as they were during earthly life.

When recently this fact presented itself to my spiritual sight with tremendous force, something further occurred to me. During my life I have devoted a great deal of study to the works of Homer and have tried to understand many things contained in these ancient epics. On this particular occasion I was reminded of a certain passage. Homer, by the way, was called by the Greeks the ‘blind’ Homer, thus indicating his spiritual seership. In speaking of the realm through which men journey after death, Homer calls it the ‘realm of the Shades in which no change is possible’. Here once again I realised that we can rightly understand much that is contained in the great masterpieces and revelations of mankind only by drawing upon the very depths of spiritual knowledge. Much of what will lead to an understanding of humanity as a whole must depend upon a new recognition by men of those great ancestors whose souls were radiant with spiritual light. Any sensitive soul will be moved by the recognition that this ancient seer was able to write as he did only because the truth of the spiritual world shone into his soul. Here begins the true reverence for the divine-spiritual forces which stream through the world and especially through the hearts and souls of men. This attitude makes it possible to realise how the progress and development of the world are furthered. A very great deal that is true in the deepest sense is contained in the works of men whose gifts were on a level with those of Homer. But this truth which was once directly revealed to an ancient, dreamlike clairvoyance, has now been lost and must be regained on the path leading to spiritual knowledge.

In order to substantiate still further this example of what has been bestowed upon humanity by creative genius, I will now speak of something else as well. There was a certain truth which I strongly resisted when it first dawned upon me, which seemed to me to be paradoxical, but which through inner necessity I was eventually bound to recognise.

The spiritual investigation on which I was engaged at that time was also connected with the study of certain works of art. Among them was one which I had previously seen and studied although a particular aspect of it had not struck me before. I am speaking now of the Medici tombs in the Chapel designed and built in Florence by Michelangelo. Two members of the Medici family, of whom no more need be said at present, were to be immortalised in statues. But Michelangelo added four so-called ‘allegorical’ figures, named at his suggestion, ‘Morning’ and ‘Evening’, ‘Day’ and ‘Night’. ‘Day’ and ‘Night’ were placed at the foot of one statue; ‘Morning’ and ‘Evening’ at the foot of the other. Even if you have no particularly good photographs of these allegorical figures, you will easily be able to verify what I have to say about them.

We will begin with ‘Night’, the most famous of the four. In guide-books you can read that the postures of the limbs in the recumbent figure of ‘Night’ are unnatural, that no human being could sleep in that position and therefore the figure cannot be a good symbolic presentation of ‘Night’. But now let me say something else. Suppose we are looking at the allegorical figure of ‘Night’ with occult vision. We can then say to ourselves: when a human being is asleep, his Ego and astral body have left the physical and etheric bodies. It is conceivable that someone might visualise a particular posture which most accurately portrays that of the etheric body when the astral body and Ego have left. As we go about during the day our gestures and movements are conditioned by the fact that the astral body and Ego are within the physical and etheric bodies. But at night the astral body and Ego are outside and the etheric body alone is in the physical body. The etheric body then unfolds its own activity and mobility, and thus adopts a certain posture. The impression may well be that there is no more fitting portrayal of the free activity of the etheric body than that achieved by Michelangelo in this figure of ‘Night’. In point of fact, the movement is conveyed with such precision that no more appropriate presentation of the etheric body under such circumstances can be imagined.

Now let us turn to the figure of ‘Day’. Suppose we could induce in a human being a condition in which his astral and etheric bodies were as quiescent as possible and the Ego especially active. No posture could be more fitting for the activity of the Ego than that portrayed by Michelangelo in the figure of ‘Day’. The postures are not allegorical but drawn directly and realistically from life. The artist has succeeded in capturing as it were for earthly eternity the postures which in the evolutionary process most aptly express the activity of the Ego and the activity of the etheric body.

We come now to the other figures. First let us take that of ‘Evening’. If we think of how, in a healthily developed human being, the etheric body emerges and the physical body relaxes—as also happens drastically at death—but if we think, not of actual death but of the emergence of the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego from a man's physical body, we shall find that the posture then assumed by the physical body is accurately portrayed in the figure of ‘Evening’. Again, if we think of the activity of the astral body while there is diminished activity of the etheric body and Ego, we shall find the most precise representation in Michelangelo's figure of ‘Morning’. So on the one side we have the portrayals of the activity of the etheric body and of the Ego (in the figures of ‘Night’ and ‘Day’) and on the other side the portrayals of the physical and astral bodies (in the figures of ‘Evening’ and ‘Morning’).

As already said, at first I resisted this conclusion, but the more carefully one investigates the more one is compelled to accept it. What I have wanted to indicate here is how the artist is inspired by the spiritual world. Admittedly, in the case of Michelangelo the process was more or less unconscious but in spite of that his creations could only have been produced by the radiance of the spiritual world shining into the physical. Occultism does not lead to the destruction of works of art but on the contrary to a much deeper understanding of them; as a result. a great deal of what passes for art today will in the future no longer do so. A number of people may be disappointed but truth will be the gainer! I could well understand the foundation of the legend that has grown up in connection with the most elaborate of these figures. The legend is to the effect that when Michelangelo was alone with the figure of ‘Night’ in the Medici Chapel in Florence, he could make the figure rise up and walk. I will not go further into this, but when we know that this figure gives expression to the ‘life-body’, the significance of the legend is obvious.

The same applies in many cases—in that of Homer, for instance. Homer speaks of the spiritual realm, a realm of the Shades in which there can be no change or alteration. But when we study the conditions prevailing in the period of life following Kamaloka, we begin to have a new understanding of works of a divinely blessed man such as Homer. And a great deal will be similarly enriched through Spiritual Science.

Useful as it may be to indicate these things, they are not of prime importance in actual life. Of prime importance is the fact that mutual relationships are continually being formed between one human being and another. A man's attitude towards another individual will be very different if he detects a spiritual quality in him or thinks of human beings as pictured by a materialistic view of life. The sacred riddle that every human being should be to us can only be this to our feelings and perceptions when we have within our own soul something that is able to throw spiritual light upon the other soul. By deepening our contemplation of cosmic secrets—with which the secrets of human existence are connected—we shall learn to understand the nature of the man standing before us; we shall learn to silence our preconceptions and to feel and recognise the true qualities of the individual in question. The most important light that Spiritual Science can give will be the light it throws upon the human soul. Thereby sound social feelings, also those feelings of love which ought to prevail between human beings, will make their way into the world as a fruit of true spiritual knowledge. We shall recognise that our grasp of spiritual knowledge alone can help this fruit to grow and thrive. When Schopenhauer said: “To preach morality is easy; to establish morality is difficult”, he was giving expression to true insight. After all, it is not so very difficult to discover moral principles, neither is it difficult to preach morality. But to quicken the human soul at the point where spiritual knowledge can germinate and develop into true morality capable of sustaining life—that is what matters. Our attitude to spiritual knowledge can also establish within us the seeds of a truly human morality of the future. The morality of the future will either be built on the foundations of spiritual knowledge—or it will not be built at all!

Love of truth requires that we acknowledge these things; it requires us to deepen our anthroposophical life; and above all to bear in mind what has been said today as an introductory fact, namely, that whereas knowledge demands activity, action in the spiritual world demands of us inner tranquillity, in order that we may prove worthy of Grace. You will now be able to understand that during the period between death and the new birth, when we are confronting another being, we can realise through the activity we then unfold whether we have deprived him of love or done anything to him that we ought not to have done. But, as I have said, during this period we cannot induce the tranquillity of soul that is necessary if the wrong is to be righted. In the lectures this winter I shall be describing the period during which it is actually possible in the natural course of the life between death and the new birth, to establish conditions in which change can be made possible—in other words, when a person's karma can be influenced in a certain way. We must, however, carefully distinguish between the point of time we have just been considering and the later period between death and the new birth when the tasks are different.

It remains to be said that there are certain conditions which will enable a human being to live through his existence after death in a favourable or an unfavourable way. It will be found that the mode of existence of two or more human beings after the period immediately following their life in Kamaloka depends largely upon their moral disposition on Earth. Human beings who displayed good moral qualities on Earth will enjoy favourable conditions during the period immediately following Kamaloka; those who displayed defective morality will experience bad conditions.

I should like to sum up what I have been saying about the life after death in a kind of formula, although as our language is coined for the physical world and not for the spiritual world, it cannot be strictly exact. One can only try to make it as exact as possible. If, then, there has been a good moral quality in our soul, we shall become ‘sociable’ spirits and enjoy companionship with other spirits, with other human beings or with Spirits of the higher Hierarchies. The opposite is the case if a genuine moral quality has been lacking in us; we then become solitary spirits, spirits who find it extremely difficult to move away from the clouds of their visions. To feel thus isolated as a spiritual hermit is an essential cause of suffering after death. On the other hand it is characteristic of the companionship of which I have spoken, to be able to establish the connection with what is necessary for us. It takes a long time after death to live through this sphere which in occultism is called the Mercury-sphere.

The moral tone of the soul is naturally still decisive in the next sphere, the Venus-sphere; but new conditions then begin. In this sphere it is the religious disposition of the soul that is decisive. Individuals with a religious inner life will become sociable beings in the Venus-sphere, quite irrespective of the creed to which they belonged. On the other hand, individuals without any religious feelings are condemned in this sphere to complete spiritual self-absorption. Paradoxical though it may seem, I can only say that individuals with predominantly materialistic views and who scorn religious life, inevitably become spiritual hermits, each one living as it were confined in his own cell. Far from being an ironical comparison, it is true to say: all those who are supporters of ‘monistic religion’—that is to say, the opposite of true religion—will find themselves firmly imprisoned and be quite unable to find one another.

In this way the mistakes and errors committed by the soul in earthly life are corrected. On the physical plane errors are automatically corrected but in the life between death and the new birth, errors and mistakes on Earth. also our thoughts, become facts. In the process of Initiation too, thinking is a real fact and if we were able to perceive it, an erroneous thought would stand there before us, not only in all its ugliness but with all the destructive elements it contains. If people had no more than an inkling that many a thought signifies a destructive reality they would soon turn away from many of the thoughts circulating in Movements intent upon agitation. It is part of the martyrdom endured in the process of Initiation that thoughts gather around us and stand there like solidified, frozen masses, which we cannot in any way dislodge, as long as we are out of the body. If we have formed an erroneous thought and then pass out of the body, the thought is there and we cannot change it. To change it we must go back into the body. True, memory of it remains, but even an Initiate is only able to rectify it when he is in the physical body. Outside the body it stands there like a mountain. Only in this way can he become aware of the seriousness of the realities of life.

This will help you to understand that for certain karmic adjustments a return into the physical body is essential. The mistakes do indeed confront us during the life between death and the new birth; but the errors have to be corrected while we are in the physical body. In this way compensation is made in the subsequent life for what happened in the previous life. But what must be recognised in all its strength and fallaciousness stands there, unchangeable to begin with, as in the case of things in the spiritual world according to Homer. Such knowledge of the spiritual world must penetrate into our souls and become perception and feelings, and as feelings they form the basis for a new conception of life. A monistic Sunday sermon may expound any number of moral principles but as time will show, they will produce very little change, because in the way they are presented the concepts can have a real effect only when we recognise that for a certain period after death whatever is a burden on our karma will confront us as a direct reality. We recognise the burden but it remains as it is; we cannot change it now; all we can do is to recognise and accept the burden fully and deepen our nature accordingly.

The effect of such concepts upon our souls is that they enable us to have the true view of life. And then there will follow all that is necessary to further the progress of life along the paths laid down by those who are the spiritual leaders of mankind; we shall thus move forward towards the goals that are set before man and mankind.

• 1. From 25th to 31st August, 1912, eight lectures were given with the following general title: On Initiation, Eternity and the Passing Moment. On Spiritual Light and Darkness of Life.
• 2. St. Norbert, c. 1085–1134. In 1121 founded the Order of Norbertines. In 1126 he became Archbishop of Magdeburg.

My first sad and heavy duty is to acquaint you with the fact that our dear friend, the leader of the Munich Lodge, Fraulein Stinde, now belongs to those whom we have to reckon to-day as the ‘Sphere-Beings.’ She left this physical plane yesterday evening. It is not possible just now to speak about this extremely severe and significant loss to our society. As a beginning to our consideration for to-day I will merely say these few words concerning this event, which is so painful and important to us.

Fraulein Stinde belongs to those who are certainly known to the greater number of our friends. She belongs to those who have grasped our matters in the deepest depths of their hearts and have completely identified themselves with them. In her house (and that of her friend the Grafin Kalckreuth) I was able as early as 1903 to give the first intimate lectures in our sphere, which I had to give in Munich. And one may say that from this first occasion when Fraulein Stinde approached us, she united with our aims not only her whole personality but the whole power of her work, so valuable, so excellent and influential. She forsook the artistic calling which was previously so dear to her, in order to put herself and her powers entirely at the service of our work, and since then she has worked intensely for this, in a rare, objective, quite impersonal manner, both in narrower and wider circles. She was the soul of our whole work in Munich. And she was one of those souls, of whom one could say, that through the inner qualities of her being she gave the very best guarantee that in Munich itself, our aims would be able to develop in the best possible manner. You know what an immense task was laid on all those persons helping in Munich in those early years, through the performances of the Mystery Plays and everything connected with them. Fraulein Stinde and her friend Grafin Kalckreuth gave themselves up absolutely to this work, and above all, it may be said, with the understanding created by the profound nature of their studies, and by the will which may itself be born of this. I may perhaps point out that the intense labour which Fraulein Stinde accomplished, really very considerably exhausted her life-strength in later years. It must be admitted that the valuable life-force which was perhaps too rapidly used up of late, was devoted to our cause in the most beautiful and deeply satisfactory manner. Probably no one among those who knew her most intimately, could help feeling that this personality was one of our very best workers. It is true many of the activities of Fraulein Stinde have been misunderstood, and it is to be hoped that the sun-like force that proceeded from her personality will presently be recognised, even by those of our friends and followers who through prejudice have misunderstood her work. And those of our wider circle who could observe all she did for our cause, will, in common with those more closely connected with her, preserve the most faithful recollection of her. We are sure that in her case we may quite specially emphasise the mantram which must often be uttered during these days in connection with the departure of many of our friends from the physical plane. It may be especially emphasised with reference to Fraulein Stinde, that amidst the many attacks and oppositions which our cause encounters in the world, we reckon on the help of those in the spiritual-world—we reckon on those who have only changed the form of their existence, and who, in spite of their passage through the gate of death, are still truly united with us in soul, and are most significant and important co-workers. The many veils which surround those still incarnate in the physical body, gradually fall away, and the souls of these dear departed friends—of this we are sure—work in our midst, and we specially need their help. We need the help of those no longer assailed from the physical plane, those who have no longer to consider the limits of the physical plane. If we have the deep and earnest belief in the success of our cause in the civilisation of the world, it is because we have the full consciousness that those who formerly belonged to us, are still our best forces, that they work among us from the spiritual world with spiritual means. The trust in our cause that we require, will often be strengthened by the knowledge that we must thank our departed friends for being in our midst in order that, by uniting our forces with theirs, we can accomplish the labour which is laid upon us for the spiritual civilisation of the world. I should now like to continue the considerations which we began to develop in our last lecture. Such times as our own, in which the enigma of death approaches the human soul in so many different forms—and on this we laid stress in our last lecture—urges us quite specially to investigate what man is certainly able to acquire regarding the spiritual world. Times like our own, in which humanity is exposed to such severe trials, are destined for the very purpose of leading the human soul to inquire as to the beings of the spiritual world. For who does not see at each step in what is happening to-day—and is happening in the greater part of the civilised world—who does not see at almost every stage the great riddle of Life confronting him? And who does not feel that great connections lie concealed behind such events as those occurring around us to-day and which, as they occur, convulse the souls and hearts of men with pain and sorrow, though fill them also with hope and confidence? Certainly, he who beholds the events of the world with but a short-sighted vision, will judge such far-reaching events by those which immediately precede and follow them. But one who externally, without entering into esoteric considerations, regards the course of cosmic events and compares earlier times with the present, will become conscious of how very much may be connected first with that, let us say, which in quite a different manner, runs its course later on in the Cosmos, as effect. Consider there are now many people who say: “The present events of the war are merely the results of external political opposition among the various nations and peoples.” Certainly, that is true, and there is no question of bringing forward anything in objection to the truth of such a conception in a limited sense; but, if we consider, for example, the wars which were waged in the beginning of the Middle Ages between the Central European peoples and those of South Europe and above all the peoples belonging to the Roman Empire, we must say that the wars which took place then in political strife also proceeded from the opposition, the political opposition which then existed; they had their causes in those oppositions in their immediate vicinity. These battles have now run their course. They have evoked certain configurations in the entire life of Europe. If we investigate but a little into history and consider what happened at that time through the battles of the Central European peoples with, let us say, the peoples of the Roman Empire, we shall come to the conclusion that out of the earlier configuration of the European World there has arisen a later one. But if we wish to estimate correctly the real point at issue, we must consider all the historical results. For these historical results which have occurred in Europe could not have arisen as they have, if those battles had ended the other way. And what was the consequence of this European History? The whole manner in which Christianity spread and grew in Europe is the result of it! And if we consider these deep connections we can say: In all that happened in the following centuries, the facts lie thus: the events of these centuries are karmically connected with their causes, the battles of those times. That means that the events to which we have alluded, are connected with the whole later configuration of the European World even in its spiritual relations. Just consider that in all its gravity, and you will admit that Christianity then spread in Europe and so fashioned itself, that through the youthful Germanic peoples opposing the Roman peoples who had now grown old, and through the uniting of their youthful forces with that which flowed into humanity as the announcement of Christianity, a certain European atmosphere was thereby created, into which the souls descending later were born. Thus the souls lived and developed in the following centuries, in accordance with these events. Thus we may say: If a man at that time had asserted: ‘How does that affect things? It is merely a political opposition between the nations of South and Central Europe,’ he would be right. But if another had said: ‘Just look, the configuration of the spiritual civilisation of all the following centuries will result from what is happening’—he also would be right, and in a much deeper sense. If we seek the immediate causes of anything by pointing to the opposing forces nearest at hand, we do not therewith touch on the entire gravity of the occurrence. The affairs of this world are all very intimately connected. And if we require inner strengthening in order, as it were, to find the right forces for the support of our work, we need only remind ourselves that in a still smaller circle than our present one, were once seated together those who, when Christianity was first announced represented its great Cosmic Truths. I have already often used this comparison. But we shall apply it yet again to-day. There was a time which we can describe as follows: We see the old Roman Empire. We see it with its old philosophy. We see it living entirely in the atmosphere of the old heathen philosophy. We see this Empire with the people who in a sense formed the upper classes. And there below, truly more underneath than our ‘under’ signifies to-day—literally underneath, in the catacombs under the earth, we see the first small handful of Christians, possessing something quite foreign to the world-culture up above, but which they carried so deeply in their hearts that its force became truly cosmically creative. Let us picture to ourselves these catacombs. There, underneath in the catacombs, with their thoughts directed to the Christ-impulse, were the first Christians—and above, over their heads, the Romans, who behaved quite differently from the first Christians. You know all that, I need not relate it further. But if you picture two centuries later, how different everything appears! That which was above is swept away, and that which was venerated underground in secret has found its way to the surface! Certainly, the times and the forms in which such doings occur change; but the essential remains. Concerning those who to-day advocate the external scientific and spiritual culture it may be said—though this is not to be taken literally—they feel themselves above, and call that which is striven for in our circles, the philosophy of a few sectarians, derived from a few abnormal minds. But he who really penetrates the nature of these conceptions of ours and who above all permeates himself with them, may have the assurance that here too some day what is kept under will be on the top. Here then our thoughts may dwell on the transformed world which will arise out of these difficult times of ours, on the spiritual which mankind must learn to grasp. For there hardly exists a greater similarity in historical evolution, than that between our own times and that which played its part in the epoch when the old Roman culture was still above, and Christianity, tended by a few faithful souls, was still below.

I should like to point out—if I may do so without seeming narrow-minded through a too exact and pedantic reference to these things, for in these days we should be very broad indeed—that it is especially good to hold before the soul as imaginative pictures our own epoch and that of the Rome at the first appearance of Christianity.

Now, many who to-day oppose what we call Spiritual Science, cannot fail to feel the entirely different nature of that which Spiritual Science must advocate, in contradistinction to that which is otherwise upheld among the so-called ‘normal’ people of to-day. And here we need only observe, if we wish to understand this correctly, how the first announcement of Christianity was completely opposed to that which was upheld among the Romans, the normal men of those times: with such a thought we must make ourselves acquainted, for it is again and again leveled against us that with the accepted means of cognition man cannot reach worlds such as those with which we are concerned. We must really so grasp the more intimate work in our groups as to be able to say: This life in our groups is not useless. It is not without significance to this cause of ours, that we should meet together in such groups, and again and again renew, not only acquaintance with the theoretical results of our doctrine, which is not of importance, but also renew our warm feelings and sensations for the actual things and beings of the spiritual world. Thereby we accustom ourselves to that manner of psychic sensing and feeling which above all makes it possible for us to take up spiritual truths in a different way from those who are unprepared. In our group meetings there must occasionally be imparted to you something from the higher and later parts of spiritual knowledge. We cannot always start afresh from the beginning. But this intimacy within the life of the groups must make it possible for a number of our friends to take into themselves, into their souls, such things as I pointed out in the last lecture, namely, the special manner of verifying our spiritual knowledge, and of taking it into oneself. We cannot verify these things in the same manner as man does in the external world when he contacts things with his eyes: but he who has a feeling for such facts as I pointed out last time, will, even if he does not himself see into the spiritual world, feel that through the mutual support of spiritual truths the value of these truths is intensified. Therefore I shall yet again draw attention to the very significant fact that on the one side, through many years of study, the definite point of view is reached, that a third of our life between birth and death—in time—is again lived through after death; while now on the other side a quite different point of view is discovered—namely, that in reality we experience our sleep life in a special form during the time we call Kamaloka, and that this time also occupies a third of the life on the physical plane. These two points of view are quite independent of each other and have been discovered from different starting points. We have also shown on other occasions how, from three or four different points of view, one always comes to the same conclusion. Thus do the truths support each other. But for this, we must ourselves acquire the right feeling. This will produce something like a natural elemental feeling for the truth of this spiritual knowledge. I must often appeal to this, otherwise I could not give out the later and higher truths in the various group-meetings.

Last time we drew attention to the fact that the right connection of our Ego-consciousness between death and rebirth is, as it were, kindled through that panoramic review of our last earth-life which takes place after death. We go over our life again in a kind of tableau. You must quite clearly understand what a man there really beholds. We are here accustomed to stand on the physical plane, forming, in a sense, a kind of central point of our cosmic horizon, and we see the world around us which makes an impression on our senses. In normal life on the physical plane, we do not look into ourselves, we turn our gaze outwards. Now, if we want to form an idea of the life immediately following death, it is important to keep in mind that this gaze on the panorama of life is absolutely different from the perception we are accustomed to use on the physical plane. On the physical plane we look out of ourselves and regard the world as our environment. ‘We are here, we look outwards, and not into ourselves.’ Immediately after death we have a few days in which our field of vision is filled with that which we have undergone between birth and death. We then look within from the circumference to the centre. We regard our own life in its chronological course. Whereas we usually say: ‘Here are we and everything else is outside us’ ... immediately after death we have the consciousness that this distinction between us and the world does not exist. For we look from the circumference on to our own life, which for these few days is our world. In ordinary perception on the physical plane we behold hills, houses, rivers, trees, etc., so, in the same way, we see that which we have undergone in life from a certain personal standpoint, as our own immediate world. And because we see it, that gives the starting point for the maintenance of the Ego through the entire life between death and rebirth. It is that which strengthens and invigorates the soul, so that between death and rebirth it always knows: ‘I am an Ego!’ Here in physical life we realise our Ego through the fact—which I have often pointed out—that we stand in a certain relation to our body. Consider: if you reflect closely on a dream you will say: In the dream you have no clear feeling of the Ego, but often a feeling of separation. That is because man here on the physical plane only really feels his Ego through contact with his body. You can represent it very crudely thus: If you move your finger through the air—there is nothing there! Move it further—there is still nothing. When you touch something, however, in coming against something, you know of yourself, you become aware of yourself. We are thereby made aware of our Ego. Not the Ego itself is aroused—the Ego is a Being—but the consciousness of the Ego. The opposition makes us aware of our Self. Thus we are Ego-conscious in the physical body because of our living in it. For this reason we have received the physical body. In the life between death and rebirth we have an Ego-consciousness, because we have received the forces which proceed from the vision of the previous life. We come to a certain extent in contact with that which the world of space gives us and thereby win our Ego-consciousness for the life between birth and death. We come in contact with that which we ourselves have experienced between birth and death in the last life, and thereby have our Ego-consciousness for the life between death and rebirth.

There now follows the quite different life which occupies a third of the time of the life between birth and death, and which is usually called the Kamaloka life. This life follows. It is of such a nature that we may say a widening of our vision appears. While during the first few days our vision is really directed only to our self, to our past life, not to the personality—this, as time goes on, becomes quite different. Certainly the power of knowing oneself as an Ego remains. But there now appears, and you can gather for yourselves, from the lectures and books, what I am about to say—there now appears something quite peculiar, to which man has first to accustom himself, because the whole method of perceiving in that world is quite different from what it is here on the physical plane. A great part of that which man has to undergo after death consists in inwardly accommodating himself to a different mode of perception. Here we have nature around us. What we here regard in the physical world as nature is absolutely nonexistent in that world which is ours between death and rebirth. To see nature here we have our physical eyes, ears, and the whole physical apparatus of perception. And this nature as it exists with its fullness of colour and other characteristics could not be perceived by other, different organs of perception. Therefore we are endowed with a physical body, that we may be able to perceive nature. After death, in the place of what is here around us as nature, we have around us the spiritual world which we describe as the world of the hierarchies and world of pure being, of pure soul. Not matter or substance or objects which have colour, but pure being. That is the essential point. Therefore naturally the astonishment is greatest for those souls who denied the spirit while here in physical life. For those, who deny the spirit and believe nothing of the spiritual, are placed in a world which they have denied, and which is completely unknown to them. They have compulsorily to live in a world whose existence they actually refused to admit.

Thus we are encompassed by a spiritual environment of pure being, of pure soul. And now gradually emerge souls, fashioning themselves out of this universal soul-world, for at first there are souls everywhere—souls whom we do not recognise. We know they are all souls, but we do not recognise them individually; and gradually the individual souls appear more distinctly and concretely. And especially at this time appear those souls with whom we have lived here on the physical plane, the souls of men with whom we have lived here. While we face this fullness of souls we learn to know among whom we are: this soul is so and so, that soul is someone else, and so on. We make acquaintance with these souls. First of all we must recognise the fact that the whole relation in which we stand to the world then, between death and rebirth, is essentially different, in yet other respects to the relation in which we stand here on the physical plane. Here we say that the world is outside us; after death we have really the consciousness that the world is within us. Just imagine that for a moment here, on the earth, you were to dissolve entirely, that you were to vanish into vapour. The vaporous cloud which is you spreads out more and more and only ceases to spread further when it reaches the firmament. It expands, but it can get no further. Let us consider for a moment the firmament as a being. You then feel yourself as this firmament and now see everything within it; thus you stand outside with your consciousness and see the world inside. You feel yourself in such a way that everything that appears is within you. Just as here a pain is inside us, in like manner after death beings appear in us as inner experience. That brings about the infinite intimacy of the experiences between death and rebirth, the fact of being so bound together with them that we actually have them as our own inner experiences. And here there is a certain distinction. Consider such a soul as I have instanced, which one begins to recognise and of which all one can know at first is: ‘Yes, it is there, but it has no form. It is not yet perceptible, but it is there.’ To make it perceptible one has to accomplish an inner activity, an activity somewhat like the following: Let us suppose ourselves placed in the spiritual. If I feel behind me something which I do not see, the following idea arises in me: It is there, but I must accomplish an activity in order to get some conception of it. I may say it is comparable to touching a thing so as to get an idea of it. This inner activity is necessary if the imagination is to appear. I know the being is there, but I have first to create the imagination by uniting myself inwardly with the being. That is the one way in which man can perceive souls. The other manner is this: that one does not oneself accomplish this inner activity with such intensity, but it arises of its own accord. It appears without one's having very much to do with it. It is somewhat like our perception of something here, only of course it is transferred into the spiritual. And this distinction can exist between two souls. Of the one, man receives a perception through being very active himself; of the other, through an imagination arising out of itself. You only need be attentive to recognise this distinction. For if you become acquainted with a soul that requires more activity to be perceived; that is the soul of one who has died. But a soul that appears more of its own accord is a soul which is incarnate here on the earth in a physical body. These distinctions are really there. Man stands—with a few exceptions, which we can mention at the proper time—man stands in union after death both with the souls who have died and those who are still here on earth. And the distinction lies in a man's knowing which kind of soul he has to deal with; he knows he must be active or passive, according to the way in which there arises the imagination of the soul which he faces.

Now, there is one idea, one characteristic, which has indeed been expressed many times already, but which we will once more bring forward in connection with the life which occupies a third of the earth-life just elapsed, and which we are accustomed to call the life in Kamaloka. If you are living here on the earth and somebody strikes you, you are aware of it. You perceive it, and say: he has struck me. And as a rule it makes a difference whether somebody hits you, or whether you hit him, and if you hear something said by someone, you have not the same experience as when you yourself say something. All this is quite reversed in Kamaloka life, in which we live our life backwards between death and rebirth. To use this rough illustration it is then as follows. If you have given anybody a blow in life, you feel what the other person felt through the blow. If you have injured another through a word, you experience the feeling you caused him. Thus you feel the experience of the other soul. In other words, you experience the results brought about by your own deeds. We experience in this journey backwards everything which other people have experienced through us during our life here, between birth and death. If you have lived here between birth and death with many hundreds of men, these men have experienced something through you. But here in physical life you cannot feel that which those others felt and experienced through you, you only experience what they make you go through. After death this is reversed, and it is essential that we should experience everything in this review which others have suffered through us. Thus we undergo the effects of the last earth existence, and the task of these years really lies in our experiencing them. Now, while we are undergoing these effects, the experience is transformed in us into forces, and it happens in the following manner: Suppose I have offended a man, who has thereby suffered bitterly. During Kamaloka I now experience this bitterness myself. I go through it as my own experience. And while I now experience it, it makes good in me the force which must work as opposition; that is, while I undergo this bitterness, I create in myself the force to wipe away from the world this bitterness. I thus realise all the effects of my deeds and thereby absorb the force to wipe them away. And during this time in Kamaloka—which lasts a third of the earth-life—I absorb all the forces which may be expressed as an intense longing in the now disembodied soul, to remove everything which destroys perfection by retarding the soul's evolution. If you ponder over this you will see that man himself makes his own Karma, that is, that he has in himself the wish to become such that everything undesirable may be wiped out. Thus is Karma prepared, during this particular time. We incorporate into our souls the force which we must take up between death and rebirth, in order to bring about in the next incarnation that configuration of our life which we are able to regard as the right one. This is how Karma is created. In order to understand these things aright—not only theoretically but so to grasp them that they may penetrate deeply into our forces of feeling and willing—we must be clear that the whole mode of feeling common to the dead is absolutely different from that of the living. The living may very easily say, ‘I pity this or that dead man because he has to suffer something from which he cannot escape!’ But suppose he has terribly wronged another and can do nothing to put it right, you may perhaps feel sorry for the dead man, but that is quite uncalled for; for he desires nothing more than to be able to evolve the forces whereby he can balance the wrong. That is the very thing which he regards as precious. You would thus be wishing that he should not reach what he himself most longs for. To attain this he must undergo all the aforesaid suffering, for the positive develops out of the negative. Through insight into that which we have done, we develop the power of making compensation.

Thus we may say that at the end of this Kamaloka period a man has already determined, in accordance with his last life and its recapitulation, how he will enter the next incarnation in his existence; and in what relation he will stand to this or that person in order to compensate this or that. There we actually determine our Karma for the life we are to enter.

The first part of our time is spent in assimilating from the spiritual world the forces through which we can build up humanity in general, and through which we can form for ourselves a body suitable for our own individuality. First we have the plan of our Karma. Then we must fashion the human body to this end. That requires a much longer time, and takes place later on. Now, you can see from this that the essential of the time in Kamaloka lies in the fact that it gives us the possibility of ethically preparing our next incarnation in the right manner. We must be quite clear that each following incarnation depends on the earlier ones. We see how our following incarnations are prepared. And we see that the entire mode of a man's life depends on the way in which he went through his former life. The objection is raised by persons who have not yet fully considered the matter, that this contradicts a man's freedom. I will return to this later—it does not contradict freedom.

If we thus observe individual persons in life we find that they are very, very different; no matter how many men there are on the earth, they are all different. Yet one may distinguish categories. There are, for instance, men who so behave that from their earliest youth we can see that as individuals they are specially suited for this, or that. As you know, there are such people. Even in childhood we can predict that they will accomplish some definite purpose. They thrust themselves into it, as it were. They possess activity. They have a special task, because they develop force for this end. Others we find who are interested in many things but have no definite inclination to any one thing. They take up many things. Perhaps later in life they may come to a definite task which is not specially suited to them; they might perhaps have been able to do something else quite as well. In short, people are quite different one from another in reference to the way in which they act in life. And this really makes life possible. There are men, for example, who enter life, and who do not seem to have much to do, externally. But they need only speak a word or two to have an influence on people. Such men work more through their inner being. Others work more externally. That is intimately connected with the manner in which they have lived through their previous incarnation. There are persons who die in early youth—before the age of thirty-five—in order to have these very limitations. Such men with regard to their death in this incarnation are in a quite different position from those who die after the age of thirty-five. One who dies before the age of thirty-five still stands nearer to the world from which he descended at birth. This thirty-fifth year is an important boundary. One then crosses a bridge, as it were. The world out of which a man has descended then withdraws, and he produces a new spiritual world from his inner being. It is important that we should distinguish this. And now suppose a man dies before the age of thirty-five. On reincarnating, those forces develop in him which he did not use in the years which would have followed his thirty-fifth year. Such men, who before the thirty-fifth year go through death in this way in one incarnation, thereby economise for the next incarnation certain forces, which would have been exhausted if they had lived till fifty, sixty or seventy years of age. The forces which they thus saved are added to those with which they incarnate in the next life. Thereby such souls are born into bodies through which they are in a position, especially in their youth, to confront life with strong impressions. In other words: when such souls, who in their last incarnation died before the thirty-fifth year, reincarnate again, everything makes a strong impression on them. They are deeply stirred by things, they enjoy things deeply, they have living feelings and are easily urged to impulses of will. They are those who take a strong position in life, and who receive a mission. A man does not die without cause before his thirty-fifth year; he will thereby receive a quite definite mission in his next life. These things are complex, and death before the age of thirty-five may also bring about other things—it is not absolute law, for these are only examples. But when a man dies after thirty-five it happens that in his next life he does not receive such strong impressions from the things in his surroundings. He cannot easily be stirred or roused. He becomes acquainted more slowly but more intimately with things, and he thus prepares himself for a life in his next incarnation in which he will work more through his inner nature, without being so definitely guided to a special task in life. He will so stand in life, that he would perhaps have preferred some other task, and is diverted from it in order to accomplish something perhaps absolutely against his will. Because through the previous earth incarnation he had accustomed himself to work more delicately, he can now be used in a wider sphere. And if a man—I have already mentioned this case earlier—if a man is led in very early youth through the gate of death, let us say in his eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth year of life, he then has but a short time in Kamaloka. But he remains very, very near the world which he forsook at physical birth. Everything appears different. After a life ending with the twelfth year, there follows the usual retrospect during the first days after death, but it takes place in such a manner that it appears more from outside. Whereas if a man dies at the age of fifty, sixty or seventy, he himself must do much more to bring about this retrospect. It must be brought about by his own activity. And because they have to experience this life after death in so many various ways, men are thereby differently prepared for their next life. It may be that in one life a man is especially active. Now, if an especially active man is summoned from life at an early age, it would then occur that in his next life his Karma would appoint him to a quite definite task in life, which he would certainly accomplish. He would be as if predestined. If, however, a man is especially active in one life and lives to a good old age, these forces are then intensified inwardly. He has then in his next life a more complicated task. Outer activity withdraws, and there appears in the soul the necessity to evolve inner activity.

Thus the life of man is complex as it develops from incarnation to incarnation. We shall continue these considerations in the next lecture. Now, I should like to conclude by saying one thing: When you face a whole epoch such as ours, in which in a relatively short time an exceptional number of men are led in abnormal fashion through the gates of death, then through this something quite exceptional is being prepared. And it was necessary that this should be prepared. You see each year how the time of blossoming comes to the world in intervals. If you look back in history you can also say that even there the blossoms appear at intervals. A great time of blossoming was the epoch of Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Fichte, Goethe. It is as if there was then a gathering of geniuses for a time, and it then ceased. And thus the world progresses in leaps. Such intervals of genius are recorded, and then these things change again. In the spiritual realms too, we have a blossoming, a special sprouting, at intervals. Now, in our days we have an interval of decay in the physical realm. Here you have again two things which you can place as pictures, side by side, and which as pictures are tremendously significant. Great physical decay—which is the seed for a later significant spiritual blossoming. Things have always two sides. From this standpoint, ever seeking again and again force and consolation—but also gaining confidence in our hopes—let us once more repeat in reference to our times, and from the consciousness of our spiritual science:

From the fighters' courage,
From the blood of battles,
From the mourners' suffering,
From the people's sacrifice,
There will ripen fruits of Spirit
If with consciousness the soul
Turns her thought to Spirit Realms.