The Rudolf Steiner Archive

To-day I should like to make some introductory remarks to what I am going to lay before you in the coming days. My reason for doing this is that you may know the purpose of these talks from the outset.

It will not be my task during the following days to deal with any narrowly defined, special branch of science, but to give various wider viewpoints, having in mind a quite definite goal in relation to science. I should therefore like to warn people not to describe this as an ‘Astronomical Course’. It is not meant to be that. But it will deal with something that I feel is especially important for us to consider at this time. I have therefore given it the title “The relation of the diverse branches of Natural Science to Astronomy,” and today in particular I shall explain what I actually intend with the giving of this title.

The fact is that in a comparatively short time much will have to be changed within what we call the sphere of science, if it is not to enter upon a complete decline. Certain groups of sciences which are now comprised under various headings and are permitted to be represented under these headings, in our ordinary schools, will have to be taken out their grooves and be classified from quite other aspects. This will necessitate a far reaching regrouping of our sciences. The grouping at present employed is entirely inadequate for a world-conception based upon reality, and yet our modern world holds so firmly to such traditional classification that it is on this basis that candidates are chosen to occupy the professorial chairs in our Universities. People confine themselves for the most part to dividing the existing, circumscribed fields of Natural Science into yet further special branches, and they then look to the specialists or experts as they are called. But a change must come into the whole scientific life by the advent of quite different categories, within which will be united, as in a whole new field of science, things that today are dealt with in Zoology or Physiology, or again, let us say, in the Theory of Knowledge. The older forms of scientific classification, often extremely abstract, must die out, and quite new scientific combinations must arise. This will meet with great obstacles at first, because people today are trained in the specialized branches of science and it will be difficult for them to find an approach to what they will urgently need in order to bring about a combination of scientific material in accordance with reality.

To put in concisely, I might say: We have today a science of astronomy, of Physics, of Chemistry, of Philosophy, we have a science of Biology, of Mathematics, and so on. Special branches have been formed, almost, I might say, so that the various specialists will not have such hard work in order to become well grounded in their subject. They do not have too much to do in mastering all the literature concerned, which, as we know, exists in immense quantities. But it will be a matter of creating new branches which will comprise quite different things, including perhaps at the same time something from Astronomy, something from Biology, and so on. For this, a reshaping of our whole life of science will of course be essential. Therefore, what we term Spiritual Science, which does indeed aim to be of a universal nature, must work precisely in this direction. It must make it its special mission to work in this direction. For we simply cannot get any further with the old grouping. Our Universities confront the world today, my dear friends, in a way that is really quite estranged from life. They turn out mathematicians, physiologists, philosophers, but none of them have any real relation to the world. They can do nothing but work in their narrowly confined spheres, putting before us a picture of the world that becomes more and more abstract, less and less realistic.

It is the change here indicated—a deep necessity for our time—to which I want to do justice in these lectures. I should like you to see how impossible it will be to continue the older classifications indefinitely, and I therefore want to show how other branches of science of the most varied kinds, which, in their present way of treatment, take no account of Astronomy, have indeed definite connections with Astronomy, that is, with a true knowledge of universal space. Certain astronomical facts must perforce be taken into account in other branches of science too, so that we may learn to master these other fields in a way conformable to reality.

The task of these lectures is therefore to build a bridge from the different fields of scientific thought to the field of Astronomy, that astronomical understanding may appear in the right way in the various fields of science.

In order not to be misunderstood, I should like to make one more remark about method. You see, the manner of presenting scientific facts which is customary nowadays must undergo considerable change, because it actually arises out of the scientific structure which has to be overcome. When today facts are referred to, which lie somewhat remote from man's understanding,—remote, just because he does not meet with them at all in his scientific knowledge,—it is usual to say: “That is stated, but no proved.” Yet in scientific work is often quite inevitable that statements must be made at first purely as results of observation, which only afterwards can be verified as more and more facts are brought to support them. So it would be wrong to assume, for instance, that right at the beginning of a discourse someone could break in and say, “That is not proved.” It will be proved in the course of time, but much will first have to be presented simply from observation, so that the right concept, the right idea, may be created.

And so I beg of you to take these lectures as a whole, and to look in the last lectures for the plain proof of many things which seem in the first lectures to be mere statements. Many things will then be verified which I shall have to handle at first in such a way as to evoke the necessary concepts and ideas.

Astronomy as we know it today, even including the domain of Astrophysics, is fundamentally a modern creation. Before the time of Copernicus or Galileo men thought about astronomical phenomena in a way which differed essentially from the way we think today. It is even extraordinarily difficult to indicate the way in which man still thought of Astronomy in, say, the 13th and 14th centuries, because this way of thinking has become completely foreign to modern man. We only live in the ideas which have been formed since the time of Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus; and from a certain point of view that is perfectly right. They are ideas which treat of the distant phenomena of universal space, in so far as they are concerned with Astronomy, in a mathematical and mechanical way. Men think of these phenomena in terms of mathematics and mechanics. In observing the phenomena, men base their ideas upon what they have acquired from an abstract mathematical science, or an abstract science of mechanics. They calculate distances, movements and forces. But the qualitative outlook still in existence in the 13th and 14th centuries, which distinguished Individualities in the stars, an Individuality of Jupiter, of Saturn ... this has become completely lost to modern man. I will make no criticism of the things at the moment, but will only point out that the mechanical and mathematical way of treating what we call the domain of Astronomy has become the exclusive one. Even if we acquaint ourselves with the stars in a popular fashion without understanding mathematics or mechanics, we still find it presented, even if in a manner suitable for the lay-mind, entirely in ideas of space and time, of a mathematical and mechanical kind. No doubts of any kind exist in the minds of our contemporaries—who believe that their judgment is authoritative—that this is the only way in which to regard the starry heavens. Anything else, they are convinced, would be merely amateurish.

Now, if the question arises as to how it has actually come about that this view of the starry heavens has emerged in the evolution of civilization, the answer of those who regard the modern scientific mode of thought as absolute, will be different from the reply which we are able to give. Those who regard the scientific thought of today as something absolute and true, will say: Well, you know, among earlier humanity there were not yet any strictly scientifically formed ideas; man had first to struggle through to such ideas, i. e., to the mathematical, mechanical mode of regarding celestial phenomena of the Universe, a later humanity has worked through to a strictly scientific comprehension of what does actually correspond to reality.

This is an answer that we cannot give, my dear friends. We must take up our position from the standpoint of the evolution of humanity, which in the course of its existence, has introduced various inner forces into its consciousness. We must say to ourselves: The manner of observing the celestial phenomena which existed among the ancient Babylonians, the Egyptians, perhaps even the Indian people, was due to the particular form which the development of the human soul-forces was taking in those times. Those human soul-forces had to be developed with the same inner necessity with which a child between the 10th and 15th year must develop certain soul-forces, while in another period it will developing other faculties, which lead it to different conclusions about the world. Then came the Ptolemaic system. That arose out of different soul-forces. Then our Copernican system. That arose from yet other soul-forces. The Copernican system did not develop because humanity had happily struggled through to objectivity, whereas before they had all been as children, but because humanity since the middle of the 15th century needed precisely the mathematical, mechanical faculties for its development. That is why modern man sees the celestial phenomena in the picture formed by the mathematical, mechanical faculties. And he will some day see them again in a different way, when in his development he has drawn up out of the depths of the soul other forces,—to his own healing and benefit. Thus it depends upon humanity what form the world-concept takes. But it is not a question of looking back in pride to earlier times when men were “more childlike,” and then thinking that in modern times we have at last struggled through to an objective understanding which can now endure for all future ages.

There is something which has become a real necessity to later humanity and has given color to the requirements of the scientific mind. It is this: Men strive on the one hand for ideas that are clear and easy to control—namely, mathematical ideas—, and on the other hand they strive for ideas through which they can surrender most strongly to an inner compulsion. The modern man at once becomes uncertain and nervous when he does not feel the strong inner compulsion presented, for instance, by the argument of the Pythagorean theorem, but realizes, let us say, that the figure which is drawn does not decide for him, but that he must develop an activity of soul and decide for himself. Then he at once becomes uncertain and nervous and is no longer willing to continue the line of thought. So he says: That is not exact science; subjectivity comes into it. Modern man is really dreadfully passive; he would like to be led everywhere by a chain of infallible arguments and conclusions. Mathematics satisfies this requirement, at least in most cases; and where it does not, where man have interposed their own opinion in recent times,—well, my dear friends, the results are according! Men still believe that they are being exact, while they hit upon the most incredible ideas.

Thus in mathematics and mechanics men think they are being led forward by leading-strings of concepts which are linked together through their own inherent logic. They feel then as if they had ground under their feet, but the moment they step off it they do not want to go on any further. Concepts which are easy to grasp on the one hand, and the element of inner compulsion on the other: this is what modern man needs for his “safety.” Fundamentally, it is on this basis that the particular form of world-conception, supplied by the modern science of Astronomy, has been built up. I am not at the moment speaking of the single facts, but merely of the world-conception as a whole.

This attitude towards a mathematical, mechanical conception of the world has so penetrated the consciousness of humanity, my dear friends, that people have come to regard everything that cannot be treated in this way as more or less unscientific. From this feeling proceeded such a phrase as that of Kant, who said: In every domain of science there is only so much real science as there is mathematics in it; one ought really to bring Arithmetic or Geometry into all the sciences. But this idea, as we know, breaks down when we think how remote the simplest mathematical ideas are to those, for instance, who study Medicine. Our present division of the sciences gives to a medical student practically nothing in the way of mathematical ideas.

And so it comes about that on the one hand what is called astronomical knowledge has been set up as an ideal. DuBois-Raymond has defined this in his address on the limits of the knowledge of Nature by saying: We only grasp truths in Nature and satisfy our need of causality inasmuch as we can apply the astronomical type of knowledge. That is to say, we regard the celestial phenomena in such a way that we draw the stars upon the chart of the sky and calculate with the material which is there given us. We can state exactly: There is a star, it exercises a force of attraction upon other stars. We begin to calculate, having the different things, to which our calculations apply, visibly before us. This is what we have brought into Astronomy in the first place. Now we observe, let us say, the molecule. Within the complex molecule we have the atoms, exercising a force of attraction on one another, moving around each other,—forming, as it were, a little universe. We observe this molecule as a small cosmic system and are satisfied if it all seems to fit. But then there is the great difference that when we look out into the starry sky all the details are given to us. We can at most ask whether we understand them rightly, whether after all, there might not be some other explanation than the one given by Newton. We have the given details and then we spin a mathematical, mechanical web over them. This web of thought is actually added to the given facts, but from a scientific point of view it satisfies the modern need of man. And now we carry the system, which we have first thought out and devised, into the world of the molecule and atom. Here we add in thought what in the other case was given to us. But we satisfy our so-called need of causality by saying: What we think of as the smallest particle, moves in such and such a way, and it is the objective counterpart of what we experience subjectively as light, sound, warmth etc. We carry the astronomic form of knowledge into every phenomenon of the world and thus satisfy our demand for causality. Du-Bois Raymond has expressed it quite bluntly: “When one cannot do that, there is no scientific explanation at all.”

Yes, my dear friends, what is here claimed should actually imply that if, for example, we wished to come to a rational form of therapy, that is to say, to understand the activity of a remedy, we should have to be able to follow the atoms in the substance of the remedy as we follow the movements of the Moon, the Sun, the planets and the fixed stars. They would all have to become little cosmic systems. We should have to be able to calculate how this or that remedy would work. This was actually an ideal for some people not so very long ago. Now they have given up such ideals. Such an idea collapses not only in reference to such a far off sphere as a rational therapy, but in those lying more within reach, simply because our sciences are divided as they are today. You see, the modern doctor is educated in such a way that he masters extraordinarily little of pure mathematics. We may talk to him perhaps of the need for a knowledge of astronomy but it would be of no use to speak of introducing mathematical ideas into his field of work. But as we have seen, everything outside mathematics, mechanics and astronomy should be described, according to the modern notion, as being unscientific in the strict sense of the word. Naturally that is not done. People regard these other sciences too as exact, but this is most inconsistent. It is, however, characteristic of the present time that the demand should have been made at all for everything to be understood on the model of mathematical Astronomy.

It is hard today to talk to people in a serious way about such thing; how hard this is I should like to make clear to you by an example.

You know of course that the question of the form of the human skull has played a great role in modern biology. I have also spoken of this matter may times in the course of our anthroposophical lectures. Goethe and Oken put forward magnificent thoughts on this question of the human skull-bones. The school of Gegenbauer also carried out classical researches upon it. But something that could satisfy the urge for a deeper knowledge in this direction does not in fact exist today.

People discuss, to what extent Goethe was right in saying that the skull-bones are metamorphosed vertebrae, bones of the spine. But it is impossible to arrive at any really penetrating view of this matter today, because in the circles where these things are discussed one would scarcely be understood, and where an understanding might be forthcoming these things are not talked of because they are not of interest. You see, it is practically impossible today to bring together in close working association a thoroughly modern doctor, a thoroughly modern mathematician,—i.e., one who is master of higher mathematics—, and a man who could understand both of them passably well. These three men could scarcely understand one another. The one who would sit in the middle, understanding both of them slightly, would be able at a pinch to talk a little with the mathematician and also with the doctor. But the mathematician and the doctor would not be able to understand each other upon important questions, because what the doctor would have to say about them would not interest the mathematician, and what the mathematician would have to say—or would say, if he found words at all,—would not be understood by the doctor, who would be lacking the necessary mathematical background. This is what would happen in an attempt to solve the problem I have just put before you. People imagine: If the skull-bones are metamorphosed vertebra, then we ought to be able to proceed directly, through a transformation which it is possible to picture spatially, from the vertebra to the skull. To extend the idea still further to the limb-bones would, on the basis of the accepted premises, be quite out of the question. The modern mathematician will be able, from his mathematical studies, to form an idea of what it really means when I turn a glove inside out, when I turn the inside to the outside. One must have in mind a certain mathematical handling of the process by which what was formerly outside is turned inward, and what was inside is turned to the outside. I will make a sketch of it (Fig. 1)—a structure of some sort that is first white on the outside and red inside. We will treat this structure as we did the glove, so that it is now red outside and white inside (Fig. 2).

But let us go further, my dear friends, and picture to ourselves that we have something endowed with a force of its own that does not admit of being turned inside out in such a simple way as a glove which still looks like a glove after being inverted. Suppose that we invert something which has different stresses of force on the outer surface from those on the inner. We shall then find that simply through the inversion quite a new form arises. The form may appear thus before we have reversed it (Fig. 1): we turn it inside out and now different forces come into consideration on the red surface and on the white, so that perhaps, purely through the inversion, this form arises (Fig. 3). Such a form might arise merely in the process of inversion. When the red side faced inward, forces remained dominant which are developed differently when it is turned outward. And so with the white side; only when turned towards the inside can it develop its inherent forces.

It is of course quite conceivable to give a mathematical presentation of such a subject, but people are thoroughly disinclined nowadays to apply to reality what is arrived at conceptually in such a way. The moment, however, we learn to apply this to reality, we become able to see in our long bones or tubular bones (that is, in the limb bones), a form which, when inverted, becomes our skull bones! In the drawing, let the inside of the bone, as far as the marrow, be depicted by the red, the outside by the white (Fig. 4). Certain forms and forces, which can of course be investigated, are turned inward, and what we see when we draw away the muscle from the long bone is turned outward. But now imagine these hollow bones turned inside out by the same principle as I have just given you, in which other conditions of stress and strain are brought into play;

then you may easily obtain this form (Fig. 5). Now it has the white within, and what I depicted by the red comes to the outside. This is in fact the relationship of a skull-bone to a limb-bone, and in between lies the typical bone of the back—the vertebra of the spinal column. You must turn the tubular bone inside out like a glove according to its indwelling forces; then you obtain the skull-bone. The metamorphosis of the bones of the limbs into the skull-bones is only to be understood when keeping in mind the process of inversion, or ‘turning inside-out’. The important thing to realizes is that what is turned outward in the limb-bones is turned inward in the skull. The skull-bones turn towards a world of their own in the interior of the skull. That is one world. The skull-bone is orientated to the world, just as the limb-bone is orientated outward, towards the external world. This can be clearly seen in the case of the bones. Moreover, the human organism as a whole is so organized that it has on the one hand a skull organization, and on the other a limb-organization, the skull-organization being oriented inward, the limb-organization outward. The skull contains an inner world, the limb-man an outer world, and between the two is a kind of balancing system which preserves the rhythm.

My dear friends, take any literature dealing with the theory of functions, or, say, with non-Euclidean geometry, and see what countless ideas of every kind are brought forward in order to get beyond the ordinary geometrical conception of three-dimensional space;—to extend the domain—widen out the concept of geometry. You will see what industry and ingenuity are employed. But now suppose that you have become an expert at mathematics, who knows the theory of functions well and understands all that can be understood today of non-Euclidean geometry. I should like now to put a question concerning much that tends in this direction (Forgive me if it seems as if one did not value them highly, speaking of these things in such trivial terms. And yet I must do so, and I beg the audience, especially trained mathematicians, to turn it over in their minds and see if there is not truth in what I say.) The question could be put as follows: What is the use of all this spinning of purely mathematical thoughts? What is it worth to me, so to speak, in pounds, shillings and pence? No one is interested in the spheres in which it might perhaps find concrete application. Yet if we were to apply to the structure of the human organism all that has been thought out in non-Euclidean geometry, then we should be in the realm of reality, and applying immeasurably important ideas to reality, not wandering about in mere speculations. If the mathematician were so trained as to be interested also in what is real,—in the appearance of the heart, for example, so that he could form an idea of how through a mathematical process he could turn the heart inside out, and how thereby the whole human form would arise,—if he were taught to use his mathematics in actual life, then he could be working in the realm of the real. It would then be impossible to have the trained mathematician on the one hand, not interested in what the doctor learns, and on the other, the physician, understanding nothing of of how the mathematician—though in a purely abstract element—is able to change and metamorphose forms. This is the situation we must alter. If not, our sciences will fall into decay. They grow estranged from one another; people no longer understand each other's language.

How then is science to be transformed into a social science, as is implied in all that I shall be telling you in these lectures? A science which leads over into social science is not yet in existence.

On the one hand we have Astronomy, tending more and more to be clothed in mathematical forms of thought. It has become so great in its present form just because it is a purely mathematical and mechanical science. But there is another branch of science which stands, as it were, at the opposite pole to Astronomy, and which cannot be studied in its real nature without Astronomy. It is however, impossible, as science is today, to build a bridge between Astronomy and this other pole of science, namely, Embryology. He alone is studying reality, who on the one hand studies the starry skies and on the other hand the development of the human embryo. How is the human embryo generally studied today? Well, it is stated: The human embryo arises from the interaction of two cells, the sex-cells or gametes, male and female. These cells develop in the parent organism in such a way as to attain a certain state of independence before they are able to interact. They then present a certain contract, the one cell, the male, calling forth new and different possibilities of development in the other, the female. The question is put: What is a cell? As you know, since about the middle of the 19th century, Biology has largely been built upon the cell theory. The cell is described as a larger or smaller, spherule, consisting of albuminous or protein-like substances. It has a nucleus within it of a somewhat different structure and around the whole is an enclosing membrane. As such, it is the building-stone for all that arising by way of living organisms. The sex-cells are of a similar nature but are formed differently according to whether they are male or female, and from such cells every more complicated organism is built up.

But now, what is actually meant when it is said that an organism builds itself up from these cells? The idea is that substances which are otherwise in Nature are taken up into these cells and then no longer work in quite the same way as before. If oxygen, nitrogen or carbon are contained in the cells, the carbon, for instance, does not have the effect upon some other substance outside, that it would have had before; such power of direct influence is lost to it. It is taken up into the organism of the cell and can only work there as conditions in the cell allow. That is to say, the influence is exerted not so much by the carbon, but by the cell, which makes use of the particular characteristics of carbon, having incorporated a certain amount of it into itself. For example, what man has within him in the form of metal—iron for instance—only works in a circuitous way, via the cell. The cell is the building-stone. So in studying the organism, everything is traced to the cell. Considering at first only the main bulk of the cell, without the nucleus and membrane, we distinguish two parts: a transparent part composed of this fluid, and another part forming sort of framework. Describing it schematically, we may say that there is the framework of the cell, and this is embedded, as it were, in the other substance which, unlike the framework, is quite unformed. (Fig. 6) Thus we must think of the cell

as consisting of a mass which remains fluid and unformed and a skeleton or framework which takes on a great variety of forms. This then is studied. The method of studying cells in this way has been pretty well perfected; certain parts in the cell can be stained with color, others do not take the stain. Thus with carmine or saffron, or whatever coloring matter is used, we are able to distinguish the form of the cell and can thus acquire certain ideas about its inner structure. We note, for instance, how the inner structure changes when the female germ-cell is fructified. We follow the different stages in which the cell's inner structure alters; how it divides; and how the parts become attached to one another, cell upon cell, so that the whole becomes a complicated structure. All this is studied. But it occurs to no-one to ask: With what is this whole life in the cell connected? What is really happening? It does not occur to anyone to ask this.

What happens in the cell is to be conceived, my dear friends, in the following way,—though to be sure, it is still a rather abstract way. There is the cell. For the moment let us consider it in its most usual form, namely the spherical form. This spherical form is partially determined by the thin fluid substance, and enclosed within it is the delicate framework. But what is the spherical form? The thin fluid mass is as yet left entirely to itself and therefore behaves according to the impulses it receives from its surroundings. What does it do? Well, my dear friends, it mirrors the universe around it! It takes on the form of the sphere because it mirrors in miniature the whole cosmos, which we indeed also picture to ourselves ideally as a sphere. Every cell in its spherical form is no less than an image of the form of the whole universe. And the framework inside, every line of the form, is conditioned by its relationship to the structure of the whole cosmos. To express myself abstractly to begin with, think of the sphere of the universe with its imaginary boundary (Fig. 7). In it, you have here a planet, and there a planet (a,a₁). They work in such a way as to exert an influence upon one another in the direction of the line which joins them. Here (m) let us say—diagrammatically, of course,—a cell is formed; its outline mirrors the sphere. Here, within the framework it has a solid part which is due to the working of the one planet on the other. And suppose that here there were another constellation of planets, working upon each other along the line joining them (b,b₁).

And here again there might be yet another planet (c), this one having no counterpart;—it throws the whole construction, which might otherwise have been rectangular, out of shape, and the structure takes on a somewhat different form. And so you have in the whole formation of the framework of the cell a reflection of the relationships existing in the planetary system,—altogether in the whole starry system. You can enter quite concretely into the formation of the cell and you will reach an understanding of this concrete form only if you see in the cell an image of the entire cosmos.

And now take the female ovum, and picture to yourselves that this ovum has brought the cosmic forces to a certain inner balance. They have taken on form in the framework of the cell, and are in a certain way at rest within it, supported by the female organism as a whole. Then comes the influence of the male sex-cell. This has not brought the macrocosmic forces to rest, but works in the sense of a very specialized force. It is as though the male sex-cell works precisely along this line of force (indicated by Dr. Steiner on the blackboard) upon the female ovum which has come to a condition of rest. The cell, which is an image of the whole cosmos, is thereby caused to relinquish its microcosmic form once more to a changing play of forces. At first, in the female ovum, the macrocosm comes to rest in a peaceful image. Then through the male sex-cell the female is torn out of this state of rest, and is drawn again into a region of specialized activity and brought into movement. Previously it had drawn itself together in the resting form of the image of the cosmos, but the form is drawn into movement again by the male forces which are, so to speak, images of movement. Through them the female forces, which are images of the form of the cosmos and have come to rest, are brought out of this state of rest and balance.

Here we may have some idea, from the aspect of Astronomy, of the forming and shaping of something which is minute and cellular. Embryology cannot be studied at all without Astronomy, for what Embryology has to show is only the other pole of what is seen in Astronomy. We must, in a way, follow the starry heavens on the one hand, seeing how they reveal successive stages, and we must then follow the process of development of a fructified cell. The two belong together, for the one is only the image of the other. if you understand nothing of Astronomy, you will never understand the forces which are at work in Embryology, and if you understand nothing of Embryology, you will never understand the meaning of the activities with which Astronomy has to deal. For these activities appear in miniature in the processes of Embryology.

It is conceivable that a science should be formed, in which, on the one hand, astronomical events are calculated and described, and on the other hand all that belongs to them in Embryology, which is only the other aspect of the same thing.

Now look at the position as it is today: you find that Embryology is studied on its own. It would be regarded as madness if you were to demand of a modern embryologist that he should study Astronomy in order to understand the phenomena in his own sphere of work. And yet it should be so. This is why a complete regrouping of the sciences is necessary. It will be impossible to become a real embryologist without studying Astronomy. It will no longer be possible to educate specialists who merely turn their eyes and their telescopes to the stars, for to study the stars in that way has no further meaning unless one knows that it is out of the great universe that the minute and microscopical is fashioned.

All this,—which is quite real and concrete,—has in scientific circles been changed into the utmost abstraction. It is reality to say: We must strive for astronomical knowledge in cellular theory, especially in Embryology. If DuBois-Raymond had said that the detailed astronomical facts should be applied to the cell-theory, he would have spoken out of the sphere of reality. But what he wanted corresponds to no reality, namely that something thought-out and devised—the atoms and molecules—should be examined with astronomical precision. He wanted the astronomical type of mathematical thoughts, which have been added to the world of the stars, to be sought for again in the molecule.

Thus you see, upon the one hand lies reality: movement, the active forces of the stars and the embryonic development in which there lives, in all reality, what lives in the starry heavens. That is where the reality lies and that is where we must look for it. On the other hand lies abstraction. The mathematician, the mechanist, calculates the movements and forces of the heavenly bodies and then invents the molecular structure to which to apply this kind of astronomical knowledge. Here he is withdrawn from life, living in pure abstractions.

These are the things about which we must think, remembering that now we must renew, in full consciousness, something which was in a certain sense present in earlier times. Looking back to the Egyptian Mysteries, we find astronomical observations such as were made at that time. These observations, my dear friends, were not used merely to calculate when an eclipse of the Sun or Moon would take place, but rather to arrive at what should come about in social evolution. Men were guided by what they saw in the heavens, as to what must be said to the people, what instructions should be given, so that the development of the whole social life should take its right course. Astronomy and Sociology were dealt with as one. We too, though in a different way from the Egyptians, must again learn how to connect what happens in social life with the phenomena of the great universe. We do not understand what came about in the middle of the 15th century, if we cannot relate the events of that time to the phenomena which then prevailed in the universe. It is like a blind man talking about color to speak of the changes in the civilized world in the middle of the 15th century without taking all this into account.

Spiritual Science is already a starting point. But we shall not succeed in bring together the complicated domain of Sociology—social science—with the observations of natural phenomena, unless we first begin by connecting Astronomy with Embryology, linking the embryonic facts with astronomical phenomena.

Yesterday I showed a connection between two branches of science which according to our modern ideas are widely separated. I sought to show that the science of Astronomy should provide certain items of knowledge which must then be turned to account in quite a different branch of science, from which the study and method of Astronomy is completely excluded nowadays. In effect, I sought to show that Astronomy must be linked with Embryology. It is impossible to understand the phenomena of cell-development, especially of the sex-cells, without calling to our aid the realities of Astronomy, which lie apparently so far removed from Embryology.

I pointed out that there must come about a regrouping of the sciences, for a man specializing nowadays along certain lines finds himself hemmed in by the circumscribed divisions of science. He has no possibility of applying his specialized knowledge and experience to spheres which may lie near to hand but which will only have been presented to him from certain aspects, insufficient to give him a deeper understanding of their full significance. If it is true, as will emerge in these lectures, that we can only understand the successive stages in human embryonic development when we understand their counterpart, the phenomena of the Heavens; if this is a fact—and it will turn out to be so—then we cannot work at Embryology without working at Astronomy. Nor can we occupy ourselves with Astronomy without bringing new light to the facts of Embryology. In Astronomy we are studying something which reveals its most important activity in the development of the human embryo. How, then, shall we explain the meaning and reason of astronomical facts, if we bring into the kind of connection with these facts the very realm in which this meaning and reason are revealed?

You see how necessary it is to come to a reasonable world-conception, out of the chaos in which we are today in the sphere of science. If, however, one only accepts what is fashionable nowadays, it will be very difficult to grasp, even as a general idea, anything like what I said yesterday. For the evolution of our time has brought it about that astronomical facts are only grasped through mathematics and mechanics, while embryological facts are recorded in such a way that in dealing with them anything of the nature of mathematics or mechanics is discarded. At most, even if the mathematical-mechanical is brought into some kind of relation to Embryology, it is done in a quite an external way, without considering where lies the origin of what, in embryonic development, might truly be expressed in mathematical and mechanical terms.

Now I need only point to a saying of Goethe's, uttered out of a certain feeling—a ‘feeling knowledge’ I might call it—but indicating something of extraordinary significance. (You can read of it in Goethe's “Spruche in Prosa”, and in the Commentary which I added to the publication in the Kurschner edition of the Deutsche National-Literatur, where I spoke in detail about this passage.) Goethe says there: People think of natural phenomena so entirely apart from man that they are tending ever more and more to disregard the human being in their study of the phenomena of Nature. He, on the contrary, believed that natural phenomena only reveal their true meaning if they are regarded in full connection with man—with the whole organization of man. In saying this, Goethe pointed to a method of research which is well-nigh anathematized nowadays. People today seek an 'objective' understanding of Nature through research that is completely separated from the human being. This is particularly noticeable in such a science as Astronomy, where no account at all is taken of the human being. On the contrary, people are proud that the apparently ‘objective’ facts have shown that man is only a grain of dust upon an Earth which has somehow been fused into a planet, moving first round the Sun and then, in some way or other, moving with the Sun in space. They are proud that one need pay no attention to this ‘grain of dust’ which wanders about on Earth,—that one need only pay attention to what is external to the human being in considering the great celestial phenomena.

Now the question is, whether any real results are to be obtained by such a method.

I should like once more to call attention, my dear friends, to the path we must pursue in these lectures. What you will find as proof will only emerge in the further course of the lectures. Today we must take a good deal simply from observation in order to form certain preliminary ideas. We must first build up certain necessary concepts; only then shall we be able to pass on to the verification of these concepts.

From what source, then, can we gain a real perception of the celestial phenomena merely through the mathematics which we apply to them? The course of development of human knowledge can disclose—if one does not take up the proud position of thinking how ‘wonderfully advanced’ we are today and how all that went before was childish—the course of human development can teach us how the prevailing points of view can change.

From certain aspects one can have great reverence for the celestial observations carried out, for instance, by the ancient Chaldeans. The ancient Chaldeans made very exact observations concerning the connection of human time-reckoning with the heavenly phenomena. They had a highly develop ‘Calendar-Science’. Much that appears to us today as self-evident really dates back to the Chaldeans. Yet the Chaldeans were satisfied with a mathematical picture of the Heavens which portrayed the Earth more or less as a flat disc, with the hollow hemisphere of the heavenly vault arched above, the fixed stars fastened to it, and the planets moving over it. (Among the planets they also included the Sun.) They made their calculations with this picture in the background. Their calculations for the most part were correct, in spite of being based upon a picture which the science of today can only describe as a fundamental error, as something ‘childish’.

Science, or more correctly, the scientific tendency and direction, then went on evolving. There was a stage when men pictured that the Earth stood still, but that Venus and Mercury moved round the Sun. The Sun formed the central point, as it were, for the motions of Venus and Mercury, while the other planets—Mars, Jupiter and Saturn—moved round the Earth. Thereafter, men progressed to making Mars, Jupiter and Saturn also revolved around the Sun, but the Earth was still supposed to stand still, while the Sun with its encircling planets as well as the starry Heavens revolved round the Earth. This was still the fundamental view of Tycho Brahe, whereas his contemporary Copernicus established the other concept, namely, that the Sun was to be regarded as standing still and that the Earth was to be reckoned among the planets revolving round the Sun. Following hard one upon the other in the time of Copernicus were the two points of view, one which existed in ancient Egypt, of the stationary Earth with the other planets encircling the Sun, still represented by Tycho Brahe; the other, the Copernican concept, which broke radically with the idea of the center of coordinates being in the center of the Earth, and transferred it to the center of the Sun. For in reality the whole alteration made by Copernicus was nothing else than this,—the origin of coordinates was removed from the center of the Earth to the center of the Sun.

What was actually the problem of Copernicus? His problem was, how to reduce to simple lines and curves these complicated apparent motions of the planets,—; for so they appear as observed from the Earth. When the planets are observed from the Earth, their movements can only be described as a variety of looped lines, such as these (Fig. 1). So, when taking the center of the Earth as the center of coordinates it is necessary to base the planetary movements on all sorts of complicated curves. Copernicus said, in effect: ‘as an experiment, I will place the center of the whole coordinate system in the center of the Sun.’ Then the complicated planetary curves are reduced to simple circular movements, or as was stated later, to ellipses. The whole thing was purely the construction of a world-system which aimed at being able to represent the paths of the planets in the simplest possible curves.

Now today we have a very remarkable fact, my dear friends. This Copernican system, when employed purely mathematically, supplies the necessary calculations concerning the observed phenomena as well as and no better than any of the earlier ones. The eclipses of the Sun and Moon can be calculated with the ancient Chaldean system, with the Egyptian, with the Tychonian and with the Copernican. The outer occurrences in the Heavens, in so far as they relate to mechanics or mathematics, can thus be foretold. One system is as well suited as another. It is only that the simplest thought-pictures arise with the Copernican system. But the strange thing is that in practical Astronomy, calculations are not made with the Copernican system. Curiously enough, in practical Astronomy,—to obtain what is needed for the calendar,—the system of Tycho Brahe is used! This shows how little that is really fundamental, how little of the essential nature of things, comes into question when the Universe is thus pictured in purely mathematical curves or in terms of mechanical forces.

Now there is another very remarkable fact which I will only indicate today, so that we shall understand each other about the aim of these lectures. I shall speak further about it in succeeding lectures. Copernicus in his deliberations bases his cosmic system upon three axioms. The first is that the Earth rotates on its own North-South axis in 24 hours. The second principle on which Copernicus bases his picture of the Heavens is that the Earth moves round the Sun. In its revolution round the Sun the Earth itself, of course, also revolves in a certain way. This rotation, however, does not occur round the North-South axis of the Earth, which always points to the North Pole, but round the axis of the Ecliptic, which, as we know, is at an angle with the Earth's own axis. Therefore the Earth goes through a rotation during a 24-hour day round its own N. S. Axis, and then, inasmuch as it performs approximately 365 such rotations in the year, there is added another rotation, an annual rotation, if we disregard the revolution round the Sun. The Earth, then, if it always rotates thus, and then again revolves round the Sun, behaves like the Moon as it rotates round the Earth, always turning the same side towards us. The Earth does this too, inasmuch as it revolves round the Sun, but not on the same axis as the one on which it rotates for the daily revolution. It revolves through this 'yearly day' on another axis; this is an added movement, besides the one taking place in the 24-hour day.

Copernicus' third principle is that not only does such a revolution of the Earth take place round the North-South axis, but that there is yet a third revolution which appears as a retrograde movement of the North-South axis round the axis of the Ecliptic. Thereby, in a certain sense, the revolution round the axis of the Ecliptic is canceled out. By reason of this third revolution the Earth's axis continuously points to the North celestial Pole (the Pole-Star). Whereas, by virtue of revolving round the Sun, the Earth's axis would have to describe a circle, or an ellipse, round the pole of the Ecliptic, its own revolution, which takes the opposite direction (every time the Earth proceeds a little further its axis rotates backwards), causes it to point continually to the North Pole. Copernicus adopted this third principle, namely: The continued pointing of the Earth's axis to the Pole comes about because, by a rotation of its own—a kind of ‘inclination’ (?)—it cancels out the other revolution. This latter therefore has no effect in the course of the year, for it is constantly being annulled.

In modern Astronomy, founded as it is on the Copernican system, it has come about that the first two axioms are accepted and the third is ignored. This third axiom is lightly brushed aside by saying that the stars are so far away that the Earth-axis, remaining parallel to itself, always points practically to the same spot. Thus it is assumed that the North-South axis of the Earth, in its revolution, remains always parallel to itself. This was not assumed by Copernicus; on the contrary, he assumed a perpetual revolving of the Earth's axis. Modern Astronomy is therefore not really based on the Copernican system, but accepts the first two axioms because they are convenient and discards the third, thus becoming lost in the prevarication that it is not necessary to suppose that the Earth's axis itself must move in order to keep pointing to the same spot in the Heavens, but that the place itself is so far away that even if the axis does move parallel to itself it will still point to the same spot. Anyone can see that this is a prevarication. To-day therefore we have a ‘Copernican system’ from which a most important element has actually been discarded.

The development of modern Astronomy is presented in such a way that no one notices that an important element is missing. Yet only in this way is it possible to describe it all so neatly: “Here is the Sun the Earth goes round in an ellipse with the Sun in one of the foci.” (Fig. 2)

As time went on it became no longer possible to hold to the starting-point of the Copernican theory, namely that the Sun stands still. A movement is now attributed to the Sun, which is said to move forward with the whole ellipse, perpetually creating new ellipses, so to speak (Fig. 3). It became necessary to introduce the Sun's own movement, and this was done simply by adding something new to the picture they had before. A mathematical description is thus obtained which is admittedly convenient, but few questions are asked as to its possibility or its reality. It is only from the apparent movement of the stars that the Earth's movement is deduced by this method. As we shall presently see, it is of great significance whether or no one assumes a movement—which indeed must be assumed—namely the aforesaid ‘inclination’ (?) of the Earth's axis, perpetually annulling the annual rotation. Resultant movements, after all, are obtained by adding up the several movements. If one is left out, the whole is no longer true. Thus the whole theory that the Earth moves round the Sun in an ellipse comes into question.

You see, purely from these historical facts, that burning questions exist in Astronomy today, though it is seemingly a most exact science because it is mathematical. The question arises: Why do we live in such uncertainty with regard to a real astronomical science? We must then ask further, turning the question in another direction: Can we reach any real certainty through a purely mathematical approach? Only think that in considering a thing mathematically we lift the observation out of the sphere of external reality. Mathematics is something that ascends from our inner being; in mathematics we lift ourselves out of external reality. It must therefore be understood from the outset that if we approach an external reality with a method of investigation that lifts itself out of reality, we can, in all probability, only arrive at something relative.

To begin with, I am merely putting forward certain general considerations. We shall soon come to the realities. The point is that in regarding things purely from the mathematical standpoint, man does not put reality into his thought with sufficient energy, in order to approach the phenomena of the outer world rightly. This, indeed, demands that the celestial phenomena be brought nearer to man; they must not be regarded as quite apart from man, but must be brought into relationship with man. It was only one particular instance of this associating of the heavenly phenomena with the human being, when I said that we must see what takes place out there in the starry world in its reflection in the embryonic process. But let us look at the matter at first somewhat more generally. Let us ask whether we cannot perhaps find another approach to the celestial phenomena than the purely mathematical one.

We can indeed bring the celestial phenomena, in their connection with earthly life, somewhat nearer to man in a purely qualitative way. We will not disdain to form a basis today with seemingly elementary ideas, these ideas being just the ones that are excluded from the foundations of modern Astronomy. We will ask the following question: How does man's life on Earth appear, in relation to Astronomy? We can regard the external phenomena surrounding man from three different points of view. We can regard them from the standpoint of what I will call the solar life, the life of the Sun; the lunar life; and the terrestrial, the tellurian life.

Let us think first in quite a popular, even elementary way how these three domains play around man and upon him. Clearly there is something on the Earth which is in complete dependence upon the Sun-life, including also that aspect of the Sun's life which we shall have to look for in the Sun's movement or state of rest, and so on. We will leave aside the quantitative aspect and today merely consider the qualitative. Let us try to be clear as to how, for instance, the vegetation of any given region depends upon the solar life. Here we need only call to mind what is very well known with regard to vegetation, namely, the difference in the vegetation of spring, summer, autumn and winter; we shall be able to say that we see in the vegetation itself an imprint of the solar life. The Earth opens herself in a given region to what is outside her in heavenly space, and this reveals itself in the unfolding of vegetative life. If the Earth closes herself again to the solar life, the vegetation recedes.

There is, however, an interplay of activity between the terrestrial or tellurian and the solar life. There is a difference in the solar life according to the variation of tellurian conditions. We must here bring together quite elementary facts and you will see how they lead us further. Take, for example, Egypt and Peru, two regions in the tropical zone.—Egypt, a low-lying plain, Peru a table land, and compare the vegetation. You will see how the tellurian element, simply the distance from the center of the Earth in this instance, plays its part in conjunction with the solar life. You only need study the vegetation over the earth, regarding the Earth, not as mere mineral but as incorporating plant-nature as well, and in the picture of vegetation you have a starting-point for an understanding of the connection of the earthly with the celestial. But we perceive the connection most particularly when we turn our attention to mankind.

We have, in the first place, two opposites on the Earth: the Polar and the Tropical. The Polar and the tropical form a polarity, and the result of this polarity shows itself very clearly in human life.

Is it not so that life in the polar regions brings forth in man a condition of mind and spirit which is more or less a state of apathy: The sharp contrast of a long winter and a long summer which are almost like one long day and one long night, produces a certain apathy in man; it is as though the setting in which man lives makes him apathetic. In the Tropics, man also lives in a region which makes him apathetic. But the apathy of the polar region is based upon a sparse external vegetation—sparse and meager in a peculiar way even where it develops to some extent. The tropical apathy of man is caused by a rich, luxuriant vegetation. Putting together these two pictures of environment one can say that the apathy which affects man in polar regions is different from that affecting him in tropical regions. He is apathetic in both regions, but the apathy results from different causes. In the Temperate Zone lies the balance. Here the human capacities are developed in a certain equilibrium.

No-one will doubt that this has something to do with the solar life. But what is the connection: (I will, as I said, first make a few remarks based on observation and in this way arrive at essential concepts.) Going to the root of things, we find that in the life around the Poles there is a very strong working-in of the Sun-forces upon man. In those regions the Earth tends to withdraw from the life of the Sun; she does not let her activity shoot upward from below into the vegetation. But the human being is exposed in these parts to the true Sun-life (you must not only look for the Sun-life in mere warmth). That this is so, the vegetation itself bears witness.

We have, then, a preponderance of solar influence in the Polar zones. What kind of life predominates in the Tropical? There it is the tellurian, the Earth-life. This shoots up into the vegetation, making it rich and luxuriant. This also robs man of a balanced development of his capacities, but the causes in the North and in the Tropics come from different directions. In Polar regions the sunlight represses man's inner development. In the Tropics, what shoots up from the Earth represses his inner powers. We thus see a certain polarity, the polarity shown in the preponderance of the Sun-life around the Poles, and of the tellurian life in tropical regions—; in the neighborhood of the Equator.

If we then observe man and have in mind the human form, we can say the following. (Please do not object at once if it seems paradoxical, but wait a little. We shall be taking the human form seriously.) The head, the part of the human form which in its outer configuration copies universal space,—namely the sphere, the spherical shape of the Universe as a whole—the head is exposed by life in polar regions to what comes from the Cosmos outside the Earth. In the Tropics, the metabolic system in its connection with the limbs is exposed to the Earth-life as such.

We come to a special relationship, you see, of the human head to the cosmic life outside the Earth and of the human metabolic and limb-system to the Earth-life. Man is so placed in the Universe as to be more co-ordinated with the cosmic surroundings of the Earth in his head, his nerve-senses system, and with the Earth-life in his metabolic system. And in the temperate zones we shall have to look for a kind of perpetual harmonizing between the head-system and the metabolic system. In the temperate zones there is a primary development of the rhythmic system in man.

You see then that there exists a certain connection between this threefold membering of man—nerves-and-senses system, rhythmic system, metabolic system—and the outer world. The head-system is more related to the whole Cosmos, the rhythmic system is the balance between the Cosmos and the earthly world, and the metabolic system is related to the earth itself. Then we must take up another indication, which points to a working of the solar life upon mankind in a different direction.

The connection of the solar life with the life of man which we have just been considering can only be related to the interplay of the earthly and extra-earthly life in the course of the year. But as a matter of fact, in the course of the day we are also concerned with a kind of repetition, even as in the yearly course. The yearly course is determined by the relation of the Sun to the Earth, and so is the daily course. In the language of purely mathematical astronomy we speak of the daily rotation of the Earth on its axis, and of the revolution of the Earth round the Sun in the course of the year. But we are then confining ourselves to very simple aspects. We have then no justification for assuming that we are really starting from adequate premisses, giving an adequate basis for our investigations. Let us call to mind all that we have considered with regard to the yearly course. I will not say ‘the revolution of the Earth round the Sun’, but the course of the year with its alternating conditions. This must have a connection with the three-fold being of man. Since through the earthly conditions it finds different expression in the Tropics, in the Temperate Zones and at the Poles, this yearly course must be connected in some way with the whole formation of man—with the relations of the three members of the threefold man. When we bring this into consideration, we acquire a wider basis from which to proceed and can perhaps arrive at something quite different from what we reach when we merely measure the angles which one telescopic direction makes with another. It is a matter of finding broader foundations in order to be able to judge the facts.

Speaking of the daily course, we speak in the astronomical sense of the rotation of the Earth on its axis. But something rather different is here revealed. There is revealed a far-reaching independence of man upon this daily course. The dependence of man on the yearly rhythm, namely on what is connected with the yearly course, the shaping of the human form in the various regions of the Earth, shows us a very great dependence of man on the solar life,—on the changes that appear on Earth in consequence of the solar life. The daily course shows it far less. True, very much of interest will also be revealed in connection with the daily course, but as regards the life of mankind as a whole it is relatively insignificant. The differences appear in individual human beings. Goethe, who can be regarded in a certain respect as a normal type of man, felt himself best attuned to production in the morning; Schiller at night. This points to the fact that the daily rhythm has a definite influence upon certain subtler parts of human nature. A man who has a feeling for such things, will tell us that he has met many persons in his life who have confided to him that their really important thoughts were worked out in the dusk, that is, in the temperate period of the day-to-day rhythm, not at midday nor at midnight, but in the temperate time of the day. It is however, a fact that man is in a way independent of the daily course of the Sun. We have still to go into the significance of this independence and to show in what way a certain dependence does nevertheless exist.

A second element is the lunar life, the life that is connected with the Moon. It may be that a great deal of what has been said on this subject in the course of human evolution appears today as mere fantastic nonsense. But in one way or another we see that the Earth-life as such, for example in the phenomena of tidal ebb and flow, is connected quite evidently with the movement of the Moon. Nor must it be overlooked that the female functions, although they do not coincide in time with the Moon's phases, coincide with them in their periodicity, and that therefore something essentially concerned with human evolution is shown to be dependent in time and duration upon the phases of the Moon. It is as though this process of the female function were lifted out of the general course of Nature, but has remained a true image of Nature's process; it is accomplished in the same period of time as the corresponding natural phenomenon.

Just as little must it be overlooked—only people do not make rational, exact observations of these things if they turn aside from them at the very outset—just as little must it be overlooked that as a matter of fact, man's life of fancy and imagination is extraordinarily bound up with the phases of the Moon. If anyone were to keep a calendar-record of the upward and downward flow of his life of imagination, he would notice how much it had to do with the Moon's phases. The fact that the Moon-life, the lunar life, has an influence upon certain lower organs should he studied in the phenomenon of the sleep-walker. In the sleep-walker, interesting phenomena can be studied; phenomena which are overlaid by normal human life, but are present in the depths of human nature and point in their totality to the fact that the lunar life is just as much connected with the rhythmic system of man as is the solar life with his nerves-and-senses system.

This gives a sort of crossing of influences. We have seen how the solar life, in its interplay with the forces of the Earth, works on the rhythmic system in the temperate zones. Crossing this influence, we now have the direct influence of the lunar life upon the rhythmic system.

When we now look at the tellurian, the Earth-life as such, we must not disregard a domain in which the earthly influence makes itself felt; though, to be sure, this is not ordinarily taken into account. I ask you to turn your attention to such as phenomenon as home-sickness. It is difficult to from any clear ideas about home-sickness. It can no doubt be explained from the point of view of habit, custom, and so on. But I ask you to note that real physiological effects can be produced entirely as a result of this so-called home-sickness. Home-sickness can go so far as to make a man ill. It can express itself in such phenomena as asthma. Study the complex of the phenomena of home-sickness with its consequences, asthmatic conditions and general ill-health, a kind of emaciation, and it is possible to come to the following conclusion. One comes to see that ultimately the feeling of home-sickness results from an alteration of the metabolism—the whole metabolic system. Home-sickness is the reflection in consciousness of changes in the metabolism—changes entirely due to the man's removal from one place, with its tellurian influences from below, to another place, with different influences coming from below. Please take this in connection with other things which, unfortunately, Science as a rule leaves unconsidered.

Goethe, I said, felt most inspired to poetry, to the writing of his works in the morning. If he needed a stimulant however, he took that stimulant which in its nature takes least hold of the metabolic system, but only stirs it up via the rhythmic system, namely wine. Goethe took wine as a stimulant. In this respect he was, indeed, altogether a Sun-man; he let the influence of the solar life work upon him. With Schiller or Byron this was reversed. Schiller preferred to write his poetry when the Sun has set, that is to say when the solar life was hardly active any more. And he stimulated himself with something which takes thorough hold of the metabolic system—with hot punch. The effect was quite different from that obtained by Goethe from wine. It worked into the whole metabolism. Through the metabolism the Earth works upon man; so we can say that Schiller was essentially tellurian—an Earth-man. Earth-men work more through the emotions and what belongs to the will; the Sun-man works rather through calm and contemplation. For those persons, therefore, who could not endure the solar element, but only liked the tellurian, only what is of the Earth Goethe increasingly became “the cold literary Greybeard” as they called him in Weimar—“the cold, literary greybeard with the double chin.” That was the name which was so often given to Goethe in Weimar in the 19th century.

Now I should like to bring something rather different to your notice. We have observed how man is set into the universal connections of Earth, Sun, Moon: the Sun working more on the nerves-and-senses system; the Moon working more on the rhythmic system; the Earth, inasmuch as she gives man of her substance as nourishment and makes substance directly active in him, working upon the metabolic system, working tellurically. We see something in man through which we can perhaps find starting-point for an explanation of the Heavens as they exist outside man, upon broader foundations than merely through the measurement of angles by the telescope and so on.

This is especially so if we go yet further, if we now consider Nature outside of man,—but consider it so as to see more in it than a mere register of external data. Look at the metamorphosis of insects. In the course of the year it is a complete reflection of the external solar life. I would say that with man we must make our researches more in the inner being in order to follow what is solar, lunar and tellurain in him, whereas in the insect-life with its metamorphoses, we see the direct course of the year expressed in the successive forms the insect assumes. We can now say to ourselves: Maybe we have not to only proceed quantitatively, but should also take into account the qualitative impression which such phenomena make upon us Why always merely ask what a phenomenon of the outer Universe looks like in the objective of the telescope? Why not ask what relation is given, not merely by the objective of the telescope, but by the insect? How does human nature react? Is anything revealed to us through human nature regarding the celestial phenomena? Are we not led in this way to broader foundations, making it impossible that on the one hand, theoretically, we should be Copernicans when desiring to explain the world philosophically, while on the other we use Tychonic System as our basis for calculating the calendar etc., as practical Astronomy still does to this day. Or that we are Copernicans, but set aside the most important part of his theory, namely his third axiom Can we not overcome the uncertainties which create burning problems even in the most fundamental realms of Astronomy today, by working on a broader basis—working in this sphere too from the quantitative to the qualitative?

Yesterday I sought to point out the connection of the celestial with the embryonic phenomena; today, the connection with fully developed man. Here you have an indication towards a necessary regrouping of the sciences. Now take another thing to which I have also referred to in the course of today's remarks. I indicated the connection of human metabolism with the Earth-life. In man we have the faculties of sense-perception mediated through the nerves-and-senses system, connected as a whole with the solar and cosmic life. We have the rhythmic system connected with what lies between Heaven and Earth. We have the metabolism related especially to the Earth, so that in contemplating metabolic man we should be able to get nearer to the real essence of the tellurian. But what do we do today if we want to approach the tellurian realm? We behave as we habitually do, and investigate things from the outside. But things have an inner side also! Will they perhaps only show it in its true form when they pass through the human being?

It has become an ideal nowadays to regard the relationship of substances quite apart from man and to rest there; to observe by experimentation in chemical laboratories the reciprocal actions of substances in order to arrive at their nature. But if the substances only disclosed their nature within the human being, then we should have to practice Chemistry in such a way as to reach man. Then we should have to form a connection between true Chemistry and the processes undergone by matter within man, just as we see a connection between Astronomy and Embryology, or between Astronomy and the whole human form—the threefold being of man. Thus do the things work into one another. We only come to real life when we perceive them in their interpenetration.

On the other hand, inasmuch as the Earth is poised in cosmic space, we shall have to see the connection between the tellurian and the starry realm.

Now we have seen a connection between Astronomy and the substances of Earth; also between the Earth and human metabolism; and again a direct influence of the solar and celestial events upon man himself. In man we have a kind of meeting of what comes directly from the Heavens and what comes via earthly substance. Earthly substances work on the human metabolism, while the celestial influences work directly upon man as a whole. In man there meet the direct influences for which we are indebted to the solar life, and those influences which, passing indirectly through the Earth, have undergone a change by reason of the Earth. Thus we can say: The interior of the human being will become explicable even in a physical, anatomical sense as a resultant of cosmic influences coming directly from the Universe outside the Earth, and cosmic influences which have first passed through the earthly process. These flow together in man (Fig. 4).

You see how, contemplating man in his totality, the whole Universe comes together. For a true knowledge of man, it is essential to perceive this.

What then has come about by scientific specialization? It has led us away from reality into a purely abstract sphere. In spite of its 'exactness', Astronomy—to calculate the calendar—cannot help using in practice something other than it stands for in theory. And then again, Copernican though it is in theory, it discards what was of great importance to Copernicus, namely the third axiom. Uncertainty creeps in at every point. These modern lines of research do not lead to what matters most of all,—to perceive how Man is formed from the entire Universe.

[ 1 ] In public discussions of the anthroposophy for which I stand there have been mingled for some time past statements and judgments about the course which my life has taken. From what has been said in this connection conclusions have been drawn with regard to the origin of the variations so called which some persons believe they have discovered in the course of my spiritual evolution. In view of these facts, friends have felt that it would be well if I myself should write something about my own life.

[ 2 ] This does not accord, I must confess, with my own inclinations. For it has always been my endeavour so to order what I might have to say and what I might think well to do according as the thing itself might require, and not from personal considerations. To be sure, it has always been my conviction that in many provinces of life the personal element gives to human action a colouring of the utmost value; only it seems to me that this personal element should reveal itself through the manner in which one speaks and acts, and not through conscious attention to one's own personality. Whatever may come about as a result of such attention is something a man has to settle with himself.

[ 3 ] And so it has been possible for me to resolve upon the following narration only because it is necessary to set in a true light by means of an objective written statement many a false judgment in reference to the consistency between my life and the thing that I have fostered, and because those who through friendly interest have urged this upon me seem to me justified in view of such false judgments.

The home of my parents was in Lower Austria. My father was born at Geras, a very small place in the Lower Austrian forest region; my mother at Horn, a city of the same district.

[ 4 ] My father passed his childhood and youth in the most intimate association with the seminary of the Premonstratensian Order at Geras. He always looked back with the greatest affection upon this time in his life. He liked to tell how he served in the college, and how the monks instructed him. Later on, he was a huntsman in the service of Count Hoyos. This family had a place at Horn. It was there that my father became acquainted with my mother. Then he gave up the work of huntsman and became a telegraphist on the Southern Austrian Railway. He was sent at first to a little station in southern Styria. Then he was transferred to Kraljevec on the border between Hungary and Croatia. It was during this period that he married my mother. Her maiden name was Blie. She was descended from an old family of Horn. I was born at Kraljevec on February 27, 1861. It thus happened that the place of my birth was far removed from that part of the world from which my family came.

[ 5 ] My father, and my mother as well, were true children of the South Austrian forest country, north of the Danube. It is a region into which the railway was late in coming. Even to this day it has left Geras untouched. My parents loved the life they had lived in their native region. When they spoke of this, one realized instinctively how in their souls they had never parted from that birthplace in spite of the fate that forced them to pass the greater part of their lives far away from it. And so, when my father retired, after a life filled with work, they returned at once there-to Horn.

[ 6 ] My father was a man of the utmost good will, but of a temper – especially while he was still young – which could be passionately aroused. The work of a railway employee was to him a matter of duty; he had no love for it. While I was still a boy, he would sometimes have to remain on duty for three days and three nights continuously. Then he would be relieved for twenty-four hours. Under such conditions life for him wore no bright colours; all was dull grey. Some pleasure he found in keeping up with political developments. In these he took the liveliest interest. My mother, since our worldly goods were none too plentiful, was forced to devote herself to household duties. Her days were filled with loving care of her children and of the little home.

[ 7 ] When I was a year and a half old; my father was transferred to Mödling, near Vienna. There my parents remained a half-year. Then my father was put in charge of the little station on the Southern Railway at Pottschach in Lower Austria, near the Styrian border. There I lived from my second to my eighth year. A wonderful landscape formed the environment of my childhood. The view stretched as far as the mountains that separate Lower Austria from Styria: [ 8 ] “Snow Mountain,” Wechsel, the Rax Alps, the Semmering. Snow Mountain caught the sun's earliest rays on its bare summit, and the kindling reflection of these from the mountain down to the little village was the first greeting of dawn in the beautiful summer days. The grey back of the Wechsel put one by contrast in a sober mood. It was as if the mountains rose up out of the all-surrounding green of the friendly landscape. On the distant boundaries of the circle one had the majesty of the peaks, and close around the tenderness of nature.

[ 8 ] But around the little station all interest was centered on the business of the railway. At that time the trains passed in that region only at long intervals; but, when they came, many of the men of the village who could spare the time were generally gathered at the station, seeking thus to bring some change into their lives, which they found otherwise very monotonous. The schoolmaster, the priest, the book-keeper of the manor, and often the burgomaster as well, would be there.

[ 9 ] It seems to me that passing my childhood in such an environment had a certain significance for my life. For I felt a very deep interest in everything about me of a mechanical character; and I know how this interest tended constantly to overshadow in my childish soul the affections which went out to that tender and yet mighty nature into which the railway train, in spite of being in subjection to this mechanism, must always disappear in the far distance.

[ 10 ] In the midst of all this there was present the influence of a certain personality of marked originality, the priest of St. Valentin, a place that one could reach on foot from Pottschach in about three-quarters of an hour. This priest liked to come to the home of my parents. Almost every day he took a walk to our home, and he nearly always stayed for a long time. He belonged to the liberal type of Catholic cleric, tolerant and genial; a robust, broad-shouldered man. He was quite witty, too; had many jokes to tell, and was pleased when he drew a laugh from the persons about him. And they would laugh even more loudly over what he had said long after he was gone. He was a man of a practical way of life, and liked to give good practical advice. Such a piece of practical counsel produced its effects in my family for a long time. There was a row of acacia trees (Robinien) on each side of the railway at Pottschach. Once we were walking along the little footpath under these trees, when he remarked: “Ah, what beautiful acacia blossoms these are!” He seized one of the branches at once and broke off a mass of the blossoms. Spreading out his huge red pocket-handkerchief – he was extremely fond of snuff – he carefully wrapped the twigs in this, and put the “Binkerl” under his arm. Then he said: “How lucky you are to have so many acacia blossoms! “My father was astonished, and answered: “Why, what can we do with them?” “Wh-a-a-t?” said the priest. “Don't you know that you can bake the acacia blossoms just like elder flowers, and that they taste much better then because they have a far more delicate aroma?” From that time on we often had in our family, as opportunity offered from time to time, “baked acacia blossoms.”

[ 11 ] In Pottschach a daughter and another son were born to my parents. There was never any further addition to the family.

[ 12 ] As a very young child I showed a marked individuality. From the time that I could feed myself, I had to be carefully watched. For I had formed the conviction that a soup-bowl or a coffee cup was meant to be used only once; and so, every time that I was not watched, as soon as I had finished eating something I would throw the bowl or the cup under the table and smash it to pieces. Then, when my mother appeared, I would call out to her : “Mother, I've finished!”

[ 13 ] This could not have been a mere propensity for destroying things, since I handled my toys with the greatest care, and kept them in good condition for a long time. Among these toys those that had the strongest attraction for me were the kind which even now I consider especially good. These were picture-books with figures that could be made to move by pulling strings attached to them at the bottom. One associated little stories with these figures, to whom one gave a part of their life by pulling the strings. Many a time have I sat by the hour poring over the picture-books with my sister. Besides, I learned from them by myself the first steps in reading.

[ 14 ] My father was concerned that I should learn early to read and write. When I reached the required age, I was sent to the village school. The schoolmaster was an old man to whom the work of “teaching school” was a burdensome business. Equally burdensome to me was the business of being taught by him. I had no faith whatever that I could ever learn anything from him. For he often came to our house with his wife and his little son, and this son, according to my notions at that time, was a scamp. So I had this idea firmly fixed in my head: “Whoever has such a scamp for a son, nobody can learn anything from him.” Besides, something else happened, “quite dreadful.” This scamp, who also was in the school, played the prank one day of dipping a chip into all the ink-wells of the school and making circles around them with dabs of ink. His father noticed these. Most of the pupils had already gone. The teacher's son, two other boys, and I were still there. The schoolmaster was beside himself; he talked in a frightful manner. I felt sure that he would actually roar but for the fact that his voice was always husky. In spite of his rage, he got an inkling from our behaviour as to who the culprit was. But things then took a different turn. The teacher's home was next-door to the school-room. The “lady head mistress” heard the commotion and came into the school-room with wild eyes, waving her arms in the air. To her it was perfectly clear that her little son could not have done this thing. She put the blame on me. I ran away. My father was furious when I reported this matter at home. Then, the next time the teacher's family came to our house, he told them with the utmost bluntness that the friendship between us was ended, and added baldly: “My boy shall never set foot in your school again,” Now my father himself took over the task of teaching me; and so I would sit beside him in his little office by the hour, and had to read and write between whiles whenever he was busy with his duties.

[ 15 ] Neither with him could I feel any real interest in what had to come to me by way of direct instruction. What interested me was the things that my father himself was writing. I would imitate what he did. In this way I learned a great deal. As to the things I was taught by him, I could see no reason why I should do these just for my own improvement. On the other hand, I became rooted, in a child's way, in everything that formed a part of the practical work of life. The routine of a railway office, everything connected with it, – this caught my attention. It was, however, more especially the laws of nature that had already taken me as their little errand boy. When I wrote, it was because I had to write, and I wrote as fast as I could so that I should soon have a page filled. For then I could strew the sort of dust my father used over this writing. Then I would be absorbed in watching how quickly the dust dried up the ink, and what sort of mixture they made together. I would try the letters over and over with my fingers to discover which were already dry, which not. My curiosity about this was very great, and it was in this way chiefly that I quickly learned the alphabet. Thus my writing lessons took on a character that did not please my father, but he was good-natured and reproved me only by frequently calling me an incorrigible little “rascal.” This, however, was not the only thing that evolved in me by means of the writing lessons. What interested me more than the shapes of the letters was the body of the writing quill itself. I could take my father's ruler and force the point of this into the slit in the point of the quill, and in this manner carry on researches in physics, concerning the elasticity of a feather. Afterwards, of course, I bent the feather back into shape; but the beauty of my handwriting distinctly suffered in this process.

[ 16 ] This was also the time when, with my inclination toward the understanding of natural phenomena, I occupied a position midway between seeing through a combination of things, on the one hand, and “the limits of understanding” on the other. About three minutes from the home of my parents there was a mill. The owners of the mill were the god-parents of my brother and sister. We were always welcome at this mill. I often disappeared within it. Then I studied with all my heart the work of a miller. I forced a way for myself into the “interior of nature.” Still nearer us, however, there was a yarn factory. The raw material for this came to the railway station; the finished product went away from the station. I participated thus in everything which disappeared within the factory and everything which reappeared. We were strictly forbidden to take one peep at the “inside” of this factory. This we never succeeded in doing. There were the “limits of understanding” And how I wished to step across the boundaries! For almost every day the manager of the factory came to see my father on some matter of business. For me as a boy this manager was a problem, casting a miraculous veil, as it were, over the “inside” of those works. He was spotted here and there with white tufts; his eyes had taken on a certain set look from working at machinery. He spoke hoarsely, as if with a mechanical speech. “What is the connection between this man and everything that is surrounded by those walls?” – this was an insoluble problem facing my mind. But I never questioned anyone regarding the mystery. For it was my childish conviction that it does no good to ask questions about a problem which is concealed from one's eyes. Thus I lived between the friendly mill and the unfriendly factory.

[ 17 ] Once something happened at the station that was very “dreadful.” A freight train rumbled up. My father stood looking at it. One of the rear cars was on fire. The crew had not noticed this at all. All that followed as a result of this made a deep impression on me. Fire had started in a car by reason of some highly inflammable material. For a long time I was absorbed in the question how such a thing could happen. What my surroundings said to me in this case was, as in many other matters, not to my satisfaction. I was filled with questions, and I had to carry these about with me unanswered. It was thus that I reached my eighth year.

[ 18 ] During my eighth year the family moved to Neudörfl, a little Hungarian village. This village is just at the border over against Lower Austria. The boundary here was formed by the Laytha River. The station that my father had in charge was at one end of the village. Half an hour's walk further on was the boundary stream. Still another half-hour brought one to Wiener-Neustadt.

[ 19 ] The range of the Alps that I had seen close by at Pottschach was now visible only at a distance. Yet the mountains still stood there in the background to awaken our memories when we looked at lower mountains that could be reached in a short time from our family's new home. Massive heights covered with beautiful forests bounded the view in one direction; in the other, the eye could range over a level region, decked out in fields and woodland, all the way to Hungary. Of all the mountains, I gave my unbounded love to one that could be climbed in three-quarters of an hour. On its crest there stood a chapel containing a painting of Saint Rosalie. This chapel came to be the objective of a walk which I often took at first with my parents and my sister and brother, and later loved to take alone. Such walks were filled with a special happiness because of the fact that at that time of year we could bring back with us rich gifts of nature. For in these woods there were blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries. One could often find an inner satisfaction in an hour and a half of berrying for the purpose of adding a delicious contribution to the family supper, which otherwise consisted merely of a piece of buttered bread or bread and cheese for each of us.

[ 20 ] Still another pleasant thing came from rambling about in these forests, which were the common property of all. There the villagers got their supplies of wood. The poor gathered it for themselves; the well-to-do had servants to do this. One could become acquainted with all of these most-friendly persons. They always had time for a chat when Steiner Rudolf met them. “So thou goest again for a bit of a walk, Steiner Rudolf” – thus they would begin, and then they would talk about everything imaginable. The people did not think of the fact that they had a mere child before them. For at the bottom of their souls they also were only children, even when they could number sixty years. And so I really learned from the stories they told me almost everything that happened in the houses of the village.

[ 21 ] Half an hour's walk from Neudörfl is Sauerbrunn, where there is a spring containing iron and carbonic acid. The road to this lies along the railway, and part of the way through beautiful woods. During vacation time I went there every day early in the morning, carrying with me a “Blutzer.” This is a water vessel made of clay. The smallest of these hold three or four litres. One could fill this without charge at the spring. Then at midday the family could enjoy the delicious sparkling water.

[ 22 ] Toward Wiener-Neustadt and farther on toward Styria, the mountains fall away to a level country. Through this level country the Laytha River winds its way. On the slope of the mountains there was a cloister of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. I often met the monks on my walks. I still remember how glad I should have been if they had spoken to me. They never did. And so I carried away from these meetings an undefined but solemn feeling which remained constantly with me for a long time. It was in my ninth year that the idea became fixed in me that there must be weighty matters in connection with the duties of these monks which I ought to learn to understand. There again I was filled with questions which I had to carry around unanswered. Indeed, these questions about all possible sorts of things made me as a boy very lonely.

[ 23 ] On the foothills of the Alps two castles were visible: Pitten and Frohsdorf. In the second there lived at that time Count Chambord, who, at the beginning of the year 1870, claimed the throne of France as Henry V. Very deep were the impressions that I received from that fragment of life bound up with the castle Frohsdorf. The Count with his retinue frequently took the train for a journey from the station at Neudörfl.

Everything drew my attention to these men. Especially deep was the impression made by one man in the Count's retinue. He had but one ear. The other had been slashed off clean. The hair lying over this he had braided. At the sight of this I perceived for the first time what a duel is. For it was in this manner that the man had lost one ear.

[ 24 ] Then, too, a fragment of social life unveiled itself to me in connection with Frohsdorf. The assistant teacher at Neudörfl, whom I was often permitted to see at work in his little chamber, prepared innumerable petitions to Count Chambord for the poor of the village and the country around. In response to every such appeal there always came back a donation of one gulden, and from this the teacher was always allowed to keep six kreuzer for his services. This income he had need of, for the annual salary yielded him by his profession was fifty-eight gulden. In addition, he had his morning coffee and his lunch with the “schoolmaster.” Then, too, he gave special lessons to about ten children, of whom I was one. For such lessons the charge was one gulden a month.

[ 25 ] To this assistant teacher I owe a great deal. Not that I was greatly benefited by his lessons at the school. In that respect I had about the same experience as at Pottschach. As soon as we moved to Neudörfl, I was sent to school there This school consisted of one room in which five classes of both boys and girls all had their lessons. While the boy who sat on my bench were at their task of copying out the story of King Arpad, the very little fellows stood at a black board on which i and u had been written with chalk for them. It was simply impossible to do anything save to let the mind fall into a dull reverie while the hands almost mechanically took care of the copying. Almost all the teaching had to be done by the assistant teacher alone. The “schoolmaster” appeared in the school only very rarely. He was also the village notary, and it was said that in this occupation he had so much to take up his time that he could never keep school.

[ 26 ] In spite of all this I learned earlier than usual to read well. Because of this fact the assistant teacher was able to take hold of something within me which has influenced the whole course of my life. Soon after my entrance into the Neudörfl school, I found a book on geometry in his room. I was on such good terms with the teacher that I was permitted at once to borrow the book for my own use. I plunged into it with enthusiasm. For weeks at a time my mind it was filled with coincidences, similarities between triangles, squares, polygons; I racked my brains over the question: Where do parallel lines actually meet? The theorem of Pythagoras fascinated me. [ 27 ] That one can live within the mind in the shaping of forms perceived only within oneself, entirely without impression upon the external senses – this gave me the deepest satisfaction. I found in this a solace for the unhappiness which my unanswered questions had caused me. To be able to lay hold upon something in the spirit alone brought to me an inner joy. I am sure that I learned first in geometry to experience this joy.

[ 28 ] In my relation to geometry I must now perceive the first budding forth of a conception which has since gradually evolved in me. This lived within me more or less unconsciously during my childhood, and about my twentieth year took a definite and fully conscious form.

[ 29 ] I said to myself: “The objects and occurrences which the senses perceive are in space. But, just as this space is outside of man, so there exists also within man a sort of soul-space which is the arena of spiritual realities and occurrences.” In my thoughts I could not see anything in the nature of mental images such as man forms within him from actual things, but I saw a spiritual world in this soul-arena. Geometry seemed to me to be a knowledge which man appeared to have produced but which had, nevertheless, a significance quite independent of man. Naturally I did not, as a child, say all this to myself distinctly, but I felt that one must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself after the fashion of geometry.

[ 30 ] For the reality of the spiritual world was to me as certain as that of the physical. I felt the need, however, for a sort of justification for this assumption. I wished to be able to say to myself that the experience of the spiritual world is just as little an illusion as is that of the physical world. With regard to geometry I said to myself: “Here one is permitted to know something which the mind alone, through its own power, experiences.” In this feeling I found the justification for the spiritual world that I experienced, even as, so to speak, for the physical. And in this way I talked about this. I had two conceptions which were naturally undefined, but which played a great role in my mental life even before my eighth year. I distinguished things as those “which are seen” and those “which are not seen.”

[ 31 ] I am relating these matters quite frankly, in spite of the fact that those persons who are seeking for evidence to prove that anthroposophy is fantastic will, perhaps, draw the conclusion from this that even as a child I was marked by a gift for the fantastic: no wonder, then, that a fantastic philosophy should also have evolved within me.

[ 32 ] But it is just because I know how little I have followed my own inclinations in forming conceptions of a spiritual world – having on the contrary followed only the inner necessity of things – that I myself can look back quite objectively upon the childlike unaided manner in which I confirmed for myself by means of geometry the feeling that I must speak of a world “which is not seen.”

[ 33 ] Only I must also say that I loved to live in that world For I should have been forced to feel the physical world as a sort of spiritual darkness around me had it not received light from that side.

[ 34 ] The assistant teacher of Neudörfl had provided me, in the geometry text-book, with that which I then needed – justification for the spiritual world.

[ 35 ] In other ways also I owe much to him. He brought to me the element of art. He played the piano and the violin and he drew a great deal. These things attracted me powerfully to him. Just as much as I possibly could be, was I with him. Of drawing he was especially fond, and even in my ninth year he interested me in drawing with crayons. I had in this way to copy pictures under his direction. Long did I sit, for instance, copying a portrait of Count Szedgenyi.

[ 36 ] Very seldom at Neudörfl, but frequently in the neighbouring town of Sauerbrunn, could I listen to the impressive music of the Hungarian gipsies.

[ 37 ] All this played its part in a childhood which was passed in the immediate neighbourhood of the church and the churchyard. The station at Neudörfl was but a few steps from the church, and between these lay the churchyard. [ 38 ] If one went along by the churchyard and then a short stretch further, one came into the village itself. This consisted of two rows of houses. One row began with the school and the other with the home of the priest. Between those two rows of houses flowed a little brook, along the banks of which grew stately nut trees. In connection with these nut trees an order of precedence grew up among the children of the school. When the nuts began to get ripe, the boys and girls assailed the trees with stones, and in this way laid in a winter's supply of nuts. In autumn almost the only thing anyone talked about was the size of his harvest of nuts. Whoever had gathered most of all was the most looked up to, and then step by step was the descent all the way down – to me, the last, who as an “outsider in the village” had no right to share in this order of precedence.

[ 39 ] Near the railway station, the row of most important houses, in which the “big farmers” lived, was met at right angles by a row of some twenty houses owned by the “middle class” villagers. Then, beginning from the gardens which belonged to the station, came a group of thatched houses belonging to the “small cottagers.” These constituted the immediate neighbourhood of my family. The roads leading out from the village went past fields and vineyards that were owned by the villagers. Every year I took part with the “small cottagers” in the vintage, and once also in a village wedding.

[ 40 ] Next to the assistant teacher, the person whom I loved most among those who had to do with the direction of the school was the priest. He came regularly twice a week to give instruction in religion and often besides for inspection of the school. The image of the man was deeply impressed upon my mind, and he has come back into my memory again and again throughout my life. Among the persons whom I came to know up to my tenth or eleventh year, he was by far the most significant. He was a vigorous Hungarian patriot. He took active part in the process of Magyarizing the Hungarian territory which was then going forward. From this point of view he wrote articles in the Hungarian language, which I thus learned through the fact that the assistant teacher had to make clear copies of these and he always discussed their contents with me in spite of my youthfulness. But the priest was also an energetic worker for the Church. This once impressed itself deeply upon my mind through one of his sermons.

[ 41 ] At Neudörfl there was a lodge of Freemasons. To the villagers this was shrouded in mystery, and they wove about it the most amazing legends. The leading role in this lodge belonged to the manager of a match-factory which stood at the end of the village. Next to him in prominence among the persons immediately interested in the matter were the manager of another factory and a clothing merchant. Otherwise the only significance attaching to the lodge arose from the fact that from time to time strangers from “remote parts” were visitors there, and these seemed to the villagers in the highest degree unwelcome. The clothing merchant was a noteworthy person. He always walked with his head bowed over as if in deep thought. People called him “the make-believe,” and his isolation rendered it neither possible nor necessary that anyone should approach him. The building in which the lodge met belonged to his home.

[ 42 ] I could establish no sort of relationship to this lodge. For the entire behaviour of the persons about me in regard to this matter was such that here again I had to refrain from asking questions; besides, the utterly absurd way in which the manager of the match-factory talked about the church made a shocking impression on me.

[ 43 ] Then one Sunday the priest delivered a sermon in his energetic fashion in which he set forth in due order the true principles of morality for human life and spoke of the enemy of the truth in figures of speech framed to fit the lodge. As a climax, he delivered his advice: “Beloved Christians, beware of him who is an enemy of the truth: for example, a Mason or a Jew.” In the eyes of the people, the factory owner and the clothing merchant were thus authoritatively exposed. The vigour with which this had been uttered made a specially deep impression upon me. [ 44 ] I owe to the priest also, because of a certain profound impression made upon me, a very great deal in the later orientation of my spiritual life. One day he came into the school, gathered round him in the teacher's little room the “riper” children, among whom he included me, unfolded a drawing he had made, and with the help of this explained to us the Copernican system of astronomy. He spoke about this very vividly – the revolution of the earth around the sun, its rotation on its axis, the inclination of the axis in summer and winter, and also the zones of the earth. In all of it I was absorbed; I made drawings of a similar kind for days together, and then received from the priest further special instruction concerning eclipses of the sun and the moon; and thence-forward I directed all my search for knowledge toward this subject. I was then about ten years old, and I could not yet write without mistakes in spelling and grammar.

[ 45 ] Of the deepest significance for my life as a boy was the nearness of the church and the churchyard beside it. Everything that happened in the village school was affected in its course by its relationship to these. This was not by reason of certain dominant social and political relationships existing in every community; it was due to the fact that the priest was an impressive personality. The assistant teacher was at the same time organist of the church and custodian of the vestments used at Mass and of the other church furnishings. He performed all the services of an assistant to the priest in his religious ministrations. We schoolboys had to carry out the duties of ministrants and choristers during Mass, rites for the dead, and funerals. The solemnity of the Latin language and of the liturgy was a thing in which my boyish soul found a Vital happiness. Because of the fact that up to my tenth year I took such an earnest part in the services of the church, I was often in the company of the priest whom I so revered. [ 46 ] In the home of my parents I received no encouragement in this matter of my relationship to the church. My father took no part in this. He was then a “freethinker.” He never entered the church to which I had become so deeply attached; and yet he also, as a boy and as a young man, had been equally devoted and active. In his case this all changed once more only when he went back, as an old man on a pension, to Horn, his native region. There he became again “a pious man.” But by that time I had long ceased to have any association with my parents' home.

[ 47 ] From the time of my boyhood at Neudörfl, I have always had the strongest impression of the manner in which the contemplation of the church services in close connection with the solemnity of liturgical music causes the riddle of existence to rise in powerful suggestive fashion before the mind. The instruction in the Bible and the catechism imparted by the priest had far less effect upon my mental world than what he accomplished by means of liturgy in mediating between the sensible and the supersensible. From the first this was to me no mere form, but a profound experience. It was all the more so because of the fact that in this I was a stranger in the home of my parents. Even in the atmosphere I had to breathe in my home, my spirit did not lose that vital experience which it had acquired from the liturgy. I passed my life amid this home environment without sharing in it, perceived it; but my real thoughts, feelings, and experience were continually in that other world. I can assert emphatically however, in this connection that I was no dreamer, but quite self-sufficient in all practical affairs.

[ 48 ] A complete counterpart to this world of mine was my father's political affairs. He and another employee took turns on duty. This man lived at another railway station, for which he was partly responsible. He came to Neudörfl only every two or three days. During the free hours of the evening he and my father would talk politics. This would take place at a table which stood near the station under two huge and wonderful lime trees. There our whole family and the other employee would assemble. My mother knitted or crocheted; my brother and sister busied themselves about us; I would often sit at the table and listen to the unheard of political arguments of the two men. My participation, however, never had anything to do with the sense of what they were saying, but only with the form which the conversation took. They were always on opposite sides; if one said “Yes,” the other always contradicted him with “No.” All this, however, was marked, not only by a certain intensity – indeed, violence – but also by the good humour which was a basic element in my father's nature.

[ 49 ] In the little circle often gathered there, to which were frequently added some of the “notabilities” of the village, there appeared at times a doctor from Wiener-Neustadt. He had many patients in this place, where at that time there was no physician. He came from Wiener-Neustadt to Neudörfl on foot, and would come to the station after visiting his patients to wait for the train on which he went back. This man passed with my parents, and with most persons who knew him, as an odd character. He did not like to talk about his profession as a doctor, but all the more gladly did he talk about German literature. It was from him that I first heard of Lessing, Goethe, Schiller. At my home there was never any such conversation. Nothing was known of such things. Nor in the village school was there any mention of such matters. There the emphasis was all on Hungarian history. Priest and assistant teacher had no interest in the masters of German literature. And so it happened that with the Wiener-Neustadt doctor a whole new world came within my range of vision. He took an interest in me; often drew me aside after he had rested for a while under the lime trees, walked up and down with me by the station, and talked – not like a lecturer, but enthusiastically – about German literature. In these talks he set forth all sorts of ideas as to what is beautiful and what is ugly.

[ 50 ] This also has remained as a picture with me, giving me many happy hours in memory throughout my life: the tall, slender doctor, with his quick, long stride, always with his umbrella in his right hand held invariably in such a way that it dangled by his side, and I, a boy of ten years, on the other side, quite absorbed in what the man was saying.

[ 51 ] Along with all these things I was tremendously concerned with everything pertaining to the railroad. I first learned the principles of electricity in connection with the station telegraph. I learned also as a boy to telegraph.

[ 52 ] As to language, I grew up in the dialect of German that is spoken in Eastern Lower Austria. This was really the same as that then used in those parts of Hungary bordering on Lower Austria. My relationship to reading and that to writing were entirely different. In my boyhood I passed rapidly over the words in reading; my mind went immediately to the perceptions, the concepts, the ideas, so that I got no feeling from reading either for spelling or for writing grammatically. On the other hand, in writing I had a tendency to fix the word-forms in my mind by their sounds as I generally heard them spoken in the dialect. For this reason it was only after the most arduous effort that I gained facility in writing the literary language; whereas reading was easy for me from the first.

[ 53 ] Under such influences I grew up to the age at which my father had to decide whether to send me to the Gymnasium or to the Realschule ¹ at Wiener-Neustadt. From that time on I heard much talk with other persons – in between the political discussions – as to my own future. My father was given this and that advice; I already knew: “He likes to listen to what others say, but he acts according to his own fixed and definite determination.”

• 1. The Gymnasium and the Realschule are secondary schools, the curriculum of the former giving more prominence to the classics and that of the later to science and modern languages.

Now that we can be together again, it will be my task in the coming days to speak about important but rather difficult aspects of human and world existence, and we shall certainly not be able to reach any conclusion about these in this lecture; we can only make a beginning. As we proceed we will see how tremendously important these very questions are if we are to connect ourselves inwardly with the soul-stirring events of our times. If I had to summarize in a few words what I am going to speak about, I would say “necessity in world events and in human actions” and “human freedom in these two domains.”

There is hardly anyone who is not more or less intensely concerned with these problems, and perhaps there are hardly any events on the physical plane that urge us as strongly to deal with these questions as the ones that are at present overshadowing the peoples of Europe and reverberating in their souls. If we look at world events and our own actions, feeling, willing, and thinking within these events, considering them for the moment in conjunction with what we call divine cosmic guidance, wisdom-filled cosmic guidance, we see that this divine guidance is at work everywhere. And if we look at something that has happened and that perhaps we ourselves have been involved in, we can ask afterwards “Was the reason for this event we were involved in so much a part of wise cosmic guidance that we can say it was inevitable for it to happen as it did, and we ourselves could not have acted differently in it?” Or, looking more toward the future, we could also say “At some time in the future one or another thing will happen in which we believe we may be playing a part. Ought we not assume of the wise world guidance we presupposed that what happens in the future will also come about inevitably or, as we often say, is predetermined?” Can our freedom exist under such conditions? Can we resolve to use the ideas and skills we have acquired to intervene in some way? Can we do anything to alter things through the way we intervene if we do not want them to happen in the way they would be bound to happen without our intervention?

If we look back on the past, we tend to have the impression that everything was inevitable and could not have happened differently. If we look more toward the future, we have the impression that it must be possible for us to intervene in the course of events with our own will as much as we can. In short, we will always be in a conflict between supposing an absolute and all-pervading necessity on the one hand and necessarily assuming that we are free on the other. For without this latter assumption we cannot maintain our world view and would have to accept the fact that we are like cogs in the huge machine of existence, governed by the forces ruling the machine to the point where even the duties of the cogs are predetermined.

As you know, the conflict between choosing one thing or the other runs to some extent through all our intellectual endeavors. There have always been philosophers called determinists who supposed that all the events we are involved in through our actions and our willing are strictly predetermined, and there have also always been indeterminists who supposed that, on the contrary, human beings can intervene in the course of evolution through their will and their ideas. You know too that the most extreme form of determinism is fatalism, which clings so firmly to the belief that the world is pervaded by spiritual necessity as to presuppose that not one single thing could possibly happen differently from the way it was predetermined, that human beings cannot do other than submit passively to a fate that fills the whole world just because everything is predetermined.

Perhaps some of you also know that Kant set up an antinomian chart on one side of which he wrote a particular statement and always set its opposite on the other side.¹ For example, on one side stood the assertion “In terms of space the world is infinite,” and on the other side “In terms of space the world is finite.” He then went on to show that with the concepts at our disposal we can prove one of these just as well as the other. We can prove with the same logical exactitude that “the world is infinite with regard to both space and time” or that “the world is finite, boarded-up, in terms of space and that it had a beginning in time.”

The questions we have introduced also belong among the ones Kant put on his antinomian chart. He drew people's attention to the fact that one can just as well prove positively, in as proper and logical a way as possible, that everything that happens in the world, including human action, is subject to rigid necessity, as one can prove that human beings are free and influence in one way or another the course of events when they bring their will to bear on it. Kant considered these questions to be outside the realm of human knowledge, to be questions that lie beyond the limits of human knowledge, because we can prove the one just as easily and conclusively as the other.

Our studies of the last few years will actually have more or less given you the groundwork to get to the bottom of this strange mystery. For it certainly is a mysterious question whether human beings are bound by necessity or are free. It is a puzzling matter. Yet it is even more puzzling that both these alternatives can be conclusively proved. You will find no basis at all for overcoming doubt in this sphere if you look outside of what we call spiritual science. Only the background spiritual science can give will enable you to discover something about what is at the bottom of this mysterious question.

This time we will deal with our subject in very slow stages. I would just like to ask in anticipation, “How is such a thing possible that human beings can prove something and also prove its opposite?” When we approach a matter of this kind, we are certainly made aware of certain limits in normal human comprehension, in ordinary human logic. We meet with this limitation of human logic in regard to other things too. It always appears when human beings want to approach infinity with their concepts.

I can show you this by means of a very simple example. As soon as human beings want to approach infinity with their intellects, something occurs that can be called confusion in their concepts. I will demonstrate this in a very simple way. You must just be a little patient and follow a train of thought to which you are probably not accustomed. Suppose I write these figures on the blackboard one after the other, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. I could write an infinite number of them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc., couldn't I? I can also write a second column of figures; on the right of each number I can put double the number, like this:

Again I can write an infinite number of them. Now you will agree with me that each number in the right-hand column is in the left-hand column too. I can underline 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on. Look at the left column for a moment; an infinite series of numbers is possible. This infinite series contains all the numbers included in the right column. 2, 4, 6, and so on are all there. I can continue underlining them. If you look at the figures that are underlined, you will see that they are exactly half of all the numbers together because every other one is underlined. But when I write them on the right-hand side, I can write 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on into infinity. I have an infinite number both on the left and on the right, and you cannot say that there are fewer on the right than on the left. There is no doubt that I am bound to have just as many numbers on the right as on the left.

And yet, as every other number would have to be crossed out on the left to make the left column the same as the right, the infinite number on the left is only half the infinite number on the right. Obviously I have just as many numbers on the right as on the left, namely an infinite number, for each number on the right has one corresponding to it on the left—yet the amount of numbers on the right cannot but be half that of the numbers on the left.

There is no question about it, as soon as we deal with infinity, our thinking becomes confused. The problem arising here also cannot be solved, for it is just as true that on the right there are half as many numbers as on the left as it is true that there are exactly as many numbers on the right as on the left. Here you have the problem in its simplest form.

This brings us to the realization that our concepts cannot actually be used where infinity is concerned, where we go beyond the sense world—and infinity does go beyond the sense world. And do not imagine this to apply only to unlimited infinity, for you cannot use your concepts where limited infinity is concerned either, as the same confusion arises there.

Suppose you draw a triangle, a square, a pentagon, a hexagon and so on. When you reach a construction with a hundred sides, you will have come very close to a circle. You will no longer be able to distinguish the small lines very clearly, especially if you look at them from a distance. Therefore you can say that a circle is a polygon with an infinite number of sides. If you have a small circle there are an infinite number of sides in it; if you have a circle twice the size, you still have an infinite number of sides—and yet exactly twice as many!

So you do not need to go as far as unlimited infinity, for if you take a small circle with an infinite number of sides and a circle twice the size with an infinite number of sides, then even in the realm of visible, limited infinity you can encounter something that throws your concepts into utter confusion. What I have just said is extremely important. For people completely fail to notice that there is only a certain field where our concepts apply, namely the field of the physical plane, and that there is a particular reason why this has to be so.

You know, at a place where people are attacking us rather severely—which is now happening in many places from a great many people—a pastor gave a speech opposing our spiritual science, and thinking it might be especially effective, he concluded with a quotation from Matthias Claudius.² This quotation says roughly that human beings are really poor sinners who cannot know much and ought to rest content with what they do know and not chase after what they cannot know. The pastor picked this verse out of a poem by Matthias Claudius because he thought he could charge us with wanting to transcend the sense world—after all, had not Matthias Claudius already said that human beings are nothing but sinners who are unable to get beyond this world of the senses?

“By chance,” as people say, a friend of ours looked up this poem by Matthias Claudius and also read the verse preceding it. This preceding verse says that a person can go out into the open and, although the moon is always a round orb, if it does not happen to be full moon, he sees only part of the moon even though the other part is there. In the same way there are many things in the world people could become aware of if only they looked at them at the right moment. Thus Matthias Claudius wanted to draw attention to the fact that people should not confine themselves to immediate sense appearance and that anyone who allows himself to be deceived by this is a poor sinner. In fact, what the good pastor quoted from Matthias Claudius reflected on himself.

The sense world—if we happen not to be just like that pastor—at times makes us aware that wherever we look we should also look in the opposite direction and adjust our first view accordingly. However, the world of the senses cannot supply this immediate adjustment with regard to what transcends the sense world. We cannot just quote the other verse. That is why human beings philosophize away and, of course, are convinced of the truth of their speculations, for they can be logically proved. But their opposite can also be logically proved. So let us tackle the question today, “Why is it that when we transcend the sense world our thinking gets so confused?” And we will now look at the question in a way which will bring us closer to an answer. How does it happen that two contradictory statements can both be proved right? We will find this has to do with the fact that human life is in a kind of central position, a point of balance between two polar opposite forces, the ahrimanic and the luciferic.

You can of course cogitate on freedom and necessity and imagine you have compelling evidence that the world contains only necessity. But the compelling force of this argument comes from Ahriman. When we prove things in one direction, it is Ahriman who leads us astray, and if we prove their opposite, we are misled by Lucifer. For we are always exposed to these two powers, and if we do not take into account that we are placed in between them, we shall never get to the bottom of the conflicts in human nature, such as the one we have been considering.

It was actually in the course of the nineteenth century that people lost the feeling that throughout the world order there are, besides a state of equilibrium, pendulum swings to the right and the left, a swing toward Ahriman and a swing toward Lucifer. This feeling has been totally lost. After all, if you speak nowadays of Ahriman and Lucifer, you are considered not quite sane, aren't you? It was not as bad as this until the middle of the nineteenth century, for a very clever philosopher, Thrandorff, wrote a very nice article here in Berlin in the middle of the nineteenth century in an attempt to refute the argument of a certain clergyman.³ This clergyman let it be known—and it should be alright to say this in our circles—that there is no devil and that it is really a dreadful superstition to speak of one. We speak of Ahriman rather than of the devil. The philosopher Thrandorff spoke out against the clergyman in a very interesting article, “The Devil: No Dogmatic Bogy.” As late as the middle of the 1850s he tried as it were to prove the existence of Ahriman on a strictly philosophical basis.

In the course of the public lectures I am to give here in the near future I hope I can speak about this extinct part of human spiritual life, about an aspect of theosophy that completely disappeared in the middle of the nineteenth century. Right up to that time people had still spoken about these things, even if they called them by other names. The feeling for these things has now been lost, but basically it was there in a delicate form right into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, until it had to recede into the background for a while in the natural course of things. We know of course, as I have often emphasized, that spiritual science does not in the slightest way deny the great value and significance of progress in the natural sciences. But this progress in science would not have been possible unless the feeling for this opposition between Ahriman and Lucifer, which can be discovered only on a spiritual level, had been lost. It now has to emerge again above the threshold of human consciousness.

I would like to give you an example of how things stood in regard to Ahriman and Lucifer in the days when people had only a feeling left that there are two different powers at work. Here is an example to illustrate this.

In the old town hall in Prague there is a remarkable clock that was made in the fifteenth century. This clock is really a marvel. At first sight it looks like a sort of sundial, but it is so intricately constructed that it shows the course of the hours in a twofold way: the old Bohemian and the modern way. In the old Bohemian way the hours went from 1 or rather from 0 to 24, and the other way only to 12. At sunset the pointer or gnomon—and there was a shadow there—always pointed to 1. The clock was so arranged that the pointer literally always indicated 1 at sunset. That is to say, despite the varying times of sunset the hand always showed 1.

In addition to this, the clock also showed when sun or moon eclipses occurred. It also showed the course of the various planets through the constellations, giving the planetary orbits. It really was a wonderful construction and even showed the movable festivals, that is to say, it indicated on what day Easter fell in a particular year. It was also a calendar, giving the course of the year from January to December, including the fact that Easter is movable. A special pointer showed on what day Easter fell, despite it being movable, and it also showed Whitsun.

This clock, then, was constructed in the fifteenth century in an extraordinarily impressive way. And the story of how it was constructed has been investigated. But apart from this story—and the documents are there for you to read, with lots of descriptions—there is a legend that also aims at giving an account of the marvelous quality of this clock: first regarding its wonderful construction, and then regarding the fact that the man who was gifted enough to make such a clock always wound it up as long as he lived. After his death nobody could wind it, and they searched everywhere for people who could put it in order and get it going. As a rule they only found people who damaged it. Then someone would be found who said he could sort it out and did so, yet time and again the clock went wrong.

These facts grew into a kind of folk tale, which runs as follows: Once upon a time through a special gift from heaven a simple man acquired the ability to make this clock. He alone knew how to look after it. The legend attaches great significance to the fact that he was only a simple man who acquired this ability through special grace; that is to say, he was inspired by the spiritual world. But it came about that the governor wanted to keep this clock specially for Prague and prevent any other town from having one like it. So he had the inspired clockmaker blinded by having his eyes plucked out. Thus the man withdrew from the scene. But just before his death he begged once more to be permitted a moment in which to set the clock to rights again, and according to the legend he used this moment to make a quick manipulation and put the clock into such disorder that nobody could ever put it right again.

At first sight this seems a very unpretentious story. But in the way the story is constructed there is a sure feeling for the existence of Ahriman and Lucifer and the balance between them. Think how sensitively this story has been formed. The same sensitive construction can be found in countless such folk tales; it grows out of this same sure feeling for Lucifer and Ahriman. The story begins with the position of equilibrium, doesn't it? Through an act of grace from the spiritual world the man acquires the ability to construct an extraordinary clock. There is no trace of egotism in it, though anybody can give way to egotism. It was a gift of grace, and he really did not build the clock out of egotism. Nor was there any intellectuality in it, for it is expressly stated that he was a simple man. This whole description of the skill being an act of grace with no trace of egotism, and of his being a simple man who was free of intellectuality, was in fact given in order to indicate that there was no trace of Ahriman and Lucifer in this man's soul, but that he was entirely under the influence of divine powers that were good and progressive.

Lucifer lived in the governor. It was out of egotism that he wanted to keep the clock exclusively for his own town, and this was why he blinded the clockmaker. Lucifer is placed on the one side. But as soon as Lucifer is there, he always allies himself with his brother Ahriman. And because the man has been blinded, this other power acquires the capacity to attack from outside through skillful manipulation. That is the work of Ahriman.

Thus the power for good is placed between Lucifer and Ahriman. You can find a sensitive construction like this in many of the folk tales, even the simplest of them. But it was possible for this feeling of the intervention of Ahriman and Lucifer in life to get lost at a time when a sense had to gain ground that positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism, and so on, are the basic forces of the material world. This feeling for perceiving the world spiritually had to withdraw in order for scientific investigation to flourish.

We shall now look at how Ahriman and Lucifer intervene in what human beings call knowledge, in what people call their relation to the world in general, in a way that leads to the very confusion we were speaking about. This confusion is especially evident in the questions we have introduced. Let us take a simple hypothetical example. I could just as well have taken this from great world events as from everyday occurrences. Let us suppose that three or four people are preparing to go out for a drive. They plan to travel, let us say, through a mountain pass. This pass has overhanging rocks. The people are ready for the drive and intend setting out at an arranged time. But the chauffeur has just ordered another mug of beer which is served a bit too late. He therefore delays the departure by five minutes. Then he sets out with the party. They drive through the ravine. Just as they come to the overhanging rock it breaks loose, falls on top of the vehicle, and crushes the whole party. They all perish, or perhaps it was only the passengers who were killed and the chauffeur was spared.

Here we have a case in point. You could ask whether it was the chauffeur's fault, or whether the whole thing was governed by absolute necessity. Was it absolutely inevitable that these people should meet with this disaster at that precise moment? And was the chauffeur's tardiness just part of this necessity? Or could we imagine that if only the chauffeur had been punctual, he would have driven them through the mountain pass a long time before the rock fell, and they would never have been hit by it?

Here in the midst of everyday life you have this question of freedom and necessity which is intimately connected with “guilty” or “innocent.” Obviously, if everything is subject to absolute necessity, we cannot say that the chauffeur was guilty at all from a higher point of view, as it was entirely inevitable that these people met their death.

We meet this problem in life all the time. It is, as we have said, one of the most difficult of questions, the kind of question in which Ahriman and Lucifer interfere most easily when we try to find a solution. Ahriman is the one who appears first when this question is being tackled, as we shall see.

We will have to approach this question from a different angle if we want to get at an answer. You see, if we set about solving a question like this by starting with the thought “I can easily follow the course of events: the boulder fell—that happened,” and then ask “Is this actually based on necessity or freedom? Could things have happened differently?” we are only looking at the external events. We are looking at the events as they happen on the physical plane. Now people follow this approach out of the same impulse that leads them, if they have a materialistic outlook, to stop short at the physical body when contemplating the human being. Anyone who knows nothing about spiritual science will stop short at the physical body nowadays, won't he? He will say “The human being you see and feel is what exists.” He does not go beyond the physical body to the etheric body. And if he is a thoroughly pig-headed materialist, he will jeer and scoff when he hears people saying there is a finer, etheric body underlying the dense physical body. Yet you know how well-founded the view is that among the members of the human being the etheric body is the one most closely associated with the physical body, and in the course of time we have become accustomed to knowing that we must not just speak of the human physical body but also of the human etheric body, and so on.

Some of you, however, may not yet have asked yourselves “What kind of world is that other world outside the human being, the world in which the ordinary world events occur?” We have of course spoken of a number of things in this connection. We have said that to begin with when we perceive the external events of the physical plane with our senses, we have no idea that wherever we look there are elemental beings; it is exactly the same when we first look at the human being.

Human beings have an etheric body, which we have often also called an elemental body. Outside in nature, in external physical happenings in general, we have a succession of physical events and also the world of elemental existence. This runs absolutely parallel: the human being with a physical and an etheric body, and physical processes with events of the elemental world flowing into them. It would be just as one-sided to say that external processes are merely physical as to say that a human being has a physical body only, when we ought to be saying that he also has an etheric body. What we perceive with our physical senses and physical intellect is one thing. But there is something behind it that is analogous to the human etheric body. Behind every external physical occurrence there is a higher, more subtle one.

There are people who have a certain awareness of such things. This awareness can come to them in two different ways. You may have noticed something like the following either in yourself or in other people. A person has had some experience. But afterwards he comes to you and says—or it may be something you experienced and you may say, “Actually I had the feeling that while this experience was taking place externally, something quite different was happening to me as well, in a higher part of my being.” This is to say, deeper natures may feel that events not taking place on the physical plane at all can yet have an important effect on the course of their life. First, such people know something has happened to them. Others go even further and see things of this kind symbolically in a dream. Someone dreams he experiences this or that. He dreams, for instance, that he is killed by a boulder. He wakes up and is able to say, “That was a symbolic dream; something has taken place in my soul life.” It can often be proved true in life that something took place in the soul that was of far greater significance than what happened to the person on the physical plane. He may have progressed a stage higher in knowledge, purified part of his will nature, or made his feelings more sensitive or something of that kind.

In lectures given here recently I drew attention to the fact that what a person knows with his I is actually only a part of all that happens to him, and that the astral body knows a very great deal more, though not consciously. You will remember my telling you this. The astral body certainly knows of a great deal that happens to us in the supersensible realm and not in the realm of the senses. Now we have arrived from another direction at the fact that something is continually happening to us in the supersensible realm. Just as in the case of my moving my hand, the physical movement is only part of the whole process and behind it there is an etheric process, a process of my etheric body, so every physical process outside me is permeated by a subtle elementary process that runs parallel with it and takes place in the supersensible realm. Not only beings are permeated by a supersensible element, but so is the whole of existence.

Remember something I have repeatedly referred to and which even seems somewhat paradoxical. I have pointed out that in the spiritual realm we often have the opposite of what exists on the physical plane, not always, but often. Thus if something is true here for the physical plane, the truth with regard to the spiritual aspect can look quite different. Not always, as I say. But I have counted many cases over the years where one would have to say that on the spiritual level there is exactly the opposite result from what one would expect to happen on the physical plane.

With regard to supersensible occurrences running parallel with those of the sense world, this is occasionally, in fact very often, the case. So let us examine it. If we see a party of people setting off by coach and taking a drive, and a piece of rock falls and crushes them, that is the physical occurrence. Parallel with this physical event, that is to say, within it in the same way as our etheric body is within us, there is a supersensible occurrence. And we have to recognize that this may be the exact opposite of what is happening here on the physical plane. In fact it is very frequently the exact opposite.

This can also create great confusion if we do not watch out. For instance, the following may happen. If someone has acquired atavistic clairvoyance and has a kind of second sight, he or she may have the following experience: Supposing a party of people is setting out on a journey, but at the last moment one of the party decides to stay behind, the person who has second sight, let us say. Instead of going with the others, that person stays behind and after a while has a vision. In this vision any event can appear to that person. He or she could of course just as well see the party being hit by boulders as see, for instance—and this can be a matter of disposition—that some especially good fortune happens to them. He or she could very well see the party having a very joyful experience, and might subsequently hear that the party had perished in the way I described.

This could happen if the clairvoyant were not to see what was happening on the physical plane—which he might very well have seen—but had seen what was happening as a parallel event on the astral plane: for the moment these people left the physical plane they may well have been called to something special in the spiritual world, something that filled them with an abundance of new life in the spiritual world. In short, the clairvoyant person may have seen an event of the supersensible worlds going on in exactly the opposite direction, and this absolutely contradictory event could be true. It might really be the case that here on the physical plane a misfortune exists that corresponds in the supersensible world to some great good fortune for those same souls.

Now someone who thinks he is smarter than the wise guidance of the world (and there are such people) might say, “If I ruled the world, I would not do it in such a way that I call souls to happiness in the spiritual world and at the same time shower them with misfortune here on the physical plane. I would do it better than that!” Well, all one can say to people like that is, “Surely one can understand that here on the physical plane people can easily be misled by Ahriman. But cosmic wisdom always knows better.” It could be a matter of the following: The task awaiting the souls in the spiritual world requires their having this experience here on the physical plane, so that they can look back, so to speak, to this physical event of their earthly lives and gain a certain strength they need. That is to say, for the souls who experience them these two occurrences, the physical and the spiritual one, may necessarily belong together.

We could quote hypothetical examples of all kinds, showing that when something takes place here on the physical plane there exists, as it were, an etheric body of this event, an elemental, supersensible event belonging to it. We must not merely generalize like pantheists do and stop short at the general statement that there is a spiritual world underlying the physical, but we must give concrete examples. We must be aware that behind every physical occurrence there is a spiritual occurrence, a real spiritual occurrence, and both together form a whole.

If we follow the course of events on the physical plane, we can say that we get to the point where we link together the events of the physical plane by means of thoughts. And as we watch things happen on the physical plane we actually reach the point of finding a “cause” for each “effect.” That is how things are. People everywhere look for the cause belonging to each effect. Whenever anything has happened, people always have to find the cause of it. But this means finding the inevitability. If you look with sufficient pedantry at the simple example I chose, you could say, “Well now, this party had gathered and had fixed their departure for a definite time. But if I follow up why the chauffeur was tardy, I will go in several directions. First of all, I may look at the chauffeur himself and consider how he was brought up and how he became tardy. Then I will look at the various circumstances leading to his getting his mug of beer too late. All I will be able to find in this way is merely a chain of causes. I will be able to show how one event fits in with the others in such a way that the affair could not possibly have happened otherwise. I will gradually come to the point where I completely eliminate the chauffeur's free will, for if we have a cause for every effect, this includes everything the chauffeur does as well.” The chauffeur only wanted another mug of beer, didn't he, because he had probably not been thrashed sufficiently when he was young. If he had been thrashed more often—and it is not his fault that he was not—things would not have turned out as they did. Looking at it this way we can base the whole thing on a chain of cause and effect.

This has to do with the fact that it is only on the physical plane that we can use concepts. For just consider: if you want to understand something, one thought must be able to follow from another, that is to say, you depend on being able to develop one thought out of another. It lies in the nature of concepts that one follows from the other. That must be so.

Yet, what can be clearly and necessarily linked together through concepts on the physical plane immediately changes as soon as we enter the neighboring supersensible world. There we have to do not with cause and effect but with beings. This is where beings are active. At every moment one or another being is working on or withdrawing from a task. There it is not at all a matter of what can be grasped by concepts in the usual sense.

If you tried using concepts for what is happening in the spiritual world, the following could happen. You might think, “Well, here I am. Certainly I am far enough advanced to perceive that something spiritual is happening. At one moment a gnome approaches, then a sylph, and soon afterwards another being. Now all the beings are together. I will do my best to fathom what the effects will have to be.” On the physical plane this is sometimes easy to do, of course. If we hit a billiard ball in a certain direction, we know which way the other one will go, because we can calculate it. Yet on the spiritual plane it may happen that when you have seen a being and now know “Ah, that is a gnome, he is setting out to do something and will do such and such; he is joining forces with another being, thus the following is bound to happen,” you think you have figured it all out. But the next moment another being appears and changes the whole thing, or a being you were counting on drops out and disappears and no longer participates. There, everything is based on beings. You cannot link everything together with your concepts in the same way as you can on the physical plane. That is quite impossible. There, you cannot explain one thing following from the other on the basis of concepts. Things work together in an entirely different manner in the spiritual world, in the series or stream of spiritual happenings running parallel with physical happenings.

We must become familiar with the fact that underlying our world there is a world we must not only assume to be spiritual in comparison to ours, but we must also assume its events to be connected with each other in a totally different way than those in our world. For we can do nothing at all in the spiritual world, in the actual reality of this spiritual world, with the way we are used to explaining things in the world of our concepts.

Thus we see that two worlds interpenetrate; one of them can be grasped with concepts and the other cannot, but can only be perceived. I am pointing to something that goes very deep, but people are not aware how deep it goes. Just consider for a moment that if someone were to believe he could prove everything, and that only what has been proved is true, the following could happen. That person could say, “As a matter of fact, everything has to be proved, and what has not been proved is unacceptable. Therefore everything that happens in the course of the history of the world must be capable of being proved. So I only need to think hard and I am bound to be able to prove, for instance, whether the Mystery of Golgotha took place or not.” Indeed, people are so very inclined nowadays to say that if the Mystery of Golgotha cannot be proved, the whole thing is nonsense and there never was such an event.

And what do people think of proofs? They think that one starts with one definite concept and proceeds from this to the next one, and if it is possible to do this right through, the matter is proved. But no world other than the physical functions according to this kind of proof. This reasoning does not apply to any other world. For if we were able to prove that the Mystery of Golgotha had to take place of necessity, and this could be concluded from our concepts, it would not have been a free deed at all! Christ would then have been compelled to come down to the earth from the cosmos simply because human concepts prove and therefore dictate it. However, the Mystery of Golgotha has to be a free deed, that is to say, it has to be just the kind of deed that cannot be proved. It is important that people come to realize this.

It is the same thing, after all, when people want to prove either that God created the world or that he did not. There, too, they proceed from one thought to another. But “creating the world,” at any rate will have been a free deed of a divine being! From this it follows that we cannot prove the Creation as following of necessity from our series of concepts; rather, we have to perceive it to arrive at it.

So we are saying something of tremendous importance when we state that the very next world to ours—which, as a supersensible world, permeates ours—is not organized in a way we can penetrate by means of our concepts and their conclusiveness, but that there a kind of vision comes into its own in which events are arranged in a totally different way.

Today I would just like to add a few words about the following. When I was here at Christmas, I drew your attention to the fact that in our time especially, such contradictory things are emerging, that they are quite confusing for human thinking. Just imagine, a book has just been published by the great scientist Ernst Haeckel called Thoughts about Eternity,⁴ I have already mentioned it earlier. These Thoughts about Eternity contain exactly the opposite of what many other people have concluded as a result of living through recent world events. Just think, there are many people today (we shall come to speak of this fact in its particular connection with our present studies, but today I just wanted to give an introduction) who have experienced a deepening of their religious feelings just because world events are having such a terribly overwhelming effect on their souls; for they say, “Unless there is a supersensible world underlying our physical world, how can we explain what is happening in our time?” Many people have rediscovered their feeling for religion. I do not need to describe their train of thought; it is obvious and can be discerned in so many people.

Haeckel arrives at a different train of thought. He explains in his recently published book that people believe in immortality of the soul. However, he says, current events prove clearly enough that any such belief is ridiculous, for we witness thousands of people perishing every day for no reason at all. With these events in mind, how can any sensible person imagine that there can be any talk about the immortality of the soul? How is it possible for a higher world order to stand behind things of this sort?

These shocking events seem to Haeckel to prove his dogma that one cannot speak of immortality of the soul. Here we have antinomy again: A large proportion of humanity is experiencing a deepening of religious feeling, while the very same events are making Haeckel tremendously superficial where religion is concerned.

All this is connected with the fact that nowadays people are unable to understand the relationship between the world accessible to their senses and their brain-bound intellect and the supersensible world underlying it. No sooner do they approach these things than their thinking gets confused. Yet despite all the disillusionment it brings, our time will certainly in one way also bring about a deepening of people's souls, a turning away from materialism. It will be necessary that knowledge of the way supersensible events complement happenings in the world of the senses arise from a pure activity of the soul devoting itself to an impartial exploration of the world. It is necessary that there should be at least a small number of people who are able to realize that all the pain and suffering being experienced at present on the physical plane are, from the point of view of the whole of human evolution, only one side and that there is also another side, a supersensible side.

We have drawn your attention to this supersensible aspect from various points of view, and we will speak of still further ones. But when peace returns to Europe's blood-stained soil, we will again and again experience the need for a group of people capable of hearing and sensing spiritually what the spiritual worlds will then be saying to humanity in times of peace. And we must never tire of impressing the following lines upon our hearts and souls, for it will be proved over and over again how deeply true they are:

Out of the courage of the fighters,
Out of the blood of battles,
Out of the grief of the bereaved,
Out of the peoples' deeds of sacrifice
There shall arise spirit fruit
If only souls, in spirit-mindfulness,
Will reach out to the spirits' realm.

• 1. Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, German philosopher of the Enlightenment. For his antinomian chart see his book Critique of Pure Reason published in 1781.
• 2. Matthias Claudius, 1740-1815, German poet.
• 3. K. F. E. Thrandorff, 1782-1863. Wrote an open letter entitled “The Devil—No Dogmatic Bogy” to a preacher in Berlin in 1853.
• 4. Ernst Haeckel, 1834-1919, German scientist and philosopher. Adherent of Monism.

[ 1 ] What we have seen to be true of the supersensible way of cognition in general, becomes immediately evident when we set out to study Man from this standpoint. For the essential thing will be to recognize the ‘manifest secret’ of our own human nature. What is accessible to the senses, and to the intellect that rests on sense-perception, is but a part of human nature as known to supersensible cognition. It is the physical body of man.

To reach a clear and accurate idea of the ‘physical body,’ our attention must first be directed to the phenomenon of death—the great riddle that confronts us wherever we turn to observe life. And in connection with death, we have to think of lifeless Nature so-called—the kingdom of the mineral, which carries death perpetually within it. All these are facts of which the full explanation is only possible with the help of supersensible knowledge, and an important section of this work must be devoted to them. We will begin by suggesting certain ideas and lines of thought with a view to clearer understanding.

[ 2 ] Within the manifest world it is the physical body in which man is of like nature with the mineral creation. Anything that distinguishes man from the mineral cannot properly be regarded as ‘physical body.’ To clear and open-minded reflection the important fact will be that death lays bare the part of the human being which—after death—is of like nature with the mineral world. We can point to the corpse as to that part of man, which, after death, is subject to processes such as are also found in the mineral kingdom. We can emphasize that in this member of man's nature, which we now call the corpse, the same substances and forces are at work as in the mineral world. Equal stress must however be laid upon the fact that for the physical body of man, disintegration sets in the moment death occurs. Moreover we shall be justified in saying: while the same substances and forces are indeed at work in the physical body of man and in the mineral, during man's lie their activity is made to serve a higher function. It is only when death has taken place that they work identically with the mineral world. Then they appear, as indeed they must in accordance with their own nature, as the destroyer of the form and structure of man's physical body.

[ 3 ] Thus we are able clearly to distinguish what is manifest from what is hidden in the human being. Throughout the life of man something that is hidden must perpetually be battling with the mineral substances and forces in the physical body. The moment the battle ceases, the mineral form of activity makes its appearance. This is the point where the science of the supersensible must enter in; it has to discover what is it that maintains the battle. For this is hidden from the outer senses; it is accessible only to supersensible observation. The way man can attain such observation, so that the ‘hidden reality’ becomes as manifest to him as are the phenomena of the sense-world to his ordinary vision, will be dealt with in a later chapter. Here, the results of supersensible observation must first be described. As has already been pointed out, information about the path to the attainment of higher faculties of cognition can only be of value to a man when he has first made himself acquainted, through simple narrative, with that which supersensible research reveals. In this domain it is indeed possible to comprehend what one cannot yet observe. Nay more, the right path to seership is one that takes its start from such comprehension.

Although the hidden something which battles against the disintegration of the physical body can be observed by seership alone, in its effects it is plainly evident even to the kind of judgment which is restricted to the outwardly manifest. For its effects are expressed in the form and shape into which the substances and forces of the physical body are combined during life. When death has taken lace, this form gradually disappears and the physical body becomes part of the mineral kingdom pure and simple. Supersensible perception can observe, as an independent member of the human being, what it is that prevents the physical substances and forces during life from going their own way, which would, as we have seen, lead to the disintegration of the physical body. We will call this independent member of man's being the Etheric Body or Life-Body.

[ 4 ] If misunderstandings are not to creep in at the outset, two things must be borne in mind when these terms are used. In the first place, the word ‘ether’ is here applied in a different sense from that of modern Physics, which denotes as ether, for example, the supposed carrier of light—the ‘luminiferous either.’¹ Here the word ‘ether’ will be strictly limited to the meaning above indicated. It will be applied to the reality, accessible to higher perception, which makes itself known to sense-observation only by its effects, namely by its power to give definite form and configuration to the mineral substances and forces present in the physical body. Nor, in the second place, must the word ‘body’ be misunderstood. To designate these more spiritual entities there is no avoiding the use of words taken from ordinary language, which to begin with apply to material, sense-perceptible things. The etheric body is of course nothing ‘bodily’ in the sensual meaning of the term, in however refined a way we might conceive it.²

[ 6 ] With the mention of the etheric body or life-body, our description of supersensible realities is already bound to come into conflict with contemporary opinions. As an outcome of the development of human thought hitherto, the mention of a ‘life-body’ as an essential principle of human nature can at the present time scarcely fail to be regarded as unscientific. Materialistic thought has reached a point where it see no more in the living organism than a combination of physical substances and forces such as are also found in the so-called lifeless body, or in the mineral. The combination is only supposed to be far more complex.

Yet it is not so very long since other views were held, even by official science. If we study the writings of many serious thinkers of the first half of the nineteenth century, we realize how at that time even ‘genuine scientists’ were aware that something more is present in the living body than in the mineral. They spoke of a vital force or life-force. True, they did not conceive it as a ‘life-body’ in the sense above described, but there was in their minds a dim underlying feeling that something of the sort exists. To their way of thinking, it was as though the life-force were present in the living body over and above the physical substances and forces, in much the same way as in the magnet the magnetic force is present over and above the mere iron. Then the time came when the idea of a life-force was eliminated form the accepted scientific teachings. It was claimed that physical and chemical causes alone are a sufficient explanation. Latterly, there has again been a reaction. Some scientific thinkers are disposed to admit that something like a vital force is, after all, not entirely out of the question. But even scientists who admit this much will hardly be disposed to make common cause with the conception here put forward of the life-body.

Generally speaking, to enter into a discussion of these scientific theories from the standpoint of supersensible knowledge will be of little value. Rather should it be recognized that the materialistic conception is an inevitable concomitant of the great progress of Natural Science in our time. This progress has been due to an extreme refinement in the methods of observation by the external senses. And it is characteristic of human nature: again and again in the course of his evolution man brings certain faculties to a high degree of perfection at the expense of others. The faculty of precise sensory observation, which has evolved so significantly with the rise of Natural Science, was bound to eclipse the cultivation of those human faculties which lead into the hidden worlds. But the time has come round again when their cultivation is urgently needed. The recognition of the hidden worlds will not be furthered by combating judgments which are only the logical outcome of its denial; rather, by putting forward the hidden reality itself in a true light. Then those for whom the time has come will recognize it.

[ 7 ] Yet it was necessary to say this much, lest mere ignorance of scientific viewpoints should be presumed when mention is made of an etheric body, which, we are well aware, will widely be regarded as a mere figment of the imagination.

[ 8 ] The etheric body, then, constitutes a second member of the human being. For supersensible perception it has indeed a higher degree of reality than the physical. A description of how supersensible perception sees it can only be given in the later sections of this book, when the way of understanding such descriptions will have been made clear. For the present it will suffice to say that the etheric body completely permeates the physical, of which it may be regarded as a kind of architect. All the organs of the physical body are maintained in their form and structure by the currents and movements of the etheric body. Underlying the physical heart there is an etheric heart, underlying the physical brain as etheric brain, and so on. The etheric body is in effect a differentiated body like the physical, only far more complicated. And whereas in the physical body there are relatively separated parts, in the etheric all is in living interflow and movement.

[ 10 ] Man has the etheric body, the science of the supersensible advances to a further member of human nature. And as in leading up to the etheric body attention had to be drawn to death, so, to form a conception of this further member of man's nature, supersensible science points to the phenomenon of sleep. All the creative work of man depends—so far as the manifest world is concerned—on his activity in waking life. But this activity is only possible if he again and again derives from sleep a strengthening of his exhausted forces. In sleep, action and thought disappear; pain and joy vanish from conscious life. On awakening, man's conscious powers well up from the unconsciousness of sleep as if from mysteries and hidden springs. It is the same consciousness which sinks into dark depths when man falls asleep, and then arises again when he awakens. To the science of the supersensible, what rouses life again and again from the unconscious state is the third member of the human being. It may be called the Astral Body.

As the physical body cannot maintain its form through the mineral substances and forces it contains, but needs to be permeated by the etheric body, so too the forces of the etheric body cannot of themselves become illumined with the light of consciousness. Left to itself, an etheric body would of necessity be in a perpetual state of sleep—or, we may also say, could only maintain in the physical body a vegetable form of life. An etheric body that is awake is illumined by an astral body. For outer observation the effect of the astral body disappears when man falls asleep. For supersensible observation however, the astral body still remains, but it is now seen to be separated from the etheric body, or lifted out of it. Sensory observation is in fact concerned, not with the astral body itself, but only with its effects within the manifest world, and these are not immediately present during sleep.

Man has his physical body in common with the minerals and his etheric body with the plants. In the same sense he is of like nature with the animals in respect of the astral body. The plant is in a perpetual state of sleep. Anyone who does not judge accurately in these matters may easily fall into the error of attributing to plants too a kind of consciousness such as the animals and man have in their waking state. But this mistake is only possible when one's idea of consciousness is inexact. One may then aver that a plant too, when subjected to an outer stimulus, will perform movements, just an animal will do. One will refer to the ‘sensitiveness’ of many plants, which for example contract their leaves when certain outer things affect them. But the criterion of consciousness does not lie in the fact that to a given action a being shows a definite reaction. It lies in this, that the being has an inner experience, and this is a new factor, over and above the mere reaction. Otherwise we might as well speak of consciousness when a piece of iron expands under the influence of heat. Consciousness is only there when for example, through the effect of heat, the being inwardly experiences pain.

[ 11 ] The fourth member³ which supersensible science attributes to the human being, is one he no longer has in common with any of the manifest world around him. Indeed it is this fourth member which distinguishes him from all his fellow-creatures and marks him as the crown of the creation—or of that realm of the creation to which man belongs. Supersensible science arrives at an idea of this fourth member of the human being by pointing to an essential differentiation between the kinds of experience we have even within waking life.

This difference becomes directly evident when man observes that in the waking state he is on the one hand in the midst of experiences which must come and go, while on the other hand he also has experiences of which this cannot be said. It comes out most distinctly when we compare the conscious experiences of man with those of the animal. The animal experiences the influences of the outer world with great regularity. Under the influences of heat and cold it becomes conscious of pain or pleasure, and its experience of thirst and hunger is subject to bodily processes which take a regular and periodic course. Man's life is not exhausted by experiences such as these. He can develop wishes and cravings transcending all these things. For the animal, could we but pursue the matter far enough, we should always be able to indicate—within the body or outside it—the precise cause for any given action or sensation. With man it is not so. He can give birth to wishes and desires for whose origin no external cause—whether in the body or outside it—is sufficient. Everything that belongs to this domain must be attributed to a special source, which the science of the supersensible recognizes to be the I or Ego of man. The I may therefore be described as the fourth member of the human being.

If the astral body were left to itself, pleasure and pain, feelings of hunger or of thirst would come and go in it, but one thing would never come about—namely, the sense of something permanent in all these things. Not the permanent itself, but that which has conscious experience of the permanent, is here called the I. (We must form our concepts with great precision if misunderstandings are not to arise in this domain.) With the awareness of something permanent and lasting in the changing flow of inner experiences, the feeling of ‘I’ of inner selfhood begins to dawn. The mere fact that a creature experiences hunger, for example, cannot give it the feeling of ‘I.’ On every new occasion when the causes of hunger make themselves felt, hunger arises. The creature falls upon its food simply because the causes of hunger are there anew. The feeling of ‘I’ comes in when the creature is not merely impelled to take food by the renewed causes of hunger, but when a previous satisfaction gave rise to a sense of pleasure and the consciousness of the pleasure has remained. Here it is not only the present experience of hunger but the past experience of satisfaction which provides the impulse.

The physical body disintegrates when it is not held together by the etheric; the etheric body falls into unconsciousness when it is not irradiated by the astral body. In the like manner the astral body would ever and again have to let the past sink into oblivion if the I did not preserve the past and carry it over into the present. Forgetting is for the astral body what death is for the physical body and sleep for the etheric. Or, as we may also express it: life is proper to the etheric body, consciousness to the astral body, and memory to the Ego.

[ 12 ] To attribute memory to animals is an error still easier to fall into than the mistake of ascribing consciousness to plants. It is natural enough to think of memory when a dog recognizes its master, whom it may not have seen for some time past. Yet in reality the recognition depends not on memory, but on something else. The attraction proceeds from the master's nature, which give pleasure to the dog when in his presence. Every time the master's presence is renewed this causes a renewal of the pleasure. Now memory is only there when a being not only feels the experiences of the present moment but preserves those of the past. Even when this is granted, it is however still possible of make the mistake of attributing memory to the dog. Surely, one might rejoin, since the dog grieves when its master goes away, it must retain some memory of him. This too, however, is a wrong conclusion. By living with him, the master's presence has become a need to the dog; it feels his absence just as it experiences hunger. If we are not ready to make clear distinctions of this kind, insight into the true relationships of life remains impaired.

[ 13 ] Prevalent misconceptions may even now lead to the retort that we surely cannot know whether anything like human memory is present in the animal or not. This difficulty is due to untrained observation. Anyone who can observe in a really sensible way how the animal behaves in the whole nexus of its experiences, will notice an essential difference between the behavior of the animal and that of man. He will realize that the animal's behavior implies the absence of all memory. To supersensible perception this is directly evident; but in these matters what the supersensible observer is aware of directly, can also be recognized in its effects by sense-perception and the penetration of sense-perception with clear thinking.

If we say that man is aware of his memory by looking into his own inner life—a method he obviously cannot apply to the animal—we make a fatal mistake. Man is of course aware of his own faculty of memory, but he can not derive this knowledge from mere introspection. He derives it from what he experiences with himself in relation to the things and events of the external world. This kind of experience he has with himself, with his fellow-man, and with the animals too, in precisely the same way. It is an illusion to imagine that we judge of the presence of memory simply on the strength of introspection. The power underlying memory may indeed by called an inner one; the judgment about it is acquired, even for one's own person, by the tests of the external world—by observing the whole sequence and continuity of life. Of this we can form a judgment in the case of the animal no less than in our own. In such matters the psychology of our time suffers greatly from crude and inexact conceptions—conceptions based on faulty observation and therefore highly misleading.

[ 14 ] The significance for the Ego of remembering and forgetting is like that of waking and sleeping for the astral body. As sleep lets the cares and troubles of the day vanish into nothingness, so does forgetting spread a veil over the unhappy experiences of life, thus extinguishing a portion of the past. And as sleep is necessary to refresh the exhausted powers of life, so must the human being blot out from memory certain portions of his past if he is to meet new experiences openly and freely. From the very forgetting he gains strength for perception of the new. Think for instance of how we learn to write. The many details which a child must live through as he learns to write are afterwards forgotten. It is only the faculty of writing that remains. How would a man ever manage to write, if every time he put pen to paper there rose up in his soul the memory of all the experiences he had to undergo as a child during his writing lessons!

[ 15 ] Now memory appears in different stages and degrees. We have it in its simplest form when a man perceives an object and, having turned away, is able still to recall an image of it to his mind. It was while he was perceiving the object that he formed the mental image. A process was then taking place between his astral body and his Ego. The astral body brought the external impression of the object to his consciousness. But his awareness of the object would have lasted no longer than it was actually there before him, if it were not for the Ego receiving this awareness into itself and making it its own.

It is this point that the science of the supersensible distinguishes ‘body’ from ‘soul.’ We speak of the ‘astral body’ so long as we have in mind how the knowledge or awareness of an actually present object comes about, while we designate as ‘soul’ what give the knowledge performance, duration. From this it will be evident how close is the connection of the astral body with the part of the soul which gives permanence to knowledge. In a sense, they may even be said to be united—to constitute a single member of the human being. Hence it is also possible to refer to them jointly as the astral body. Or, if we desire a more exact description, we may call the astral body of man the ‘Soul-Body’ and the soul, is so far as it is united with the astral body, the ‘Sentient Soul.’

[ 16 ] The Ego rises to a higher stage of being when it directs its activity to what it has received and has made its own by taking cognizance of external objects. In this activity it liberates itself increasingly from the external objects of perception., to work within its own sphere and property. The part of the soul to which this faculty belongs may be described as the Intellectual or Mind-Soul.

It is characteristic both of the sentient and of the intellectual soul that they work with what is received through the impressions of sense-perceived objects and with what memory retains of these impressions. The soul is here entirely given up to things external to it. For even what it has made its own through memory,--even this was received originally from outside. But it is able to transcend all this; the soul is not only sentient and intelligent. Supersensible perception can most readily form an idea of this transcendent faculty by pointing to a simple fact, the far-reaching significance of which needs only to be rightly valued,--the fact that in the whole domain of language there is one name which differs in its essence from all other names. It is the name ‘I.’ Every other name can be given by every man to the thing or being to which it belongs. ‘I,’ on the other hand, as the designation of a being, only has meaning when the being gives itself this name. The name ‘I’ can never reach a man from without as a designation of himself. It is only to himself that any being can apply this name. ‘I’ am an I only to myself; to every other being I am a you, and every other being is a you to me.’

This is the outer expression of a deeply significant truth. The real being of the I is independent of all external things and for this very reason no external thing or person can call it by its name. Hence those religious faiths which have consciously maintained their connection with the supersensible wisdom speak of the I as the Unutterable Name of God. For this is what they mean to indicate. Nothing external has access to the part of the human soul which is here envisaged. Here is the ‘hidden Holy of Holies’ of the soul, to which no entry is possible save for a Being with whom the soul is of like kind and essence. ‘The God who dwells in man,—He it is who speaks when the soul perceives and knows itself as ‘I.’ As the sentient soul and intellectual soul live in the outer world, so does a third member of the soul immerse itself in the Divine when the soul comes to a perception of its own essence and nature.

[ 17 ] One may all too easily be misunderstood at this point—as though one were asserting that the human I and God were one and the same. Yet it is not said that the I is God, but only that it is of like kind and essence with the Divine. When we say that a drop of water taken from the ocean is of the same essence or substance as the ocean, are we thereby stating that the drop is the ocean? If we must use a comparison, we may put it thus: as the drop is to the ocean, so is the I to the Divine. Man can find a Divine within himself, because his own and most essential being springs from the Divine.

In this way man reaches up to a third member of his soul—to an inner knowledge and awareness of himself, even as through the astral body he gains knowledge and awareness of the outer world. Hence too, Occult Science calls this third member of the soul, the Consciousness-Soul or Spiritual Soul.⁴ Thus Occult Science sees the soul as consisting of three members: Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Spiritual Soul; just as the bodily nature consists of the three members: Physical Body, Etheric Body and Astral Body.

[ 18 ] Errors in psychological observation, not unlike those already discussed with reference to memory, give rise to difficulties once again when seeking insight into the nature of the I. Much that people think they see may easily be taken by them for a refutation of what has here been said, whereas in truth it serves only to confirm it. Such is the case, for instance, with Eduard von Hartmann's remarks on page 55 of his Outline of Psychology.⁵ ‘To begin with,’ says von Hartmann, ‘self-consciousness is older than that word ‘I.’ The personal pronouns are a comparatively late product in the evolution of language, and have for language merely the value of abbreviation. The word ‘I’ is a short substitute for the proper name of the speaker—with this peculiarity, that every speaker applies it to himself, no matter by what proper name the others call him. In animals and in the untrained deaf and dumb, self-consciousness may evolve to a high degree, even without the initial connection with a proper name. Also the consciousness of the proper name may completely replace the use of the word ‘I’ when this is absent. The recognition of this fact will suffice to remove the magic halo with which the little word ‘I’ is invested for so many people. The word contributes nothing to the concept of self-consciousness; it receives its own content purely from this concept.’

We need not quarrel with such a point of view. We may well agree that the little word ‘I’ should not be invested with a magic halo—such as could, after all, only blur the thoughtful perception of the truth. But the essence of a matter is not decided by the way in which the word, the designation for it, has evolved. That the real essence and nature of the I in self-consciousness is ‘older than the word ‘I’—this is precisely the point. The point is, moreover, that the human being needs this word, with its unique properties, to express what he experiences in relation to the outer world in a different way from an animal. Nothing is ascertained about the nature of the triangle by showing how the word ‘triangle’ evolved. No more can the nature of the I or Ego be determined by anything that we may know as to how the use of the word ‘I’ arose from other usages of words in the evolution of language.

[ 19 ] In the spiritual soul the real nature of the I first becomes revealed. For while in sentient and intellectual activity the soul is given up to other things, qua spiritual soul it seizes hold of its own being. Hence too, the spiritual soul can only perceive the I by dint of a certain inner activity. The mental images and representations of external objects are formed as these objects come and go; in the intellect they go on working by their own impetus. But if the I is to perceive itself, it can no longer passively devote itself to other things. To become conscious of its own essence and being, it must first call it forth—by dint of inner activity—out of the depths of its own nature. With the perception of the ‘I’—with self-contemplation—an inner activity of the I itself begins. By virtue of this activity, the perception of the I in the spiritual soul has a fundamentally different significance for man from the observation of what comes to him through the three bodily members and the other two members of the soul.

The power which brings the I to manifestations in the spiritual soul is indeed the self-same power which reveals itself throughout the world. In the body however, and in the lower members of the soul, it does not come forth directly but is revealed stage by stage in its effects. The lowest revelation of it is through the physical body; thence it arises, step by step, up to the content of the intellectual soul. We might say that with each step in the ascent one of the veils by which the Unmanifest is shrouded falls away. In the experience and content of the spiritual soul, the Unmanifest in its own essence enters unveiled into the inmost temple of the soul Admittedly it shows itself as a mere drop out of the ocean of the all-pervading spiritual essence. Yet it is here that man must first seize the spiritual essence. He must know it by discovering it within himself; then he can also find it in all other revelations.

What penetrates in this way like a drop into the spiritual soul is what Occult Science calls the Spirit. Thus the spiritual soul is connected with the universal Spirit which is the hidden reality within all things manifest. If man would apprehend the hidden Spirit in all the other manifestations of the World, he must needs do so in the same way in which he apprehends the Ego in the ‘Consciousness-Soul’—the spiritual soul. He must apply to the manifest world the same activity which has led him to a perception of the I within himself. By this means he evolves to higher stages of his being. To the bodily members and the members of the soul he now adds something new.

The first step along this path consists in his conquering and making his own all that lies hidden in the lower members of his soul He does this by working upon his soul—working upon it out of the inmost resources of the Ego. We have a vivid picture of the way the human being is engaged upon this work when we compare a man still given up to lower ravings and so-called sensual pleasures with a high-minded idealist. The former evolves into the latter in that he withdraws from lower inclinations and turns to higher ones. In so doing, he works from the Ego upon his soul, ennobling and spiritualizing it. The Ego becomes master in the soul's life.

This process can go so far that no desires or enjoyments can gain access to the soul without the I itself being the power which makes possible their entry. And in this way the soul in its entirety becomes at length a revelation of the I, as was hitherto the spiritual soul alone . This is the meaning of all civilization, of all the spiritual strivings and aspirations of mankind. There is this constant endeavor for the mastery of the Ego. Every human being living at the present time is engaged in this great work—whether he will or no, whether he is conscious of the fact or not.

[ 20 ] This work leads on to ever higher levels of human nature. Through it man evolves new members of his being, which lie—as yet unmanifest—behind what is manifest in him. Moreover, it is not only the soul over which a man can attain mastery by working upon it from the Ego, till from the manifest within the soul the unmanifest springs forth. He can extend this work still further, carrying it over to the astral body. As he does so, the Ego gains power over the astral body, entering into union with its hidden nature. The astral body thus mastered and transformed by the I may be called the ‘Spirit-Self.’ (This is identical with what is called, in connection with Oriental wisdom, ‘Manas.’) In the Spirit-Self we have therefore a higher member of man's nature, one which is already present in him—germinally, as it were—and comes forth ever more and more as he continues to work upon himself.

[ 21 ] As man gains mastery over his astral body by penetrating to the hidden forces that underlie it, so in the course of evolution does he gain mastery over the etheric body too. The work upon the etheric body is however more intense and more exacting. For what lies hidden in the etheric body is shrouded beneath a double-veil; the hidden in the astral body beneath a single veil only. We can get some idea of the difference in the work upon the two bodies by noticing the changes which take place in a human being in the course of his life. Think of the qualities that are developed when the Ego works upon the soul. How very different a man's pleasures and desires, his joys and sufferings become! A man need only look back to the time of his childhood. What was it that he then delighted in, or that caused him pain? And what has he not learned and added to the faculties he had in childhood? These changes are but an expression of the way the Ego has been gaining mastery over the astral body. For the astral body is the bearer of pleasure and pain, of joy and suffering. And now compare with this the small extent to which certain other qualities of man will change in course of time: his temperament, for instance, his deeper traits of character. One who as a child is given to sudden fits of anger will often show signs of violent temper right on into later life. This is indeed so evident a fact that some thinkers tend altogether to dismiss the possibility of change in the basic character of any man. They assume it to be something that persists throughout is life, though it may be revealed in varying directions. Such a judgment rests however on insufficient observation. One who has sensitive perception will realize that even the character and temperament of man can change under the influence of his Ego, although the change is comparatively slow. We might even say that the two types of change are to one another as the movement of the hour hand to that of the minute hand of a clock.

[ 1 ] Now the forces that affect these changes in character or temperament belong to the hidden domain of the etheric body. They are alike in kind with the forces that govern the kingdom of life—the forces of growth and nourishment and those that serve the reproductive process. All this will appear in the proper light in the further course of this book.

It is not when man is merely given up to pleasure or suffering, to joy or pain, that the Ego works upon the astral body; rather, when these proclivities are actually being changed. In like manner, the work of the Ego works upon the astral body; rather, when these proclivities are actually being changed. In like manner, the work of the Ego extends to the etheric body when it applies itself to changing the qualities of character, temperament and so forth. And at this transformation too, every man is working, whether or no he be aware of it. The impulses that work most strongly in this direction are those of religion. When the Ego lays itself open to these influences again and again, they work within it as a power which reaches down to the etheric body and transforms it, just as the lesser incentives of life will bring about the changing of the astral body. These lesser incentives, which come to man through learning, through thoughtful reflection, through the refinement of his feelings and so on, are subject to many variations; the religious emotions, on the other hand, impress a kind of unity on all his thinking, feeling and willing. They pour out as it were a common light, a light that is ‘single,’ over the whole life of the soul. A man thinks and feels one thing to-day, another to-morrow. Many and varied circumstances provide occasion for his thoughts and feelings. But one who is aware through his religious life, of whatsoever kind it be, of something that outlasts all changes, will refer to the same underlying emotion his thoughts and feelings of to-day and his experiences of to-morrow. A man's religious faith thus has a penetrating influence in his soul's life—an influence which grows as time goes on through constant repetition. It thereby gains the power to work on the etheric body. So do the influences of true art affect the human being. When through the outer form, color or sound of a work of art man penetrates with thought and feeling to the spiritual sources that underlie it, the impulses the Ego thus receives do in effect reach the etheric body. Thinking this through to its conclusion, we may gain some idea of the immense significance of art in human evolution.

We have thus indicated some of the incentives enabling the Ego to work at the etheric body. There are other such influences in human life, though outwardly less evident than the ones here mentioned. From these, however, it can already be seen that there lies hidden in man a further member of human nature, which, once again, the Ego is progressively elaborating. It is the second member of man's spiritual being, and may be called the ‘Life-Spirit.’ (It is identical with what is named ‘Budhi’ in connection with Oriental wisdom.’ The term Life-Spirit is right and proper because the same forces are working in it as in the life-body. Where they reveal themselves as life-body the I of man is not yet active in them; when they come to expression as Life-Spirit they are penetrated through and through by its activity.

[ 22 ] Man's intellectual development, the purification and refinement of his feelings and of the manifestations of his will, are the measure of his transmutation of the astral body into Spirit-Self. His religious experiences, and other experiences too which life affords, become engraved in his etheric body, changing it into Life-Spirit. In the ordinary course of life all this goes on more or less unconsciously. There is, on the other hand, what is called the Initiation of man Initiation consists in his being shown, through supersensible knowledge, the means whereby he may take in hand with full consciousness this work upon the Spirit-Self and the Life-Spirit. This will be spoken of in subsequent chapters. For the moment, the point was to show that in addition to the Soul and Body the Spirit too is at work in man. In contrast to the transitory body, the Spirit belongs to the Eternal in man. This too will emerge more clearly in further course.

[ 23 ] Now the activity of the Ego is not exhausted with the work upon the astral and etheric bodies. It extends also to the physical. We see a faint suggestion of the influence of the ego on the physical body when, for example, a human being blushes or grows pale. For the I is here the underlying motive power of a process taking place in the physical body. If now, through the Ego's own activity and initiative, its influence upon the physical body undergoes essential changes, the Ego will then be working in unison with the hidden forces of the physical body. It will be united, in effect, with the same forces which bring about the physical processes in this body. The Ego itself may then be said to be working upon the physical body to transform it. But this expression must not be misunderstood. It must not be supposed that the work is of a crude material kind. For what appears crudely material in the physical body is merely what is manifest in it. Behind this manifest there lie the hidden forces of its being, and these are of a spiritual kind. Here we are speaking, not of a working upon the material appearance of the physical body, but of a spiritual working—a working upon the invisible forces to which the coming-into-being and also the decay of the physical body are due. In ordinary life man can at most become very dimly conscious of this work of the Ego upon the physical body. Full clarity is only reached when under the influence of spiritual knowledge he takes the work consciously in hand. It then becomes manifest that there is yet a third spiritual member in the human being. It may be called, in contrast to the physical man, the ‘Spirit-Man.’ (In Oriental wisdom it is called ‘Atma.’)

[ 24 ] With regard to Spirit-Man it is easy to be led astray by the fact that the physical appears to be the lowest member of the human being. One finds difficulty in conceiving that work upon the physical body should culminate in the highest member of man's nature. But for the very reason that the physical body conceals beneath a threefold veil the Spirit that is active in it, the highest form of human activity is needed to unite the Ego with this hidden Spirit.

[ 25 ] Thus in the light of Occult Science man appears as a being composed of several members. Those of a bodily nature are: physical body, etheric body and astral body. Those of the soul are: sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul. In the soul the Ego sheds its light. Lastly we have the spiritual members: Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man.

From the above explanations it will be seen that the sentient soul and the astral body are intimately united, forming in one respect a single whole. The same is true of the spiritual soul and the Spirit-Self. For in the spiritual soul the light of the Spirit arises, to radiate from thence throughout the other members of man's nature. Taking this into account, the constitution of the human being may also be described as follows: The astral body and the sentient soul can be taken together as a single member; likewise the spiritual soul and the Spirit-Self. Lastly the intellectual soul, since it partakes of the nature of the I—since in a certain respect it is the I, though not yet conscious of its spiritual being—may be designated simply as the I or Ego. We thus obtain the following seven members of the human being:

1. Physical body
2. Etheric body or life-body
3. Astral body
4. I, Ego
5. Spirit-Self
6. Life-Spirit
7. Spirit-Man

[ 26 ] Even for those accustomed to materialistic notions, this organization of the human being according to the number seven would not have the vaguely magical and superstitious quality often attributed to it, if they could simply follow the given explanations, and not themselves bring in the ‘magical’ significance which they presume. We speak of the seven colors of the rainbow, or of the seven notes of the scale (treating the octave as a repetition of the keynote.) In no other sense—only from the standpoint of a higher kind of observation—do we refer to the seven members of man's being. As light appears in seven colors and the musical scale in seven notes, so does human nature—for all its singleness and unity—appear in the seven members here described. In sound and color the number seven does not imply any kind of superstition; nor does it in the constitution of the human being. (On one occasion when this was mentioned in a lecture, it was objected that the number seven does not apply to color, since there are other ‘colors’ beyond the red and violet, only the human eye cannot perceive them. But even taking this into account, the comparison is still valid; for the human being too reaches beyond the physical body on the one hand and beyond Spirit-Man on the other. Only these extensions of man's being are ‘spiritually invisible’ to the available methods of spiritual observation, just as the colors beyond red and violet are invisible to the physical eye. This remark was necessary because it is too easily concluded that supersensible vision and the ideas to which it leads are scientifically inexact. If one really enters into what is here intended, it will in no case be found inconsistent with genuine Science. There is no contradiction—neither when scientific facts are cited by way of illustration, nor when a direct relation to the discoveries of natural Science is pointed out.)

• 1. Note by Translators. At the time these words were written, the hypothetical ‘luminiferous ether’ was still part of the accepted teachings of Physics; hence it was necessary to guard against a possible misunderstanding.
• 2. That the terms ‘etheric body’ and ‘life-body’ are not intended as a mere revival of the long since discarded idea of a ‘vital force’ was pointed out by the author in his earlier work, Theosophy.
• 3. In rendering Rudolf Steiner's chosen term das Ich for the fourth and central member of the sevenfold being of Man, it is desirable also to use the direct English equivalent ‘ the I’ and not be restricted to the Latin alternative, ‘the Ego’. In this and other translated works, we have adopted the convention of leaving a little extra space on either side of the word I when used as a noun in this hitherto unfamiliar way. (Note by Translators.)
• 4. Note by Translators. ‘Consciousness-Soul’ is the literal translation of the original German word Bewusstseins-Seele, and will be found in the earlier English editions of this and other works. In later years Rudolf Steiner – who often did not favor a merely literal translation – suggested ‘Spiritual Soul’ as the best English equivalent. ‘ Spiritual Soul’ will therefore be used throughout this book, the alternative ‘ Consciousness-Soul’ being occasionally added where it would seem to throw light on a particular context.
• 5. E. von Hartmann: System der Philosophie im Grundriss. Vol. III: Grundriss der Psychologie.

Those who represent spiritual science in the truly scientific sense, as it is meant here, cannot be surprised at the numerous biased judgments and rejections that it still encounters from all sides today. For they are able to see the scope and scope of the scientific results of the present and the recent past, which many people assume contradict this spiritual-scientific world view. On the part of those who believe that they stand on firm ground in the results of present-day research and can form a world picture for themselves that does not take into account the ideas of spiritual science, it is understandable that they do not yet engage in a real examination of what spiritual science has to say about its results. And so it turns out that it can be shown that spiritual science not only harmonizes with all the justified scientific results of the present day, but that these scientific results, when looked at closely, confirm what spiritual science has to say; and yet, one must find opponents, which becomes even more understandable when one considers the methods of scientific research in more concrete, specific things.

Not so long ago, Professor Dewar gave a lecture at the Royal Institution in which he attempted to speak about a future end state of earthly existence based on the view he has gained from the scientific results of the present. Let us consider for a moment what ideas this physicist, whose physical research has my full and unstinting approval, has about a final state of earthly existence, a state in which the human inhabitants of the earth, who now walk this earth, can no longer exist. Professor Dewar tries to utilize the physical ideas that are available to him today and finds, with a certain one-sided justification, that one must assume, according to the processes that can be observed by the physicist, that the earth is cooling down. And he calculates an end state in which the earth will have cooled down to, say, minus 200 degrees Celsius. He suggests that the Earth is evolving towards this final state. He is clear about the fact that everything that is now water in the oceans will of course have long since solidified; that the air that makes up our atmosphere today will be liquid, and that at a height of ten meters the Earth will be covered by this liquid air, in the form of a sea. The cold that will then prevail, he believes, will make much of what is on the earth today appear different. Of course, not only the temperature will change and with it the aggregate states of the individual bodies, but also many other things in the appearance of what will then be found on earth. Thus Professor Dewar, again quite correctly starting from physical ideas, finds that milk, which of course will then be solid, will glow in blue light. I don't know how this solid milk will be produced, but according to physical ideas it will shine in blue light. And there's more: egg white will be so luminous that you can read a newspaper by this light, which you can produce by painting the walls of the room with this egg white. I don't know who will read newspapers then, since I suspect that people will have long since frozen to death, but Dewar still uses this argument to form an idea of the former state of our Earth according to his world view, and many other things. On the liquefied air, which will then be the sea, there will only be very gaseous light bodies, hydrogen, helium, neon, krypton. He describes very nicely how one will feel quite differently then, because of course the resistance of these light gases will not be as strong as the resistance of the air for the present organism.

One can, by following the ideas of today's physics, paint this final state of the earth in great detail, and such a lecture is of course in our present time by the “non-authoritarian” people - one must say that out of courtesy, because today, of course, no one believes in authority - be said, because today, of course, no one believes in authority — is accepted as something extraordinarily significant, which finally shows how the “exact physicist” has to think about a valid world view.

If you recall what I said about the most important conditions necessary for spiritual scientific research, it was that through the inner exercises that the soul has to go through, it gradually comes to what I have called, using Goethe's words, the beholding through the eyes of the soul; that it has to undergo, in particular, a life in conceptions that are modeled on outer moral thinking. Not that it is to be confused with this, but the whole soul mood that the spiritual researcher has to develop within himself must be such that his own self relates to the ideas saturated with reality, which he must strive for, in the same way that a person relates externally to things that he considers morally good and to things that he considers morally bad. Here one is not satisfied with the fact that certain things can be designated as morally good and others as morally bad, but one knows that when one's affect speaks of the good, one must follow the good impulses, and when one's affect speaks of evil, one must suppress it. And when a person's soul is fully developed, he will act accordingly in his outer life. In this way, the relationship between the spiritual researcher and his own conceptual world must become a living one, not just a logical one. And in the life of the idea, of the concept, it happens that one cherishes certain concepts because they are capable of penetrating into reality. While other ideas announce themselves in such a way that they can be compared to what is to be avoided in the realm of moral life; they must, as it were, be pushed away from the horizon of consciousness. In this inner life of the soul, the ascent of the spiritual worlds is revealed, which can then be contemplated.

People like Professor Dewar are led away from such a striving for reality-imbued ideas precisely by their prejudices or, better, “prejudices”. For the spiritual researcher, it then becomes clear where the error actually lies in the structure of such a world view. In the style of this world picture, one could draw a comparison with regard to the final state of the earth if someone, on the basis of quite correct physical, chemical and physiological premises, calculates the development of, let us say, certain metabolic phenomena in man. One could interpret certain metabolic phenomena in the human body and calculate future conditions on the assumption that this metabolic process occurs in time at a constant rate, let us say, between the 30th and 40th year of the person's life. One observes individual processes and then calculates how these must take shape in 150 years according to the very correct assumptions of science. The only objection is that after 150 years people will no longer be alive, that the state will have already been reached where the soul has left the body and the body no longer follows the laws that are imposed on it by being filled with a soul, but instead follows external physical and chemical laws of the earth's environment.

If you say something like that today, you may be accused of saying something quite grotesque, something quite foolish. Nevertheless, anyone who does not thoughtlessly follow the scientific research of the present day, but who engages with the way in which certain assumptions are used to draw conclusions, knows that what I have just mentioned as a comparison is deeply justified. For it is absolutely true that after the time when milk would shine so beautifully in a blue light, when you could paint the walls with egg white so that you could read newspapers while doing so, the earth would be just as absent as the human body is after 150 years.

Today, the opinion is widespread that spiritual science forms lightly-dressed ideas out of thin air. And because of this assumption, the comparison of spiritual science and natural science naturally turns out in such a way that one says: on the one hand there is natural science, which reaches its results in an exact, thorough way; and on the other hand there is spiritual research, which indeed claims to be in full agreement with natural science, but which obtains its concepts through some kind of fantasy! Prejudices of this kind must first be overcome if spiritual science is to be further recognized. And spiritual scientific results are not to be had for nothing. One can study the difficulties that stand in the way of real results in spiritual research by considering people of knowledge who dedicate their lives to the struggle for real knowledge, who do not merely repeat what the course of external research is today, but who, being familiar with all the details of modern research, also strive for knowledge of the spiritual conditions of the world.

Recently, we were reminded of such a personality of knowledge, as the psychologist of the soul, whom I mentioned here recently in a different context, Franz Brentano, died a few days ago. The honored audience, who are here often, know that I rarely speak about myself. But today I would like to make one comment: that I really followed Franz Brentano's, the soul researcher, research path from its beginnings to his later struggles. And with him in particular, one could see very clearly how, for someone striving for knowledge of the spiritual world, it is difficult in the present day to achieve full strength, insofar as this is possible in everyone, even in today's age, due to opposing prejudices. Many obstacles stood in the way of Franz Brentano, which arose precisely from the fact that he did not live in the scientific age, which would have been his good fortune, but in the prejudices of the scientific age. And so it came about that Brentano, after writing some brilliant, profound works on Aristotle, then published a “psychology” in 1874. It was intended as the first volume of a multi-volume work in which he sought to ascend to an understanding of the actual life of the mind and soul. He never got beyond the first volume, and only in smaller writings did Brentano go on to add, I would say, a few splinters of what he had to say.

To be sure, Brentano's outer life was full of changes; and if one regards things only superficially, one could perhaps say that this changing outer life prevented Franz Brentano from finding the composure necessary to complete his “Psychology.” But that is not the case; rather, it turned out that Brentano failed because of the riddles of the life of the soul itself. He began to present them in the first volume of his “Psychology” in such a way that the path would have led him precisely to the point where the spiritual science that is meant here stands. But he could not get through because of his adherence to scientific prejudices. And since he did not want to develop mere concepts, but concepts containing reality, he left the whole matter alone.

Now, even at the time when he wrote his Psychology, Brentano started from the principle that the inner mental life can admittedly be perceived but not observed. It is a saying that seems as well-founded as possible for the simple reason that we ourselves are the mental life that we develop. So one can say: When any representation arises, we must have it; we cannot confront it and observe it. When we observe it, it has already passed, and so it must first be brought up again from memory. These and other difficulties are present. Therefore Brentano thinks that one can perceive the mental life, but not observe it. But he has not seen that if one could observe as he means, namely that this observation would be completely in line with the model of natural science, then one would never arrive at a science of the mental. If one could observe in this way, that is, if one's soul life were at a standstill, one would perceive nothing in this soul life but mirror images, mirror images of a reality. From these mirror images, just as little could be found out about reality as one can grasp the images of a mirror or the like. One cannot observe the soul life at all if one only wants to observe it in the immediate present. That is why I had to say here a few weeks ago: What matters when observing the soul and spirit is not that you, so to speak, place yourself in opposition to this soul and spirit and then observe it like a scientific object, but what matters is that you bring about such inner processes as, for example, this is: one gives oneself, as one says, to a very specific idea in a meditative state, again and again, but one then also observes how this idea works without being present; one hands over, so to speak – there is no need to decide on this from the outset – what one imagines to the objective course of the world. Whether it is pushed down into the so-called subconscious or handed over to some other sphere of the world's existence will become apparent in the further course of the performance. One lets what one has called into consciousness take effect without being present. And if one has then performed the other amplifications of consciousness described in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then one does indeed find that one cannot observe this soul-spiritual that reigns in oneself as Brentano wanted, but that one must observe it by considering it in its workings in time. The soul reveals itself only when we observe it in the course of a person's life; not by confronting it in the present, but by seeing how this soul works between birth and death. And this observation of the soul takes place with the same exactitude as external scientific research.

As I said, if I may add a personal note, I may perhaps say that in the last two lectures here I spoke about the relationship of the soul to the nervous human being, to the breathing human being, to the metabolic human being, and I tried, in full harmony with science, to show a result that I believe can be of tremendous importance for understanding the interrelation of the world. I have not formulated what I said in the last two lectures in this way before, but it is now exactly thirty-five years since I, as a very young man in Vienna, began the research that could ultimately lead to expressing what I have in the last two lectures. And I have been unremitting in this research. I have tried to pursue this research as I have also described recently: by handing over the ideas to objectivity, to see what becomes of the ideas themselves when they work spiritually without one being present. One will just realize that spiritual research is just as exact as external scientific research. This may be necessary if the circle of those who see in this spiritual science what is necessary for the future development of humanity is to become larger. It turns out, however, that in the path of this spiritual research, the ideas in the soul do not proceed as abstractly as they do when one does external scientific research, or when one reflects in the way one is accustomed to with regard to the external life. Rather, I would say that on the other side, when we are no longer personally present, the images that are pursued in their own course connect with the spiritual life, with the spiritual events, through their own inner essence, in a way that is different from the way they connect with the external world of the senses. Only in full swing, when one participates, can the spiritual world be observed.

An observation, as I now want to cite it, will, if undertaken without the prerequisite of an inner schooling of spiritual research activity, lead to nothing right, just as when working in a chemical laboratory, for those who cannot handle things, they lead to nothing; only after one has created the inner experimental things does the matter show up in the right light. What appears in its true form is what some thinkers have suspected, although they have hardly progressed beyond mere suspicion. All the soul life that we develop by coming into contact with the outside world, whether inanimate or animate, all this soul life, which usually lies within our consciousness, is accompanied by another soul life. And anyone who has created the inner conditions to observe such things correctly inwardly can become aware of how the soul — Eduard von Hartmann would call it: in the unconscious, but this unconscious, which I mean here, differs from Hartmann's precisely in that it can become conscious — is constantly working in this unconscious. Alongside the currents of the conscious soul life, there is another that constantly flows along, which - if one can direct the soul's gaze at it - is not subject to the laws that govern the external soul life, and which naturally correspond to the course of natural events. This soul life is also subject to laws, but they do not correspond to the laws that prevail in the ordinary conscious soul life. For the spiritual researcher, this subconscious soul life comes to the surface. For ordinary life, it also comes to the surface, but one does not know that it is coming to the surface. For example, one often believes that one has formed a particular idea or thought, and assumes that the whole process lies in the ordinary conscious soul life. It does not, but emerges from the subconscious soul life. The spiritual researcher can now observe how these two currents of soul life work together. And basically, when one speaks of clairvoyance not in a superstitious or theoretically mystical sense, but in an exact sense, this clairvoyance is nothing other than the ability to truly raise this parallel soul life and to be able to convince oneself that it is indeed subject to its laws, but that these laws are different from those of the conscious soul life. He who rises in a healthy way to such observations, as described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, will not be driven into any kind of morbid or pathological states. On the contrary, what I indicated in the last lecture will happen here: he will make his soul life healthier and healthier if he proceeds correctly. But such a spiritual researcher will acquire a certain ability of the subconscious soul life to interact with the ordinary soul life. And while in ordinary life, for example when one listens when someone reads something to one, one believes that one is now completely absorbed in what is being read to one, as a truly trained spiritual researcher one no longer thinks so. One knows that the subconscious soul life runs away and often goes completely different ways than the ways of the ideas that are being read. And if one has sufficient skill not to become inattentive while listening, then between two words that one hears, things arise from the subconscious that are just as much the product of the soul as the things of the conscious soul life, but that run parallel to the stream of the conscious soul life; things of a completely different soul life. Certain thinkers have sensed this, for example by pointing out that a person not only dreams while sleeping, but that the dream life actually continues throughout the day while awake, only to be overshadowed by the ordinary conscious mental life. This is also true – and yet, again, it is not true. It is only something similar to the dream life. The dream life is only a chaotic shadow of what is going on. In the subconscious, there is a parallel current that is as fleeting for today's ordinary soul life as dreams are, and can therefore be compared to dreams, but which arises from a spiritual reality.

By observing these two currents — the soul-spiritual and the soul bound to external nature — in their interaction, one gradually learns to ascend to a conception that cannot be substantiated in this one lecture in its details, but which is to be presented according to its result. One learns to recognize that the ordinary life of the soul, as it is rightly described by the physiological psychologists of the present day, by the type of Theodor Ziehen, for example, whom I recently quoted, has as its necessary condition the outer physical life of the body. If we now pursue this outer physical life with the means of spiritual research, we find that this outer physical life and with it the soul experiences of ordinary consciousness bound up with it are connected with those effects that take place between Earth and Sun. These effects are only of a refined nature, but they are similar to the effects of the sun's surroundings, say, on the plant world and the like. We learn to recognize the real connection between the tools of our ordinary conscious soul life and the earth and sun, I could also say: of our whole world system, as astronomy or astrophysics speaks of this world system. But we also learn to recognize that the course of the other currents is fundamentally different from the laws that are implanted in the physical and thus also in the soul of the human being through the sun-earth life. In its own laws it is not connected with the laws of the processes of which the human being is conscious in body and soul. On the contrary, it often contradicts them. Whereas in the outer life of the soul the psychologist speaks of association, of the bringing together of ideas, here the inner subconscious life of the soul carries out a separation, and vice versa.

These are only hints at the far-reaching differences between external and internal experience. And if we recognize the connection between the soul and the body to a much greater extent, and again the connection between the human body and the whole solar-earthly existence, then we also get ideas about a final state of the earthly existence itself; ideas whose formation is difficult to describe even in today's language. I can only say: Everyone knows how the astronomer can calculate a future star constellation from a present one, how one can calculate future solar and lunar eclipses. What happens here through calculation happens when one finds the right relationship to what one learns about the two currents that I have indicated, in their relation to the final state of the earth. What is calculated there is seen inwardly here. We are not dealing with vague analogies in the sense intended by Fechner, but with a real inner vision of the final state of the earth. For one learns to recognize that something, which of course cannot be expounded in its details in a lecture, turns out to be a necessary result. I will lead up to this result by way of a comparison.

It is true that the way in which man as a physical being goes through the world is only possible because the soul — I do not want to say permeates him, lest one believe that I am making some kind of hypothesis — proves effective in him. If it can no longer prove itself effective, then this body follows different laws than those it follows between birth and death. It then follows the laws that it must follow because of its relationship to the external physical environment of the earth. It merges completely with its own laws into the surrounding laws of the earth. I would like to compare this with the result that emerges with regard to the life of our earth. Our Earth is progressing in its evolution, but in doing so it is undergoing inner transformations. These transformations cannot be known unless one is aware that the one real factor in the process of our Earth is what all spiritual beings perceive in their subconscious and develop in the manner indicated. Just as one cannot comprehend the development of a plant if one cannot form an idea of how the plant germ of the next year is prepared in the plant of this year in all its growth laws, if one does not see in all the shooting up of the leaves and so on the development of the fruit germ of the next plant, so one cannot comprehend our earth if one only applies the physical laws to it, as the geologist does. For what we experience in our subconscious manifests itself as something germinal in our earthly existence. If I may use an expression that is not quite correct, we will understand each other: it works and lives with us, but it is something that is not at all connected with the relationships of earth and sun. And so it turns out: just as a point in time occurs for the physical human being when his soul experience is separated from the physical, and the physical passes into the outer earthly environment, so a point in time occurs for the earth when the earth-sun effects cease. Just as the soul effects in the body cease from within, so the sun effects on the earth cease from without. Just as the body and soul, when separated, cannot be mixed, but dissolve, so from a certain point in time the Earth will become an impossible body in the universe. And just as the human body merges into its earthly environment, into its physical and chemical laws, so from a certain point in time the Earth will merge into the laws that we now follow in the indicated current.

As you can see, the reverse is the case with the earth and with man. The body of man passes over into the earthly environment. That which is earthly-solar in the earth passes over into the spiritual. Then, when this moment occurs, the lawfulness that we can perceive in the parallel current, which does not at all agree with the external laws of nature, prevails in this earthly body, which will then have died in the way I have described. And here the peculiarity comes to light, which today still looks like a crazy paradox: that the laws that we call natural laws today, are only valid until the end of the earth. And if someone tries, like Professor Dewar, to apply these laws beyond the end of the earth, he makes the same mistake as someone who calculates the laws of metabolism beyond physical death, for 150 years. The Earth will no longer exist at the point in time calculated by Professor Dewar because it will have been transformed into spiritual substance. And all spiritual and soul substance that can be observed in the second current, as I have described it, is absorbed into the spiritual and soul substance of the Earth, and lives within it, towards other formations of the world, towards future formations of the world that cannot be described at this time. But we are looking forward to a future final state of our earth, in which this earth will have gone through its death in such a way that it will have merged with a spiritual realm. Not even solidified milk will glow bluish, and egg white will serve as a candle, but everything that is now on earth under the law of the earth and sun, under what we today call natural laws, will one day live under completely different laws, under spiritual and soul laws, which will arise in the way I have described, from our own inner life. For we are already connected today, in a germinal way, with that which the earth is to become, through which the earth is immortal. Therefore, what lives down there in the soul life seems like a dream. It is precisely the germ of future worlds, and we are immortal because we live with this immortality of the general spirit.

In this way, one comes to a much more concrete view of the spiritual world than if one uses the abstract buzzwords of “mystical pantheism” and so on, which so many people still use so much today. In the spiritual science meant here, one should not seek a vague, nebulous pantheism, but concrete results based on exact spiritual and psychological observation.

The general thinking of our time is still averse to such reality-saturated conceptions, to which the spiritual researcher must advance in order to arrive at a world picture that encompasses all reality that we can attain, not just the outer physical. Anyone who has consciously followed the course of education in recent decades has been able to see how people basically do not love to immerse themselves in reality with their concepts. To grasp the living spiritual life by wanting to come to ideas that themselves live in a spiritual world - without being personally present, but only observing the inner life - is something that people in recent decades have not taken the time to do at all. Hence these numerous people, whom I would like to mention, the 'button counters' of spiritual science. I would like to call them button counters for the following reason: if you have consciously grown up with what many people have been concerned with as important concepts in recent decades, you can certainly understand that it has happened that way, but you also have to grasp it. For several centuries, certain people have repeatedly reflected on the social coexistence of people. Some have come to more individualistic concepts, others to more social concepts. Individualism and socialism have played a role in the most diverse variations in recent times when considering human coexistence, which must be thought of as imbued with the spirit. To those accustomed to concepts saturated with reality, this splashing about among all the socialists and individualists of recent times and down to our days, when one follows the lines of thought by which one became an individualist or a socialist, really does not appear to be based on deeper spiritual grounds, but rather as if one were counting at the buttons: Individualist-Socialist, Individualist-Socialist, and would have counted which button it stops at; only that it is not so noticeable when this button counting happens in thoughts. You splash around in such concepts that are not at all suitable for reaching into true reality, like these conceptual shadows that have been so idolized as individualism and socialism in recent decades.

But there is a very serious background to this, and it is connected with much that is already extraordinarily important for certain conditions in the present. For man does not always need to know how the general world picture, which arises from his ideas, feelings and will impulses, is connected with ordinary daily life, with social life. But he will cause tremendous harm if he, in particular, stands at an important point and proceeds from ideas and feelings that are not steeped in reality. When he theorizes about mere scientific concepts of a world view, as Professor Dewar does, these concepts appear to spiritual science as delusions, which he imposes on his listeners. It is one thing to view a world view from a scientific point of view, but if someone with the same spirit is involved in social work and transfers the same kind of spiritual to this external aspect, then it has a highly destructive effect, and often in life we look for what is actually missing in completely different places than where it should be sought. Because everything that happens on earth is connected. And just as a doctor sometimes has to diagnose an illness as something completely different from what one would initially believe after a superficial examination, so too does the person who has an overview of the situation sometimes have to look for the origins of some illnesses and some devastating effects in completely different places than what appears to be the case after a superficial examination. I would like to give an example of this, but how should I do it in this day and age, when, precisely with regard to this example, I could be seen to be allowing myself to be influenced in my judgment by the events of the times that affect us all so painfully? But precisely with regard to this example, I have a way of avoiding this appearance. In 1913, in Helsingfors, that is before the war, I gave a series of lectures on a completely different subject, but in the course of which, to mention just one example, I had to make an allusion to Wilson, and I will read out what I said about Wilson at the time in a different context. You will also see from what I said at the time that I certainly did not fail to recognize a certain significance, and also a certain spirit, that can be attributed to Wilson, but you will also see that it was not necessary, in order to form an opinion about this man, to first let the events of the last few years or weeks sink in – perhaps even – as was necessary with some people. I said at the time:

“There are some very remarkable essays that have appeared recently by the President of the United States of North America, Woodrow Wilson. There is an essay on the laws of human progress.”

Of course, Woodrow Wilson was already talking about the laws of true human progress back then.

"In it, he explains quite nicely and even ingeniously how people are actually influenced by the prevailing thinking of their age. And he explains very ingeniously how, in the age of Newton, when everything was full of thoughts about gravity, one felt the Newtonian theories, which in reality only applied to the heavenly bodies, to have an effect on social and even state concepts. One feels the after-effects of thoughts about gravity in particular in everything. This is really very ingenious, because one only needs to read up on Newtonism and one will see that words like attraction and repulsion, etc. are used everywhere. Wilson emphasizes this very ingeniously. He says how inadequate it is to apply purely mechanical concepts to human life, to apply concepts of celestial mechanics to human affairs, by showing how human life at that time was virtually embedded in these concepts, how these concepts influenced state and social life everywhere. Wilson rightly criticizes this application of purely mechanical laws in the age in which, so to speak, Newtonism has brought the whole of thought under its yoke. You have to think differently, says Wilson, and now constructs his concept of the state in such a way that, after he has demonstrated this from the age of Newtonism, Darwinism now peeps out everywhere.

What I wanted to say at the time was that Wilson now sees, by looking at a previous age: Newton was included in the concepts of the state, and people now followed that. What does he do? He now includes Darwinism because it is a comrade of the age of Darwin, just as people were contemporaries of Newton at the time. He is doing exactly the same thing, but he is naive enough not to notice it.

If all sorts of people have played with the concepts of individualism and socialism, and they have remained playing, well, that may be so; but if, with such defective thinking, as I wanted to say at the time, an important position is managed, then that has a completely different meaning. If you want to get to know our age, then you will have to get to know how to work with concepts that are divorced from reality, that are only shadows of something, where these concepts are justified, as in Wilson's case these social concepts, how to work with such shadowy, unrealistic concepts. One may still be quite far from such insight; but one will not understand reality and come to no conception of the world that corresponds to this reality, if one is not able to see through what kind of conceptual shells are used today in science and in the social fields. That is why people are least able to gain an insight when it comes to entering the real spiritual world and gaining a world view from it or through it. There are people who, whether through their own inner development or through external circumstances, are seized by the longing to know the spiritual. But where do they often look for it? They cannot bring themselves, because of a certain inner laziness of thought, to seek the spirit where it can really be found: on the path of the spirit itself. This is difficult, although, even if things have taken 35 years, it is entirely possible, when the results come to light, to find them immediately plausible. Above all, it requires that the inner soul be brought into such a mood and state that it is often not appreciated by exact researchers of the present day. This can be seen most clearly when an exact researcher who rightly has a reputation in the field of external natural science delves into the spiritual world.

Among the books that have caused the greatest sensation in the English-speaking world in recent months, apart from war literature, is the one that the naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge has written as his latest book. This book has a special reason. The reason for this is that the son of the naturalist Lodge, Raymond Lodge, was killed on the Western Front in August 1915. Now, Oliver Lodge always had a certain inclination towards the spiritual world. The death of his son added to his desire to penetrate into the spiritual world. And so it came about - I can only tell these things briefly, so some things will be inexplicable, but I still want to tell the case to confirm what is connected with the attracted train of thought - it came about like this: Even before the son fell, Sir Oliver Lodge had been made aware from America that something had happened to this son. When you read what was written to the Lodge family from America, indirectly through a medium – as these personalities are called – then a scientifically minded person – and Oliver Lodge is that, too – or let us say, a spiritually minded person , the impression is: Yes, what has been written to him could mean anything; at best, it can be interpreted to mean that Frederick Myers, the editor of a work on the scientific study of the soul's life, who died long ago, would take care of Sir Oliver Lodge's son. But the matter could be interpreted in one way or another. If Raymond Lodge had not fallen, it could be interpreted that Myers would protect him from death in battle; after death, it could be interpreted that he would be his helper and guide in the hereafter. I do not want to go into what is behind such things; they are not as harmless as one might think. Now Raymond Lodge fell. And Sir Oliver Lodge - who would completely refuse to intrude on the ways into the spiritual world to get to the immortal soul, which is represented in the spiritual science meant here - he came into contact with mediums that were, in his opinion, beyond reproach , and then it soon turned out for him that through these mediums the soul of Raymond Lodge communicated through the mediums, telling all kinds of things: how she was now living, what her wishes were with regard to the father, the family and so on. I would not mention this matter if I only wanted to relate what ordinary spiritualists report, because they lack objectivity; even where Lombroso and Richet are involved, objectivity still prevails. But Oliver Lodge is really a person who knows the exact methods, and who therefore also proceeds exactly in such a matter, so that also someone who has enjoyed an education in the methods of natural science in his scientific thinking and research, and who has learned to to develop real conscientiousness in natural science, which basically the spiritual researcher should also have, could have a certain respect for the exactness with which Oliver Lodge proceeds in describing the things he shares in his thick book. And while in the case of ordinary reports, it is of course always immediately apparent, if one is somehow even a little familiar with the things, where the observers have not seen anything, where the messages are missing about the arrangements and so on, with Sir Oliver Lodge one sees that a person is reporting who really knows how to handle and describe scientific methods.

Now, one thing that Sir Oliver Lodge states has made a particularly great and deep impression. I will not tell the other things, because they are, despite being stated exactly, according to the pattern of other sessions. But the one that made a particularly great impression is this: Sir Oliver Lodge relates that through the impeccable mediums – I can tell all this because you know I do not represent this direction – it has come out that Raymond Lodge had himself photographed with comrades before he was killed on the Western Front. And now Raymond Lodge's soul describes the picture through the medium, and in three photographs, as they are taken one after the other by the photographer, where, when one group is photographed, the same group sits, and only sometimes one, while in one shot he put his hands on his knees, then puts them on the chair or on the shoulder of the neighbor. With great accuracy, this medium describes, let us say, these photographs. While one – Oliver Lodge also admits this – could find some connections in the other things, so that some kind of quiet suggestion, as it usually is with such things, took place, or some other process that every spiritual researcher knows to transfer to the medium, what memories, reminiscences, especially subconscious reminiscences of the deceased Raymond Lodge came to life – while it went with everything else that was there, it did not go with this incident, because nobody could know about these photographs. These photographs were taken in the very last days before Raymond Lodge died, and had not yet arrived in England. Nobody knew anything about them, neither any of the family nor the medium. And indeed, a fortnight or three weeks later, the three photographs arrived, exactly as described by the medium. Now this naturally became an experimentum crucis for him, a proof of the cross, because here it was directly demonstrable: Nobody could know anything about it, it came from a world that is not the world in which Raymond Lodge used to live before he went through the gate of death.

This has not only had a great effect on Sir Oliver Lodge, who had a great affinity for such things, but it has made a great impression on the whole audience interested in such things. Oliver Lodge was indeed completely convinced and was also able to convince his family members who had previously been skeptical; the circle then expanded more and more. It is now strange how satisfying it is, especially today, not to have to face discomfort in order to penetrate into reality, how one can easily form ideas about the spiritual world in a light-hearted way.

The spiritual researcher knows that if something comes out in this way, it is certainly not a manifestation of a truly spiritual world. That is why in the last lecture I called what comes to light in this way the most soulless of all, the thing from which the spirit has been driven out completely, although it can sometimes imitate the spirit. When something comes out in this way, it is related to the spirit as the dead shell of a mussel is to the living oyster, when the oyster is outside. The shell comes out, the most material, the most sensual, the most sensual remnant, which sometimes reproduces the spiritual in its forms. For the spirit must be sought in a spiritual way. But how could Oliver Lodge, one may say this if one is familiar with real spiritual research, how could he yield to such dilettantism? Simply because he lacks the reality-saturated concepts to judge such things. If he had read just a little of the abundant German literature on these matters, which of course is also little considered today, but which is there, especially from the first half of the nineteenth century, is there in great numbers, then he would have known that, admittedly, he is not dealing with anything other than what was relegated to the field of deuteroscopy in German intellectual life in the first half of the nineteenth century. There have been reports of phenomena such as the often-cited case of someone who, through a particular state of mind — even Schopenhauer mentioned it — in a kind of dream consciousness, comes to the conclusion: Then and then you will have an accident here and here. Some somnambulists describe such accidents in the not-too-distant future so precisely that, for example, if they fall off a horse, they describe the scene in great detail. We are not dealing here with something that could expand human insight into the real spiritual world, but with a mere expansion of perception that relates to sensory reality. We are dealing with the transgression of the ordinary perception of space and time, which is entirely possible within certain limits. Now, in the case of Raymond Lodge, there was obviously nothing different than what happens in such cases. What did the medium tell Oliver Lodge? Nothing more than what happened afterwards. Although the photographs had not yet arrived at the time the medium described them, they did come later. Oliver Lodge and his family were waiting for them. There was an event that occurred; just as a somnambulist dreams, in a fortnight he will fall off a horse. So it is not something that would show someone who is truly a spiritual researcher the way into a real spiritual world, but rather something that relates to the real spiritual world as the oyster shell relates to the oyster. It reproduces it. But in what comes to light, can one suspect something, when one takes the things seriously? But because it is more comfortable than the actual entering into the spiritual world, many a person will love to investigate something of the spiritual world in this way. But one has to do with something much more belonging to materiality in a spiritualistic phantom than one has to do with the real bodily human being. This is precisely the peculiar thing about the way in which real spiritual research must become part of people's educational lives, that this spiritual research will deduce from the aberrations to which even great thinkers are exposed, people who are quite familiar with the exact methods of external research into nature.

Now, just as one must say that the laws of nature, as we abstract them from natural phenomena and apply them to the world, are not applicable in the characterized way for the final state of the earth, since the earth will change with all human soul and spiritual life as it has been described, so one can also say that for the initial state. There one must indeed learn how memory - that is, the life of representations that already live in our soul by themselves, so that we are no longer present - actually relates to the bodily life. And if one studies this in the same way as I have indicated for the soul life that one needs for the final state on earth, then one finds that an initial state of the earth cannot be calculated in the same way as current geologists do, who simply take the physical laws and then calculate what the earth might have looked like according to these physical laws so many millions of years ago. You could also take the laws of digestion and calculate what a seven-year-old child might have looked like as a physical being forty years ago. In this case, one would use exactly the same method as the geologist uses when calculating the state of the earth millions of years ago. It is really the case that the calculation is completely correct, and that the physical methods are also correctly applied, when one calculates from the metabolism of a seven-year-old child what that child might have looked like forty years ago – only it was not yet alive at that time. And so it is just not right that for the point in time for which the geologist gives such beautiful things – as I mentioned earlier, that Professor Dewar gives for the final state of the earth – the earth was not yet there. It had not yet emerged from its different life in the sun, it had not yet emerged, it had not yet lifted itself out. And for the initial state of the earth – I can only give a brief description of this – the situation is as follows: As we have to do with the final state of the earth, with the rising of the material earth in the sun-earth-law into a spiritual-soul state, so that we carry our own immortal-supernatural with us through future world cycles, so at the beginning of the earth's development we have to do with a descent - if one wants to use the expression, which is not very beautiful, of a spiritual-soul-like one; but in such a way that it does not become more spiritual, but is taken up, as it were, by what comes from the solar, so that within the material the spiritual-soul-like comes to realization, one can already say: is embodied. Here we have to do with the reverse process: with the origin of a spiritual from a spiritual that surrounds itself, envelops — “wraps,” one might say, in contrast to “develops” — in a material from the world of space, from the world of time. And here again we notice that for the beginning of the evolution of the earth the laws hold good which I have already mentioned for the parallel currents of the subconscious, and that the ordinary laws of mathematics come to an end there. However grotesque it may sound, it is nevertheless true. And I would like to say: Kant grasped a quarter-truth about this, in that he showed in his antinomies how it can be conceived that for certain initial and final conditions, it is possible to think in such and such a way; but just because he found a quarter-truth, the whole thing had more of a paralyzing effect on the world picture of reality than that it could have been beneficial. For Kant would not only have had to believe that space and time are tied to the human faculty of perception, but he would have been able to recognize, if he had penetrated to the real spiritual research, how that which lives in man as spiritual-soul is closely connected with the spiritual spiritual-soul happenings of the entire outer existence, first of all of the earthly existence, and how a thorough study of the spiritual-soul life yields a truly spiritual-scientific picture of the world, so that one can say: our world of space and time is bound to man's intercourse with the earth. Therefore, what we can discern through them is only valid from the beginning of the earth to the end of the earth. And one must get to know the other laws that are in the other current if one wants to talk about the beginning and end of the earth in such a way that a true, real picture of the world emerges. Then one recognizes that the human soul is older than the earth; that the human soul was already present in that spiritual, which has wrapped itself up, involved itself in that law of the earth, which comes about in the intercourse of the earth with the life of the sun.

Spiritual science thus goes beyond the world view that I recently mentioned, which made such a repulsive impression on Herman Grimm, who of course did not know these connections. I have already shared Herman Grimm's words at the time, I have shared them many times before, but they are so interesting that one can always let them affect one's soul again. For in them we have words that prove how a healthy, sensitive soul must relate to such worldviews, as Professor Dewar has presented them to the world in the manner described, and how they are so firmly entrenched in the education of the present that one is naturally still considered a real crank today if one agrees with such words as Herman Grimm has expressed. Herman Grimm was forgiven for that. They would say: oh, he is an art historian, he is – well, he is not generally familiar with the rules of exact natural science and its results; it is of no consequence. That is a good reason. But the serious spiritual scientist will not be forgiven if he cites Grimm's words, which he said in connection with Goethe's world view:

How could the children not believe it, how could they not indulge in this scientific fantasy! It's so easy to show. One need only pose as a teacher, take a 'droplet' formed from a certain substance, take a piece of card and slide it into the equatorial plane of the droplet, stick a needle in at the top, place it on the water; then turn it and show how the little droplets are formed, how the little world systems are formed. How could anything be more conclusive than this, that the great cosmic structure also came into being according to the Kant-Laplace theory? Unfortunately, sometimes it is good to forget oneself, but in this case, when one is conducting scientific experiments, one must not forget oneself – namely, the teacher forgot himself. Because if he had not turned, then none of the world system would have come about. If he wanted to describe this process correctly, he would have to think of a giant professor standing in space.

In short, the fact that today, despite being generally accepted by the scientific community, Herman Grimm can say:

Thus spiritual science provides a different picture of the world, one that can incorporate the spiritual and soul into the beginning and end state of the earth in such a way that this incorporation is truly supported, like any other scientific fact. The only difference is that these things must be investigated from the spiritual-mental side, and cannot be worked out on the basis of what applies only to the material processes of the earth, as long as the earth is this material body that it is.

People today are not even aware of the conceptual shadows in which they actually live. Only sometimes does one think a little more sharply; he then does not come away from these conceptual shadows, but he thinks a little more sharply and sometimes comes to very strange assertions. For example, Eduard von Hartmann, who could not get away from physical ideas, but who could think. Hartmann came to think about physical ideas as well. He thought in terms of these physical ideas and had the courage to express what arose from them. Take a very nice saying:

“That there is a real nature, and that the laws established by physics apply in this real nature, is itself only a hypothesis.”

What is actually behind this? That is to say: physics establishes laws; if you really think about it, the whole of nature is only a hypothesis. It is really only a hypothesis, because with the physical concepts you cannot grasp reality. And if those who form a world picture out of physical concepts do not – thank God – see the real nature illuminated by the sun, it would remain a hypothesis for them. Only external reality counts for them.

In the spiritual realm, one must achieve reality by being fully active in penetrating it. This is not so comfortable. It does not present itself automatically, like external nature. But a saying such as Eduard von Hartmann's shows quite clearly that the concepts prevailing in the physical field are also powerless to reach real nature. For he who can really think, who knows that nature is out there, but what the physicist wants to absorb from it, that only gives a hypothetical nature.

It is a momentous thought that Hartmann expresses, although it is, of course, a completely insane thought. It will come about that spiritual science enters into the educational life of humanity because the conditions for it are present. But some things will have to be understood again that are no longer understood today, that are only taken in by the sound of the words.

I have often referred to the first step of the view that one can arrive at when observing this second current of human soul life, which can become conscious, as imaginative presentation. One must penetrate to this imaginative presentation, which is not a form of self-conceit but a life in spiritual reality, in order to grasp reality at all. We shall have to understand such ideas that can inwardly quicken this penetration into spiritual reality. We shall have to understand not merely the sound of the words, but their deeper inner value, such as can be found by the hundred in the fragments, thrown down just so, of a great spiritual man who died only young: Novalis. And from what has been said today about life, death and immortality in the universe, one will get an idea of the depth that lies, for example, in such a word of Novalis: “We will only become physicists when we make imaginative substances and forces the measure of natural substances and forces.” That is to say, when we can also recognize from the imaginative, when we approach external nature.

Of course, people's attention had to be diverted from the spiritual for a time so that great progress could be made in the external, natural sciences. But man must not cut himself off from the spiritual world. The connection to real spiritual research must be found again.

Now, one should not think that one must break with all reason, with all that is sound, if one does not give in to the ideas that arise from a false interpretation of physics, as given by a man like Professor Dewar. However, the matter also has a moral aspect in a sense. And with regard to much, a different scientific attitude will have to prevail than the one that often dominates scientific people today if one wants to approach the study of the spiritual worlds in the right way in order to find that inner peace of mind that makes it possible to experience the spiritual world in such a way that the spiritual world becomes objective, that the spiritual world is really there before the soul's eye, not as a vague pantheism or mysticism. One will also have to develop certain things with regard to the inner eye of the soul, above all a certain composure and humility with regard to inner experience. I do not mean it in the sentimental sense, as some who call themselves mystics do, because I think nothing of all these stereotyped labels. But one will have to acquire a certain mood. For the tendency of the times has also become similar to those concepts, which only cling to the surface, and people believe that they are developing particular idealism when they use the usual shadow concepts to do a little abstraction from external sensual reality. We shall have to develop a different attitude, for even the attitude of science has surrendered to mere clinging to the outer life, an attitude which I will now summarize in a few words at the end. Not my words, but the words that a sensible German personality used when she translated a spiritual-scientific book — the sensible Matthias Claudius. Let me conclude with his words, in which I would like to show, so to speak, the soul power that must enter into the inner mood as a soul attitude if one is to go beyond such scientific delusions, as I have also characterized them today. Matthias Claudius said on this occasion, when he translated a book from the field of spiritual science - as was appropriate for the time, not as it would be for the present time - he said in his preface:

“... whether a man is vain and foolish about a moustache or about metaphysics and Henriade, or hates and envies a man because of a larger pumpkin” — he means the head “or because of the invention of differential and integral calculus, in short, whether one lets oneself be held and hindered by one's five yoke oxen” – he means the five senses – ‘or by one's polyhistorey’ – that is, by one's external erudition – ‘on the rope, seems basically the same and not different.’

And since inner soul life is really very closely connected with the soul's attitude, it will be necessary to pour out a yearning for an exploration of the spiritual world, as expressed in these beautiful words of Matthias Claudius. For when a person has realized within himself what is implied in these words, then he really does have a relationship with the spiritual world through his feelings. And that is a preparation for clearing away all the mists that arise, especially in the spiritual world, when one allows all the different kinds of arrogance and pride to take effect, which are particularly present in the present state of spiritual development.

Dear attendees!

What I have to say to you today about ways to knowledge of the eternal powers of the human soul will by no means be suitable to immediately evoke conviction in our time. Even those who speak from the point of view of spiritual science, as spiritual science is meant here, do not succumb to such an illusion. It can only be a matter of communications that are made for the purpose of stimulation, communications about a research method that believes it can say something with the same certainty and the same certainty about the soul life, its meaning and its significance in the universe as the newer natural science expresses something about the connections of the forces of nature, the meaning of this or that natural event in the whole world context. Precisely because spiritual science, as it is meant here, is, so to speak, a continuation of the achievements of nature, of the way of thinking, one could also say, of the spirit of research, for the spiritual life, which has been integrated into human development through the scientific world view over the last three to four centuries. But because this spiritual science seeks its field in the spiritual worlds, it is necessary that its scientific and research methods are quite different from the research methods and the research approach for the natural scientific point of view. It is precisely in order that spiritual science may be, as it were, the sister of natural science, that it must, because its field is so different, take other paths and other methods. And so the methods and paths that I have to describe to you will at first differ completely from those paths and methods that seek to eavesdrop on nature's secrets through external manipulation and action. But the attitude is the same.

Spiritual science also seeks, as it were, to eavesdrop on the spiritual world's secrets through spiritual experimentation. In spiritual science, one is not dealing with the paths to knowledge of spiritual secrets, nor is one dealing with some kind of experiments that can be observed externally with the senses and whose factual sequences can be combined through the powers of the external mind. When one speaks from the standpoint of spiritual science about the “Ways to Knowledge of the Eternal Powers of the Human Soul,” one is dealing with the most intimate processes of the soul. If one calls them experiments, they are very intimate, inner soul experiments, experiments that cannot be observed externally.

The goal to which these inner soul experiments should lead is an inner knowledge of that essential core of the human being that is not accessible to the external senses, nor to the mind that is needed for ordinary life and ordinary science. Rather, it can only be accessed by forces that are first activated in the soul. Therefore, I would say, from the very beginning the path of spiritual science is different in a certain respect from the paths of all other sciences and from the paths of thought and action in ordinary life.

In ordinary life and in ordinary science, we also try to gain insights into the things of the world and their processes. And when we have gained insights through which we believe we can see through the lawful connection of the individual facts, see through the individual things, then we have finished our efforts in ordinary science and also in natural life.

Now one can say for spiritual science: that which is the end, the conclusion in relation to research and thinking for ordinary science and for ordinary life, is only the beginning. All those activities that lead us to a desired goal in ordinary science are only there to prepare the soul for what will then evoke the forces in that soul through which insight can be gained into the spiritual worlds.

And so, what the spiritual researcher has to say is, in many respects, much, much more different from the conventional thinking and conceptual habits of the present, than what had to say about the structure of the universe, about the movement of the Earth, the Sun and so on, was much more different than what was thought about these things immediately before.

Therefore it cannot be surprising that what the spiritual researcher has to say is not so readily accepted in the present day. One need only recall how long it took for what was to be said about the structure and the paths of the universe and its bodies from the standpoint of the newer scientific world view to become established in wider circles in the face of long-held views. And the fact that people do not believe everything from the outset is something that is just as understandable and comprehensible as it is basically even commendable from a certain point of view. Therefore, one need not be surprised if some of what the spiritual researcher has to say still sounds fantastic, like a dream today. And so some things will indeed have to be said, especially today.

When one first looks at the writings and publications that are sent out into the world from the perspective of spiritual science, as it is meant here, some of it will seem like a dream, like a fantasy. How could one possibly recognize that this physical body of man, which one sees with one's eyes and which external science investigates with its admirable methods, that this ordinary physical physical body is based on a finer body – whether you call it the etheric body or something else, it does not matter – that a finer body is based on it, a body that is absolutely invisible to the ordinary eye and [to the ordinary methods of research]; and that you can know something about this finer body, that seems, at first, to be rightfully something incredible.

And it seems just as incredible when the spiritual researcher has to say that when a person has gone to rest after work and has now surrendered to sleep with regard to external events, something of what the person's nature is has emerged from the physical organization, from the physical-bodily organization, something that represents a different soul life than the ordinary daytime soul life. And in this different soul life - let us call it a different consciousness from the consciousness of the day or whatever one wants to call it, it does not matter - in this different consciousness, in this different soul life, the human being lives until he wakes up again. And when he wakes up again, this different soul life emerges into the outer physical body.

And when the spiritual researcher must claim that something of the eternal essence of the human being lives in what emerges from the physical body when falling asleep and re-enters it when waking up, something of the eternal essence of the human being lives in what emerges from the physical body when falling asleep and re-enters it when waking up. Only in ordinary life can a person not be aware of what he experiences between falling asleep and waking up. Again, this is something that, for the ordinary habits of thought of today, still has something dream-like about it.

One certainly only has the right to talk about these things, esteemed attendees, if one can show in a world of facts – even if this world of facts is an unfamiliar one – that one can really come to something like a finer body and a different kind of soul life, a different kind of consciousness.

Now the processes by which one can explore this finer body – what underlies the physical body that the eyes see as an invisible human being – these methods are intimate; they are not based on some kind of magic, some kind of false mathematics or false mysticism. Rather, they are methods that are entirely in line with what a person already does in their ordinary, everyday mental life, only in its continuation. What must arise as an intimate process of the soul, what must be brought about as an intimate process of the soul, ladies and gentlemen, is first of all something that can be described as a strengthening of the inner life of thought, about which, however, one has no real conception in the ordinary course of the life of the soul.

Technically, in the sense of spiritual science, these inner activities, these inner exercises, are called: concentration and meditation in the soul life. What is concentration, what is meditation in the soul life? Meditation is a form of visualization, a form of thinking, only a somewhat different kind of visualization and a somewhat different kind of thinking than ordinary visualization and ordinary thinking. And since I do not want to talk in a nebulous way, but want to communicate the most definite, I would like to describe, at least in principle, the process of meditation, the process of concentration of thinking, this inner soul experiment - in principle. Everything else can be found in the books, namely in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in my “Occult Science: An Outline”.

The point is that in order to continue the ordinary everyday thought process and the thought process that he practices in ordinary science, man - in order to continue the ordinary everyday thought process and the thought process that he practices in ordinary science, man - in order to continue the ordinary everyday thought process and the thought process that he practices in ordinary science, man places very specific ideas that he can oversee at the center of his consciousness.

It does not matter how these ideas relate to external reality, nor does it matter what truth value these ideas initially have; therefore, it is even better not to take ideas that are retained from memory or ideas that depict something external, but to take symbolic, allegorical ideas. Say, let us imagine – even if it has no truth content, it does not matter; we will see in a moment why it does not matter – let us imagine, for example, that light spreads out in space, and in that light lives wisdom. – As I said, how this relates to any truth is not important.

And now you should arrange the whole range of your soul life, your entire soul life, so that you think nothing but this one idea: wisdom flooding in light – so that your entire soul life, which is otherwise distributed across reality processes, reality impressions, changing impressions, this entire soul life holds on to this one idea for a certain period of time.

I said that it does not depend on the truth content of what one places in consciousness. It does not matter whether you place something external, something depicted, in your consciousness, but it does matter what the inner activity is; it matters that the soul carries out the activity with particular effort, lives in an elevated effort of will, and in doing so exercises the activity that is necessary to place a single idea at the center of consciousness, to hold it for a longer period of time, even if only for minutes.

By doing these exercises over and over again, for months – it does not take long, although this time frame naturally depends on the disposition of the soul of the person doing the exercises – if you practices with inner effort and pays particular attention to how one moves inwardly in a delicate will activity in this way, in order to grasp this idea - because that is what matters - then one gradually notices that the entire soul life changes. Of course, this only changes for those times when one undertakes these soul exercises. The entire soul life gradually feels that it is detaching itself – this is an inner experience – from everything in which it otherwise lives. And the success is initially a very peculiar one.

Initially, the success is that if you now try – and you have to try this to complete the exercise – if you now try to suppress the idea that you have brought to the center of your consciousness, that is, if you want to get out of the meditation again – or even earlier – then you will see all kinds of ideas emerging from the depths of your consciousness. Indeed, one is tempted to say that never before has one had so many opportunities to see what a vast number of ideas are constantly striving to rise above the threshold of consciousness and gain power over the soul as through this exercise. If you now continue this exercise, a certain change occurs: you gradually have the feeling that you are moving in nothing but memories of life, in all kinds of memories of the life you have gone through since you started thinking and observing the world in a conscious way. All kinds of memories that have flooded past us, either recently or long ago, arise; and one feels, I might say, enslaved for a time by the emerging inner soul reminiscences, the soul memories.

Now one must acquire the ability - and it comes more or less by itself if one continues the exercise over and over again - to observe that now - even if they are memories of one's life that arise - the way they enter consciousness is different than memories of one's life usually arise in consciousness: the memory of one's life will arise dream-like. And there is one thing one notices above all, which is tremendously important to notice: it does not linger in the memory, it passes by like a dream image. One knows exactly: they are memories from life; they now flood up, but they do not call to mind memories as such now - by being there now; they do not evoke memories. They come, they go; they torment us, they enslave us, so to speak; but they do not evoke new memories as such, they are like flooding dreams; but it is a coherent whole, a flooding whole.

You now have to continue your meditation in the face of all these inner experiences. You always have to keep doing exercises like the ones described. By doing so, you will gradually develop the ability to gain control over this mass – one might say – of pure dream experiences that emerge. You gain control over them. One becomes master of them in such a way that one can gradually fade them out and dampen them down through one's own will. And this will becomes so strong through meditating on and on and on that one really comes to empty the conceptualized space in which these ideas arise, to make it like a free visual field.

Yes, dear ones, what I have just described, I first had to describe in the abstract; but it is not experienced in such an abstract way. The experience is an incredibly profound one. And that is the peculiar thing about spiritual scientific research: the paths one has to take are filled with meaningful, harrowing inner soul experiences. By continuing such exercises, one arrives at a certain point in time at an experience that is truly harrowing; and when it occurs, one knows: one has now reached a certain point, to which one must arrive in order to have any prospect of making further progress in spiritual research. What is this point?

And, honored attendees, spiritual science, as it is meant here, is really only possible, I would say, after three to four centuries of natural scientific thinking has been incorporated into human development, into the spiritual development of humanity. It can only arise for similar reasons for which the Galilean, the Giordano Bruno, and the Keplerian achievements could only arise in their time. But what must be found for the present and for the future in a certain way through this spiritual science has always occupied the human soul. I cannot speak about it in detail now, because it would be going too far to explain how something similar to this spiritual science was developed in earlier epochs of human development. It was much more unconscious, one might say, much more instinctive, if I may choose an imprecise but descriptive word. But from the powers that people had at that time - which were not the powers that are, so to speak, beginning to develop humanity now - people also came to the point that I mean now, where one stands, as it were, at the entrance to the spiritual world. And they described the experience that one now has – has at the point I have described, and still has today and must have – they described this, dear honored attendees, with a word that one really understands when one has gone through the corresponding experiences, with a weighty word. They said: 'The human soul comes to a certain point in its development before it can enter the spiritual world, to the 'gate of death'.

As I said, you learn to understand what this means when you have reached the point I am referring to: the moment you have come to fade, to dampen the dreamlike soul reminiscences described to you, you also come to know that precisely because you can think as a human being, since the time you have absorbed the powers of thought within you, especially in the powers of thought — not only in the powers of thought, but especially in the powers of thought — that power is to be seen which, little by little, as it develops in man — develops gradually or even at times suddenly —, which leads man into death.

Those forces of human nature, of bodily human nature, those forces that are active in this human nature and that are the instrument, so to speak, the tool for the most glorious thing we have in the outer, in the physical life: for thinking - those are not constructive forces, not constructive life forces; the fruiting life forces tend to make man dull, to push his consciousness down under dreaming. That a person's consciousness can become bright enough to think is due to the fact that there are forces of death, of disintegration and destruction within him. What is the physical instrument for our thinking is intimately connected with what works in human nature as the forces that bring death.

Spiritual science is in complete harmony with natural science - especially with that part of natural science, esteemed attendees, that will, on the whole, gain in popularity. Spiritual science does not take the view that thinking, as it is practiced in ordinary physical life, does not need a physical instrument. It needs a physical instrument. That is to say, wherever it occurs, ordinary thinking needs physical representations that are carried out. But these are destructive representations. And at the moment when, through meditation, one has brought one's thinking to the point that I have described, when one can replace thoughts and develop thinking through thinking itself , one is confronted with full clarity by how ordinary physical thinking is bound to the physical tool - that is, to the destructive power, to the death-bringing power - of ordinary memory. One has an inner experience of standing at the gate of death. One knows now what it means: there are forces within the soul that can separate themselves from the body, but that, in separating, must also look at what is death-bringing in the body.

That is the harrowing experience. That is what has been referred to for thousands of years in the circles where these things were known as “stepping to the threshold of death”. But by bringing it to this experience, one has confronted oneself with the power that lives in thinking – mind you, dear honored attendees, not with the thinking that occupies us in physical life, but with the power that lives in it and that one has now released – one has brought it to the point of really facing oneself. Thus we have stepped out of ourselves.

But we must not remain one-sided in the way I have just described. If we were to remain in this way, we would only come to know the realm in which we live with our thinking when we have separated it from the physical body. One knows, in the moment when one has come to the point that I have described to you, that one lives and moves in a finer element than usual. One knows what it means to live with one's ordinary consciousness, with one's eyes, one's ears, one's visual and auditory sensations, to live in one's ordinary thoughts. One knows what this means. But one also knows what it means to live outside of this.

But holding on to this state is an extraordinarily difficult task. And because it is difficult, a person cannot initially reach this point without strong, strongest efforts of will of an inner nature. But this path must not remain one-sided. And it does not remain one-sided, not even through what we do in meditation. By not exerting our will in such a way as to move our limbs, to walk, to do some physical work or even to do mental work with the brain, but by exerting our will in meditation, we are at the same time cultivating our will, an inner spiritual willpower. And we gradually learn to feel our will in a completely new way, to experience it inwardly.

If we did not achieve this through meditation – and we do achieve it through meditation if we practise it as described, for example, in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' – we would not achieve the inner control of our will, then we would come to the point described; but then something like a spiritual faint or even like a sleep would occur. We would pass over into an unconscious state, we would not be able to carry our ego over into the new state.

But by strengthening our will at the same time - and we strengthen it, as I said, through that inner effort, which thus has a direct effect on thinking, as has been described - by strengthening our will, we carry our ego into the new state , we carry it into that fine corporeality in which we [weave and live] initially, as I have described, after the muffling and killing of the representations, which lies in a corresponding expansion of time — we carry our ego, we carry our will into it. And now a new harrowing experience, a harrowing event for the soul, occurs, which must now be gone through again.

If the first was an experience that, as I said, familiarized us with the experience of death in the soul - theoretically experienced by the soul [death] - familiarized us with what can be called “really dying”, then the other thing we are experiencing now is what can be called: one learns to recognize the basis of what goes through the world as pain, as pain and suffering.

Therefore, anyone who has walked the paths to the eternal powers of the human soul will always be able to tell us what the reasons are for why pain and suffering must flood and surge through the world. For this carrying of one's own ego, of one's own will, into the new world is associated with a painful effort, with a full effort, which is also connected with the deepest, deepest loneliness. The rest of the world is as if absorbed at first. One is alone within a vast, vast emptiness, as if with oneself. At first one has only carried one's own will and thus one's own ego into this world.

You now learn to recognize that everything that comes into existence, that enters into existence, must enter through the sphere of suffering – which is simply a law of the world. And one learns to recognize that everything that pulses through the world as a wonderful world, in beauties and wisdoms and in other useful and pleasurable things, that this can only be like the blossom that rises out of the plant - but in the roots, as the underground, are suffering and pain.

Those who would not recognize this as a reality would be in the same position as someone who refuses to recognize that the three angles of a triangle are 180 degrees. If something wants to be a triangle, then the three angles must be 180 degrees. And so everything great, everything glorious, everything beautiful, everything that develops harmoniously in the world can only develop out of the element of pain. And this pain of the soul must now be recognized again when one enters into a primal element.

But now, at this point on the path of knowledge, something occurs, dear attendees, which, when described, seems even more like a fantasy, like a dream, because one is accustomed to accepting such things according to what is currently valid, as if they are meant figuratively, as if they allegorically represent something. But as I have described them here, they represent something - they represent real, actual inner experiences of the soul, realities in an even higher sense than the external realities of physical space and physical time.

What we are coming to now is this: one learns to recognize that all will – and one has indeed carried the will out into a completely different realm, into the realm – now let us say it, I don't think we need be afraid of the words – into the realm of etheric experience.

After one's will, one's own will, has been transferred there, one learns to recognize that this will, which rules in man, is now based on what can be called the actual spiritual-soul core of the human being, but which does not come earlier to the outer — one can say externally in relation to its objectivity, internally in relation to ourselves — which cannot otherwise be perceived than by muffling one's thoughts in the manner described. Now you realize that in all the will that rules our hands, our walking, all our work, all our yearning, that in all this will there is a core, but such a core that has consciousness, that is a being.

That is the incredible thing, dearest present, but it is just true: one now discovers another consciousness in oneself, an inner spectator - but as I said, one only understands this if one takes the matter not for an image but for a reality - one discovers in oneself an inner spectator, whom one carries within oneself continually, who also acts, who has a consciousness of his own.

And this spectator, when you discover him - discovered in the light of what you yourself have created through your meditation - who can only appear in this new element, in this new sphere, you recognize this inner spectator as that which preceded our birth, or let's say, our conception, and [you recognize] that we pass through the gate of death once we physically go through death.

In this way, the element, the spiritual world, in which our inner man can live, has been discovered, and so has the inner man himself. It is something completely new. And from now on, one learns to recognize how to see in the spiritual world. And one must say: everything is just a preparation. The seeing can only come by itself. Because everything we have set out to do was just preparation. It was like what nature set out to do to give us an eye. And once the eye is there, it sees. We have formed the inner eye. We have the inner organ of sight, the spiritual eye; we also have spiritual hearing – to use Goethe's expression. We have transported our inner spectator into the world, into the sphere that we ourselves have now created. We now live in the spiritual world, and this spectator in the human realm is beginning to see, to see what is always around us in the spiritual world, but which cannot be perceived by the ordinary human consciousness; just as one who, without physical observation, has no idea that there is air around him, can also believe that the space around us is empty, so the spiritual world surrounds us, it lives around us.

But the organ, the spiritual eye, the spiritual ear must first be there. And to prepare, to prepare for it, all the power of thought, all the powers that we otherwise apply in ordinary science and in ordinary life to a goal must be applied to prepare.

Therefore, the peculiar thing also occurs, dear attendees, that, as strange as it sounds: While the eyes see and the ears hear the ordinary external phenomena – in short: the sensory perception – the ordinary mind combines, while one must first look at these phenomena, and then understand, while one reflects, observes ing in thought, one must first understand and conceptualize what one experiences in the spiritual world, and then, when one has understood and conceptualized it, one can gain insight. Then one can see into the spiritual world.

Dear attendees, after I have described to you in a positive way how a person can prepare his soul so that he can truly perceive the spiritual world with an expanded spiritual eye and spiritual ear, after I have described this to you, dear attendees, I would also like to draw your attention to all the concerns that are rightly raised by what I have said. And there are not only logically, but also practically very significant concerns.

Take, for example, the fact that we have to develop our thinking in meditation and concentration to a certain point, and that we then regard what we have developed there in our soul as the measure of something in order to enter into another world.

As I said, spiritual science does not want to contradict natural science in any way if it is understood correctly. But the natural scientist who has not yet risen to the right understanding of spiritual science, namely of its world, will now rightly, with full justification - I emphasize it expressly - object: Well, you student of the spirit, what illusions you are laboring under! You believe that through your concentration, through your meditation, you have developed your thinking to such an extent that it can perceive something quite new. You do not know how much unconscious, how much darkness there is in the soul life of man. You take all this with you on your path of thought. Just think how the natural scientist knows or can know how, through the particular dispositions of the nervous system, how through everything that is innate in our nervous system through our inheritance, how through that the human being carries very specific dispositions, of which he knows nothing, thought directions, thought tendencies, how he drags them along. Is it not then quite obvious that if one trains one's thinking, one could also say maltreats it, one then perceives something seemingly new, but in truth only something that has long been waiting in the unconscious, subconscious soul life, and only looks like something new because it has not come to consciousness earlier, has not crossed the threshold of consciousness earlier? And the spiritual researcher must explicitly recognize such factual objections of the natural scientist as justified. And they are even factually justified; because those people who, in an easy way, without the careful way of that which is explained, for example, as the spiritual scientific meditation method in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, who want to enter the spiritual world easily, without the careful observation of this method, they very easily come to believe that they are seeing something completely new. They then talk about all kinds of things, but they have nothing before them but their illusions, that which they give birth to out of their own soul, for the simple reason that they do not know that they have had it in their souls before and only now, through their efforts, are bringing it out.

Those people who want to enter the spiritual world easily do not become researchers themselves, but illusionists. They surrender to every opportunity that must appear to them as something new. So not only a theoretical, not only a logical way, but a practical way is necessary. But what matters first is that the spiritual researcher is able to carefully examine his research path step by step, and that his research path leads him precisely to this, to gradually surveying what has entered his soul life in the course of his life; and that he is able to dampen, to kill, all the ideas that arise - that is what matters. Because by really learning to practise this act and learning to recognize it, learning to manage it inwardly, you not only dampen the conscious ideas that arise, but you know very well: you also dampen all unconscious ideas; you overcome thinking in thinking.

What is this? This can only be experienced, only be realized. But everything depends on the fact that things are experienced and realized – just as everything depends on experiencing the truth in the external world.

So then, dear ladies and gentlemen, what is being presented from this side of natural science is, to begin with, fully justified. But there is also something else to be said. The natural scientist will say: Yes, we are quite familiar with those morbid states of mind in which a person believes they have a special insight. But we know the physical causes that lead to illusions, to hallucinations; what you are putting forward here are only more subtle illusions, more subtle hallucinations. It must be said, dear lady, that the spiritual researcher fully agrees with what the natural scientist says in this way. For precisely through the paths he takes, and which I have described to you, at least in principle, all that is overcome. One learns to recognize and overcome it: what in the ordinary sense, in the superstitious or otherwise ordinary sense, is called clairvoyance. And if one wants to call the seeing with the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, as I have described it, clairvoyance, then one must understand something quite different by clairvoyance than is so often understood in ordinary life, and that is so often recognized with a light heart as something that can lead into particularly spiritual worlds. All that which appears there as hallucination, as illusion, and which also underlies ordinary clairvoyance, that is not, dearest ones present, a stepping out of the core of the soul from the body, but that is a much higher and more powerful phenomenon, which is the direct and conscious perception of the spiritual world by the spiritual eye and spiritual ear. uzination, as an illusion, and what also underlies ordinary clairvoyance, that is not, dearest ones, a stepping out of the core of the soul from the body, but a much more profound connection to the body than the ordinary, everyday life of the healthy, normal person.

And what in ordinary life is often called clairvoyance does not lead to what, as we shall hear, this true clairvoyance, of which I am speaking today, leads to. Instead, it leads to learning – while one recognizes with ordinary healthy thinking that which is favorable for man between birth and death, through this clairvoyance, which, due to a morbid organization, binds the soul to the body more closely than it is otherwise bound, one learns to recognize something that has a much lesser significance: One does not learn to recognize anything eternal about the human soul, but on the contrary, something much more temporal than one learns to recognize with ordinary, everyday thinking. Therefore, these insights are worth much less than in ordinary, everyday thinking. Just as one becomes dependent on the body when one has even the slightest pain, no matter where, so when there is any morbid tendency in the body, the inner life of the soul is concentrated on it. And one lives, if I may express myself roughly, in a smaller part of the body; while with ordinary thinking one lives in the whole body.

But – I would like to say – the clairvoyance that leads consciously into the spiritual world, leads precisely out of the physical. Therefore, it is only there when this physical can be observed as an external thing – like other external things, next to us, outside of us – in the way I have described.

If you, dear honored attendees, have now come so far as to truly experience this inner spectator, this inner soul-core, then you are living in a spiritual world. Above all, you are living in the spiritual world that is our world before our birth – or let us say, before our conception and after our death.

And now there is no such thing as what is usually called proof of immortality, but now there is the experience of this immortality for the spiritual researcher, and one gets to know these soul cores.

Yes, dear ones, when one otherwise gets to know that which corresponds to this soul core, then one learns it in a very unsuitable way. For what is this soul core? Is it somehow also there in man otherwise?

You see, the consciousness that is actually not consciousness at all, that the human being has from falling asleep to waking up, that lives in this core of the soul, and lives in what is the inner spectator. Only that consciousness is so slight from the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up that it is not really consciousness at all; that is to say, the perception, everything that the person experiences inwardly, is so dull that unconsciousness is poured over it. And through the efforts one has made, one can voluntarily, not only in sleep but voluntarily, draw out of the body the same thing that is otherwise only lived through in sleep, and unconsciously live as a spirit among spirits, among soul-spiritual beings, and now consciously live in it.

Therefore, the spiritual researcher, because he can feel his thinking in such a way that it lives in the finer body, as I have described it, and because he lives by feeling his will and getting to know the will in in which the human being lives unconsciously when falling asleep and waking up. Therefore, the spiritual researcher may speak of the finer body, and he may also speak of the other body, which can be experienced separately from the physical body during sleep. But in sleep we get to know it in such a way that we know, so to speak – I have to express it figuratively now, although all of this can be expressed in quite scientific terms, but that would take us too far now – that when this inner soul core – that which is outside the body in sleep, outside the physical body, then that which actually lives in the core of the soul [...] lives in the core of the human soul as dreams, and it reflects what the dream phenomena are, what reminiscences of life they are or the like.

But that is not what actually lives in the core of the soul. When the core of the soul is experienced outside the body – as can happen through spiritual research in the manner indicated – then one knows what this core of the soul is.

Yes, what is it then? That which passes through the gate of death, that which is our life-fruits, that which we think, feel and accomplish, and what in our thinking, feeling and accomplishing between our birth and death as fruits, as germs prepared, that carries through the gate of death.

And if you now look at it the way it has been described, you realize from all that does not come to consciousness in ordinary life, but which develops in our inner being just as a plant germ develops in a flower to become the next plant, as surely as one knows that the nature of the plant germ is such that it can develop into a plant again, so one knows that what lives in you as just an observer, as this second being, as the other person, what is inside there, that is the germ of a new life on earth. We know that it only needs to go through a period of development in the spiritual life between death and a new birth, and what develops into an individual earthly life develops so truly as the individual plant germ develops into a new plant. Only that there may be obstacles in the outer physical world for the plant germ in its development; whereas in the spiritual world there can be no obstacles for the soul germ, but under all circumstances it will enter into another earth-life!

[And while the ordinary memory - of which one notices, I said, when the memory images occur like this, how one can then dampen these images] - while this ordinary memory ceases, while one feels, as it were, hollowed out from all memory images at the moment one has dampened the images, the images now occur that let one know: Before your birth, or conception, you were in the spiritual world. You descended from this; as a physical human being you are not a product of only the paternal and maternal elements, but a third element from the spiritual world has joined with this duality, and with the paternal and maternal and with the hereditary current, that which comes from your previous existence on earth. In this way, through inner research, repeated earthly lives become a certainty, as the spiritual researcher can say, even if this certainty is perceived differently from that of the natural scientist. They become a scientific truth, the repeated earthly lives, which in more recent spiritual life have blossomed out again in such a brilliant way, first for Lessing. These repeated earthly lives.

This then adds results to the other results of developmental science; these will be incorporated by spiritual science into the spiritual development of humanity. But it is not only by realizing that human life goes through repeated earthly lives that one enters the spiritual world, but one really acquires the ability to research in the spiritual world.

But you have to realize, dear audience, that this research in the spiritual world is different from that in the physical world. This must be emphasized. The one who first hears that there is such a thing as true clairvoyance, an insight into the spiritual world, believes that when the spiritual researcher shines a light into the spiritual world, then he has the spiritual world before him in such impressions as the physical man has the external physical world before him.

Yes, you see, there is no question of that, esteemed attendees! The spiritual world is more real than the physical; but it is not like the physical. While in the physical world things spread out and then enter our thoughts, that is, they enter our field of consciousness through our sense organs, the spiritual beings, into whose sphere we enter through spiritual research, enter through our will element, but this does not have the power of that arbitrariness that would arise if only what the external natural scientist knows were spirit. And since, as I said, I do not want to talk in nebulous terms, but always in concrete terms, dearest present, I do not want to shy away from also hinting at how such spiritual experiences now take place, compared to ordinary clairvoyance.

I am well aware that by making such statements from the specific field of spiritual research, I must expose myself even more than I already have to the risk of such things being seen as fantasies, as dreams; but they are not. They are not in the sense that Copernicus' and Galileo's ideas were not fantasies, although their contemporaries thought so. For just as Galileo, even if he did not actually say it, is reported to have said, “And yet it moves!” the spiritual researcher must say in the face of all the objections that are raised against looking into the spiritual world: And the soul, the human soul, it nevertheless looks into the spiritual world! It learns to recognize that there is a spiritual as well as a physical in our environment, only that it enters our consciousness in a different way, in a truly clairvoyant way.

An example: It is self-evident, dear attendees – one does not do this out of immodesty, but because it has to be done – one must give such examples from one's own experience in the broad field that we have been able to observe. [I will] share a simple fact.

You see, dear audience, the one who first has to do this or that in the physical world, for which a certain spiritual power is needed, which he may think he can achieve, even in a certain limited area, practices such activity intensely, and he is no longer aware of anything other than that he practices it intensely. This feeling, however, stops with the spiritual researcher. For example, it may happen that you have to do something in a certain period of time, to organize something artistic. If you now need to organize this artistic thing, then you have to bring it forth from the depths of your soul's strength, I would say, even if it is to a limited extent: inventive powers, powers that research something that is not yet there. In a sense, you have to become productive.

When I myself was once in such a situation, it came so vividly to my mind to whom something specific in this activity is actually due. Years ago, dear audience, a friend of mine died who had been close to me in life, a personality who was fully artistic in her entire soul development. She passed through the gate of death. With a soul with which one has been connected in life – so spiritual science teaches – one remains connected with it, whether it is unconscious, as it must be for the non-spiritual researcher, or conscious, as it can become for the spiritual researcher. Years later, when I was called upon to perform a certain task that involved what this other personality counted among the special powers of his soul, I knew that everything I was able to accomplish in doing so was imbued with that soul! However, in order to observe this, dear ones present, it is necessary to be able to apply all criteria. Of course I know that the natural scientist or the person who values a scientific world view alone can say: Well, that went into your soul; that then came out of your soul. One can talk like that as long as all application remains nebulous. But when one sees the forces of the deceased soul striking like an influx into the increased willpower and then raising it into consciousness, when one looks at it like that, as one looks at what is before one's eyes as an experienced , then, dear attendees, there is no denying the spiritual world and the connection of the human soul with it, just as there is no possibility of denying the external physical world when you see it with your eyes.

And so that which now enters consciousness not through external but through internal organs becomes the content of a concrete spiritual world - a spiritual world in which not only the dead are the so-called dead, but in which there are also other spirit beings are present, who are active in the evolution of the world and live in it, descending into physical existence, of which one becomes, as it were, a fellow, once one's spiritual eyes and ears have been opened in the way just described.

It must be emphasized again and again: Of course, for our time this must seem more fantastic and ridiculous to many than it seemed to people who once believed that the earth stood still and the sun moved around, and the whole starry sky, and who then heard about Copernicus: That must be different. But what was once a reverie, a fantasy – as it is in The Transfiguration – later becomes a matter of course, as what seemed paradoxical to mankind before has become a matter of course. And those who are familiar with these new research results know that this talk of the spiritual world will one day become a matter of course.

You cannot even begin to guess what a difference habitual thinking makes, what it means that you are not accustomed to even considering such a thing. But spiritual research then extends to other things as well, and I will select another example from this broad field.

We see, dear readers, not only people who have, so to speak, fully lived their lives, going through the gate of death; we see people going through the gate of death in early youth; we see people going through the gate of death - in our time, particularly painful for our soul - not because the inner, death-bringing forces send them to their death, as it were, but because they pass through the portal of death through external causes, through external violence, through a bullet or the like.

When the spiritual researcher focuses his attention on these so-called early deaths, which occur, then he arrives at a view, at a realization, which also makes these early deaths appear in the world in a meaningful way.

After all, we do not do it any differently in science: we see separate facts; we seek to recognize their essence and to find a connection in them. This is also how the spiritual researcher proceeds with what he now cognizes spiritually. And when the spiritual researcher, guided by his inner path, has come a certain way in spiritual research, then, if I may say so, when the inner circumstances are favorable, the inner soul conditions, one is led to certain inner fact connections. If one concentrates on a certain context of facts, in the way one has acquired the ability to meditate, then other contexts of facts arise in the soul, in the spiritual eye, and one recognizes the relationship in the process.

In this way the spiritual researcher can concentrate – but as I said, only when he has gone through the paths that have been described today – he can concentrate on this: A human life comes to a physical end in early youth by violent means, by a shot or something similar. A soul passes through the gate of death in such a way that not those forces that work inwardly in the organism have had an effect and brought about death from within the organism, but through violence from the outside, through an accident and the like, such a human life perishes, passes through the gate of death. If one concentrates on this – but as I said, with the powers that one has acquired on the path of spiritual research – then another fact comes to mind, and one recognizes the connection between these two facts.

And this other fact is this: that even in ordinary human life we encounter two different aspects in a certain area. We observe children growing up. We are, for example, educators or teachers of these children. We know very well: we make an effort to educate the child in this or that. We will strive for this or that knowledge through this or that, which arises from the child's soul. But with some children whom we teach and who have the potential to become more learned, more talented, more intelligent than we ourselves are as teachers and educators, we notice that something is emerging from unfathomable depths. In one child this may be something modest, in another child it may be the potential of a genius. We see in the small and in the large, the emergence of ingenious powers from the human soul. And now we recognize the connection between these seemingly far-removed facts. That which manifests itself in a later period, often years later, in some child in particularly ingenious ways, has passed through the spiritual development, through the invisible spiritual development, and has its cause in the violent death, which can be brought about by external violence. It does not have to be the same soul; but some human being perishes. What he goes through when his soul is violently snatched from the body in this way, that communicates itself to the purely spiritual world, and becomes interwoven with a human soul - with a very different human soul it can be interwoven - that is in the life between death and a new birth! And this soul brings that power, which comes precisely from such a death, into the new life. And these powers arise as genius powers.

This does not always have to be the case, dear ones present, it does not always have to have this cause! In the future of the earth's development it will perhaps be quite different when genius powers develop. But for the life we can see, this is initially just a strangely mysterious connection, a connection that certainly provides insights that are really such that one says: spiritual science provides insights that give us insights into the meaning of life - even when this life touches us particularly hard, particularly painfully in some places. We can also investigate pain and suffering as meaningful phenomena in life. And spiritual science leads to a certain higher point of view - although it is not there to make people shallow, superficial people who are beyond pain and suffering. No, pain and suffering must be felt, otherwise they cannot become the cause that now arises from them. If one were to believe that spiritual science would simply be a means of numbing pain and suffering, then it would eliminate pain from the world and prevent the emergence of what should arise from pain and suffering. No, spiritual science does not numb pain, but from a certain higher point of view, it shows how pain and suffering also fit into the meaning of life.

Finally, I must draw your attention to one more point, esteemed attendees: it is an absolute misunderstanding to believe that spiritual science is in any discord with natural science in its views! No, spiritual science fully recognizes everything that it achieves on its part, and also fully recognizes what experimental soul research achieves. Spiritual science is much more at peace with these other sciences than these other sciences want to be at peace with spiritual science. There is a science of the soul that seeks to find out through all kinds of reflection. And many today believe this, even in those circles that practice public psychoanalysis, a science of the soul. They believe that by observing thinking, feeling and willing, as it lives in man, one can find out what the immortal is, what the eternal powers of the human soul are.

Spiritual science in particular shows that natural science is basically right from the standpoint that it is increasingly asserting today. Indeed, spiritual science perhaps takes an even stronger position than natural science itself already has today. To those who say that one can know something that corresponds to immortality in the ordinary thinking that a person develops here in the physical world, or in his will or feeling, the natural scientist rightly objects: Yes, look at the human being, at his thinking, feeling and will: if a part of the brain is paralyzed by some force, an entire part of his soul life can fail. We also see that thinking, feeling and willing, just as the organism has developed from early childhood, also changes. We see it as being linked to the organism. Do we not see how this thinking, feeling and willing is bound to the organism?

From today's point of view, the natural scientist can rightly object to those who want to prove immortality from ordinary thinking, feeling and willing.

But spiritual science also shows that this ordinary thinking, feeling and willing, this ordinary, this unique thinking, feeling and willing that asserts itself in physical life with ordinary science, that this is bound to the instrument of the body. And here spiritual science leads to something else, [namely, that] what is in this thinking, feeling and willing must first be developed in the human soul! It is always there; but it must first be made clear: And that is the immortal essence. And it is the essence that was there before birth, or let us say, before our conception and that will be there after our death. It is a different state of consciousness, it is a state that looks back on our life on earth – not an unconscious one, but a [higher state of consciousness]; for the spiritual researcher also develops through to a higher consciousness, as I have shown you. And this is what we carry through the gate of death.

We must not believe that something new is meant by the spiritual researcher carefully working his way up; this eternal essence is contained in every soul; the spiritual researcher only sees it – it is in every human soul just as, of course, an object is there even if you do not look at it. Only looking at it is what spiritual science brings. But spiritual science shows that, in addition to the thinking, feeling and willing that is in the physical body and bound to the body, there is another that is not bound to the body and that can be recognized as such. That the spiritual world must be recognized differently than the physical world is what constitutes the essence of spiritual science. And so spiritual science leads to the eternal powers of the human soul - which, developed, are already contained in the thinking, feeling and willing that is bound to the body - which can be found when that which lives as an eternal core of being in man is developed and can only not be perceived by ordinary thinking, feeling and willing for ordinary consciousness. New, different from the ordinary power of consciousness of the human soul, this spiritual science must reveal for the human soul!

As I said, it is quite understandable, esteemed attendees, that many things still have to happen before a larger group of people even see something in what has been suggested today as a small stimulus, but what already exists today as an extensive spiritual science, just as an extensive natural science exists.

But, dear ones present, everything must, I would say, enter the world in a state of germination. And that there is nevertheless a certain need in humanity, that is very well known to anyone who can get to know the, I would say, more intimate forces at work in human souls. In their consciousness, many people today still resist the acceptance of what has been hinted at here; but in the subconscious and unconscious soul forces, a great number of people, without being aware of it today and want to admit it, a great number of people have longings for such knowledge of the soul life as has been hinted at and as it must come - as surely must come as the newer natural science has come in place of medieval natural science.

And as an outward sign that with such views we no longer stand entirely on an unreal ground, it may be pointed out in conclusion – so, as I said, it may be taken as an outward sign – that it has already been possible, through the constant willingness of a large circle of friends of this spiritual-scientific world view to make sacrifices, it has been possible to build a structure for this spiritual science, a structure as a shell for this spiritual science, here in Switzerland, in Dornach, near Basel. As I said, I only mention it as an external sign; as an external sign of reality, of the real ground on which one can stand when speaking of this spiritual science.

There must already be a certain understanding in a larger circle, if sacrifices are to be made to create such an outward appearance for this school of thought today.

The main focus today could only be directed towards the essential spiritual science in this building. Those of you, esteemed attendees, who will one day turn their attention to this building in Dornach, near Basel, will see that even in the external forms and in the whole furnishings of this building, something comes to meet you that is, I would say, to the old architectural styles, old building furnishings, as spiritual science is to the old habits of thinking of people.

Many errors and misunderstandings have been spread about this Dornach building. Misunderstandings and errors about it might lead one to believe that even people who have seen it appear as though their eyes had not seen what is there! I have heard it said, for instance, that the interior of this building is completely filled with all kinds of mysterious symbols and magical figures. As I said, if you were to direct your attention to this building and look at it, you would not find a single one of the commonly used magical symbols and figures, none of that stuff at all – just a new way of building, a way of building that makes the building a kind of shell for the thoughts and ideas that are to live in it. And just as earlier buildings were the shell for earlier things, so this building must also have different forms because it is the environment for other things. Just as in ancient Greece the shell was created for Greek thoughts out of the comprehensive that was available to the Greeks, so with our building here something has been created, and not in an inartistic way and manner - for every allegory and symbolism and the like is inartistic - not in an inartistic, but in an artistic way, an attempt was made to create a building in a style appropriate to this spiritual science. For this spiritual science can be poured into forms, can live out its life without thereby wanting to speculate. Without there being symbols or allegories, it can be translated into forms in everything. With artistic feeling, [one can implement that which lives in spiritual science into the outer forms of all the arts - architecture, language, sculpture.]

And when such things occur, for example, someone says: Yes, I like some things about this building, but there you have seven columns on one side, and seven columns on the other side as well; why do you have that? That is not meant to be a symbol. Those who study the matter more closely will really confirm – because the columns are no longer identical, because the capitals progress, have been made unequal – that the motif, which was first engraved on a column capital, actually ends at the last column. Just as the tones open in a seven-part scale and the octave is the repetition of the fundamental tone, and as one is not dealing here with some kind of fantastic symbolism, not with some kind of magical symbolism, so it is not the case here either. And if someone is looking for particularly subtle, inner reasons, reasons that are supposed to be spiritual science, then you can always say: Look for similar reasons to those why there are four different strings on a violin, if someone says there could also be five strings or three! It cannot be otherwise than that there are four strings; just as little as it can be with us six or eight columns, but must be seven! It is an inner, organic structure of the motifs, and the motifs yield this number seven - not some superstitious attachment to a number seven or the like.

Everything should be thought of in artistic terms! I wanted to mention this in particular, not, dear honored attendees, truly not, to make propaganda for the Dornach building, but to point out how spiritual science is in fact capable of intervening in human life. As it encompasses artistic forms, so it will also be able to encompass other forms of life, albeit perhaps more slowly than in artistic forms. Thus it will try to penetrate into all life, into all conceptions of life. And many souls today already long for such a conception of life, which shows the soul in a living connection with the spiritual world to which it belongs, even if they may not know it. That is why spiritual science is already allowed to say what it has to say among people.

I know, dear attendees, that what I would call emerging from the depths of spiritual existence – just as the findings of science actually emerged and came to light over time and then communicated themselves to the development of humanity – often has a difficult path. But anyone who is connected with the inner meaning and sense of the matter knows that truth finds its way in the world, however little credence is given to it. And should it go through the thinnest cracks in the rocks of the mind that confront it, it will find its way!

Therefore, the one who has to represent these spiritual truths - even if they are still regarded by wide circles as fantasies, as dreams, perhaps as something even worse - is imbued with the fact that even if they could not enter into the consciousness of humanity today, if they were completely suppressed, they would emerge anew, because they are intimately grounded in the nature of the human soul!

Therefore, in my closing remarks, I would like to express the consciousness that comes to the soul from this spiritual research when it is properly engaged in it. But before that, let me draw your attention to the fact that one does not need to be a spiritual researcher to recognize spiritual truths. Just as not everyone can become a chemist, that is, not everyone can conduct experiments in a laboratory, not everyone can become a biologist to verify the biological, chemical, physiological, and astrological truths that are communicated to the general consciousness of humanity, not everyone needs to be a spiritual researcher; although to a certain degree, as you can see from my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, everyone can at least to a certain degree recognize the truth, the validity of what spiritual science has to say; but in principle one does not need to become a spiritual researcher oneself. What the spiritual researcher brings out of the spiritual world, when it is spoken, when it is clothed in words, can also be recognized by the non-spiritual researcher, in as far as he has been able to reflect on what has been imparted. And there is a healthy sense of truth by which one can recognize the truth of spiritual experiences. Therefore, anyone who is a priori under the authority of all possible present-day scientific truths – although he cannot investigate them himself and says that he is a very clever person because he believes in scientific truths – must not object that those who, although they are not spiritual researchers but followers of spiritual science, are superstitious and gullible! They are so to a lesser degree than precisely the one who simply describes them as believers in authority. Because that which is brought from the spiritual world does not speak to our lack of understanding, but it speaks to our understanding. And I have just said at the beginning that one must first understand the spiritual world; one must be able to look at it. And this understanding can first be acquired in the message. It is, so to speak, the first step in entering the spiritual world.

Therefore one should not say: I will first recognize the spiritual world in its individual manifestations when I have investigated it. For one must first understand. Even the spiritual researcher himself must first understand, even if this seems paradoxical, just as one also understands certain mathematical laws through their occurrence and then knows that once one has gained this understanding, experiences that have not yet occurred must take place – just as one can calculate solar eclipses in advance. Because one has first understood the nature of the whole, for example, one first understands the spiritual connections; and then, with what is happening in the outer world with this understanding, the outer world illuminates that which one must first have as a concept.

This in itself is certainly something that still goes against the thinking of many researchers today; but that too will become part of people's minds over time. And having explained this, dear attendees, how the consciousness of someone who truly understands the essence of spiritual science - understands how it must arise in our time in the spiritual development of humanity , just as the newer natural scientific world view arose in the Copernican era, the spiritual researcher, when he has attained this consciousness, which arises from the nature of spiritual science, thinks: Yes, it is understandable to be an opponent of the truth; one can, for example, misunderstand the truth, misunderstand it completely, when it contradicts old habits of thought. But those who misunderstand, who fail to recognize the truth, will always be followed by others who can recognize it! For truth is something that is alive within. And though it may be misunderstood, it always knows how to find the way to its own recognition through an inner strength and intensity! One can also hate the truth, esteemed attendees. But he who hates the truth will experience that the truth has such a power over life that the hatred will eventually rebound on him. And in the face of hatred stands the truth; and he who knows how to live in it, yes, by recognizing the intrinsic value of truth, knows: you can revile the truth; but even more than with hatred, the reviling against the truth falls back on the reviler himself.

You can also suppress the truth; but you cannot destroy the truth. You cannot destroy it.

This awareness is gained particularly from spiritual science. Because – even if I express it figuratively, it is not meant figuratively, but literally: the human soul and the truth are sisters. And even if the human soul can sometimes come into conflict with the truth, can come into discord with it, if it can prove to be unloving itself, there must always be times and places when the human soul unites lovingly with the truth. For they become inwardly aware – human soul and its sister, the truth – that they belong together, that they must belong together in love, that they, as two sisters of world existence, have a common origin in the one, all-pervading and world spirit, which can be recognized when one finds the paths to the eternal powers of the human soul.

In the preceding meditations I have spoken to you about three successive but interrelated supersensible modes of knowledge: imaginative knowledge, inspired knowledge and intuitive knowledge. And I have tried to explain to you the views of the world and life that can be arrived at by applying these modes of knowledge. Today I will only add to what I said yesterday the knowledge to be gained through such supersensible insight into the innermost nature of the human being himself, the knowledge about which the human being longs for an answer because not only does the satisfaction of a religious or theoretical need somehow depend on it, but the possibility that the human being may only become fully human at all. All human striving ultimately aims at this: Man wants to become fully human.

That which forms the actual center of our being and which we initially face with the ordinary consciousness that we, so to speak, summarize it in the only point that we then express with the word “I”, we actually face in ordinary life as something unknown. And it is precisely this mode of knowledge, as it is meant and characterized here, that gradually leads to the self-knowledge that is initially accessible to the human being. I would like to use a comparison to make it clear what I actually mean. When we look around us with our eyes, we see things through light, which itself is supersensible, but which, in its effects in the colors of objects, makes them perceptible to us for this one sense. But we can also say that we see that which is not illuminated by light. If we have a white surface somewhere with a dot in the middle, we see the white through the effect of light, as we can imagine. But we also perceive the black dot, that which confronts us as dark. We know something of this black point. If we reflect properly, it is something like this in our ordinary lives with our perception of the self. We perceive the things around us. We also bring thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will from our own soul life to our consciousness. That is, so to speak, the illuminated part. But what belongs to us in all of this, the I, that we actually perceive only as a black spot. In our ordinary consciousness, we only know about it through the fact that we perceive nothing. I would like to expand the comparison even further. I would like to remind you how you actually have to put together your entire life on earth so far in your memory from the parts that you can see because you have lived through them in an awake state. But when you look back, you connect these experiences, which you have spent while awake during the day, in a single continuous stream of reminiscence. But these experiences are everywhere interspersed with what happened while you were asleep, let's say, dreamless sleep. And dreams also mostly belong to what has been forgotten, so that we can say in general: while you were asleep. In fact, in remembering you would always have to imagine these intermediate pauses if you wanted to place the complete stream of your experiences before your soul. But yesterday we saw that the I with the astral body - that is the actual soul being with its center, the actual self - dwells outside the physical body from falling asleep to waking up. They only emerge from their unconsciousness, in which they are during sleep, when they are not left to their own devices, but when they can submerge into the etheric body, the time body, and into the spatial or physical body. With the help of these supports – we cannot call them tools in the proper sense, as we saw yesterday – they have thoughts, mental images and, through mental images, feelings and impulses of will, which are more dream-like and also asleep. In order for the I and the astral body to truly unfold the forces that they have within them, it is necessary for them to submerge into the etheric body and the physical body. Thus, when we look back on our life on earth in our ordinary consciousness, we never actually remember the true form of the I and the astral body, but only what arises when this I and this astral body have support in the physical and etheric bodies.

From this you will see that it is more than a mere comparison when I speak of the fact that the I and the astral body, that is, the actual soul being, is like a dark point within that which is actually perceived. We would have to see the true form and capacity of this ego and this astral body in retrospect if we saw them not only as dark inclusions, but as realities, as we otherwise perceive realities. But we lift these soul entities out of their indeterminacy, their imperceptibility, through imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. As I discussed yesterday, we first lift the thinking part of our soul out of the dark uncertainty by immersing it in the physical body. This thinking part initially only uses the physical body as a kind of thinking power, which is present in this physical body in the form of air-like substance. And then, when sensory perceptions, emotional experiences, will impulses or desires are added to thinking when fully awake, where the soul must fully submerge into the physical body, where everything in the physical body must be utilized by the soul, then what would otherwise would otherwise be mere fleeting thoughts, as long as the processes take place only in the airy substance of the body, can, as it were, condense into the ability to remember and into that which, as thoughts, as mental images, connects with sensory perception or emotional experiences or volitional impulses.

We can study the human organism in a much more detailed way with the means of knowledge I have mentioned than we can without them. Ask yourself what a person usually has as a mental image of their physical body when they do not think about it too much. Of course, if you think about it a little, something else immediately arises. He has the mental image that the physical body is limited by the skin, and that inside it is actually a closed mass, which one thinks of as more or less solid or semi-solid. But we must take into account that hardly ten percent of the human body is really solid, that for the most part we are a column of liquid, that we constantly carry air within us, that through the airy we are constantly not separate from the outside world, connected to the outside world. The air that was just outside is then inside me; the air that I have inhaled, that has been processed in the body, is then outside. So that man, if he is to be understood completely in terms of his physical body, must be seen as a solid, liquid, air-like substance. And all this is permeated by the warmth element, which works in these different substances.

When, upon awakening, the soul descends into the body, it is the case with the purely conceptual that it does not descend further than what is present in our body as air-like substance. The thought takes hold of the airy element. It is quite wrong to speak of the thought merely in terms of vibrational nerve processes and the like. All this is revealed to the imaginative view that the mere thought, which also lives in dreams, first takes hold of the airy element. Then, as this air-shaped element enters into certain processes, the thoughts are transferred to the watery element, and from there they imprint themselves on the solid, salt-like element. This makes it possible for the reflexes to arise later as memories, and this through processes that I unfortunately do not have time to describe, although they are very interesting.

In this way one can gain an intimate insight into the workings and weavings of the soul within the body, graduated according to the aggregate states of the human physical body. This physical body gradually becomes transparent. One sees the weaving and workings of the soul within it. One sees that which I had to say remains actually obscure to ordinary consciousness. I put it like this yesterday: When we have the simplest volitional impulse, we first have the mental image that something should be carried out, for example, that the arm should be raised. Then this mental image shoots into our organism to become will. This eludes ordinary consciousness, just as sleep states do. In relation to the will, ordinary consciousness also sleeps in the waking state of the human being. But then one sees the effect again, and that again as a mental image. But then, when one studies the matter with the means of knowledge characterized here, one sees that when the thought becomes an impulse of will in us, this thought first has an effect in the air element of the human physical body. Then it is transferred again to the solid and liquid elements, and it is through the impulse of will that matter is, as it were, burned. In the liquid part of the human physical organism, matter is reduced to nothingness, as I described it yesterday. But because this is taking place, because matter is being reduced to nothingness, empty spaces are created in our physical body, so to speak. These empty spaces create a completely different dynamic. We become immersed in them. So that when we see through something with these means of knowledge, which becomes an act of will, we first perceive the thought, then perceive how the thought shoots into the body, how it destroys matter there, how we witness the rearrangement of the material. This is how the other state of equilibrium comes about, namely that matter is returned to nothing. This witnessing of a different equilibrium leads to the physical body also following this evocation of a different equilibrium in its movements, so that action then occurs, the action that is directly bound to the human being's physical body. In this way, the human being's will also becomes transparent in the soul, transparent down to the last details.

Just to show you that anthroposophy is truly not something that just rambles and rambles in vagueness, but that it enters into the very concrete facts of the world, I would like to give you a small example where there is also a will impulse. This example is taken from language. We have - I will choose a characteristic word, I could also choose another word - we have the German word “hier”. I say: “The box lies here.” What actually happens in the human organism when it comes to pronouncing the word “hier”? The first thing that happens is that what lives in the breath is first grasped in the subconscious. And this, what lives in the breath, is now the thought. The thought lives in the breath. We only have a real mental image of the thought when we know, from anthroposophical knowledge, that the thought can really live in the inhaled air, that it is a force that can act on the inhaled air. Only when we cannot go into these details do we come up against all the difficulties of psychology, taken physically. If we believe that thought can directly move a bone, that is, can have such a robust effect on physical matter, we cannot get by. But if we know that thought is something that is transmitted in a roundabout way through the warmth element into the air element, then what is stimulated there is continued into the rest of the organism, and we begin to grasp what is there with an impulse of will. So we can say: First of all we have the experience of breathing. This experience remains unconscious. Only the insight characterized here can transcend it. Then the second element is added: we inwardly experience that which now continues out of the breathing process into the liquid element of the organism. We experience that which signifies a direction in the speech organism. In the arm, it would mean an outstretching of the arm. We perceive this in the i. So we perceive the continuation of the thought-air into the watery element, so to speak the stretching movement. We see through imagination the transition from the breathing movement into the stretching movement. And then this stretching movement is formed in the right. If I were to say only “here,” I would have to draw it: 1st breathing process 5, 2nd stretching movement ie (the horizontal is drawn). But if I now draw the stretching movement as it is experienced unconsciously when I pronounce “here,” I must draw it like this: I perceive the breathing process, perceive the direction of the stretching, which is not carried out, but rolls along in the r. And then I have really experienced inwardly what is present as a volitional impulse when I pronounce the word “here”. In this way, we can follow the impulses of will that express themselves in language when we use our imagination to look into the whole weaving and ruling of the soul that permeates the physical body and the etheric or formative body.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

With imagination, we can initially gain an overview of the kind of things I have described here. When inspiration comes into play, we see how the soul plays within; how the physical body and the etheric body are something that exists externally in space and time, and how, on this, yes, I cannot say it well: like on an instrument, because this is in turn constantly being created by the soul processes, but like on a support, a ground that is constantly being worked on, the soul plays. Through inspiration, we thus advance to the actual seeing of the work of the soul in a physical organism.

When we then ascend to intuition, we perceive something else. Then we perceive: there is a law in the world that has nothing to do with physical law, but a law that certainly takes hold of people. I can perhaps express myself best about this fact in the following way: When one looks back at a later age on the way in which one's life on earth has passed, then one finds that, if one is honest with oneself, one must admit that one is actually nothing other than what one has become here in one's physical existence on earth as a result of one's experiences. Consider only: solely from this life. Consider how you learned to think, how you learned to feel, how you may have been stimulated to do this or that by meeting a particular person at a particular point in your life, which in turn may have had an effect on your character. Put together all the individual experiences you have gone through and ask yourself whether you would have become something different in relation to what you are for the outside world if different experiences had entered into your existence. If you follow this train of thought properly, you will soon see how something has been living in you from the very beginning, unconsciously drawing you to that which has become so important in your life. It is interesting how sometimes people who have reached a certain age and who have not used their lives to dream, but to grasp the facts of life that have come to them in a deeper sense, how such people, when they look back on their lives, came to say - Goethe's friend Knebel, for example, was such a person - “When I look back on my life, everything is like a dream.” , when they look back on their lives, came to say to themselves: When I look back on my life, everything is so systematically ordered. Not even the smallest event could be missing if I were to be exactly the same in my earthly existence as I am today. If the smallest event were missing, there would be a slight change, but a change nonetheless. Just think what, say, the sixty-year-old Goethe would have been if he had not experienced Italy. With Goethe, it is almost tangible. He did not go to Italy on a whim, but because there was a deep yearning within him. But these deep longings are not just there, if we want to analyze them precisely, so that we can always explain them, the following from the earlier, but they are born with us. We really find something planned in life. Of course, one could be deceived about that at first. I have only mentioned this because, after all, one can approach through the most ordinary observation that which is now given by intuitive knowledge. Intuitive knowledge really does give a full insight not only into what is going on in our organism in terms of the soul, but it also gives an insight into what works in us as the center, the I, the actual self-being. And this self-being reveals itself to intuitive insight at the third stage of supersensible knowledge. It reveals itself in such a way that we really do not stand passively in relation to the facts of the external world, but that we are drawn to them through that which is in us, and not through heredity, but from the deepest central soul being, which has been drawn into us from a spiritual-soul world at birth and has taken on a physical earthly body. Through intuitive insight one comes to realize that this I does not actually enter into earthly life in such a way that it would have to be passively surrendered to the random facts that come its way, but that it is strongly attracted by one fact and strongly repelled by another. It positively seeks its way in the world. In short, it is born carrying within itself the predisposition to its destiny.

And if we then further develop this intuitive insight into the nature of the human self, we come to realize that this ego has undergone repeated earthly lives. These repeated lives on earth did, however, begin at a certain point in time, before the I was so little different from its surroundings in its ancient form of existence that there was no such thing as a change between life on earth and spiritual-soul life. The repeated lives on earth will continue to be experienced until a point in time when the ego will again be so similar in its entire inner makeup to the spiritual world that it will no longer need an earthly life.

Thus, when we fully recognize the ego, we look back on repeated earthly lives. In other words, we look at the entire life of a person as proceeding in such a way that we have parts of that life between birth and death or conception and death, other parts between death and a new birth; that is, in repeated earthly lives the person lives out his full existence.

The usual objection is that people do not remember these repeated lives. This only applies to the ordinary consciousness. The moment intuition sets in, what happens through the repeated lives on earth becomes just as much an inner view of the soul as memories within a single life on earth. So it is here that anthroposophy does not come to its results through abstract proofs, as is the case with ordinary philosophy, but by first preparing the soul for higher knowledge and then recognizing these things through intuition. But this means that anthroposophical knowledge proves to be a continuation of the knowledge we have today in science, but it is a continuation that must work in a completely different way from the mere scientific knowledge that is recognized today.

Often the question is asked: how does anthroposophy prove what it asserts? Those who ask this question and who, because the usual form of proof is not available in anthroposophy, deny that anthroposophy is scientific, do not consider the following – I can only explain these things approximately, but they are absolutely and precisely true. The person who proceeds to prove something shows, by the very fact of proceeding to prove, that what has to be proved is not present in his intuition. Actually, we prove everywhere where we have no intuition. If I have to prove that yesterday a human being was here in this room, I shall need proof only if I myself have not seen the person here. This is basically the case with all proofs, and this is also the case with the proofs in the historical development of mankind. When, in their older, more instinctive knowledge, men had a view of what they called the divine being, they needed no proofs. The proofs of the existence of God began their life in historical evolution only when the view was lost. Proofs begin everywhere when there is no view.

The anthroposophical method, however, consists in first preparing the human soul so that it can then be perceived. When this is described – and this is the peculiar thing about anthroposophy – it can be brought into the forms of common sense and understood in the same way that a non-artist can understand a work of art, even though he cannot make it. Therefore, it cannot be objected that Anthroposophy cannot be grasped with common sense. It can only be investigated by someone who is an anthroposophical researcher himself. It can be understood by anyone who wants to apply their common sense without prejudice.

Thus we see that it is first of all knowledge of man, self-knowledge, knowledge of what the I really is, whereas otherwise, with our ordinary consciousness of the I, we have only a void, a darkness, a gloom, so that a knowledge is imparted of the real I, but that this I can then be seen in its eternity, and in this eternity as continuous through repeated earthly lives. Just as I have shown you that the human organism becomes transparent to the soul right down to the will, so too – as I have already hinted at in the previous days – the outside world is also made transparent. The soul-spiritual of the outside world is recognized through imagination, inspiration and intuition.

Many people who get to know superficially what is presented through anthroposophy, perhaps even only from the writings of its opponents, very often say that anthroposophy is a rehash of old worldviews, for example, of Gnosticism, which, after all, still prevailed among very many people in the first Christian centuries. They therefore say that we are dealing with something that has basically been refuted by the evolution of humanity over time, or at least has been overcome. Anyone who really focuses only on what has been presented in these lectures will not be tempted, even if they are also familiar with Gnosticism and anthroposophy, which certainly appears with new means and methods of knowledge and takes into account the consciousness of present-day humanity, to somehow combine it with Gnosticism. This anthroposophy works in such a way that it presupposes the scientific development of the last centuries. Of course, Gnosticism did not take this into account, because its existence preceded the development of science. But there is something else that could lead one to the temptation to lump anthroposophy together with gnosticism. The only way to avoid doing so is to really delve into the essence of anthroposophy. The only thing that anthroposophy might have in common with gnosis is that it also takes into account, in a certain way, what is a prevailing worldview in our time, and that is agnosticism, which is in a certain respect the opposite of gnosis and is also the opposite of anthroposophy, but in a different respect.

This agnosticism can first be characterized in terms of its theoretical aspect. It is present when a person speaks in the way, for example, Herbert Spencer spoke. Many others have followed in his footsteps, but they are not fully aware that they are agnostics, although they are actually agnostic in their entire way of thinking. He said: We see the world of the senses around us. We have the intellect, which rises from observation and experiment to the contemplation of the laws in this world. - To this we add what we can survey from ordinary consciousness as phenomena of the soul. Here too, a makeshift search is made, for it is only makeshift, for some kind of law. But then those who do not simply reject every supersensible reality, contenting themselves with the intellectual comprehension of sense perceptions and inner soul experiences as they present themselves to ordinary consciousness, , said: Yes, but one cannot penetrate with human abilities to what now lies as some or many origins behind these appearances; one cannot achieve a real gnosis, a real gnosticism, no knowledge. One is an enlightened person precisely because one admits that the origins of things cannot be known or investigated. Agnosticism in this form has taken hold in wide circles. It also exists in different variations. This agnosticism, when it appears philosophically, is a kind of opposite to anthroposophy, and I could, if I felt like it, start from this point in time to turn polemically critical, abusive if you will, against contemporary agnosticism, depending on my mood. What can be said about it, insofar as it really brings corruption to the human forces of progress in civilization, can soon be read in the journal “Die Drei”. I explained it in a lecture I gave at a Stuttgart School of Spiritual Science course. As I said, one could also approach the matter from this side. But I do not wish to do that today. I should like to show that this agnosticism also has its origin in the evolution of the human spirit.

Of course, errors can arise in the individual spheres of life. Then we become critics of these errors. We must root out these errors and illusions. But when something arises with such widespread popularity as agnosticism, then we can indeed fight it, the fight can be justified, but we must also ask: Yes, how is it that within the spiritual development of humanity something like agnosticism has arisen?

Now, anyone who sees more deeply into these matters must ask themselves the following: We once had to advance to that in the development of humanity, which I strictly defended on one of the last lecture evenings for the external natural sciences, especially the inorganic natural sciences; we had to advance to pure phenomenalism, as Goethe also demanded. To that pure phenomenalism, which no longer uses thinking to construct all kinds of atomic worlds behind sense perceptions that can no longer be perceived; which uses thinking merely to read sense perceptions, to remain within the phenomenal world, to arrange the phenomena in such a way that they appear to us as archetypal phenomena in the Goethean sense. All this has been done in the most diverse variations here in recent days. I do not want to deny that something of the kind does not live in a great number of people of the present time. Nevertheless, on the one hand, there is a definite tendency to theorize, where we, so to speak, once we have entered into thinking, pierce through the sensory carpet and continue with thinking for a while beyond sensory perception, where there is no longer anything for thinking to create. There we then posit atoms and all sorts of other things. This corresponds to a kind of law of inertia. Thinking will, in accordance with our present position, our present relationship to the world, actually only be applicable in such a way that we can apply it in the service of grouping, of interpreting phenomena in relation to one another, thus remaining within the phenomenal world, so to speak, reading the phenomenon and not underlying things with all kinds of explanations.

When someone writes down the word “table”, they have details. They try to combine the individual letters into a word. They read. They would start the wrong activity if they said: T, and then had to assume that processes were taking place that combined the T. Then the i. Thus he who, in following an inner law of thought, penetrates the sensory tapestry with his thoughts, instead of reading in the sensory world, exempts himself from having to do so. One penetrates the sensory world and puts forward hypotheses, which is not to say anything against phenomenal atomism. Some people in the present are well aware that there must be a pure phenomenalism. That is simply the direction in which natural science is tending. The natural scientists themselves, after all, are more concerned with experimenting and observing than with reflecting on the methods. Therefore, one cannot really blame them when all kinds of constructs are added to the phenomena. Then they believe they have facts in these constructs. But certain philosophical minds feel that it must come to pure phenomenalism. In particular, among Western thinkers – in the East it is quite different – we often have such personalities who see clearly that the science of the external world must ultimately come to a pure grasp of phenomena and use thinking only to allow the phenomena to interpret themselves reciprocally. “All fact is already theory,” says Goethe. And in William James, the American who established pragmatism, a philosophical interpreter arose in response to pragmatism. In Europe, he has emerged somewhat more blatantly in the so-called “as-if philosophy,” where it is said that one should not interpret anything into the phenomenon. But one must still ascend to something that is no longer an appearance, so one does not say of what arises: it is there, but one acts as if it were there. Much clearer than this “as-if philosophy” is that of William James, who actually gives up any substantial effect of the power of thought. He is clear about the fact that with thinking one can only group external facts and come to a point where one can then control these external facts in practice in the service of human development, of civilization. So that he actually sees nothing in all the laws that man penetrates to but practical guidelines, so to speak, for getting along with the world.

In principle, this is something that phenomenology tends towards. If we study it in its purity in Goethe, where it appears in a wonderful way with its full justification, we recognize that it was bound to arise, it must be there. Only through pure phenomenality can man fully enlighten himself about what is actually in his environment. But then everything that goes beyond the phenomenon is initially something that man cannot cope with. If one knows nothing of methods of knowledge that ascend into the supersensible worlds, that is, that ascend from phenomena as facts to other, but now supersensible facts, then, by tending towards phenomenalism, one must ultimately say to oneself: Only phenomena exist at all. When I examine them with my thinking, I do not discover anything that lives on behind them, other than the phenomena themselves. For the archetypal phenomena are ultimately also only phenomena. So that I actually get nothing out of them but practical principles for using the phenomena in the service of human beings.

Assuming that this were already fully developed; that phenomenalism were there, and thinking were to consist only in regulative principles ordering phenomena, then we have something that we could no longer call knowledge in the sense of the older concepts of knowledge, for example, gnosis. For what did that consist of which, in the past, out of instinctive human worldview, was always called knowledge? In my book 'The Riddles of Philosophy' you can read more about this in Greek times: Cognition consisted in the fact that when one looked at the world, one did not merely perceive the sense perceptions - sounds, colors, qualities of warmth - but that one perceived the thought objectively outside, outside oneself, like a color. Goethe still claims for himself that he sees his ideas in the world as the Greeks saw the ideas in the world, namely as sense perceptions. But now imagine a person in this mental-sensual activity. He looks at something, not just the colors, but the thoughts. By looking at the thoughts, he feels within himself, he experiences within himself not something passive as today, where we have only the sensual before us, but he felt activity within himself. This is the reason for Plato's assertion that there is something active in seeing, something like grasping. He felt something like activity, something that connected him as a human being with what he saw as an object outside. And this was knowledge, this feeling, this experience of an activity, it was not merely the acceptance of a passive thing. This way of experiencing knowledge is today found only in some retarded individuals, in some people who live more by their instincts than by their intellects, or it can be newly acquired by those who, in the anthroposophical sense, work their way up again into higher knowledge, but now fully consciously and not instinctively, as was still the case with gnosticism. But today ordinary consciousness is increasingly approaching the point where it is passively surrendered to external phenomena, where thinking is no longer considered a phenomenon, where it lives only in it as a guiding principle for ordering phenomena more and more practically and putting them at the service of humanity.

What is accomplished there with the phenomenal world does not lead to knowledge in the old sense. Those who, for example, still have the religious content with the God impulse from old traditions, like Spencer, for example, and then see what is called knowledge today, but which is no longer knowledge, gnosis, they profess that they say: One does not actually come to the source in this phenomenal existence. Agnosticism! And basically this agnosticism has two sides. On the one hand, it takes away everything that makes us strong as whole human beings when we have an activity in cognition. On the other hand, however, we have to go through this phase of human development, to be purely passively devoted to the phenomena. It is part of the overall development of the human race to develop this phenomenalism in the Goethean sense, because it conveys to us a level of truth that is necessary for the overall development of humanity.

What follows from the fact that we come to the phenomena and are thus, if we know nothing but the external phenomena, drawn into agnosticism? It follows that if we want to remain human, we have to approach the spiritual world in a different way than by interpreting the external sense world. And for that part of the external world that underlies the sense world, we cannot find it within the sense world. There was a time in my life when I was acquainted with a number of so-called teleologists. These people would come and say that the mechanistic worldview, pure phenomenalism, was not enough for the external world. One of these people even wrote a book, which was admired by many, about “empirical teleology.” He tried to show that mere causality is not enough, that one can also determine a certain purpose in natural phenomena, purely empirically. People felt very exalted about the mere mechanism, which has a certain justification in external natural science, by introducing a kind of teleology in this way.

I said to people at the time, including this Nikolaus Cossmann: just look at a clock. This clock can be explained completely mechanistically when it is in front of you. There is nothing there that causes us to assume little demons inside that make the wheels turn or anything like that. Any nebulous mysticism is excluded if you just look at the thing. I strictly held the view that the world of phenomena must be explained from itself. All interpretation and carrying in of teleology and the like is harmful. But the clock was made by a clockmaker. I will not get to know the clockmaker from the clock, but I can get to know him as a person. I choose methods other than analyzing the clock to get to know the clockmaker. I seek him out, perhaps in a social context, somewhere other than his shop. - At the moment when one is clear about the fact that the external world is to be grasped phenomenally, at that moment one has not, so to speak, demystified it, but one has shown the necessity of seeking this spirit, this supersensible, on other paths, through other means and methods of knowledge. And these are precisely the ones I have described. They must be added to the phenomenalist methods of knowledge.

As you can see, anthroposophy is currently endeavoring to fully establish and accept phenomenalism because it is clear that what leads to spiritual worlds must be achieved with these other methods of knowledge. This also includes what underlies the external sense world as a spiritual being.

So you see, on the one hand I could have repeated what I said in Stuttgart, as I mentioned earlier. I could have said: mental images become weak within agnosticism, because they are only passively devoted to the external world. But because we have weak mental images, we also have weak feelings. Feelings live in man in such a way that he must stir them up himself. They become sentimental, or else they remain dull, so that they become untruthful. Feelings thus become nebulous, sentimental or dull. As a result, a naturalistic or untruthful tendency has entered into our art, because art particularly emanates from the world of feeling. But because mental images do not enter into the impulses of the will as strong forces, we lack the right kind of determination today. In particular, we lack determination when it comes to taking on something new. We let what seems unfamiliar to us pass us by as a sensation. This is basically how it has been with anthroposophy for twenty years. Many people have heard about it, but they cannot decide, out of their usual experiences of the soul, to let it be more than a sensation. Agnosticism weakens us in our will. It even weakens us in the face of religious experience today. As a result, many people who have long aspired to have an elementary religious experience end up immersing themselves in traditional religions. How many honest seekers have recently returned to Catholicism. Or one returns to oriental mysticism. Because agnosticism weakens our mental images, we do not feel strong enough for elementary religious experiences.

Anthroposophy adds to the passive processing of the world in phenomenalism the impetus of imagination, inspiration and intuition, and thus even comes to a real grasp of that which, as supersensible, enters into our historical existence. She comes to a real grasp of the Mystery of Golgotha. She comes to a grasp of the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that she can see how the pure, divine being, the Christ-being, has taken possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This in turn gives real meaning to the mental images of the resurrection, of the connection between the living Christ and our own human development on earth, while it is actually deeply significant that theologians, who are considered enlightened in recent times, have said: Yes, one must just look at the life of Jesus. The resurrection, they say, arose as a belief, but one can only speak of an arising faith. What actually happened in the Garden of Gethsemane cannot really be spoken of. Anthroposophy, on the other hand, will speak of these things, which can only be grasped as supersensible, which cannot be grasped if one wants to grasp them with the usual historical methods taken from the world of the senses. I could speak at length about the deadening of our religious life through the widespread agnosticism of today. But I will only hint at that. It has already been discussed elsewhere.

But there are two sides to every coin. One can also speak of agnosticism in such a way that it has emerged as a necessary phase of development in the more recent history of mankind; that it is, so to speak, the accompanying phenomenon of pure phenomenalism, which we have to work our way towards. But even if this pure phenomenalism is of extraordinary interest to us as we work our way into it, we cannot gain from it that which is most important to us for our innermost humanity. We must gain that in a different way.

Now let me add something personal, not out of vanity or silliness, but because it is relevant. I have already mentioned that I completed my “Philosophy of Freedom” in 1894. I am convinced that this “Philosophy of Freedom” could not have been written by someone who is not a pure phenomenalist in relation to natural science. For, although I am a pure phenomenalist in the field of natural science, what was I compelled to do in order to found the moral truth? I was compelled to introduce into this “Philosophy of Freedom” the moral intuition, which I have already characterized here as something thoroughly supersensible and spiritual. Especially resented was my ethical individualism. But it was necessary. I had to show that in the individual human being, the moral impulse can be intuitively experienced in an individualistic way through ordinary consciousness, whereas otherwise intuition can only be attained through higher exercises. This was how it had to be done in order to give the moral world a foundation, if one was a pure phenomenalist who already ascended into the spiritual world at that time. For in the face of pure phenomenalism, the moral impulse disappears when a person is only completely honest with himself. If he is dishonest, he succumbs to all kinds of illusions.

But anyone who has met people who have wrestled with worldviews not in theory but in every fiber of their emotional life knows what the tendency towards phenomenalism, which has agnosticism in its wake, can mean for today's people. I have met people who say to themselves: If we grasp the world with today's scientific means, we see only natural processes in it. We can hypothetically trace it back to a primeval nebula or something similar, which is the event of our earth. We can follow it to the end, to the heat death or something similar. But then we see how we can develop the moral world within us for a long time - it is only a haze and fog that rises above the only real thing, which begins with the primeval nebula and ends with the heat death. And after the heat death there will be the great field of corpses for all that not only lived on earth, but also what strove there for moral impulses, for religious inwardness. All this will be buried. Certainly, not many people feel this discrepancy for their own spiritual life, but there are people who feel it. I have met them, with all the inner tragedy that made them doubt not only the reality of what could be grasped in religious terms, but also the reality of a moral world order. They are haze and mist, rising from the merely externally phenomenal facts.

Now let me add something personal, not out of vanity or silliness, but because it is relevant. I have already mentioned that I completed my “Philosophy of Freedom” in 1894. I am convinced that this “Philosophy of Freedom” could not have been written by someone who is not a pure phenomenalist in relation to natural science. For, although I am a pure phenomenalist in the field of natural science, what was I compelled to do in order to found moral truth? I was compelled to introduce into this “Philosophy of Freedom” the moral intuition which I have already characterized here as something thoroughly supersensible and spiritual. My ethical individualism was particularly resented. But that was necessary. I had to show that in the individual human being the moral impulse can be intuitively experienced in an individualistic way through ordinary consciousness, whereas otherwise intuition can only be attained through higher exercises. This was how it had to be done in order to give the moral world a foundation if one was a pure phenomenalist who already ascended into the spiritual world in those days. For in the face of pure phenomenalism, the moral impulse is lost if a person is only completely honest with himself. If he is dishonest, he comes to all kinds of illusions. But anyone who has met people who have wrestled with worldviews not in theory but in every fiber of their soul knows what the tendency towards phenomenalism, which has agnosticism in its wake, can mean for today's human beings. I have met people who say to themselves: If we grasp the world with today's scientific means, we see only natural processes in it. We can hypothetically trace it back to a primeval nebula or something similar, which is the event of our earth. We can follow it to the end, to the heat death or something similar. But then we see how we can develop the moral world within us for a long time - it is only a haze and fog that rises above the only real thing, which begins with the primeval nebula and ends with the heat death. And after the heat death there will be the great field of corpses for all that not only lived on earth, but also what strove there for moral impulses, for religious inwardness. All this will be buried. Certainly, not many people feel this discrepancy for their own spiritual life, but there are people who feel it. I have met them, with all the inner tragedy that made them doubt not only the reality of something grasped in religious terms, but also the reality of a moral world order. They are haze and mist, rising from the merely outwardly phenomenal facts.

This is rooted in the way our society is organized. Millions and millions of people, especially those in proletarian circles, only see reality in external, economic phenomena. What is spiritual – law, morality, art – is nothing, as they say, but an ideological superstructure, something that arises merely as a sham, an ideology. And so we have progressed in the agnostic direction to the point where one speaks of ideology. I myself, having been very active in working-class circles, have experienced the sense in which ideology is spoken of there, which, after all, is basically only the fault of those who, today, also from the direction of science, speak of everything spiritual, not quite clearly, not quite honestly, but actually in the sense of an ideology. We have arrived at the opposite pole of human development compared to the one that was once the oriental worldview. It spoke of Maya and of the true essence. Everything that is only accessible and attainable to the senses was Maya to it, was illusion. And the real, the truly real, was that which is now graspable for man above the sensual. Today we live in a worldview that presents exactly the opposite. For those who are agnostic, the sensory world is the only reality. They could just as easily say maya as ideology about that which can be grasped beyond the sensory world. We should translate this word in this way. Our maya is the spiritual; once the maya was the sum of sensory phenomena.

But this forces us, precisely because we had to arrive at this point, to take our paths of knowledge to the other side. For if we now ascend through imagination, inspiration, and intuition into the spiritual world, then we recognize precisely that which leads us to the actual essence of humanity. And we find the strong impulse to ascend into these worlds when we become fully aware that the sense world may only be explained from within itself, with its own methods. This gives us the impetus. But then, if the sense world can only be explained from its own methods, then thinking serves only as a tool of explanation in it. Then thinking has significance for the sense world only as a servant, for the mutual interpretation of phenomena, in order to bring the phenomena together in such a way that they explain each other. Then thinking, as we have it in pure phenomenalism or agnosticism, is merely an image. Then it no longer contains any reality. The Gnostic felt the reality of thought by looking at it. Our thinking has a mere image existence.

What follows from this if we really ascend to this pure thinking and grasp our moral impulses in it? Now, if I have a mirror here, with images in it, the mirror images cannot force me to do anything through causality. If I want to be led by mirror images, my thinking in the world development of humanity has progressed so far that it really only has the character of an image, so it no longer contains causality for me. Then, when I have moral impulses, pure thinking is formed into impulses of human freedom. By arriving at phenomenalism, and thus at pure image-thinking, and by being able to grasp moral impulses through the power of pure image-thinking, we also pass through the stage of freedom. We educate freedom into our human nature by going through this phase of human development. This is what I wanted to present in my Philosophy of Freedom. But we only become free when we have a thinking that is image-thinking, that proceeds entirely within the physical body, as I have described. At the moment we look further back, we see not freedom but fate. You see, here we have the opportunity to recognize that which we call human destiny, because it rules in the unconscious, because we only come to its rule when we ascend to intuition. Because we find spiritual laws in this destiny that work through repeated lives on earth, we have a spiritual necessity in it. But by entering into life on earth, we free ourselves from necessity for certain actions, and only follow the image-containing thinking, and in the present epoch of humanity we are thereby educated to freedom. There is no contradiction, if one looks into the matter properly, between destiny and freedom. However, in order to be able to present the concept of fate to the world correctly later on, it was necessary that the concept of freedom be presented first in the “Philosophy of Freedom”.

You see, what needs to be done is not a blind railing against agnosticism, because in a certain respect it is only the other side of phenomenalism. We read in natural phenomena, but if we merely read them, we do not find in them what we have to seek on the higher paths of knowledge. But precisely for that reason we need them fully only when we no longer bring forth instinctively from our human nature that which is the impulse of our thinking. In ancient times, even in the times of Gnosticism, man brought forth not only hunger and thirst from within himself, but also active thinking. He was not yet a technician in the modern sense. One only becomes one when one embodies pure thought outwardly in matter. I am even convinced – please forgive me for bringing up something very personal – that if I had studied philosophy in the conventional sense, instead of being educated at a technical university and finding my way into this technical life of the present, I would not have written the Philosophy of Freedom, because it is precisely the opposite pole to the experience of pure fact. And the pure fact, which is experienced in the outwardly mechanistic, and which then also leads to phenomenalism, is absolutely what, on the other hand, first evokes the full opposite pole. Otherwise, we instinctively bring something from within us that dreams little demons into the clock. We first seek the truly spiritual through inner powers of knowledge, which we must first gain when we can no longer approach our physical environment through instinctive forces and bring into it what arises from instinctive observation. On the one hand, the age of technology, with its machines, is precisely the fertile soil for a spiritual, anthroposophical worldview. And in this sense, a clear knowledge of the spirit must be brought about through anthroposophy, precisely from a non-mystical view of the world. We must not arrive at a new gnosis, based on active thinking by instinct, but we must seek for true spirituality in the outer sense and the inner human being, on a path of knowledge to be attained by practice.

We must close this course at some point, and since I wanted to present to you today what anthroposophy is in contrast to the prevailing agnosticism, we who have participated in this course are obliged to part.

Anthroposophy, as I have already mentioned, arose entirely out of the scientific spirit of modern times. Anyone who compares my earliest writings with my later ones will recognize this. It then took on the form in which simple human minds found each other and tried to satisfy certain religious needs within this anthroposophy. It may be said that there have been quite a number of such simple human souls who have found what is most essential, what is absolutely necessary for the human being, already in this anthroposophy.

It has always been a strange relationship with the scientists themselves. I can still see some of them sitting in front of me – I like to be specific – I can see a botanist sitting in front of me, for example. He was a theosophist in the sense that you may also be familiar with, in the sense of orientalizing mysticism, as it prevails in theosophical societies, for example. I had one of the most learned botanists in front of me, so it was natural for me to talk to the gentleman about botany. For me it was something natural. But he did not want to hear about it. No, no, botany must remain what it is in the university cabinet, not only with him, but also with other botanists. It should remain precisely in the way one acquires practical knowledge through the botanizing drum and works with the microscope. He should not interfere with that! Immediately, when I started a botanical topic, he talked about the etheric body, the astral body and even higher bodies. It was the rule in this theosophical movement that one first talked about all possible bodies, until far up, where they became more and more misty. They did not characterize things as I have done here, by pointing out that the etheric body is a time organism, by trying to present the matter concretely, by characterizing the astral body as that which comes from the spiritual-soul realm and inwardly shapes the body. I have tried to give a characteristic of sleep, even if it is still incomplete. I have always tried to give a concrete description. But people like those I am talking about now were not interested in that. If only one had the words for it: physical body, etheric body, astral body, then further kama manas, and then one went into the highest regions, which became thinner and thinner, but always remained material. It was a strange theosophical materialism that confronted me particularly crudely once when I was at a theosophical congress in Paris. Various lectures were held there. I asked a personality, who was actually very advanced, how she had liked the lectures. She said: Yes, it left wonderful vibrations, wonderful resonances. I felt as if she had said: One smells something extraordinarily good in this room after these lectures. — It was all transferred into the material. One knew nothing of the real spirit. And the man of whom I have just spoken always started from what lay in this direction. I always started from something else, for example, the secrets of root formation, stem formation, flower formation, the spiral tendency of plants, their germination or the like. Nothing, nothing - anthroposophy must not come into it, away with it! The astral body and buddhi and atma kept coming up, as did the rounds and the globes and everything else that is doing the rounds in the world in this sense. In short, I am only giving these as specific examples, but it was actually quite futile to approach scientists in their own scientificness.

But then, with the exception of a few people who had been involved in philosophical work from the very beginning, such as Dr. Unger, more and more younger people were coming forward. And we would never have been able to found the Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart if a number of people had not been truly seized by the anthroposophical spirit in the individual subjects of science in the anthroposophical sense. For only in this way could it also be transferred into pedagogy and didactics. This has also made it possible to expand more and more what used to be available only to simple minds, and to really return to science in a certain way. Today we can already see a broader field. And you were to be given a sample of this broader field, in which we can already work today, thanks to a number of younger forces who are working with extraordinary dedication on the development of the anthroposophical spirit in the individual concrete sciences. One may say that much would also be desirable in another direction. Work in the therapeutic-medical field is still in its infancy. We have also made all kinds of attempts, for example in the economic field. However, it is precisely in the latter that it is clear – and this can perhaps also be seen from events in recent weeks – that it is still not possible to work fully in the practical economic sphere. Hopefully, the things we have begun will continue to progress, and it will eventually be possible to work in this field in the same way as work is being done today in some areas of science itself, and as work can be done in a thoroughly future-proof way in education and didactics through the Waldorf school.

Following on from this, I would now like to express my heartfelt thanks to those here in Holland who, as friends of the anthroposophical movement, have made these college courses possible. It is certainly no easy task to organize such an event, and above all, in order to muster the necessary work in such a case, a deeper understanding of the matter is needed. That this has come about here, fills us - and I am convinced that I also speak from the hearts and souls of all those who were allowed to speak here during this course week - with a deep feeling of gratitude, and I would like to express this to you; first of all to you, who are the organizers of this course. And I would like to combine this feeling of gratitude with the hope that those who have now turned their attention to what has been discussed here over the last few days will feel that some suggestions have been given to them with the little that could be achieved here in such a short time. We cannot do more than give such individual suggestions. If you have the opportunity to develop these suggestions by trying to penetrate further into what has already been worked out, but which is still little known to the world, what has been worked out through the anthroposophical movement, the anthroposophical work, then you will see that this anthroposophical movement is not only not what its enemies and opponents would like to present it as, who mostly, because they cannot be objective, become personal, but that the anthroposophical movement not only is it not what its enemies and opponents would have us be, but that the Anthroposophical Movement is at least sustained by a truly serious scientific spirit.

And on the other hand, I may perhaps indulge in the hope that the lectures I have tried to formulate here this evening may contribute something to showing how unconscious longings live in a large part of civilized humanity in our time, which, when brought to consciousness, represent nothing other than the desire for something like anthroposophy. But the fact that such a longing exists can also be seen from all kinds of negative instances.

There is a personality in our time, Oswald Spengler, who is also known here in Holland, who wrote the book about the necessary decline of the Occident. I have witnessed how, especially among the youth of Central Europe, this book about the “Decline of the Occident” has made a deep, devastating impression. In this book, however, we are dealing with the work of a man who is fully at home in twelve to fifteen sciences, who truly does not speak from lightly-basted knowledge, but who speaks only from the negative authorities that are effective in our time.

One such negative instance is, for example, agnosticism, when it represents the other side of phenomenalism and one only wants to stop at this phenomenalism. The other, the positive, is part of it. This positive seeks to reach anthroposophy on the spiritual path of knowledge. In this sense, I would like at least a little bit of anthroposophy to have spoken to your souls, given your sincerity. Often, when representing anthroposophy, one has the feeling that it has been around for decades, but we are always at the beginning. And now, after decades, we are talking about the very beginning again, despite having spoken to thousands upon thousands of people over the decades. One feels this — not because of anthroposophy, which can wait — one feels it because of the longings of the time as something tremendously oppressive. But that is also why there is such deep satisfaction when people do come together who want to know what anthroposophy is and who, through their studies and serious engagement with life, have a certain ability to judge. Anthroposophy does not have to fear judgment. I can assure you of that from the spirit of anthroposophy. Critics with the ability to judge will always be most welcome to anthroposophy. Up to now, they have mostly become its adherents after they have got to know it. The more objectively one engages with anthroposophy, even if it means criticizing it, the better for anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is not something that works on the basis of blind faith in authority or that counts on a lack of criticism. It prefers those listeners and readers and collaborators who bring their full, discerning soul nature to it, not the kind that often comes from the agnosticism of the present, but the kind that comes from the truly unbiased human soul.

If one can have the feeling that, even if it was a beginning, such beginnings must ultimately lead to something that is connected with the deepest longings and necessities of human development, then one can say that one leaves such a course with a certain satisfaction. And so I believe that those who have spoken here will leave with a certain satisfaction and, above all, with a grateful heart from what has taken place here. But they would like to hope that some stimulating things may also have taken place for the honored audience.

In this spirit, allow me to conclude this course by saying to you in the warmest possible way, out of this anthroposophical spirit: If we have perhaps connected with each other through some thoughts, then we seek the ways to continue to be together, to work together in spiritual work. In this spirit, I bid you farewell for today.

Question and Answer Session

The Hague, April 12, 1922

Question about multidimensional space.

Rudolf Steiner: If I have the usual coordinate system, I have characterized three-dimensional space. Now, let us just discuss it schematically, we proceed from certain algebraic assumptions by abstractly continuing the same process that leads from the plane into three-dimensional space, and we arrive at the fourth dimension, the fifth and so on, at an n-dimensional space. And then it is even possible, let's say, to construct bodies – Hinton did that – to construct the tessaract, but that is not a real body, but the projection of the real tessaract into three-dimensional space. Now the thing is this: in purely theoretical-abstract terms, of course, there is nothing to be said against such derivations. In theory, one can also pass from three-dimensional space to the fourth dimension of time, if one proceeds within the calculation formulas in such a way that one takes into account the leap that is actually made, because it is different after all, if one passes from the first to the second dimension and to the third dimension of space, than if one passes into time. But if you refine it, ... then you can pass over into time. In this way one arrives at an abstract four-dimensional space. If one remains abstract, one can go on doing this as long as one remains in the purely intellectualistic, as long as one is not compelled to follow the matter vividly. But then one is confronted with a problem which, while the purely abstract train of thought leads to a regressus ad infinitum, vividly becomes an elasticity problem. We could also think of the pendulum as continuing to swing forever. But in the dynamic, we will get a state of vibration. That is how it is in reality. If you can get into imaginative thought, you simply can no longer carry out the process in infinitum by assuming a fourth and so on dimension. Then, if I call the first dimension +a, the second +b, the third +c, if I take real space, I am obliged not to write the fourth +d, but by the nature of things I am obliged to write -c. So that the fourth dimension simply cancels out the third bit by bit and only two remain. So instead of four, I end up with two dimensions. And so I am also forced, if I assume the fifth, to set - b, and with the sixth - a. That is, I come back to the point. Elasticity has struck back to the starting point. And that is not something that exists only in the imagination, for example, that is, a subjective experiment, but it is realized in the way I described the day before yesterday. As long as we have, let us say, the earth here and look at the root of the plant, we are really dealing with a special formation of gravity. Here one is in the ordinary dimensionality of space. But if one wants to explain the form of the blossom, then one cannot get away with that. Then, instead of taking the point of origin of the co-ordinates, one must take infinite space, which is, after all, only the other form of the point. And then one comes to going in centrifugally instead of going out centrifugally. You come to this wave surface. Instead of the thing spreading out, it pushes in from the outside, and then you get those movements, which are sliding or scraping movements or pressure movements, where you would go wrong if you took coordinate axes from the center of coordinates, but you have to take the infinite sphere as the center of coordinates and then all the coordinates going towards the center. So, one also gets the qualitatively opposite coordinate axis system as soon as one enters the etheric. The fact that this is not taken into account is the mistake in the ordinary ether theory. Herein lies the difficulty in defining the ether. Sometimes it is seen as liquid, sometimes as gas. The mistake here is that one starts from the coordinate system seen from the center. But as soon as one enters the ether, one must take the sphere, and construct the entire system not from the inside outwards, but the other way around.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Things become interesting when they are followed mathematically and cross over into the physical, and much could still be contributed to the solution of borderline problems if these theories, which begin to become very real here, were developed. But there is still a terrible lack of understanding for this. For example, I once gave a lecture at a mathematical university society where I tried to introduce these things. I explained that if you have the asymptotes of a hyperbola here and the branches of the hyperbola here, what you have to imagine on the right here, spreading out, you have to imagine on the left here, spreading together, so that a complete reversal takes place. These things gradually lead to a more concrete treatment of space. But today there is little understanding for this. Even pure analysts often show a certain dislike of synthetic geometry. And this newer synthetic geometry is the way to get out of the purely formal mathematical and to the problem where one has to grasp the empirical. As long as one calculates with mere analytical geometry, one does not approach the realms of reality. There one has only developed the end points of the coordinates, the geometric location of the coordinates and so on. If one remains with constructing with the linear and with circles, then one stands in lines within them, but is compelled to take a certain visualization to help. This is what makes synthetic geometry so beneficial for getting out of the formal and showing how to think the mathematical in nature.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Question: What does Dr. Steiner mean when he says that the physical body is a spatial body and the body of formative forces is a temporal body? The physical body also lives in time, growing and decaying.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is only imprecisely thought, if I may say so. In order to trace this back to an exact thinking, you would first have to undertake an analysis of the concept of time. Just consider: as the usually meant reality stands before us, space and time are interwoven. One can only think such things when one distinguishes between space and time. In ordinary objective knowledge, you have not given time at all. You measure time with nothing but spatial quantities, and changes in spatial quantities are the means of recognizing what then counts as time. Just imagine a different way of measuring time. Otherwise, you always measure time according to space. This is not the case in the moment when you move on to the real experience of time. People usually do this unconsciously. Actually, thinking is elevated into consciousness through imaginative knowledge. But you have a truly temporal experience when, for example, let us say, on April 12, 1922 at 4:4 minutes and so many seconds, you take your soul life.

When you take your soul life in this moment, it has a temporal cross-section. You cannot say that there is any spatial cross-section within this temporal cross-section. But within this temporal cross-section lies your entire earthly past, and if you want to draw schematically, if that is the flow of your experience from a to b, you have to draw the cross-section A to B. You cannot avoid placing all of your experience in this cross-section, and yet there is a perspective in it. You can say that experiences that lie further back in time are represented with less intensity than those that are closer in time. But all of this is represented in the one cross-section. So that you get different relationships when you really analyze time. We can only form a mental image of time if we do not use the analysis that we are accustomed to in physics, according to space-cognition means, but only by reflecting on our soul life itself. But in your soul life, even if you only have abstract thoughts, you are in the time body. What is important is that we are now able to understand this time body as an organism. You see, when you experience any indisposition, let us say a digestive disorder, in the stomach, you may be able to see that it affects other areas of your spatial organism as well. The spatial organism is such that the individual areas are spatially dependent on each other. In the case of the temporal organism, although we have a later and an earlier, later and earlier are connected in an organic way. I sometimes express this by saying: Let us assume we have a very old person. We find that when such an old person speaks to younger people, for example to children, that his words bounce off the children, that his words are of no use to the children. And we find another person. When he speaks to children, it is something quite different. His words flow by themselves into the child's soul. If you now study — one only does not study these things because one very rarely considers the whole human being, one does not, so to speak, pause with one's attention long enough to observe, for example, the basis of the blessing of an older man or woman, one must sometimes go back to early childhood. Today, observation does not extend that far. Anthroposophy has to do that. Go back and you will find that those who can bless in old age, who have this peculiar spiritual power in them that their words flow into young people like a blessing, have learned to pray in their youth. I express it figuratively: folded hands in youth become blessing hands in old age.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

There you have a connection between what influences other people at a later age and what, let's say, pious feelings and the like were present in the life in early childhood. There is an organic connection between the earlier and the later. And only when you know the whole person do you see how he has an infinite number of such connections. Today we are stuck with our whole life outside of this reality. We imagine that we are full of reality, but we are abstract creatures in our culture of life. We do not pay attention to true reality. For example, we do not pay attention to such things. We also do not pay attention to the fact that when we teach a child, we must avoid, if possible, giving him sharply contoured concepts, especially in primary school. These are really for a later age, as if one were to constrict the limbs and prevent them from growing larger. What we pass on to the child must be an organism, must be mobile. Now you are gradually approaching what I mean by an organism. Of course, it is only possible within the imagination. But one can still arrive at a mental image of an organism, if one is clear about the fact that what takes place in time in the human being does not relate to the spatial organism, but to the temporal organism. Now you see that there is a reality in time. You can also see this in mathematics. There was once a very nice discussion about this. I believe it was Ostwald who pointed out - not a supporter of the humanities, but someone who is not exactly a materialist - that the organic processes that take place in time cannot be reversed with the mechanical process. But the fact is that you can't even get close to the time processes with the usual calculations. You actually always remain outside of the time processes with the usual calculations. They do not follow the processes as such. If, for example, you insert negative quantities into a formula for the lunar eclipse, you get the more distant things, but you do not move away with the things. You only move in the spatial sphere. And so you only get a correct concept of what the human physical body actually is if you can separate the spatial from the temporal. In the case of man it is of fundamental importance, because one does not arrive at any understanding at all if one does not know that with him everything temporal proceeds as an entity for itself, and the spatial is ruled by the temporal as by something dynamic, while with a machine the temporal is only a function of that which has a spatial effect. That is the difference. For humans, the temporal is real, while for a mechanism, the temporal is only a function of space. That is what it ultimately comes down to.

The chairman, Mr. Roser, opens the meeting. He then announces that it is intended to introduce study evenings at which explanations of the idea of the threefold social order are to be given and at which, in particular, the book “The Core Issues of the Social Question” is to be thoroughly discussed. The first study evening is to take place in the coming week. He then reports that the shoe industry has made progress with regard to the works council issue. They have already come so far that the works councils in the leather industry have joined together to form an action committee that intends to become active within the shoe industry in the near future.

Opening words

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees, As on the previous evenings, I will also give only a brief introduction today, so that we can then discuss one or the other specific question in detail. But in view of the waning interest in the works council issue, it may be advisable to make some more general comments at the beginning of this evening.

You see, on the part of the “Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism”, the aim has been to take the first really practical step in the direction that has been outlined by the social movement for more than half a century, by creating a works council. This movement is, after all, like an outcry of the proletariat against its oppression. But this outcry is basically nothing more than a kind of world-historical critique of the capitalist economic order. Due to the world war catastrophe, conditions have now emerged that make it necessary to replace the critique to which the parties of the socialist movement have become accustomed with something else. When people within this movement began to find ways to achieve social renewal, there was hope that, especially among the broad masses of the working class, firstly from their experiences within the capitalist social order, and secondly from the undergrounds that arise because the working class is really much more politically educated than the bourgeoisie as a result of its experiences, an understanding would develop for what should replace the previously merely social criticism of the social order. After the so-called collapse of the German Reich, one could basically only hope for something really decisive from this side, because those who were completely tied to the old state and economic order had nothing to offer that could really lead to a new structure, despite the experiences of the world war catastrophe and its consequences.

One gets quite gloomy thoughts today when, on the one hand, one realizes that the intelligentsia is necessary for a new beginning, and when, on the other hand, one considers the mental and political state of this intelligentsia in today's Central Europe, especially the intelligentsia of those who belong to the leading personalities. From all that has been said here so far, those of you who have been here often will have seen that if we really want to make progress, a new social order must also be found from a new spirit. This applies in particular to the present moment, which clearly shows that Central Europe is in the process of collapse. That nothing can be hoped for from certain circles is illustrated by the following example.

You see, when one speaks of a new spirit with which the future is to be shaped, then one must first ask oneself: where are the manifestations of this new spirit? Now, the political spirit that dominates today, especially the leading classes, I would like to illustrate with an example that could be multiplied a thousandfold. The following words were spoken in Berlin. Please listen carefully, for today it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the spirit of the people. So listen carefully:

"The fact that before the revolution we were generally able to trust in the honest and objective reliability of our government, that in the excellent Prussian civil service we could spare ourselves the need to have a say, is not the least of the reasons for the intellectual superiority that Germany in general, and especially in its scientific and technical development, has demonstrated during the nineteenth century. You cannot serve two masters at the same time. The general politicization is necessarily an enemy of strict concentration and immersion in creative work. May the German mind develop the strength to work its way through the ugly political flood of sin and mud back to that glorious state of trust that Prussia gave us in the form of the Hohenzollerns!"

[Interjection: Is that the Oldenburg Januschau?]

Yes, that's what you think, that it's the Oldenburg Januschau! It would be comforting if it were at least him. But you see, these words were spoken by the leading professor of German language and literature at Berlin University. That is the crucial point! These words, spoken by the representative of German language and literature, the leading representative of this subject at the leading German university, are indeed somewhat indicative of the spirit that prevails among those who today have to inspire our youth for what humanity can expect from the future. Is it any wonder that gloomy thoughts arise when one thinks of this future? Basically, this is mentioned as a characteristic because, after all, those people who are leading the way in journalism today, especially in the journalism of the parties, have learned a great deal from these people in terms of their overall thinking, even if they have adopted individual program points. Above all, they have learned to be short-sighted, not to say dull-witted.

In the face of this, it must be emphasized again and again: Unless people can muster the strength to develop a truly new spirit, a comprehensive spirit, things cannot fundamentally improve. That is why it is so regrettable that the idea of founding a works council was drawn from a truly new spirit, that this idea of a works council, which is a truly practical idea, has found so little favor with the masses. Of course, things can move slowly at first, and that wouldn't even be the worst thing, but the way things have happened must be counted among the worst things.

We started our work here with the threefold social order in mind. At first, as I have already mentioned, the people who are always listened to said: Well, that's just a little folly, we'll let it go. But then this folly turned out to have found a following of thousands in Stuttgart and the surrounding area. That made people extremely uncomfortable. Then the practical idea of workers' councils emerged in a truly practical form. Then people became even more uncomfortable, and then this strange fact arose, which must be recorded again and again: that the parties are now raising objections to the threefold social order in general and to the works council issue in particular. On the one hand, we hear: Yes, the threefold order is all right. When our friends Gönnewein and Roser spoke at a public meeting in the Dinkelacker Hall recently, for example, one of the various speakers, most of whom were opposed to us, said: Yes, the threefold social order is all very well; it must ultimately prevail, but we are fighting against it! — Well, it is good and must ultimately be realized, but it is being fought against. - We want something completely different to start with, and then, when we have realized this completely different thing, then the threefold social order will come about by itself.

Now, there can be no question of the threefold order ever arising by itself; rather, it must be worked hard for. It is, I have to say the word, the biggest swindle when people repeat the old word over and over again: We only need to do this or that, it only needs this or that class to gain power, and then a properly ordered social being will arise by itself. No, the properly ordered social organism must first be recognized and then worked out. And it is characteristic that they keep saying: the threefold social organism is all very well, but that is how a social order must be, as the threefold social organism says, but we are fighting it. But if people are to say what they want, then one hears nothing but slogans and

The only thing I found within the Communist Party with regard to its fight against the threefold order is that they agree – as far as one is confronted with it – that the threefold order is quite good, but that it must be fought. In that they agree. And from the other side it has been shown — do not think that I care about anything, but when it comes to fighting for something, then such things must be looked at — that on the occasion of the publication of the first number of our weekly magazine 'Threefolding of the Social Organism', not a single one of the thoughts contained in this magazine was addressed, but it was all just scathing abuse. This is the result of dullness, of the inability to produce even one real thought of one's own. Therefore one can do nothing but rant. Much has also been said from third and fourth parties that aims in a similar direction. Things were always treated in such a way that it soon became clear that all these critics do not raise any real objections. On the one hand, this reveals an inability, an impotence; on the other hand, it reveals stupidity, in that one says again and again that threefolding is good in itself, but must be fought. Now, if these things are not looked at, if the cancerous damage resulting from party activity is not seen, then nothing healing can come out of the struggle in which we find ourselves.

Dear attendees! Today is truly not the time to get lost in such party squabbling, because today we are close to the point where people with the kind of attitude of Professor Gustav Roethe of the University of Berlin, which I have read to you, are gaining the upper hand again in capitalist circles as well. You don't have to be a friend of these ideas, which are only half or quarter ideas and, on top of that, quite impractical, and you don't have to be a friend of Wissell and Moellendorff, but you have to say that from a certain side they had the power to suppress them. If they had been ousted from another side, it would not have been a particular problem, but the fact that they were ousted from that side proves the current seriousness of the situation in Central Europe. It proves that certain circles feel safe again, circles that felt very unsafe relatively recently.

A few weeks ago, just as I was coming from Switzerland, from Dornach, to Stuttgart and we were beginning our work, it was still the case that the business community, indeed the leading circles in general, felt insecure in a certain sense. There was still a very strange mood prevailing in these circles. And so one could certainly have the impression that something can be achieved if a vigorous movement with content and meaning comes along. At that time, those who abhorred the planned economy and the framework laws of Moellendorff did not yet have the courage to come forward as boldly as they do today. But because it was possible to foresee how things would turn out, one idea was put forward again and again here and in other meetings at which I spoke, probably to the point of tedium for many, namely: Action should be taken on the idea of works councils before it is too late.

In connection with the farewell of Moellendorff and Wissell, it should be noted that the Works Council Constitution Act has now been reintroduced to the National Assembly. You can take all these symptoms together, and you will not find it incredible if today someone who has some insight into these things tells you: all this is the systematic work of the other side, the systematic work of former entrepreneurs who had already felt very close to the abyss and who are now gradually paralyzing the social movement in Central Europe. From this side, no means are spared, including going into partnership with the Entente, if it means paralyzing the social movement in Central Europe. If the ideas of those people who are at work today are fulfilled, and that is no exaggeration, then it is the case that all social striving, as you feel it, is an impossibility for many years. Because then it is not a question of how strong capitalism is in Central Europe, but of how strong Entente capitalism is.

That is how things are on the one hand. On the other hand, we have the most savage party infighting, which would have to be swept away in order to arrive at an objective striving. What does this party infighting reveal? Above all, it reveals the necessity for the threefold social organism. In this threefold order, spiritual life should have an independent administration, on the other hand, state or legal life should have its own administration, and on the third hand, economic life. Within economic life, as a purely economic institution, we want to develop the works councils. This works council system would mark the beginning of a real socialization by separating economic administration from spiritual and political life. What would be the safest way to keep economic life at the mercy of capitalism? By continuing to mix economic life with political life! And what is it that squeals out of the foolish party squabbling? It is the wild mixing and merging of economic points of view and political points of view. These modern parties are so harmful because they are based entirely on what has survived as a fusion of political and economic life. That is why we keep hearing from people who understand absolutely nothing about the structure of the social order that you first have to have political power and then economic power. Then they turn it around and so on. All these things show the most chaotic amateurism. The fact that such views are appearing within the parties shows how necessary the threefold social organism is. And in our day, I would say, we should really, as the twelfth hour approaches, consult with ourselves and ask ourselves: Do we really want to be the fools of the rising reaction by blindly following the party slogans more than ever the seemingly well-meaning Catholics follow them? Don't you want to rely on your own judgment? If you had relied on your own sound judgment, then the works council would have been established already. Just think what it would mean if the works council were already a reality and if the economic demands of the proletariat were taken up by the works councils and were to be heard in all that is now happening within the newly strengthened capitalism and entrepreneurship, in what is being driven on the part of the ore mining industry, which is much more damaging than one might think, and in what is connected with the peace treaty. People have repeatedly emphasized that the main thing is to conquer political power.

Oh, my dear audience, nothing strikes me as more ridiculous than such phrases. Of course, you can say such phrases, that you first have to have political power. But when the first step should be taken to gain power at all, as it could have happened through the election of the works councils, then this first step is not taken. It is not taken because people love to speak in grand words and phrases. But they do not love to approach the issue in a truly appropriate way.

The previous draft of the Works Councils Act has turned out to be impractical and unacceptable. Now a new draft is being presented to the National Assembly, after the timid attempt by Moellendorff and Wissell, which also contained rudiments of a planned economy, was thrown into the underworld, along with the two personalities. All this shows the kind of nonsense being perpetrated by a certain faction, which ultimately will lead nowhere. Imagine if our works councils in Württemberg had been in session for the last fourteen days and had sent tangible proposals for real socialization into the world every day! If that were the case, then one could say: the new spirit necessary for a new beginning arises from this proletariat. If there were a thousand works councils here instead of just a few, then we could say: We laugh at what the big industrialist said after the start of the November Revolution and the outbreak of the strike: “We just have to wait!” Because the time will come when the workers will come whining and begging to our establishment and will be satisfied if they are allowed to work a quarter of what they are asking for now. Well, but today we are not yet in a position to look at things with the necessary seriousness. But it is not enough to express this seriousness only in words; it is important that it is also reflected in actions. If we consider that the Central European industrialists will receive support from the Entente in terms of their power, then we must come to the conclusion that this works council system must be created before it is too late. I am not saying that nothing can be done now. Of course, we must continue to work in the direction we have begun, but it would be playing blind man's bluff to close our eyes to the general world situation. We are in it now, and actually we should not have got into it at all without already having works councils.

You see, in times of such upheaval as the ones we are living through, it is of the utmost importance to recognize and seize the right moment. You can't afford to wait four to six weeks for the right thing to happen. Today, many people know that with the great French Revolution at the end of the 18th century and with the following revolutions in the 19th century, only a kind of emancipation of the human being as a citizen was actually achieved. But the fact that individual people have become freer to a certain extent is meaningless for the broad masses of the proletariat. Why? Because those who rose up against the old feudal order may have seized state power, but they failed to remove the economic straitjacket from the workers, even though they were now personally free. Today it is time to realize that merely seizing state power is not enough. As a result of the revolutions, other people came to power, but nothing really new was created. The old framework of the state was retained. And so they continued to work until the catastrophe of the world wars. They squeezed everything into the framework of the old unitary state. Today the time has come to recognize that the proletariat cannot simply imitate the bourgeoisie, which only wanted to conquer state power. The proletariat must develop something new and not cling to the old unitary state. The proletariat must develop the tripartite social organism. Either we understand this tripartite structure or we will end up with an impossible construct like the state of the 19th and early 20th century. It is not enough to keep saying that we want to overthrow the old institutions and replace capitalism with new social forms! One must also know what these new forms should consist of! That is why an attempt has also been made with my book 'The Crux of the Social Question' to present to people something that really gives the longed-for social community an organic structure. It shows how this social community can become possible and how it can develop. What use is it to always say: things must come from themselves!

Well, I could imagine that such fanatics of self-origin still believe that the social order came by itself, even when it actually had to be fought for hard. You see, if the cockerel on the dung heap crows before sunrise, when it is still dark, and then the sun rises, the cockerel can imagine that it was his crowing that made the sun rise. It is quite certain that a new social order will not come about just by crowing about socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It will only come about if a sufficiently large number of people think: we have to work to bring about this new social order. We must choose from among ourselves those in whom we have confidence, so that, on the basis of existing economic experience, something beneficial for economic life may come about, which can then eclipse all the bureaucratic proposals for laws and the like that are being sought from other quarters. I ask you: Are you afraid of such work, or why do you refrain from creating such a works council, which would really be a power factor because it would be supported by the trust of the workers? At the moment, you can be sure of that, when such a works council produces new fruitful ideas, in that moment the works council is the greatest power in certain areas. It is not the crowing of a cockerel on the dung heap, who believes that the sun rises because of his crowing. It is a call to action, but to an action that is known to be the right one.

You see, I believe that the new spirit could flourish out of such a feeling alone. But as long as this new spirit does not live in people's minds, nothing good will come of it. And the current economic situation is such that, above all, we have to think about how we can get our economic life in Central Europe back on its feet to some extent. Thus, new sources of raw materials of the most diverse kinds will have to be tapped, especially in the East. There will be many a necessity that Central European entrepreneurship has not yet tackled. However, sources of raw materials in Siberia can no longer be tapped, because the course of the world does not allow this today; the Americans and the Japanese no longer allow it. Where we can be effective is in the entire European East. But there it will be a matter of finding the right tone to go along with the Russian national soul. That was precisely the worst thing about the industrial circles that have been leading up to now, that they never found the tone to enter into a corresponding connection with other national souls. That is another reason why a new spirit must enter into our economic life. Otherwise the East will slam the door on us, especially if we come with the spirit that our leading circles have developed so far. Above all, we are dependent on developing a brotherhood, an economic brotherhood, with the East, otherwise we will never get out of the situation we have gotten into.

A new spirit is needed in a wide variety of directions! This new spirit may flourish in hearts and minds, for we need it. You will not find the new spirit in what I read to you at the beginning, because it says that “before the revolution, we were generally able to trust in the honest and objective reliability of our government, that we excellent Prussian civil service state, we could spare the need to have a say in it, and it is not least in this that the intellectual superiority that Germany in general, especially in its scientific and technical development, has demonstrated during the nineteenth century, is rooted. ... May the German spirit develop the strength to work its way through the ugly political flood of sin and mud back to the glorious state of trust that Prussia's Hohenzollern gave us.

You will understand that one cannot speak in this way today. But, ladies and gentlemen, I will now translate these words into another language and then ask you whether one can speak in this way today: the fact that before the revolution we were able to place our complete trust in the honest and objective reliability of our party leaders, that we the excellent Party bureaucratism we could spare ourselves the need to have a say, and it is not least in this that the intellectual superiority is rooted, which Germany in general, but not in its social-democratic and socialist development, has demonstrated during the nineteenth century. One cannot serve two masters, the Party bureaucrats and the tripartite division. The general politicization is necessarily an enemy of strict concentration and immersion in devotion, in loyalty, in party bonze-hood. May the social spirit develop the strength to work its way through the ugly political flood of sin and mud back to that glorious party system of trust, as the party bigwigs have given it to us Social Democrats. You see, you have applied the same thought forms to something else. Whether you are Professor Roethe and speak about the Hohenzollern in this way or whether you are just an honest party man and speak about the party bigwigs in this way, both are based on the same mental perceptions. It does not make a person freer if he simply worships other idols! One becomes free by relying on one's own judgment, on one's own reason and on one's own perception. It is to this inner perception that we have appealed. I hope that it will yet be shown that we have not appealed in vain, for if we had appealed in vain, then the situation of the proletariat would be dire.

Discussion

Mr. Huch: The speaker fully agrees with Dr. Steiner's remarks and expresses his regret that the idea of the threefold social order is not taken up as it should be. He sees the fault largely with the trade unions. As a member of a workers' committee, he also notes that the business community today is again acting quite differently than it did six to eight weeks ago.

Mr. Fischer: He introduces himself as a trade union leader and defends the work of the trade unions against the previous speaker. He explains that it is the fault of the workers themselves if the union does not proceed correctly. — The poor attendance at today's meeting is probably also due to the fact that the workers are suspicious of everything that comes from philosophers, theosophists and commercial counselors. Regarding the works councils, Mr. Fischer criticizes the fact that the works councils in Germany are also fragmented. If there is now competition between works councils in different cities, independently of each other and based on different industries, then that is a big mistake. The speaker professes himself to be a supporter of the works councils. At the moment when the parties and the trade unions have outlived themselves, they must of course be swept away; the only question is what we put in their place. It must be clear that you can't just throw away the organizations that have had the trust of the masses so far. The speaker cannot imagine how unity can prevail in a works council when people with different economic and political views are represented there. If practical socialization is to be pursued, then one must begin by taking the means of production and land out of the hands of the exploiters and transferring them into the ownership of society, because the power of the capitalists is based on the ownership of these means. The speaker asks Dr. Steiner to indicate how the works councils can accomplish this task. Furthermore, Dr. Steiner is asked to provide information on how, in his opinion, the works councils can be put in a position to determine demand. Because as long as the worker has to ask, “Do I have enough to live on?” he will not concern himself with lofty spiritual problems. The starving masses crave bread, not spiritual ideals. Only when food is available again will there also be mental resilience. The masses will certainly not grovel and beg for work, but will throw society overboard. The proletariat's confrontation with the capitalists will not take the form of fine speeches, but of violence.

Another speaker: Dr. Steiner's idea that we must orient ourselves towards the East coincides with what I also said at a meeting. I also said that the new comes from the East; a new form of society has emerged there, perhaps not yet as it should be, but the new comes from there and we must orient ourselves towards it. What do we experience? Our government has known nothing but to look anxiously to the West and to make sure that nothing happens that the Entente does not like. That is the whole evil we are facing today. German capitalism has simply been replaced by Entente capitalism, and we will have to fight very hard battles if we want to eliminate this Entente capitalism from the world. No one has yet succeeded in pointing the way. If Dr. Steiner succeeds, the workers will follow him.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to make a few remarks before I return to the words of the previous speaker.

First of all, it was said that the working class is strongly opposed to the threefold social order because it is based on philosophers, commercial counsellors and the like. This is not true at all; in fact, the working class was not very prejudiced at the beginning of our work. On the contrary, it turned out that we found thousands and thousands of supporters for what we were spreading, not as a utopian idea, but as something that is directly the germ of action, as I called it at the time. The workers at that time didn't give a damn whether these thoughts came from philosophers or commercial counselors, but they relied on their common sense and listened. And those who were prejudiced whistled from a completely different direction. And they have managed to ensure that this prejudice has only gradually emerged. So the matter is quite different.

Although the previous speaker has correctly characterized the movement of commercial employees, which is showing some better traits and deserves to be studied in more detail by the rest of the working class, his words nevertheless show that he is completely unaware of what threefolding is in general and what it specifically seeks to achieve with the founding of a works council. For this is precisely what must be most vigorously combated by the threefolding of the social organism, namely, that this fragmentation occurs. It has never been our aim merely to create works councils for any industry or to individualize within the works council. How often has it been said: If works councils are created for the individual industries, this is the opposite of what must be aimed for in the context of a real socialization. We have always striven for a works council that extends uniformly over a larger, self-contained economic area. And only from such a works council should everything necessary for individualization then emerge. The fact that the matter has taken on the form that more zeal is shown in individual sectors than in others has nothing to do with the works council as it should have arisen from the idea of threefolding.

Yes, and then the previous speaker brought up the argument that one would have to start by transferring the means of production and land into the ownership of society. Just try to think through what is actually meant by this nebulous sentence to its logical conclusion! Consider what such a demand means in practice! I would like to take this up again. I once spoke about these things in a town, I think it was Göppingen, and after me spoke a man who actually spoke quite well from a certain point of view. He was probably a communist. He said he was a cobbler. At first he spoke very well, but then something strange happened: he said, “Yes, I already know that since I have not learned a trade, I cannot become a registrar, for that you need intelligence.” Well, excuse me, but that doesn't require much understanding. But a great deal of understanding and insight is needed for what this man wanted to know about the conquest of political power and the like. These things must be faced.

Now, the specific question is how to implement the fundamentally correct demand to transfer the means of production and land into the public domain. Of course, there must also be people available who can properly manage the means of production and land. The thing is this: what has been the capitalist form of production up to now has a very specific configuration; a very specific way of handling it was necessary for that. This must be transformed into a different way of handling it, and this must first be created. Today, before you have any concrete ideas about how to manage the means of production and the land, you cannot simply demand that the means of production and so on be transferred into the public domain! That is precisely what the workers' councils are supposed to do in practice. You cannot revolutionize anything with phrases and theories; you can only do it with people, and these people should have been the workers' councils, and I mean the unified workers' councils, not the fragmented ones. That is what it is all about. We shall make no headway if we keep on saying that the proposals of the philosophers and commercial counsellors come from the clouds, and then contrast them with a so-called practice that has arisen from even more nebulous regions, because then it becomes apparent that it is impossible to say how such things can actually be implemented. But it is precisely this “how” that is at issue. This “how” is explained in my book The Essential Points of the Social Question; it is only necessary to understand it, that is what it is about.

Yes, and then it has been said repeatedly that we must first change the economic order. The spiritual will then arise by itself. — It will not. We already need this new spirit to change the economic system. And it is precisely then that one speaks impractically and nebulously when one says again and again: We change the economic system, then the new spirit will come by itself. No, you need the new spirit to change the economic system. That is why I say to you: For my sake, you can chase the whole of society away with the words of the esteemed previous speaker – but then also be clear about what you have to do when you have chased away the old society. Do you know what you want to do then? You can't do the same thing, otherwise you wouldn't need to chase them away. If you centralize the entire economy and put super-bonze above super-bonze, do you think that will improve anything? I would like to see if something would be better for the working masses if you were to put the highest-ranking union bonze in the top positions instead of the capitalists and entrepreneurs. That is what you should think about. That is what emerged from practical considerations, however much I liked the tone of the previous speaker's comments. But it has not yet been understood what it is really about, because everything that is happening in the optical industry, in the automotive industry and the like is the opposite of what is being propagated here. And so it is not enough just to point out ways; there must be a real understanding among the broad masses of workers, and then these ways must be developed in concrete practice. That is why I feel I must say, when I hear it said, “Steiner shows us the ways,” Steiner shows us the way – that it will be of no use if I show these ways, as long as large masses are repeatedly kept from understanding by the fact that people keep coming who have not yet understood this way and then speak of the opposite, as has just happened again, and then say: If we are shown the way, we will follow it; I am happy to be taught. – But when something is shown, the objection is that it is nothing. No, as long as this is the case, we will not make any progress. We will only make progress if we develop an instinct for what is right. And that is what we lack from the “Federation for the Threefold Social Order”. At first we found a certain healthy mass instinct, but then we had to learn that there is still a great deal of obedience to the old leaders. I will not doubt the emergence of a healthy instinct, but it will only emerge when those speakers no longer appear before the masses who, without sufficiently penetrating the matter, simply talk and prevent the masses from from taking further steps, but on the contrary, lead them back to their old obedience and to dubious ideas, by saying again and again: “Go ahead and form works councils; they will only fragment again.

If what we have been striving for had really been achieved, we would not have fragmentation, but a unified organization of economic concerns within the works council into the future, at least for Württemberg. This would then have a motivating effect on others and could have an impact beyond this economic area.

Mr. Fischer: He states that his criticism of the works councils was not directed against Dr. Steiner, but against the remarks made by the chairman at the beginning... I said: I am convinced that the ideas that Dr. Steiner developed and carried to the masses were different. But something different was propagated than was shown in practice. Dr. Steiner said that the socialization of the means of production is a phrase and that afterwards there would be no one left who would know how to manage the means of production. It would be sad if the workers and employees who have done the work since then did not know what to do with the means of production! What I mean is that the shareholders should be eliminated and it should be said: the shares are no longer valid. The property should become the property of the general public and be administered by the general public. Dr. Steiner puts spiritual ideas above everything. But the workers today only want bread because they are physically exhausted and unable to accept spiritual ideas. I ask Dr. Steiner to address this and show how these ideas can be made accessible to the masses with hungry stomachs.

Rudolf Steiner: That is a snake that bites its own tail. Do you think it is said on the one hand: We can transfer the means of production into the general public. Well, a really concrete body that would represent this generality would be the works councils. But such a body must first be created, it is not there! Certainly, the great mass is weakened by hunger. But should we wait for manna to fall from heaven so that bread can be socialized? This is a snake that bites its own tail. We must, of course, strive for both at the same time, and we will achieve nothing if we do not all work together, because the manna will not just fall from the sky. There is work to be done! We will all have to work, but we will only really want to work if we see what comes out of that work. We will work even with weakened muscles, with hungry stomachs, when we know that tomorrow our work will lead to a result. – But if we are always told that it should be socialized, then we will not be able to work even with an empty stomach, because we know that we will not be full tomorrow if we do not work with practical ideas.

So today it is important that we engage with this and also say: Well, the old society was chased away in droves on November 9 [...] The previous speaker, who said very good things in general, then described very well what happened then. I do not want to examine now how much of what happened there can be attributed to incompetence. I attribute more to the incompetence of those in power today than to their ill will. Because of this incompetence, what should actually be overcome keeps coming to the fore. This must be avoided. Whether or not this society, which was discussed today, is chased away with or without violence, is another question. But those who take its place must know what they want. That alone is practical. And that is the aim of the 'Federation for the Threefold Social Organism': to ensure that November 9th is not repeated and that in a few months' time we do not have to say: 'Now you see, now we have a different regime in economic life, but it is doing exactly the same thing as the previous one'. This must be prevented. But it can only be prevented by setting up a works council and then showing that things are done differently under the new regime. Of course, if no people can be found among the working population, among the employees, who really know how to work, then one would indeed have to despair. But that is not the only thing. It is essential that new forms of socialization then become visible. After all, people are all accustomed to working in some way under the old regime. Therefore, now that power has been gained, those who have gained it must really recognize how to deal with that power. So, it's a matter of really taking a practical approach for once. And the sad thing is that there is no understanding of such a practical approach today, and people keep coming up with old phrases. Don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that the transfer of the means of production and the land into the community is a phrase as such. That is not what I said. But a phrase, what is a phrase? Something is a phrase for one person because he cannot see anything special behind the words, while for another it is a deep golden truth because he sees something concrete behind it. When, for example, Bethmann-Hohlkopf, I mean Bethmann-Hollweg, says, “Free rein to the efficient!” it is a mere phrase, because he may understand it to mean that, for example, his nephew or someone else is the most efficient. But when someone who has real social insight and a real sense of humanity says, “Free rein to the efficient!” it is not a mere phrase, it is real. If someone simply repeats the old party line about the socialization of the means of production, then it can be a mere catchphrase. But when someone characterizes it as it is in my book, then it is not a catchphrase, then it is an expression of a reality. Therefore, you do not have to believe that when I call something a phrase, it is meant to be absolute. I mean, it is a phrase when there is not the necessary reality behind what has been said. That is what I wanted to say.

Mr. Roser: The previous speaker is mistaken if he thinks that I welcomed the works councils in the shoe industry because they formed separately. I just wanted to state that the leather industry has grasped the tripartite structure of the social organism. I must note that the works councils in the footwear industry have been firmly established on the basis of the tripartite division; only for this reason did I welcome the matter. A start has to be made at some point.

Mrs. Bühl: I would like to tell Mr. Fischer that the union secretary said: Without a law, there can be no works councils; the law must first be created. The main reason why we still have no workers' councils is the fault of the parties. It's a disgrace that when you go to a meeting and express your convictions, people immediately say, “Ah, one of Dr. Steiner's people.” Why can't we express our convictions? And then they always come to us with the “Kommerzienräte”! Why do you always speak in the plural? I only know of one Kommerzienrat in our family, and it wouldn't be a mistake if we had a couple of dozen of them. Just think of all the things that one Kommerzienrat has achieved! First of all, the free school. It's a shame when you hear how the matter is judged. It's good when Kommerzienrats do it that way. I couldn't open a school. It's the stupid mistrust among the workers and the parties. [Shout: Where does he get the money from?] One opens his wallet, the other doesn't; that's the difference. If a person thinks socially and has a feeling for his workers, that's the main thing!

Mr. Huth: Mr. Fischer's comments call me to the scene. First of all, I would like to confirm to him, because I know him, that he is not one of those union bigwigs who move in the spirit of a Legien, but one of those who are active in the spirit of a truly revolutionary working class. But when he criticizes the fact that works councils have been formed and united in the shoe industry, and when he wants to use this to assert that a fragmentation would take place because other occupational branches also have works councils, then I have to correct him. In the shoe industry, when we elected our works councils, we waited quite a long time for the metal industry here to start electing its works councils as well, so that we could form a works council in the sense of the tripartite division together with them. But as time passed, and this was due to the fault of the proletarian parties, and in the other occupations the matter has not yet progressed as far as in the shoe industry, we had to say to ourselves: There is no point in not getting together and doing practical work ourselves. We have to form a works council, no matter how small, and then spread the idea of the works council to the circles of those workers who have not yet taken any action in this direction.

We cannot wait for some government to bring us socialization. The liberation of the proletariat must come from the proletariat itself, and if it is on a path that a philosopher has shown, if the path is good. It has been pointed out that the old slogan: We must first conquer political power - is repeatedly haunting people's minds. This is hammered into the proletarians again and again. This word is actually a phrase, a dishonest phrase of the parties that call themselves proletarian today, but do not know what to do in the given hour. Because they do not know, they always put off the proletariat to the great Kladderadatsch, until we get reinforcements from the West that will give us political power. We had the power, but what did we do with it? We let it slip out of our hands again because we didn't know what to do with it. We must start by conquering not political power, but economic power through the works councils. Then the power will no longer be able to slip out of our hands. The factory councils, which are to be only economic instruments, will then be supplemented by political councils, by a legal organization. But if we do not also associate the spiritual organization with these two organizations, then we will not arrive at a healthy state, as Russia shows. The leaders of the USP have already risen to a two-fold structure. But the cultural part must not be forgotten either!

When I read Däumig or Müller, I have to say to myself: Put into practice, this will lead to a threefold structure, because they have actually only forgotten the cultural part. — I am a member of the USP, but I am not afraid to tell the parties that they do not know what to do. As proletarians, we have to say: if you don't understand how to lead us, then you have to leave the field. Every movement has the leaders it deserves; so do we. The proletariat as a whole has not yet mustered the courage to tell its leaders who they are. Even if it is already quite late, we must nevertheless take up the question of the works councils with renewed energy. Mr. Molt: The person speaking to you this evening has repeatedly mentioned, if I may say so, the old council system. Mr. Fischer, whom I have the pleasure of meeting again, asked me the specific question of where the money I have actually comes from. This money comes from exactly the same capitalism from which Mr. Fischer also draws his money, that is, from the capitalist economic cycle. And the question is only whether one keeps the money that one acquires on capitalist ground to oneself or whether one gives it back to the general public. By their deeds you shall know them! – In the past, it was said: By their fruits. If you found a school to implement true socialism, if you used the money you had saved through hard work – really through work, not through capitalism – to educate the rising generation in ways other than what we were taught, I would call that the practical fruit of a good idea. If it only came about because I was able to fill my stomach a little better during the war and therefore had a good idea, then it's good that at least that's there. The idea seems to be there for real. And if there aren't good ideas everywhere, then at least we can be glad that there are still people who have ideas, and the main thing is that they are carried out.

You see, the question of the works councils, which Mr. Fischer has so thoroughly misunderstood, has really reached a much more serious stage than has been expressed here tonight. It is truly a matter of life or death! Either we create the works councils, and then we have socialism, or we perish at the hands of Entente capitalism, not only the manual laborers, but also the intellectual workers. And this fact, together with a true idea of socialism, can already warm our hearts for the cause, so that we make the works councils a reality and even put ourselves at the service of this cause as a commercial councilor, and we do so because we really mean it. And the fact that one means it honestly is proved by the wonderful fact that even proletarian assemblies want this strange commercial councillor to give them lectures on works councils, not to the detriment of this assembly. That is why I conscientiously stand on the side of the works councils as well as on the side of the threefold social order. These works councils are different from those in the automotive and optical industries, because they are nothing more than political means to strengthen the parties; they are not there to thoroughly socialize economic life on a large and true scale. That is why we at the “Bund für Dreigliederung” are so strongly opposed to the fact that the works councils that come from the parties are mixed up with the ones we want.

You have probably already read in a daily newspaper that this works council law has again been submitted to the government. We are clear about the fact that the works councils cannot be standardized because every company is different. Economic life cannot be regulated by political power or by laws, but can only regulate itself. Once the law is there, it is difficult to oppose it; you have to be a revolutionary. But if they do not even take a serious stand against the drafts, how much less will it be possible once the law is there? Only a few weeks separate us from this law. This time must be used. If it is not used, it will simply be too late for the works councils and for socialization. That is why one so fervently hopes that the working class will finally wake up. It is not right to think that the workers are prejudiced against 'philosophers and commercial counsellors'. The matter is different. Anyone who has read the newspaper and has read what the “Social Democrat” said about this Waldorf school - he says: “The school is nice, but it comes from factory owners, so it is nothing at all” - must say to himself: These are the people who are hindering true socialism and true progress. The party bigwigs of all stripes are to blame for the fact that our honest efforts and the works councils have so far achieved nothing. But the proletariat itself will soon see how it is driven into misery and hardship if it does not pull itself together in time.

This appeal should be addressed to you again today. There is no time to lose! We only have three to four weeks left. If we lose these, it will be over for good. To show you how serious the situation is, I would like to read you a few lines from a letter that I received just today. This letter was written by a German diplomat who is the first to go abroad, and you should hear how the German situation is characterized from that side: “The situation at home is getting worse and worse, and I fear that the catastrophe that was to be avoided by accepting the peace has only been postponed in order to break over us all the more powerfully. What is now called the government in Germany is really just a caricature of one, wavering between party doctrine and fear of the revolution from left to right. The people's morale is completely collapsing. The speed with which our reputation abroad is declining cannot be described; it is impossible to salvage anything.

This is a letter that arrived today from a German diplomat, who is familiar with the situation and knows how things stand, how we are viewed abroad. But things can truly only change if people in working-class circles do not fall asleep and fail to realize that we are only now approaching real misery, and if they pull themselves together in the last hour to arrive at a state of affairs in which our economic life, which is on the brink of the abyss, can be lifted again. And that can only happen if we ourselves lend a hand, if we ourselves want to see an upward turn in our economy through the introduction of works councils. I wanted to make this appeal to you again, so that we do not have to say in three to four weeks: 'Now it is too late.' There is still time, but it is the twelfth hour. It is up to you, not us.

Mr. Jansen: When Dr. Steiner began his lectures eight to ten weeks ago, there was really great enthusiasm for the idea of the threefold social order. But the moment Dr. Steiner and the Federation for the Tripartite Social Order moved on to the practical, and passed over from thought to reality, the moment work and effort were demanded of those who had previously only been allowed to applaud and clap, some of the enthusiasm already waned. The cool attitude of the workers was also to blame for the fact that the enthusiasm for Dr. Steiner's ideas did not go so far as to be able to fight against the leaders. All of us who were involved in the agitation know what it is to speak out against this apathy. Dr. Steiner also experiences the apathy of the masses. The idea of workers' councils, in the face of capitalism, which was not all that secure a quarter of a year ago, has evoked the last dormant forces within him. He has tried to kill off these workers' councils by denying their validity and feasibility. And the so-called educated caste of our present-day society and the even more vulgar press of all shades have managed to drag the true idea of the threefold social organism and the works councils as it is in the newspapers. |

Half a century has passed since Karl Marx died of starvation, and today people are arguing about how to implement socialization. And it has been more than half a year since the Jena of the German workers, the November Revolution, broke out, and still no one knows how to implement socialization. We should be grateful to a man who has taken the trouble to seek out a practical way, a way by which socialism can be introduced in a relatively short time. The opposite is true! It can be put down to jealousy on the one hand and stupidity on the other. I have already illustrated this a few weeks ago with an example: People talk about killing the lion, capitalism, but they are afraid of the little mouse, the representative of the factories, the director, and of the union and party officials and the like.

Mr. Fischer spoke of commercial counselors, professors, doctors who support the idea of threefolding. Don't we also have professors and doctors in the parties? Do we also say that their ideas are therefore worthless? And if they weren't in the party, the stupidity of the masses would have long since destroyed the parties. One more peculiar little chapter: Mr. Molt, whom I welcome as a colleague and whom we have asked to speak in an informative way at our meeting tomorrow about works councils, this gentleman has money. We have a great many people in the party who also have money, who had it earlier or who have made money through their work in the party. These men, who call themselves party comrades, party leaders, keep their money to themselves. They do not make it available to the party! They buy themselves villas and settle up there nicely. Therefore, let's not be too quick to reproach them: “The man has money.” We have to see what the people below us do with their money. It has been said: “Hunger must be eliminated first so that people are even open to spiritual food.” A communist recently said: Hunger is the worst revolutionary. Once hunger is raging, there is no stopping it, and what has been suppressed for so long breaks through. What are strikes if not hunger revolts? And because hunger is a good incentive, it would not be good to eliminate hunger today. Let us ensure that we abolish mass hunger by abolishing mass exploitation. Socialism is the way to do this! Hunger is an incentive to finally implement socialization.

Mr. Kühn: As managing director of the “Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism,” I would like to say a few words about what has been asked. We intend to call the works councils together for their first meeting next week. We will also begin the study evenings next week. Mr. Roser has already spoken about this. Perhaps I may say a few words about the discussion that took place with Mr. Fischer this evening. Unfortunately, Mr. Fischer has already left. I wanted to tell him in front of the meeting that I definitely know that he has never, neither here nor anywhere else, attended lectures by Dr. Steiner. The only time I met him was at a meeting to discuss the question of the works council, which was convened by employees and where he heard something about threefolding from some speakers. Dr. Steiner was not present. That is how people who know nothing about the matter judge it; they imagine all sorts of things and want to dismiss the matter out of hand. However, Mr. Fischer told me this evening that his union or association wants to hold meetings in the near future to discuss works councils and to set up trial works councils in the factories. You see, people come along when they have heard something here and there and make something out of it. That is what we want to avoid and what we must fight against. We must not make common cause with those who do not want to know about the threefold social organism and do not work towards it. Works councils that are not created on the basis of the idea of the threefold social organism will never be able to realize socialism. The works councils we wanted to introduce would have been the first step towards socialization in the sense of the threefold order. We must reject everything else. It is a pity that Mr. Fischer has left and can no longer discuss the threefold order with us.

Time and again, objections to the threefold order come from people who know nothing about it, but also from people who have already heard many lectures on the threefold order. I would like to tell you an example. There is a communist leader who has a fairly great gift as a speaker and captivates large crowds. He appears at almost every meeting. This man has heard a lot about the threefold social order, but has not grasped any of it. For example, he says: Yes, the threefold social order leads to a three-class system, because if you create three parts, then there is a class in each part, and so we get even worse conditions than today; today we only have two classes. If one wanted to draw conclusions about classes from the organizations, then one would have to say: Today we have a unified state, so there is only one class. So today there should only be one class! This man does not understand such things and comes to such a prejudice. We want to put the social organism on a healthy footing precisely in order to eliminate class rule. There is no question of a three-way division of the classes. The same man also asserts the same thing that Mr. Fischer asserted, namely that the threefold order protects employers. Anyone who has read Dr. Steiner's book knows that today's type of entrepreneur will disappear altogether. But the most beautiful objection of this communist leader was that he said: You cannot separate the economy from politics. You see it all the time in the Reichstag or in the National Assembly, how people represent their economic interests; just think of the industrialists in heavy industry! They cannot help but represent their economic interests. So people cling to the old, to this idol of a unified state, because they do not see that this is precisely what we want to fight, what we want to abolish. It is economic policy that has driven us into this disastrous catastrophe. People readily admit this in private, but they are unable to muster the strength to take measures that would no longer make such economic policy possible. There are the party leaders, above all, who have ruined the works council system for us. We must get rid of these people. The proletariat cannot see socialism realized before that.

We have also encountered an incredible prejudice among the employees, whom we have also called upon. I would like to give an example of this: a person whom I respect very much, who is a leading employee in a factory, said to me: I don't yet know whether capitalism is so wrong. In any case, I insist that it is better today than it will be. I will stick to my views and go down with them rather than introduce something new. I know that I am alone in this and that I may soon be out on the street, but I would rather it be so. I will remain honest and consistent. I have been told that this man has a heart for the proletariat, and that is why he speaks in this conservative way. When I told him he was conservative, he got terribly angry. He said it was just honest. I told him: It's just the same as when you take a train. At one station, the train driver comes in and says the train will derail at the next station, and you then say: I'll stay on the train anyway; I'd rather be injured than get off. I said: I would get off as quickly as possible and see if the train could be moved to another track where it would not derail. — So we have to pull ourselves together at the last moment and do everything we can to get the works councils together. We must present and defend the approach that we see as practical, and not be afraid of being too strongly attacked by the party bigwigs. Actually, word of mouth should teach people again and open their eyes to the philistinism of their party leaders.

Rudolf Steiner: The question has been raised: How can what is healthy in syndicalism be related to the threefold social organism? - Well, it would of course be taking us very far if we were to talk about the essence of syndicalism today at this late hour. But I would like to say that there is much that is genuinely healthy in syndicalism, as there is in other contemporary endeavors. Above all, the healthy aspect of syndicalism is that many syndicalists are dominated by the idea that, regardless of the eternal insistence on the rule of law in the state, economic gains for the broad masses of the working population must be achieved in direct competition with entrepreneurship. The idea that something for the future can arise out of economic life itself through a kind of federal structure lives as a healthy thought within syndicalism. Syndicalism has emerged particularly in recent times within the French labor movement, and it is somehow significant that it has emerged most strongly there. The French have a very strong sense of state. But just at the moment when people in France who were well-disposed towards the state wanted to found a particular labor movement, they came to the conclusion that this could only be useful if it operated exclusively on an economic basis. The federative structure of economic life, as envisaged by syndicalism, even shows certain similarities to what is sought through the associations based on the idea of threefolding.

You see, in the threefold social organism we have an independent spiritual life, then an independent state or legal life, and further an independent economic life. This independent economic life, as I have often said, will have to be built on corporate cooperative foundations, that is to say, associations will be formed on the one hand from the various occupational groups and on the other hand from certain connections between production and consumption. One of the objections raised, for example, by Professor Heck in the Tribüne is based on the fact that he says: Yes, but how will it be possible, for example, for craftsmen and small traders to be knowledgeable about the concerns of big industry if economic life is to be structured in the future as Dr. Steiner wants? Well, this shows that Professor Heck has not understood what is meant either. Of course, one cannot be knowledgeable in all fields, nor is it necessary, because if a federal structure is really established and the individual associations work together intensively, something fruitful for economic life will come of it. It is simply not possible for everything that must develop on a purely democratic basis, such as labor law, to be represented or administered in the same way as purely economic matters. This view is also encountered, at least to some extent, in syndicalism. In the Anglo-American labor movement, the principle of Anglo-American parliamentarism still prevails very strongly. Since this is based on a certain system of counterweights, namely power against power, the Anglo-American labor organizations are also aligned according to the same principle, namely, labor power against corporate power is played off against each other, just as the liberal and conservative parties face each other in parliament. We encounter a different form within the labor organizations in Germany. There is a certain centralism, I might even say a certain military system, based on command and obedience. I don't know if you will entirely agree with this, but I can assure you that I have attended several trade union meetings and that I was always unpleasantly affected by the fact that whenever different opinions arose, the chairman of the meeting stood up and said: Children, it's no use! — So, this centralized-military system is the second; and the third is what is meant by the federal structure, by the structure of independent bodies, in which there will be no majorization or centralization, but objective negotiation. In syndicalism, this appears as a good impulse, but here too a further step is necessary, as is aimed at with the idea of the threefold social organism, namely that the progressive factors that have yet to enter into the thinking of contemporary humanity are actually taken into account. And here I believe that an understanding of this may perhaps develop from syndicalism itself. But this should not be understood as if I were only singing the praises of syndicalism. However, I do believe that threefolding can be better understood from this side than from any of the other directions.

Now, I have little to add to what the last speakers have said. I would just like to make one comment, namely that I and the friends of threefolding have recently become very aware of what one speaker said about the apathy of the masses. Yes, in the place of the phlegm, one would need fire, because if we really want to make progress in this day and age, we need not only insight – this, of course, in the first place – but also fire. You see, when it is constantly being said that the spirit is not really needed, that it will come with economic transformation, then I ask you: Yes, the possibility of moving forward was there to a certain extent. On November 9, the National Assembly was elected. But is there any sign of a new spirit in this National Assembly? There was now a whole new group of voters who had not previously been entitled to vote: women. But it is strange that the spirit has obviously not yet descended on these women either, because the National Assembly shows absolutely nothing of what we really need for the future. But for that, enthusiasm and fire will be needed.

In this context, I ask you whether it is not rather short-sighted to refuse to see that a certain socialization has already begun – and this before the official socialization? Do we want socialization only on paper? Is that what it takes to satisfy you? Imagine if the commercial counsellor who devoted himself to the threefold order had done so like the other commercial counsellors. Then it would have come about that at the moment when socialization was to take place, there would have been no commercial counsellor at all! It would have come about that at some point this Kommerzienrat would have been expropriated like other Kommerzienräte, and then there would have been no more money for real socialization or better schools and the like. And now I ask you: Is it a great sin for someone to take money from another before humanity is ready, to give his money for socialization? Is it a sin if someone does not always trumpet the message that the means of production must be handed over to the general public, but does it of his own accord? I fear that those who always trumpet the phrase that the means of production must be put at the service of the general public will not apply it as sensibly as those who do something out of their own insight beforehand. This is socialization before the official socialization. This is worked out from the spirit that we are currently longing for as the social spirit of the future. And to raise the accusation that someone has the social spirit before, that is, before he is in any constitution, means not being able at all to penetrate into the spirit that can only save humanity, but only shows the longing for the written word. The law you give, you can confidently carry home. We need the spirit out of which socialization is done. Therefore, one should not fall into the trap of saying: The Waldorf School is nice, but it is done by a commercial counselor; we don't want to know anything about that! It would be wiser to say: Take him as an example, and as socializers in the future become like him, then it will be good. The things that are constantly being said from this corner against titles and the like only testify that, despite everything, one clings to words and phrases more than to action. And until we can bring ourselves to act and to acknowledge the deed, no matter where it comes from, we will not move forward; we must be convinced of this. And when we are convinced of this, then we will look only at whether someone is a reasonable person inspired by social feelings, and we will not ask about anything else. As long as we ask about something else, we will not move forward. If this does not become clear, all talk is in vain. Because the beginning must be made by those people who understand something of what is to happen, regardless of whether they play this or that role in the present order. All of us who live today, whether capitalists or laborers, naturally have what we live on out of capitalism. And we cannot change anything if we do not look to what lives in the spirit and must come about out of the spirit. We must finally overcome the phrase, we must move on to what can really become action.

Mr. Roser: As chairman, he thanks Dr. Steiner for his presentation and draws attention once again to the next event. He asks those present once again to study the book “The Core Points of the Social Question” so that they are able to talk about the book and the threefold social order in the circles in which they move.

Our present age, inartistic as it is, shows little awareness of the fact that recitation stands midway between speaking, or reading, which are not artistic, and artistically developed singing. In many circles there is a feeling that really anyone can recite – and this, of course, is not unconnected with the fact that in these same circles everyone flatters himself that he can also write poetry. It would not so easily enter anyone's head that someone could be a musician, or a painter, without having previously undergone any sort of artistic training. When we consider current views on the art of recitation, we are obliged to admit that, just as in people's ideas about the real nature of poetry, there is also a certain lack of clarity as to the nature of the art of recitation. As to how this art of recitation must use its instrument – the human voice in connection with the human organism – even for this there is no clear understanding. This is undoubtedly connected with the fundamental absence, in our present age, of any earnest feeling for the true nature of poetry. There is no doubt that poetry stands in a relationship with the whole being of man quite different to that of ordinary prose, of whatever kind this may be; everything that man must recognize as that higher world to which he belongs with the soul and spiritual parts of his being poetry must also stand in a certain connection with all this. Along with the lack of clarity which gradually invaded ideas concerning man's relationship with the super-sensible world, there also came about another partial lack of clarity, concerning man's relationship with that world which is expressed in the art of poetry. I should like to draw attention to two facts – things which resound to us from ancient times, though from quite different peoples, with quite differently evolved characters.

One fact, though one which today is passed over so lightly, is something to which Homer, the great writer of Greek epic, draws our attention at the beginning of both his poems: namely, that what he wished to convey to the world as his poetry did not come from himself.

‘Sing, O Muse, of the anger of Peleus' son Achilles ...’

It is not Homer, but the Muse who is singing. Our age can no longer take this seriously – for the understanding that lies hidden behind the opening of the Homeric poem had, in fact, already been extinguished by the eighteenth century, with its intellectual conceptions. When Klopstock began his Messiah, he did indeed look at the beginning of the Homeric poems; but in this respect he lived entirely in abstract ideas, intellectualistic ideas, and these could only lead him to say: the Greeks still believed in gods, in the Muses – modern man can replace this only by his own immortal soul. Thus, Klopstock begins with the words:

‘Sing, immortal soul, of sinful man's redemption.’

Now this opening of the Messiah, for anyone who can see into these things, is a document of the very greatest significance. And in the nineteenth century, too, all feeling had been completely lost for what Homer meant to convey – that when I reveal myself in poetry, it is really something higher that is revealed in me: my “I” withdraws, my ego withdraws, so that other powers make use of my speech-organism; divine-spiritual powers make use of this speech-organism in order to reveal themselves. One must, therefore, regard what Homer placed at the opening of his two poetic creations as something worthy of more serious consideration than is usually accorded to such things today.

It is remarkable how something similar, and yet quite different, resounds to us from a certain period in the development of Central Europe, a period to which the Nibelungenlied points – although it was not written down until a later date. This begins in a manner similar to, yet quite different from Homer:

‘To us in olden maeren is many a marvel told’

“In olden maeren” – what are maeren, for those who still have a living feeling and perception for such things? I cannot go into all this in detail, but I need only allude to the real meaning of this expression, maer – Nachtmar (nightmare): for this same expression is used to describe certain dreams which are caused by being oppressed, as it were, by an Alp – by a nightmare. In this nightmare, this Alp, we have the last atavistic traces of what is indicated in the Nibelungenlied, when it says: “To us in olden maeren is many a marvel told…”; something is here related which does not come out of normal day-time ego-consciousness, but from a kind of perception which proceeds in the manner of the consciousness we possess in an especially vivid dream such as the nightmare, the maeren. Here again our attention is directed not to ordinary consciousness, but to something which is revealed, through ordinary consciousness, from super-sensible spheres. Homer says: “Sing, O Muse, of the anger of Peleus' son Achilles ...”; and the Nibelungenlied says: “To us in olden maeren is many a marvel told.” What is referred to in the first instance? To that which is, in reality, brought forth by the Muse, when she makes use of the human organism, begins to speak through the human organism, to vibrate musically; our attention is directed to something musical which permeates the human being, and which speaks from greater depths than are reached by his ordinary consciousness. And when the Nibelungenlied says: “To us in olden maeren is many a marvel told …” – it is something which permeates human consciousness as a perception similar to seeing, as something like visual perception, to which we are referred. The Nibelungenlied indicates something plastic and formative, something imaginative; in the Homeric epic we are given something musical. Both, however, from different sides, show us what wells up in poetry from the profounder depths of human nature, something which takes hold of the human being and finds utterance through him. One must have a feeling for this, if one is to experience the way in which true declamation gives expression in poetry, and takes hold of the human instrument of speech – though, as we shall see later, this involves the entire human organism.

The manner, the whole way in which a human being is built up is an outcome of the forces of the spiritual world. And again, the whole manner in which a human being is able to bring his organism into movement when he declaims or recites poetry – this, too, must be the result of a spiritual force holding sway in the human organism. One must learn to trace this working of the spirit in the human organism when the art of poetry is expressed through recitation or declamation. Declamation then becomes what the human organism can be, when it is tuned in the most various ways. In order to gain a practical, artistic realization of these things in some detail, we would now like to show you what must live in declamation when something more of the nature of folk-poetry, or folk-song, is taken into consideration; we shall then proceed to something which is more definitely art – poetry. We hope to show you how fundamentally different the effect of declamation must be, depending on whether it sounds forth from those depths of human nature from which earnestness, or tragedy, resound; or whether it comes from those surface realms of the human organization from which gaiety, satire and humour emanate. Only when we have learned to apprehend these things quite concretely today will I permit myself to give certain intimations of the connection between poetry and recitation and declamation. From these, we will then show how there results an exact method of educating oneself in artistic recitation and declamation.

We will ask Frau Dr. Steiner to declaim a poem of Goethe: a folk-poem in its whole tone and mood – Goethe's “Heidenröslein”.

HEIDENRÖSLEIN

Sah ein Knab' ein Röslein stehn,

Röslein auf der Heiden,

War so jung und morgenschön,

Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn,

Sah's mit vielen Freuden.

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,

Röslein auf der Heiden.

Knabe sprach: Ich breche dich

Röslein auf der Heiden,

Röslein sprach: Ich steche dich,

Dass du ewig denkst an mich,

Und ich will's nicht leiden.

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,

Röslein auf der Heiden.

Und der wilde Knabe brach

's Röslein auf der Heiden;

Röslein wehrte sich und stach,

Half ihm doch kein Weh und Ach,

Musst' es eben leiden.

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,

Röslein auf der Heiden.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[Comparable in English in many respects is:

MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;

Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;

My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go. –

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North;

The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth:

Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

The hills of the Highlandsfor ever I love. –

Farewell to the mountains high cover'd with snow;

Farewell to the straths and green valleys below:

Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;

Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. –

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

My heart's in the Highlandsa-chasing the deer:

Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;

My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go. –

Robert Burns (1759-1796.]

We will now ask Frau Dr. Steiner to recite to us “Erlkönigstochter”, which gives opportunity for a quite special style in the rendering of folk-poems.

Herr Oluf reitet spät und weit,

Zu bieten auf seine Hochzeitleut':

Da tanzten die Elfen auf grünen Land,

Erlkönigs Tochter reicht ihm die Hand.

‘Willkommen, Herr Oluf, was eilst von hier?

Tritt her in den Reihen und tanz mit mir.’ –

‘Ich darf nicht tanzen, nicht tanzen ich mag,

Frühmorgen ist mein Hochzeittag.’ –

‘Hör’ an, Herr Oluf, tritt tanzen mit mir,

Zwei güldne Sporen schenk' ich dir;

Ein Hemd von Seide, so weiss und fein,

Meine Mutter bleicht's im Mondenschein.’ –

‘Ich darf nicht tanzen, nicht tanzen ich mag,

Frühmorgen ist mein Hochzeittag.’ –

‘Hör’ an, Herr Oluf, tritt tanzen mit mir,

Einen Haufen Goldes schenk' ich dir.’ –

‘Einen Haufen Goldes nahm’ ich wohl;

Doch tanzen ich nicht darf, noch soll.’

‘Und willt, Herr Oluf, nicht tanzen mit mir,

Soll Seuch' und Krankheit folgen dir.’ –

Sie tät einen Schlag ihm auf sein Herz,

Noch nimmer fühlt er solchen Schmerz.

Sie hob ihn bleichend auf sein Pferd:

‘Reit heim zu deinem Bräutlein wert.’

Und als er kam vor Hauses Tiir,

Seine Mutter zitternd stand dafür.

‘Hör’ an, mein Sohn, sag’ an mir gleich,

Wie ist dein' Farbe blass und bleich?’ –

‘Und sollt’ sie nicht sein blass und bleich?

Ich traf in Erlenkönigs Reich.’ –

‘Hört an, mein Sohn, so lieb und traut,

Was soll ich nun sagen deiner Braut?’ –

‘Sagt ihr, ich sei im Wald zur Stund’,

Zu proben da mein Pferd und Hund.’ –

Frühmorgen als es Tag kaum war,

Da kam die Braut mit der Hochzeitschar.

Sie schenkten Met, sie schenkten Wein.

‘Wo ist Herr Oluf, der Bräutigam mein?’ –

‘Herr Oluf, er ritt in Wald zur Stund’,

Er probt allda sein Pferd und Hund.’ –

Die Braut hub auf den Scharlach rot,

Da lag Herr Oluf, und er war tot.

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803).

[Comparable in style in English is:

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has wither'd from the Lake,

And no birds sing.

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful – a faery's child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look'd at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said –

‘I love thee true’.

She took me to her elf in grot,

And there she wept and sigh'd full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep

And there I dream'd – Ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dream'd

On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

Who cried – ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!’

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

With horrid darning gaped wide,

And I awoke and found me here,

On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge has wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

John Keats (1795-1821).]

Now we will present Goethe's two poems “Olympos” and “Charon”, where we shall find an opportunity to demonstrate recitation or declamation as the case may be. In the Poem “Olympos”, which is drawn more from the pictorial element, we have the art of declamation; while the more metrical “Charon” is drawn more from the musical element.

OLYMPOS

Der Olympos, der Kissavos,

Die zwei Berge haderten;

Da entgegnend sprach Olympos

Also zu dem Kissavos:

‘Nicht erhebe dich, Kissave,

Turken – du Getretener.

Bin ich doch der Greis Olympos,

Den die ganze Welt vernahm.

Zwei und sechzig Gipfel zähl ich

Und zweitausend Quellen klar,

Jeder Brunn hat seinen Wimpel,

Seinen Kämpfer jeder Zweig.

Auf den höchsten Gipfel hat sich

Mir ein Adler aufgesetzt,

Fasst in seinen mächt'gen Klauen

Eines Helden blutend Haupt.’

‘Sage, Haupt! wie ist's ergangen?

Fielest du verbrecherisch?’ –

Speise, Vogel, meine Jugend,

Meine Mannheit speise nur!

Ellenlänger wächst dein Flügel,

Deine Klauen spannenlang.

Bei Louron, in Xeromeron

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]