The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today in connection with the previous lecture some aphoristic remarks will follow concerning the different races. First however attention will be drawn to certain things, the reasons for which only appear in a few books.

The so-called laws of nutrition in the various civilisations appear at first to be very arbitrary. This is not so however, they are born out of knowledge and wisdom, but we must strictly bear in mind that our present-day humanity is not at all in a position to be able to follow such matters as we now wish to deal with. They will nevertheless provide a basis for certain laws of social life. Of course no one should believe that one immediately becomes an adept simply by going over to vegetarianism and so on.

Among oriental peoples there is a certain way of practising the art of healing in which the doctors attach the greatest importance to the nourishing of their own physical body.⁷⁸ In places where the old spiritual life still exists, there are those who have become healers by following a diet consisting exclusively of milk. They are quite clear that because they exclude everything else they gain certain healing forces within themselves, especially in the treatment of so-called mental illnesses. They have their special methods. They know for certain that when they only take milk they then develop quite definite forces.⁷⁹

Let us be clear about the intuition upon which this depends. This profound intuition can be understood in the following way. We know of a definite happening in human evolution. In the middle of the Lemurian Age the original human element divided into an ascending humanity and an animal kingdom. With this is bound up the fact that the forces which the Earth still had when it was united with the Moon also divided and a part of the same separated with the Moon from the Earth.

Let us think of the time when the Earth was still united with the Moon. Man then stood at quite a different stage of development. He already had warm blood, but was not yet divided into two sexes. It was with the separation of the Moon that this division is to be observed, so that when today you look up at the Moon you can say: It is your separation from the Earth that has brought it about that the power of human reproduction has divided into two parts. There was also a time on the Earth in which humanity was directly connected, was merged together with what was animal, and was also nourished by the animal. This kind of nourishment cannot be easily understood by those lacking the power of clairvoyance. We can however form a conception of this when we observe the normal manner of nourishment of mammals, which feed their young with their own milk. With the division of the power of reproduction this kind of nutrition also appeared. Earlier human beings could absorb food substance just as today the lungs take in the air. At that time threads of suction connected man with the whole of Nature around him, somewhat in the manner in which today the embryo is nourished in the body of the mother. This was the old form of nourishment on the Earth. A relic of this is the suckling of mammals, and milk is like the nourishment mankind took in Pre-Lemurian times. It is the old food of the Gods, the first form of nourishment on the Earth. At that time the nature of the Earth was such that everywhere this nourishment could be sucked from it. Thus milk is a product of the first form of human food. When the physical constitution of man was nearer to the divine he sucked milk out of his surroundings. Occultists know how man is connected with Nature.

The taking of milk is a transformation of a primeval form of nourishment. Man's first food was always milk. In the saying: ‘The milk of human kindness,’ this expression is used intentionally. We must ask: How was it originally brought about that milk, as it then was, could be sucked out of the Earth? The Moon forces in the Earth made this possible; like an all-pervading bloodstream they permeated the entire Earth. But when the Moon departed these forces could only be concentrated in special organs of living beings.

The occultist calls milk: the Moon-food. Sons of the Moon are those who nourish themselves on milk. The Moon brought about milk. It has been verified that the Oriental healers, who only live on milk, again absorb the original forces which were on the Earth when milk still flowed in streams. They said: These are the forces which brought mankind into existence. These productive forces must also be health bringing, so we ourselves gain the power to further health, when we only take milk and exclude everything else.

Let us transfer ourselves into the pre-Lemurian Age. Then the condition prevailed when milk was sucked out from the surroundings. A condition arose when milk became the general nourishment for mankind, and then the condition when nourishment was provided by the mother's milk. Before the time when milk was imbibed from Nature, there was an Age in which the Earth was still united with the Sun. There then existed a Sun nourishment. Just as milk has remained over from the Moon, products have also remained over which gained their maturity from the Sun. Everything irradiated with sunlight, blossoms and fruits of the plants, belongs to the Sun. Formerly their growth inclined towards the centre of the Earth when it was united with the Sun. They planted themselves into the Sun with their blossoms. When the Earth separated from the Sun they retained their old character: they again turned their blossoms towards the Sun. Man is the plant in reverse. That part of the plant which grows above the Earth has the same relationship to the Sun as milk has to the Moon, is therefore Sun-food. Side by side with milk nourishment there arose a kind of plant nourishment, namely from the upper parts of the plant. This was the second form of human food.

Thus when the Lemurian Age was approaching its end two human types faced each other: the one kind, the Sons of the Moon, who bred animals and nourished themselves from what the animals produced, from their milk; and a second kind who fed on plants, on the produce of the Earth.

This fact is portrayed in the story of Cain and Abel.⁸⁰ Abel is a shepherd, Cain a tiller of the soil; Abel represented the Moon race and Cain the Sun race. This allegory is very profound. Occult teaching reveals this in a somewhat concealed way. That divine being who gave man the possibility of becoming a Moon-being, nourishing himself with the transformed Moon food, was called by the Jewish people ‘Jehovah’. He was the nourishing force of Nature; this flowed towards Abel and he took it from his flocks. It was a falling away from Jehovah when man went over to the Sun-food. This is why Jehovah would not accept Cain's offering, because it was the offering of a Sun-food.

When we go back into the most ancient times we find no nourishment at all except milk, the food which man receives from living animals. This is the first form of nourishment as it still is now in the first weeks of life, and the Eastern healer relates this form of nourishment to the saying: ‘If you do not become as little children, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ All these things have their significance.

Now we come from the Lemurian to the Atlantean Age, to the peoples who lived in the region of the present Atlantic Ocean. With the Atlanteans something new appears. They began for the first time to eat food that was not taken from what is living, but which came from what was dead. They consumed what had yielded up life. This is a very important transition in human evolution. Through the fact that human beings nourished themselves from the lifeless it became possible to make the transition to ego-hood. This feeding on what is dead is rightly connected with the desire for the ego. Man became independent through eating what is dead. He took the lifeless into himself in various forms, at first in the case of the developing hunting peoples who killed animals. Later, peoples arose who ate, not only what was ripened by the sun, but what ripened below the surface of the earth. This is just as lifeless as the dead animal. Everything living in the lowest part of animal nature, what is saturated with, blood, has turned away from the Moon-force. The Moon-force itself is still in milk, which is connected with the life-process, whereas man absorbs the forces of what is dying when he eats what is dead. Equally dead is that part of the plant that grows below the surface of the Earth, that is not shone upon and warmed through by the life principle of the Sun. Thus there is a correspondence between the root and the blood-saturated body of the animal.

Later another form of food was added which did not exist earlier. Man introduced into his food what was purely mineral, what he took out of the Earth, salt and so on. In his food therefore he passed through the three kingdoms. This is approximately the course which the Atlantean civilisation passed through in regard to nourishment. Firstly came the hunting peoples, then the farming peoples and thirdly the development of mining, which brought to light what is under the Earth.

All these things represent a turning away from the actual force of life or production. The dead animal is separated from life. That part of the plant which is in the soil is also separated from life. Everything of the nature of salt is the dead nature of the mineral kingdom, that remains over from the past.

Now we come to the fifth human race. The drinking of milk and the eating of fruit continued; other things were added as something new. In the Fifth Root-Race the most outstanding addition is what was gained from minerals, that is to say, by means of a chemical process. This is indicated in Genesis. What is it that was gained by means of a chemical process? There is an ascent in evolution, chemistry is applied to plants, to fruit. Out of this wine arose. This did not exist on Atlantis. Therefore the Bible tells us that Noah, the original ancestor of the post-diluvian race, became intoxicated by wine. By means of a mineral-chemical process something was produced from the plant kingdom. Wine then played a special role in the whole of the Fifth Root-Race. All initiates from the beginning of the Fifth Root-Race had taken over their traditions from the time of the Atlantean Race, when there was as yet no wine. The Indian, Persian and Egyptian initiates had no need of wine. What played a part in the sacred rituals was exclusively water.

With the Fifth Root-Race wine made its appearance, in which the mineral treatment of the plant had to play its part. The first three Sub-Races were repetitions of what came earlier. The Fourth Sub-Race was the first to develop the new, which was to appear in the Fifth Root-Race. A certain sacredness was claimed for wine. In this connection cults emerged in which wine played a part (the cult of Dionysos). A wine-god even appeared.

This had gradually been prepared for in the development of humanity. Wine had first made its appearance with the Persians. Here however wine was still something quite secular. Only gradually did it find its way into ritual, into the Dionysos-Cult. The Fourth Sub-Race is the one which first brought forth Christianity and also the one which seven hundred years earlier announced its mission through the Dionysian dramas. These first took wine into the sphere of the cult. This fact was portrayed in the most wonderful way by that evangelist who knew most about Christianity: St. John. He describes at the very beginning the transformation of water into wine, for Christianity came at first for the Fourth Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race. A teaching was needed which makes sacred what had to come about on the physical plane. Wine cuts human beings off from everything spiritual. Whoever takes wine cannot attain the spiritual. He can know nothing of Atma, Buddhi and Manas, of what is lasting, of what reincarnates. This had to be. The whole course of human evolution is a descent and a re-ascent. Man had to descend to the lowest point. And it was in order that he should come right down onto the physical plane that the Dionysian Cult made its appearance. The human body had to be prepared for materialism through the Dionysian cult; this was why a religion had to appear that changed water into wine. Formerly wine was strictly forbidden to the priests, they could experience Atma, Buddhi and Manas. Now a religion had to come about which led right down onto the physical plane, otherwise human beings would not have completely descended. This religion which led them downwards had to have an outer manifestation, a manifestation that was turned away from Atma, Buddhi and Manas, from reincarnation, and only drew attention to what was of a general nature. The next thing will be that wine is again turned into water.

If at an earlier time water had not changed into wine, man would not have received everything which is in this earthly vale. At the beginning of St. John's Gospel in the description of the changing of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, we are shown how Christ took into account what was there. But he also reckoned with the future, through the fact that for his part He inaugurated the Sacrament of the Last Supper. The Last Supper is the greatest symbol of the One who began this stream of civilisation with the Fourth Sub-Race. Being indeed the true ‘Son of Man’, who descended to the greatest depths in order to rise again with the greatest power, He had to hold to what was there and show mankind how the physical constitution of the race was connected with His mission. If humanity were to ascend again it was necessary for them to have a symbol leading once more from the dead to the living: Bread and Wine. In the occult sense, bread is what only comes about when the plant has been killed. Again, wine comes about when the plant has been killed, but then further treated with mineral substance. When one bakes the plant one does the same as when one kills the animal. When we draw wine from the plant kingdom in a certain sense we do the same as when we bleed the animal. Bread and wine are there as the symbol of the Fourth Race. What should develop in the future is a further ascent from plant to mineral nourishment. Bread and Wine must again be sacrificed, must be given up. Thus as Christ appeared in the Fourth Sub-Race he pointed to Bread and Wine: ‘This is my Body; this is my Blood.’ Here He wished to create a transition from animal nourishment to plant nourishment, the transition to something higher.

At that time there were two classes of human beings: Firstly those whose nourishment was flesh and blood; these are the pre-Christian people with whom Christ in no way concerned himself. Secondly those who only killed plants, who drew from plants their blood: people who drank wine and ate bread. With these He was still concerned; they are the forerunners of that humanity which will exist in the future.

The significance of the Last Supper is the transition from nourishment taken from the dead animal to nourishment taken from the dead plant. When our Fifth Sub-Race will have reached its end, in the Sixth Sub-Race, the Last Supper will be understood. Even before this it will be possible for the third form of nourishment to begin to make its appearance, the purely mineral. Man himself will then be able to create his nourishment. Now he takes what the Gods have created for him. Later he will advance and will himself prepare in the chemical laboratory the substances he will require.

So you see that all these things arise out of deep intuitions. When with the old Eastern peoples we find all kinds of instructions about what should be eaten, these are not actually laws, but stories: You should not expect the effect of substance to be other than they are.

That which Christ killed, which was actually sacrificed after he had partaken of the Last Supper, is the physical body. This dies. For the whole of humanity this will die. Towards the middle of the Sixth Root-Race, in the last third, there will no longer be a physical body. Then the entire human being will again be etheric. It will pass over into the finer substance. But this will not happen if man himself does not bring it about. For this he must first pass over to the nourishment which he prepares in the laboratory. So that man, in so far as he no longer takes his nourishment from Nature, but gains it from his own wisdom, from the God within him, so far does he also hasten. towards his own deification.

When man begins to nourish himself, the foundation will also be laid for something higher, that is, self-propagation. He will gradually create life for himself out of the mineral world.

This is the great progression of human evolution. What the natural scientist knows today is only a fraction of the great cycle.

With Saturn we come into the Mineral Age. In the Atlantean Epoch, through consuming what was dead, preparation was made for what was to bring about egoism. From the original Semites up to the Fifth Sub-Race, the human ego was very gradually developed. In the Sixth Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race the ‘I’ will again reach a higher stage of development. This means that we stand before a new so-called spiral of existence. The previous spiral began in the time when the original Semites laid the foundation for the present Root-Race.

It is to the original Semite civilisation that we owe everything that has existed up till the present time. But now there begins a new impact with the Slavonic Peoples which will lead into the future. A kind of break with the past will be brought about by a people who will introduce a new impulse into the world. This is working as hidden spirituality out of the Russian peasantry. It will form the second part of the coming spiral. At the present time a certain culture is in process of destruction and a new one is being prepared. It is being prepared in the West and will come to fruition in the East. But the Old must activate the New. Wherever in our time we have new impulses these are germinal, awkward, unskillful. On the contrary the Old is clear-cut, but has a critical, destructive character. It was the Semitic Race which gave birth to the bearers of the Old Culture, who are the bearers of what spirals within the spiral.

All these have something Semitic about them. Examples: Lassalle, Marx. The spiral turns inwards. A continuation from here is not possible. Now a leap must be made as though from one shore to another, to the spirituality of the future culture of the East. This is a completely new impulse.

What belongs to the future is as yet unformed and naturally infiltrated by the old. Haeckel is a man who swims in midstream and is pulled by both spirals. The first part of Haeckel's ‘Weltritsel’ (Riddles of the World)⁸¹ is positive, elementary Theosophy: the second part is negative and altogether destructive. This is a double spiral (Wirbel).

We can also observe these contradictions in the Socialism of the East and the West. The Socialism of the West is a Socialism of production; that of the East is a Socialism of consumption. One who orders the social life in the direction of production reckons with possessiveness, with egoism. He who reckons with consumption turns his attention to what others require from him; he bears in mind his fellow men, reckons with brotherhood. The socialism of production—Marx, Lassalle—only bears the worker in mind, in so far as he is the producer. In the East the consumer is placed in the foreground, as for instance with Kropotkin, Bakunin, Herzen. You can see things building up to a climax if you follow Kropotkin. He had an immediate understanding of the principle of helpful interaction in the case of animals. The socialism of the West is entirely built up on strife. Thus do the currents of World evolution play into one another.

• 78. Later Rudolf Steiner spoke on this subject from many different angles especially to the workmen engaged on the Goetheanum building. See Rudolf Steiner on Nutrition and Health and Illness.
• 79. These are the words according to Mathilde Scholl. Marie Steiner's notes, on the contrary, report that the old healers ‘call up in themselves psychic means of healing mainly for psychic illnesses’.
• 80. Rudolf Steiner interpreted this allegory in different ways especially in lectures in 1904 and 1905 in connection with the Temple Legend. Die Tempel legende und die Goldene Legende. The only ones translated are Concerning the Temple Lost and Found 15, 22, 29 May, 5 June 1905, (Typescript).
• 81. See lecture 5.10.1905 Three Essays on Haeckel and Karma.

The grasp of life given by Theosophy is in the highest sense practical. The light it throws on questions of education will be deeply useful to humanity long before people are clairvoyant, and long before a person attains to direct vision he can convince himself that in Theosophy the truth about life is to be found.

Once he is born, the human being enters on a new life, and his various bodies develop in different ways and at different times. The educator should always bear this in mind. The period from the first to the seventh year is very different from the second seven-year period from the seventh to the fifteenth or sixteenth year—earlier with girls, later with boys. Then there is a change again after the sixteenth year, or shall we say after puberty. We can properly understand how a human being grows to maturity only if we keep before our eyes the different ways in which the various members of his being develop.

From birth to the seventh year it is really only the physical body that parents and educators have to consider. At birth the physical body is released into its environment; before birth it is part of the maternal organism. During the whole period of pregnancy the life of the mother and of the human embryo are intermingled. The physical body of the mother surrounds the physical body of the child, so that the outer world has no access to the child. At birth, things change; only then can the child receive impressions from other beings in the physical world. But the child's etheric and astral bodies are still not open to the external world; up to the seventh year, indeed, the external world cannot influence them, for they are inwardly absorbed in building up the physical body. At about the seventh year the etheric body begins to be free to receive impressions from outside, and it can then be influenced. But from the seventh to the fourteenth year no attempt should be made to influence the astral body, or its inward activity will be disturbed. During the first seven years it is best to leave the etheric and astral bodies quite unmolested and to rely on everything happening of its own accord.

The best way to influence the child during his first seven years is through the development of his sense-organs. All the impressions they receive from the outer world are significant, and everything a child sees or hears affects him in terms of his sense-organs. The sense-organs, however, are not influenced by lesson-books or verbal teaching, but by means of example and imitation. The most important thing during the first seven years is to nourish a child's sense-organs. He will see with his eyes how people round him are behaving. Aristotle²³ was quite right in saying that man is the most imitative of all creatures; and this is particularly true during the first seven years. Hence during these years we must try to influence a child's senses, to draw them out so that they become active on their own account. That is why it is such a mistake to give a child one of those “beautiful” dolls; they hinder him from setting his own inner powers to work. A normal child will reject the doll and be much happier with a piece of wood, or with anything which gives his imagination a chance to be active.

No particular method of teaching is needed for the etheric and astral bodies, but it is extremely important that the subtler influences which pass over to them unconsciously from their environment should be favourable. It is very important that during these early years a child should be surrounded by noble-minded, generous-hearted and affectionate people with good thoughts, for these stamp themselves on the child's inner life. Example, therefore, in thought and in feeling is the best means of education at this stage. It is not what we say but what we are that influences a child during his first seven years. Because of the extreme sensitivity of the inner members of a child's being, his surroundings should be kept free from all impure, immoral thoughts and feelings.

From the seventh to the fourteenth, fifteenth or sixteenth year—that is, until puberty—the etheric body goes through a liberation, just as the physical body is thrown open to its environment at birth. During this period, then, we must direct our efforts to the etheric body, the vehicle of memory, of lasting habits, of temperament and inclinations and enduring desires. Accordingly, when the etheric body is set free we must take every care to develop these features; we must influence a child's habits, his memory, everything which will give his character a firm foundation. The child will grow up like a will-o'-the-wisp if care is not taken to imbue his character with certain lasting habits, so that with their aid he will stand firm against the storms of life. This, too, is the time for exercising his memory; memorising is more difficult after this age. It is at this time also that a feeling for art awakens, particularly for the art of music, so closely associated with the vibrations of the etheric body. If any musical talent exists, this is when we should do all we can to encourage it. This again is the time for stories and parables; it is wrong to try to develop critical faculties so early. Our age sins greatly in this respect. Care must be taken to see that the child learns as much as possible through stories and analogies; we must store his memory with them and must see to it that his power of comparison is exercised on concepts drawn from the sense-world. We must bring before him examples taken from the lives of the great men of history, but there must be no talk of “this is good” or “this is bad”, for that would make a demand on his judgment. We can hardly place too many such pictures or examples before the child; these are the things which act on the etheric body. This, too, is the age when stories and fairy tales, which represent human life in the form of pictures, have a powerful effect. All this makes the etheric body supple and plastic and provides it with lasting impressions. How grateful Goethe must have been to his mother for telling him so many fairy stories at this age!

The later the power of critical judgment is aroused in a child, the better. But children ask “why?” We should answer such questions not with abstract explanations but through examples and images. And how infinitely important it is to find the right ones! If a child asks questions about life and death, and the changes that accompany them, we can use the example of the caterpillar and the chrysalis, and explain how the butterfly arises from the chrysalis to a new life. Everywhere in nature we can find such comparisons, relevant to the highest questions. But quite specially important for the child of this age is authority. It must not be an enforced authority—the teacher must gain his authority quite naturally, so that the child will believe before it has knowledge to go on. Theosophical education demands of the teacher not only intellectual knowledge, not only educational principles and insights; it demands that the type of people chosen to be teachers must be those whose natural gifts show promise of their becoming “an authority”. Does this seem too much to ask? Surely we cannot fail to get such teachers, since the future of mankind depends on it. Here a great cultural task for Theosophy opens up.

When the child enters the third period of seven years, the age of puberty, the astral body is liberated; on it depends the power of judgment and criticism and the capacity for entering into direct relationships with other human beings. A young person's feelings towards the world in general develop in company with his feelings towards other people, and now he is at last mature enough for real understanding. As the astral body is liberated, so is the personality, and so personal judgment has to be developed. Nowadays young people are expected to offer criticism much too early. Seventeen-year-old critics can be found in abundance, and many of the people who write and pass judgments are quite immature. You have to be twenty-two or twenty-four before you can offer a sound judgment of your own; before then it is quite impossible. From the fourteenth to the twenty-fourth year, when everything around him can teach a person something, is the best time for learning from the world. That is the way to grow up into full maturity.

These are the great basic principles of education; countless details can be deduced from them. The Theosophical Society is to publish a book²⁴ for teachers and mothers which will show how from birth to the seventh year the essential thing is example; from the seventh to the fourteenth year, authority; from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year the training of independent judgment.

This is one example of how Theosophy seeks to lay hold of practical life through all its stages.

Another example of practical Theosophy can be drawn from a study of the great law of karma: a law which really makes life comprehensible for the first time. The law of karma is not mere theory, or something that merely satisfies our curiosity. No, it gives us strength and confidence at every stage in life, and makes intelligible much that would otherwise be unintelligible.

First of all, the law of karma answers the great human question: why are children born into such widely differing conditions? For instance, we see one child born to wealth, perhaps endowed also with great talents and surrounded by the most loving care. And we see another child born to poverty and misery, perhaps with few talents or abilities, and so apparently predestined to failure—or a child may have great abilities but no chance to develop them. These are serious problems, and only Theosophy gives an answer to them. If we are to face life with strength and hope we must find an answer. How then does the law of karma answer these riddles?

We have seen that a man passes through repeated lives on Earth, and that when a child is born, it is not for the first time: he has been on Earth many times before. Now in the external world the rule of cause and effect prevails, as everyone recognises, and it is this great natural law of cause and effect which we see, carried over into the spiritual realm, as the law of karma.

How does the law work in the external world? Take a metal ball, heat it and put it on a wooden board. It will burn a hole in the wood. Take another ball, heat it but throw it into water before you put it on the board, and then it will not burn a hole. The fact that the ball was thrown into the water is significant for its later behaviour. The ball goes through a sort of experience, and its behaviour will vary accordingly. Thus the effect depends on the cause. This is an example from the inanimate world, but the same law holds everywhere. Animals gradually lose their eyesight if they go to live in dark caves. Now suppose that in a later generation such an animal were able to reflect: why have I no eyes? It would have to conclude that the cause of its fate was that its ancestors had gone to live in caves. Thus an earlier experience shapes a later destiny, and so the rule of cause and effect holds.

The higher we move in the scale of nature towards man, the more individual does destiny become. Animals have a group-soul, and the destiny of a group of animals is bound up with the group-soul. A man has his own Ego, and the individual Ego undergoes its destiny just as the group-soul of animals does. A whole species of animal may change over the generations, but with man it is the individual Ego that changes from one life to another. Cause and effect go on working from life to life: what I experience today has its cause in a previous life, and what I do today shapes my destiny in my next life. The cause of different circumstances at birth is not to be found in this life; nothing immediate is responsible for it. The cause lies in earlier lives. In a previous life a man has prepared his present destiny.

Surely, you might say, it is just this that must depress a man and rob him of all hope. But in fact the law of karma is the most consoling law there is. Just as it is true that nothing exists without a cause, so it is equally true that nothing existing remains without its effects. I may be born in poverty and misery; my abilities may be very limited; yet whatever I do must produce its effect, and whatever I accomplish now, by way of industry or moral activity, will certainly have its effect in later lives. If it depresses me to think that I have deserved my present destiny, it may equally cheer me to know that I can frame my future destiny myself. Anyone who really takes this law into his thinking and feeling will soon realise what a sense of power and of security he has gained. We do not have to understand the law in all its details; that becomes possible only at the higher stages of clairvoyant knowledge. Much more important is it that we should look at the world in the light of this law and live in accordance with it. If we do this conscientiously over a period of years, the law will of its own accord become part of our feelings. We verify the truth of the law by applying it.

At this point all sorts of objections may arise. Someone may say: “Then we should certainly become sheer fatalists! If we are responsible for whatever happens to us and cannot change it, the best thing is to do nothing. If I am lazy, that is my karma.” Or perhaps someone will say: “The law of karma says we can bring about favourable consequences in our next life. I will start being really good in a later life; for the moment I will enjoy myself. I have plenty of time; I shall be returning to Earth and I will make a start then.” Someone else says: “I shall not help anyone any more, for if he is poor and wretched and I help him I shall be interfering with his karma. He has earned his suffering; he must look after changing his karma by his own efforts.”

All these objections reveal a gross misunderstanding. The law of karma says that all the good I may have done in this life will have its effect, and so will everything bad. Thus in our Book of Life there is a kind of account-sheet, with debit and credit sides, and the balance can be drawn at any moment. If I close the account and draw the balance, that will show my destiny. At first this seems to be a hard, unbending law, but it is not so. A true comparison with the ledger would run as follows: each new transaction alters the balance and each new action alters the destiny.

After all, a merchant does not say that since every new transaction upsets his balance, he can do nothing about it. Just as the merchant is not hindered by his ledger from doing new business, so in life a man is not hindered from making a new entry in his Book of Life. And if the merchant got into difficulties and asked a friend to lend him a thousand marks to help him to recover, it would be nonsense if his friend replied that he really couldn't do anything because it would mean interfering with the state of his friend's account-book. In the same way it would be nonsense if I refused to help another man in order not to come into conflict with the law of karma. However firmly I believe in the law of karma, there is nothing to prevent me from relieving any misery and poverty. On the contrary, if I did not believe in the law, I might doubt whether my help would have any effect: as it is, I know that my help will have a good effect. It is this aspect of karma which can console us and give us energy for action. We ought to think of the law of karma not so much in its relation to the past as in its bearing on the future. We may indeed look back on the past and resolve to bear its karma, but above all we should be positively active in laying a foundation for the future.

Christian clergymen often raise the objection: “Your Theosophy is not Christian, for it ascribes everything to self-redemption. You say a man must work out his own karma quite alone. If he can do this, what place is there for Christ Jesus, who suffered for all mankind? The Theosophist says he needs no help from anyone.”

All this indicates a misunderstanding on both sides. Our critics do not realise that free-will is not restricted by the law of karma. The Theosophist, on his side, needs to see clearly that because he believes in karma he does not depend entirely on self-help and self-development; he must recognise that he can be helped by others. And then a true reconciliation between the law of karma and the central fact of Christianity will not be hard to find. This harmony has always existed; the law of karma has always been known to esoteric Christianity.

Let us imagine two people: one is in distress because of his karma, the other helps him because he has the power to do so, and in this way the karma of the former is improved. Does this exclude the law? On the contrary, it confirms it. It is precisely the working of the law of karma which makes the help effective.

If someone has more power than this, he may be able to help two or three or four others if they are in need. Someone still more powerful may be able to help hundreds or thousands and influence their karma for the better. And if he is as powerful as Christianity represents Christ to be, he may help the whole of humanity just at a time when it is in special need of help. But that does not make the law of karma ineffective; on the contrary, Christ's deed on Earth is effective precisely because the law of karma can be built upon.

The Redeemer knows that by the law of karma His work of redemption will be available for everyone. Indeed, He accomplished that deed in reliance on the law of karma, as a cause of glorious results in the future, as a seed for a later harvest and as a source of help for anyone who allows the blessings of redemption to act upon him. Christ's deed is conceivable only because of the law of karma; the testament of Christ is in fact the teaching of karma and reincarnation. This does not mean that each one must bear the consequence of his own actions, but that the consequences must be borne by someone, no matter whom. If a Theosophist maintains that he cannot understand the unique deed of Christ having been accomplished once only for all mankind, this means that he does not understand karma. The same is true of any priest who declares that karma interferes with the doctrine of redemption. The reason why Christianity has hitherto failed to emphasise the law of karma and the idea of reincarnation is bound up with the whole question of human evolution and will be dealt with later.

The world does not consist of single “I's”, each one isolated from the rest; the world is really one great unity and brotherhood. And just as in physical life a brother or friend can intervene to help another, so does this hold good in a much deeper sense in the spiritual world.

• 23. Aristotle, 384–322 B.C. The sentence cited here is from the treatise, “On the Poetic Art”, Chapter 4.
• 24. “A book will be published”: “The Education of the Child from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science”, given as a lecture in various places in Germany; first published, made into an article, in Rudolf Steiner's periodical, Lucifer-Gnosis, 1907, and in the same year as a pamphlet. An English translation is available, entitled, The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy.

If you take the concept of Jesus from the Koran, for example, and consult from 19th Surah, you will see that it specifically mentions that the Nathan Jesus Child actually spoke immediately at his birth. This is what the Koran says: “Jesus spoke and said:‘See, I am the servant of God. He has given me the book and He has made me to a prophet and He has blessed me wherever I am, and He has given me His blessings so long as I live, and love to my mother and peace upon the day of my birth and the day when I die and the day when I am resurrected again to life. This is Jesus, the son of Mary, the Word of truth’ ”. This actually appears in the Koran.

In the ancient Jewish teachings as they are contained in the Talmud and other writings apart from the Old Testament, you learn that which is more of a conceptual nature, but on the other hand the Haggadah is the name given to that which modern people would call legends and tales. However, these legends and tales in the Haggadah refer more to actual perception in the spiritual world; they go back to imaginative knowledge.

I am going to share a portion from the Haggadah about Solomon with you. It says: “Rabbi Joachin says: The feet of man guarantee for him that they bring him to that place where he is supposed to go. And they tell about those Moors who are the sons of Shesher named Elacoraf and Akia who are the scribes of Solomon. One day Solomon saw the Angel of Death who was very sad and he asked: Why are you sad? The Angel of Death replied: Because I require these two Moors. As a result of that Solomon gave his Moors to the Seherem (Seherem are those demons who for imaginative vision look like goats and fly through the air) and sent them into the City of Loos. When these two Moors arrived there, they died. A few days afterwards, Solomon again saw the Angel of Death and this time the Angel was laughing. And Solomon said to the Angel: Why do you laugh? The Angel of Death replied: You sent them precisely to the place where I wanted them to go. So at that time Solomon said the following: The feet of the human being guarantee for him that they bring him to the place where he is supposed to be. Thus Solomon had an experience with the Angel of Death, an experience which confirmed the truth of that which Rabbi Joachin said, namely, the feet of man guarantee for him that he is taken to the place where he needs to be.”

Now, my dear friends, you will see that a number of questions are raised in this story from the Haggadah. The feet of the man guarantee that he is brought to the place where he is supposed to go. Why are the feet spoken of so precisely? In such ancient imaginative legends, nothing of an arbitrary nature is there, everything has its definite deep significance. So we have the first question which one can ask. Then we also have another: Why was the Angel of Death sad when he appeared before Solomon with the statement that he is going to take the two scribes away? It seems ridiculously trivial to say that the Angel was sad; he was going to do his job. Then Solomon asks him: “Why are you sad?” What is the significance of this question? The Angel of Death says he is sad because he demands the two scribes. But Solomon gives them to the demons who carry them into the City of Loos.

Now, you see the question about the city of Loos can be more easily answered. The city of Loos was so organized that no one was allowed to die within the city, hence those people who were ready to die were carried outside the city. It was the only city which had this organization. Therefore when Solomon heard that the Angel of Death was going to take his scribes, he sent them to the city because he believed that if they were in the city, the Angel of Death could not get hold of them. This is the story given in the Haggadah. However, these stories are found in many other places in Jewish tradition. There it is related in this way: They had only arrived at the gates of the city because they fell down during their flight. And because they were not able to enter the city, the Angel was able to get hold of them. However, the next day you have the Angel of Death standing before Solomon and laughing. This is very strange; the Angel is laughing because he was able to get hold of these two scribes for death. Solomon recognizes the truth of Rabbi Joachin when he says: “The feet of human beings are a guarantee that he is brought to the place where he is supposed to be.”

Now, it is important to understand that both scribes, both Moors, are the sons of Shesher, who himself was the scribe for David. Thus, this indicates that these two scribes of King Solomon were very special. we must put all these things together if we want to perceive the whole significance of the questions which surface when we speak about this very significant cognitive moment in the life of King Solomon. Now, remember that King Solomon was not wise because he was clever in the sense that modern man is clever, he was called the wise Solomon because he was able to have real vision into the spiritual world; the spiritual world was open to him. Therefore Solomon was to experience that truth which Rabbi Joachin imparted, namely, the truth in connection with the feet of human beings.

When you consider the human being in comparison with the animal, then you see a very important difference. Through the fact that man has a vertical spine, he is at right angles to the surface of the earth. The spine of the animal, however, is parallel to the surface of the earth. Now I hope that no one here is going by object to telling us about the kangaroo. These are exceptions which can be explained if we go into the details of the situation. But let us put that on the side for the moment. We know man has an upright spine and the spine of the animal is horizontal. Now, when we draw a line through the spine of the animal—it is not a straight line, but a curved one—then we have a line curving parallel to the curvature of the earth which means when we draw a circle parallel to the earth then that passes through the spine of the animal. However, when we draw the same curve for the human being, then we find that this curve has a middle point. In the case of the animal we have seen the middle point of the curve was the middle point of the earth. However in the middle point of the curve that we draw through the spinal column of man, there you have the middle point of the moon. Why? Because that particular stage of development which the animal is going through at present, man already went through in the ancient Moon period. Therefore, at the present time man still has a connection with the moon insofar as the curve passing through his spine has its center point in the moon, just as the curve passing through the animal has its center point in the earth. Therefore man is connected with the moon in a similar descriptive way as the animal is connected with the earth.

Now, man has torn himself away from the earth; man is not as united with the earth as is the animal kingdom. As far as his external physical nature is concerned, man has torn himself loose from his earth planet. However, he has only torn himself loose in one aspect of his nature; he has another aspect through which he is attached to the earth, and that is with his feet. Man has to stand upon the earth with his feet. However, passing over from the Moon development to the earth development, he has torn himself away from the earth with his hands. His feet, however, are still connected with the earth. If you understand the human form as it has developed itself in the transition from the Moon evolution to the Earth evolution, so you must say: In so far as man belongs to the earth, the earth has been able to attach itself to him in his feet. What guarantees does man have to come to the earth? This is guaranteed by man's foot situation. Hence we have the explanation in the Hebrew: The feet guarantee him. The word ‘guarantee’ in the Hebrew is the same as the word you use in reference to guaranteeing someone an amount of capital, the word guarantee indicates that as far as his feet are concerned, it is guaranteed that he has a connection with the earth. That does not mean that the feet of the human being carry him to the place of his death, but the whole secret of the human form lies in this sentence as Solomon has recognized it through the fact that he is able to look into the spiritual world.

Now, I have yet to describe that which Solomon revealed when he had words with the Angel of Death. We will see this from the example of how we have a wisdom present in humanity which we previously called the primal wisdom. This primal wisdom passed away in order that man could have an opportunity during the Earth evolution to develop this wisdom again, but to develop it out of himself in complete freedom.

Now, there is another riddle in this story about the Angel of Death. At one time he is sad and at another time he is laughing. We can just think about the true nature of laughing and weeping. You know very well that if you see a person walking along the street who is laughing to himself, you would say that he is crazy. You see that laughing is something which you expect one to participate in with other people. On the other hand, when it comes to crying, you know that usually you cry when you are alone. To explain this phenomenon of weeping and laughing, we have to remember that we generally think that what we are as human beings is only enclosed within our skin and we forget the fact that the air is outside us and when we breathe it in, it becomes part of us and then we breathe it out again. Therefore we are part of our whole environment. And when we go to sleep, we breathe out our ego and astral body, we breathe it in again when we wake up. So we see that there is a flowing life between us and the spiritual world. Actually when we laugh, we spread out our ego and astral body outside us. You stretch out, you expand your astral body and your ego when you laugh. And this expansion of the astral body goes out to the ether body. The invisible man spreads himself out elastically. That is the process when you laugh. The reverse process takes place when you weep. There you have the astral body contracting together with the ether body and pressing itself an the physical body which then presses out tears.

Now we go back to Solomon. When Solomon looked at the Angel of Death, he did not see a physical body, but he saw a spiritual being. What he really saw when the Angel laughed was the Angel spreading himself out. The first time he saw the Angel, he was weeping, that means the Angel was drawing himself together. Here we see how spiritual beings fulfil their activities. Laughing and weeping is an accompaniment of life with us human beings through which we only express our inner being; we show how our inner being is constituted. In the case of spiritual beings, they show their actions. As far as we are concerned, when we laugh and cry, it has very little significance for other people. We do not produce activities through our laughing and crying. These are accompaniments of our life. However, in the moment when we approach certain spiritual beings who with their actual self are occupied more in working than we are, there you have the significance of the expanding out and the contracting in. The Angel of Death, because he was in the position of having to fetch these two Moors to death, had to hold his forces together, he had to condense himself in order to give support for his forces because he was about to perform some activity which expressed itself in the fact that he was sad. That is only an indication of how he is drawing himself together. The next day when he had accomplished his task, then the elasticity expressed itself again, he spread himself out and you had the appearance of laughter.

Now we come to the next question: Why were they led to the City of Loos and what is the meaning of this whole process with Solomon? In the first place we must contemplate the fact that Solomon was a person who stands in connection with the spiritual world. I told you that it is very significant that both scribes were the sons of Shesher who had been the scribe of King David. Thus they are very valuable personalities and scribes at that ancient time signified something different from what it means today. Scribes in Egypt, for example, were people who were able with all sorts of inner fervor to paint letters in the sense of the ancient Egyptian script, and when someone painted a false letter, he stood under the penalty of death, because he was dealing with something of a holy nature. There was something of a holy nature in the letters; this applied to the scribes of King Solomon who also stood in connection with the spiritual world. They stood in communion with Solomon who imparted his knowledge of the spiritual world to them. And the City of Loos points out the fact to us that there was something in these scribes which enabled them to have a feeling of their immortality even during their life, they had this connection with the spiritual world. We ought to bring our attention to the fact that they knew of their soul-spiritual kernel which passes through the portal of death. They knew this not only theoretically, but they belonged to those who, as it were, were initiated in a certain degree into these mysteries.

Hence the Angel of Death had some difficulty here, because it was necessary to put himself in a certain connection with King Solomon, which means that both scribes, as well as King Solomon, lived in the consciousness of their immortality. Therefore it was necessary for the Angel of Death to enter into the whole process which he had to execute because a consciousness was present of the death which was involved here. This did not mean that King Solomon wanted to protect his scribes from death and therefore sent then to the City of Loos, but it was supposed to indicate that here we are dealing with death which was completely conscious, that the knowledge of death was part of their knowledge. Here the main emphasis was that Solomon was conscious of the death of his scribes and when it is said that he sent then to the city of Loos, that should only indicate to us how the Ahrimanic force represented by the Angel of Death is represented by its agent as the demonic goat which enters into the situation. Thus the whole process which occurs consciously is supposed to be explained to us through the story in the following way: A death once occurred in such a way that a wise man was conscious of it. That is what Rabbi Joachin wanted to indicate. The whole process is connected with the spiritual world. This arising of knowledge of the super-sensible world in King Solomon is indicated by this story. Rabbi Joachin said: “Man is bound to the earth through the form of the feet and its relationship to the earth, and it is expressed that man is connected to the earth in a one-sided way, that only his feet are guarantee for the fact that man belongs to the earth. The upright posture of man is a guarantee for the fact that he is given over to the spiritual world with his essential kernel. And because Solomon was able to believe him, he was able to be made consciously aware of the death of his scribes who were dear to him.

Therefore we see that the idea of these ancient traditions can only be understood with the aid of spiritual science. You learn from that that Solomon's wisdom is connected with the fact that he was able to look into the spiritual world and discover the mystery of death. In the line of the generations which descends from King Solomon, you have the physical preparation, as it were, for this clairvoyance in so far as it is able to enter the portal of death. Therefore we see the body of Jesus descending from the Solomon line of the House of David, but the soul is that of Zarathustra. We have to be clear about the soul being that of Zarathustra and why it had to enter into a body which descended from someone who was permeated with clairvoyance.

Now, I have often spoken about that which came with the soul of Zarathustra. Today I only want to emphasize the fact that that which came later was mostly removed from the teaching of Zarathustra and then passed over into the teaching of Mani, and further on into the teaching of Manichaeisn. We know the deepest questions of the riddle of man belongs to the question of the relationship of good and evil, and we know that we can understand it when we have insight into the working of Lucifer and Ahriman. But this working of Lucifer and Ahriman leads us back to Zarathustra. Lucifer and Ahriman are already present as a fact of the spiritual world in the teaching of Zarathustra. And let us try to bring the Zarathustrian teaching of the good and evil into connection with the teaching of predestination which is connected with the Islamic religion.

Let us consider the import of this teaching of predestination. On the one side it says: Everything which occurs has been predetermined, so that even taking a step in front of my door was predetermined. Even when I die that was predestined. Everything is strongly predestined, which means that for the consciousness of the Islamic person, everything that occurs was already previously written in the Book of God. However, every time this Islamic person is confronted with something, he says: “If it is the will of God.” He is completely convinced of the fact that everything is written in the Book of God; however, he says: “I will only do this thing if it is the will of God”. A Westerner would say to this Islamic person: “If you say that everything is predestined, then it does not make any sense to say I will do it if God wills it. Why do you say: ‘I will do it if God wills it?’ There is no doubt about it since everything is already determined from the beginning.” Here we have an insoluble contradiction; it really is an insoluble contradiction. Look at Western philosophy, at Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling and so on, and you will find the after-working of this insoluble contradiction, but it appears in a particularly crass way in the teaching of Kismet, of everything being predestined. Here we have a teaching which, in this connection, is different from the teaching of Zarathustra, that the people who know Zarathustra know about Lucifer and Ahriman. At first we have the teaching of primal wisdom which did not contain any contradictions and this transforms itself into teaching which does carry a contradiction. A person who does not recognize that life is filled with contradictions will really never understand life. Life, when it is only approached with the human understanding is bound to give many contradictions.

First we have the age of Zarathustra and then this is followed by a time when man is confronted by contradictions. But through these contradictions he should be stimulated to develop his real inner life. Now, you have something happening in the earth evolution where something which did not belong to the earth evolution comes in in order that man can resolve these contradictions. Here we have the Nathan Jesus coming into earth evolution and with this Nathan Jesus you have something which helps to solve all the earth contradictions, because the Nathan Jesus comes from the spiritual world and is not attached to the earth. In the Nathan Jesus we have a healing of the contradictions which occurs in human beings during the earth sojourn. So we find where you have this contradiction of the predestination and the idea ‘If God wills it’ in the Koran, and you have in this very same Koran the allusion to the Nathan Jesus which I quoted earlier, who spoke immediately at birth. You see, all these things are very complicated.

It requires courage, courage in order to think things toward the end. And this is the sort of courage that we get from spiritual science. Too often today people are apathetic, but in spiritual science we want to replace apathy with calmness. With apathy you do not care; with calmness you are able to absorb these things in a mood of equanimity.

Today we will go over to some of those eurythmic exercises more related to the activity proceeding from the soul. Before we begin, however, it will be necessary to take note that it is usually assumed when a person produces an expression of will or when he arrives at a judgment, that these expressions are connected with the human nervous system alone. This, however, is not at all the case; one must make it clear to oneself that the judgments which the human being passes, for example, are bound up with his entire constitution; that man pronounces a judgment out of the totality of his being. Thus when one makes the eurythmic movement corresponding to a judgment, here again, the whole human being is influenced in a certain manner; it is not only the head which will be subject to the influences of what arises through judging eurythmically. Mrs. Baumann will show us the movement which corresponds to confirmation, and then the one corresponding to negation. Naturally it should be carried out several times without interruption when used as therapeutic exercise. Now this confirmation and negation is precisely that which can be called a judgment; when one confirms or negates something one has to do with the nature of judgment in its essence. When you give such a confirmation or negation, the movement works, when it is repeated frequently, by way of a detour through the etheric body very strongly on the respiratory system. One can by this means counter a tendency to shortness of breath. You can for example repeat the confirmation ten times consecutively, then the negation, and follow this up with confirmation, negation, confirmation, negation—both ten times consecutively. Whatsoever illness this shortness of breath may be the symptom of, by this means one will be able to counteract it in such a way that the entire constitution is affected as the whole matter occurs by way of a detour through the etheric body. You must only keep in sight what is being done here. One could interpret what Mrs. Baumann has done touching upon what is essential in it as follows: what she projects thereby into the world is a thought that has become fleeting, a thought which has gained wings and gone over into movement. When a judgment is fixed eurythmically—as a confirmation or negation—then it is a thought which rides on the movement. And because the thought rides on the movement one projects in fact on the one hand, a part of this being outwards; on the other hand, because the thought rides on the movement one takes a part more thoroughly into oneself than otherwise. That is to say, one makes a movement through which one becomes more awake than one otherwise is. Such movements are actually movements that awaken. However, because one does not wake up with the ego at the same time in the same manner, the activity of the ego is in a certain way dampened. This dampening of the ego is not absolute, however, but in relation to the organism. In fighting shortness of breath by means of this detour through the etheric body this constitutes what would be the first symptom reached and what is introduced into the whole human constitution by means of the byway through the etheric body.

Now a disposition of the will:¹ sympathy and antipathy. Now imagine you make this movement repeatedly, one after another: sympathy, antipathy, sympathy, antipathy, or only one of these two. When one does this, in a certain sense one is setting out something which one carries within oneself; naturally this can only be confirmed through observation. It is a sort of falling asleep. The other movement (confirmation and negation; the ed.) must be carried out quickly, and this must be carried out slowly. It is indeed a movement which brings forth the imagination of sleep in the observer; imaginatively one falls asleep in a way with such a movement—not in reality, however, at least that shouldn't happen. But because one in reality doesn't go to sleep while making this movement, the “I” is more strongly active in relation to the body than it usually is. And by means of such a movement the circulation and the digestion as a whole are stimulated. The entire digestion is really stimulated in such a manner that through such a movement the tendency to belch, for example, can be counteracted.

Now we want to express that which one could call the feeling of love towards something (Mrs. Baumann). Take a good look at this, the feeling of love for something. Imagine it carried out ten times consecutively and accompanied by a powerful E between each of the movements. Thus, Love-E, Love-E, and so on, one after another. You accompany the movements which you have learned as expressing feeling in eurythmy—it could be another feeling as well—with the movement for E. Here we have a strong influence which proceeds from the human etheric to act on the astral nature and which has the effect of warming the circulation. It is something which really works on the circulatory system in a beneficial manner. One cannot say that it accelerates or retards the circulation; it affects it in a beneficially warming manner.

We also have something which could be called a wish: Hope. (Miss Wolfram) Look at this and picture to yourself that one carries out this movement for the wish repeatedly—always returning to the position of balance, then carrying out the movement for the wish again—and always alternating it with the movement for U. This means that the astral will act very strongly upon the etheric and it can be said that a beneficial warming effect on the breathing system will result. Naturally one must take into consideration that all these things of which we have spoken today occur by way of the etheric body and can, therefore, never show what effect they have on the following day. Some effects may appear after two to three days and are then, however, all the more certain.

Now imagine that we make a bending and stretching movement with the legs and at the same time a definite B-movement (Mrs. Baumann). That which I have just shown you simultaneous with a decided B movement, now rest, B while bending, ten times consecutively. That is something which people who very frequently have migraine or other headaches should do. The time for them to do it, however, is not when they have the headache, but rather when they do not.

A particularly effective movement is the following: bend and stretch the torso forwards and backwards accompanying this movement simultaneously with the movement for R. (Miss Wolfram) Bend forwards, bend backwards with the R; that consecutively and often. That affects the whole rhythmic system, the rhythm of breathing and of circulation, positively. When there are irregularities present there, this will work extraordinarily well under all conditions.

Now I will ask you to take a look at another most effective movement which consists in shaking the head to the right and left with the movement for M. The head should not be turned, in so far as possible, but only bent to the right and left, and that with the M-movement. That is something which when practised has a very strong quieting effect on all possible irregularities in the lower body, again by way of the etheric body. Irregularities in the lower system which express themselves through pains can be mitigated thereby. One must combat tendencies to such pains when the pains are not present. That is the crux of the matter. While the pains are present it cannot very well be carried out. The important thing is to carry it out so long as the pains are not present.

Please take note of the following: strike the knee with the foot, stemming the movement of the foot against the knee; picture this accompanied by an E movement with the arms. It is a very beautiful movement. It can and should be carried out as an exercise with children in school, as when it is done frequently it wages war against the most varied aspects of clumsiness. The children will at least he well cured of their clumsiness when they practise just this exercise. And when the children come and say that their shoulders hurt so and everything possible hurts, then you should reply: that is exactly what I wanted; you will be especially glad about it once it's better again! Every pain that is brought about in this manner combats clumsiness. Thus in respect to this one can deal quite energetically with the children.

Now we will take a look at another variety (of movement). Imagine every sort of E movement which can be carried out with the arms now projected onto the floor. This movement comes into existence when this line crosses the other at an angle. Now let us imagine it in this way: Mrs. Baumann places herself here, Miss Wolfram there. Now walk and accompany the whole thing with an E movement with the arms. Run so that you pass by one another, but pay attention that you don't run into each other. So you make an E on the floor and an E with the arms and you pay attention at the same time that you don't collide. It is this taking notice of the other person, this exerting of one's concentration on him combined with the E-gesture which works together with the movement here. This exercise can only be carried out with two people. It is—when carried out by two people—essentially what one would call a strengthening of the heart, all that which is connected with the phenomena which one generally terms the strengthening of the heart.

Question: Could one have this exercise carried out by one sick and one healthy person?

One can readily do that, but one would perhaps have to have the healthy person omit the E-movement with the arms. This movement is especially intended for the clinical situation where one will, of course, have two people in need of a strengthening of the heart; it really is better if one has two such people.

Now let us imagine the movement so: one of the ladies stands here, the other here, behind one another. When you arrive here, then Miss Wolfram carries out the path which you have begun, but in such a manner that she is always facing forwards. Then as the movement carries on, you take this part of the path and you the other. You initiate the continuation of your own movement in the other person and accompany it with the O position of the arms. Now one must see that the people who do this begin at a certain tempo; to begin with it must be slower, then become ever faster and faster. This rapid tempo should then ebb out into a slower one. That is then a movement which serves to strengthen the diaphragm significantly and thereby the whole breathing system. Here again, when one leaves out the O movement with the arms one can have a healthy person participate, but it is of course best to employ two people who are in need of healing.

Now I will ask you, Mrs. Baumann, to demonstrate the H movement for us once again. And now I will ask you to make this movement in such a way that you hold the arms still and imitate the movement with the shoulders alone as well as possible. In this case, however, one must accustom oneself to doing this movement with the shoulders and making an A with the arms at the same time, an A of any sort with the arms. That should be repeated frequently. You see, that is what could be designated as: “laughing eurythmically”. That is how one laughs eurythmically. And when one laughs thus eurythmically that which one has in the curative effect of laughing itself is really very greatly heightened. The curative effect of laughing is well known. But when one practises laughing eurythmically, this curative effect is proportionately greater. You could do it otherwise as well, however.

Miss Wolfram, please make an A movement of some sort. And now try to make the same movement I spoke of before, the shoulder movement of the H, but do it quite slowly as if you wished to do it thoughtfully. Thus into the A movement of the arms one makes the shoulder movement of the 11. One could designate that as follows: the whole organism is brought into accord with the feeling of veneration. It encompasses all that which the feeling of veneration actually effects in the organism. The effect on the human organism of the feeling of veneration, when it is habitual, is to make the organism as such actually more durable, more sturdy. It becomes capable of greater resistance. People who really have the capacity for veneration inherent in them become more capable of resistance within their organism. That is why everything which brings children to veneration, to the gift or capacity for reverence makes children more resistant. And one can come to the assistance of this capacity for resistance through this last eurythmic exercise.

One must keep in mind that what we have demonstrated today as decision, expression of will, hope, love, what we have shown in respect to certain organic pains, what we have demonstrated as a means of combating clumsiness and so on, all these things are related to man in such a way that the human being is gripped through them in the innermost part of his organic being and by way of a detour through the etheric body actually derives the possibility of making this etheric body into a workable instrument. The etheric body is a part of man which becomes stiff in most of those people who sit out their lives, spend their lives without interest for their surroundings. And it is not good when the human etheric body becomes stiff; nor for the organic functions is it good. When one has the exercises which we have described today carried out by children in moderation and by the appropriate patients very energetically (one can see by the indications given which patients have need of them), the etheric body will become supple and inwardly flexible. And by means of them one will do the children as well as the adults a good service.

These movements are indeed such that one can give them priority over the usual gymnastic movements; the usual gymnastic movements are taken in reality from the physiology, from the physis of the body alone and they tear the physical body continually out of the etheric body. Thus, the physical body then makes its own movements which do not pull the movements of the etheric body in the appropriate manner after them. For this reason the usual, merely physiologic, gymnastics is basically a school for materialism, since by means of it materialistic thought is transformed into feeling. Eurythmy makes man capable of recognising himself within increasingly and of gaining control over himself inwardly. Therefore such exercises have a pedagogic-didactic value as well as therapeutic and hygienic value. The attempt should be made to have these exercises—those described today, I mean—carried out by adults as well in moderation and to develop them in such a way that they could be carried out by the sick in a clinical situation.

A question has been put to me which could perhaps lead to something—and some other questions as well. Here is the question: “The Chinese cannot pronounce the letter R, they substitute L for it. Strawberries thus becomes stlawbellies, for example. Does that have to do with their race?”

It has to do with the organisation of the organism insofar as that is racially determined, of course. Through the particular gift of one part of mankind for one sound or another one can see what tendencies are inherent in certain people by virtue of their race. I brought such things to discussion just a few hours ago.

Other questions have been put about exercises which could be used in relation to conditions of indolence, insufficient reaction, lethargy and so on; conditions which frequently have to do with an insufficient thyroid activity. And here it has been brought to our attention that Fliess, in his well-known book about the course of life, has placed this complex of symptoms in the intermediate sexual category. How could a contemporary author not do so? Everything about which he knows very little he chalks up to the intennediate sexual category, or some other way. He puts the left-handed, for example, in the same category. I want to emphasize, expressly, however, that I have never recommended a eurythmic exercise with a special right-left emphasis to anyone.

(Attention was drawn to the exercises which one should begin either to the right or to the left: iambus, trochee.)

That is not in order to particularly accentuate an emphasis on the right or left, but rather in order to call forth the feeling of the iambus or trochee within the forward motion. That is thoroughly justified. The fact is that it has less to do with the long-short than it has to do with the particular movement. It is quite correct; it has to do with the fact that what lives in the breathing system is reversed when it is transferred into the system of movement. The upper man and the lower man are the reverse of one another. Thus every imaginable iambus in the breathing system, brought forth in speech, must of necessity become a trochee in the movement of legs and vice versa. Eurythmy in its entirety is based on this principle. You may test the whole of eurythmy in respect to it: eurythmy does not follow the principle of similarity in its execution, but the movement which is in keeping with the polar image. It is all entirely in accord with the image formed as the other polarity. This idea must be maintained throughout. But I have never recommended to anyone that he do something especially right or left; that should be left completely to the feeling. The question of whether a thing should be done with the right hand or the left hand should be determined only by those matters which would otherwise come into consideration. I do not want people to have the impression that I would have suggested an emphasis on the right in particular eurythmic exercises to any more left-sided person whosoever. That is not the case.

In addition I would like to emphasize the following. It is the case that when one has to do with insufficient reaction or with lethargy this more general indication will fall into some category which I have already given; lethargy is a general expression and can be relegated to something or other about which I have spoken. The appropriate movements should then be carried out.

On the whole one should see that with an exercise such as I have just given in connection with judgment and expression of will²—that the appearance of indolence, of lethargy and so on can be combatted very especially by that which I have given for the expression of will. And if one should notice that this is not particularly effective, one can alternate that exercise with the exercise that I have given for judgment, but in such a way that one attempts to discover—as it is here a question of trial—whether it is more effective when one varies the expression of will and the expression of judgment in a ratio of three to two or of two to three—one shorter, the other longer. And since these things work by way of a detour through the etheric body, one will find that one will first have to begin and carry on with these exercises for two to three days and according to the circumstances—when one sees that they are not having the proper effect—make a change on the third day. But in general one can say that the one exercise so well as the other will have an awakening effect on man in both directions. The will exercise and the judgment exercise are thus the ones that come into particular consideration.

In order that there be no misunderstanding, I emphasize that of course the opinion must not arise that these exercises would have a very significant effect after being carried out for two or three days. That would be an error. In order to produce an effect, these exercises should be carried out for at least seven weeks. Thus one can maintain—without necessarily being mystically inclined—that the space of time necessary for the beneficial effects just described to show themselves would be about seven weeks.

That is what I wanted to tell you today concerning these matters. I would like to request that the corresponding session tomorrow follow the other directly, after a short pause. Tomorrow will be the last eurythmy session then, as it will be necessary to have two purely medical sessions one after the other on Monday.

• 1. Willenszustinnung
• 2. Willensäusserung

A contribution to the foundation of scientific ethics

The assertion of rationalist ethicists that only those actions can be considered truly moral whose driving forces are not conditioned by the egoism of the individual has been severely contradicted by the statements of recent psychologists, who ultimately attribute all human activities to egoistic motives. According to this latter view, even seemingly selfless actions have their basis in selfish feelings. The psychological constitution of the individual who performs so-called selfless acts is said to be such that his sense of self is elevated when he makes sacrifices to his fellow man. In contrast to this current, the author of this paper seeks to establish the existence and nature of human compassion and to prove that the latter is the reason for non-selfish actions. Based on the investigations of Herbert Spencer, he shows how the feeling of others comes to life in our own ego when we perceive a certain emotional expression (cry - trembling, etc.) in the person next to us, because we know that this corresponding expression also occurs in us with the feelings living in others. Furthermore - and in this he goes beyond Spencer - the author finds that the perception of another's emotional expression can also directly awaken the corresponding feeling in us, without the idea of the emotional expression we ourselves have carried out intervening. Starting from these facts, the author arrives at basic ethical concepts that do justice to the demands of ethical altruism as well as to the findings of psychology. For "although the actions of the benevolent are as well determined by his own weal and woe as those of the most ruthless egoist", the actions of the benevolent are not as well calculated for the highest possible future happiness as those of the egoist. In short, we are dealing with a book that is well worth reading and meets serious requirements in every respect.

It is a frequently mentioned fact that it is exceptionally difficult to obtain an understanding concerning the spiritual-scientific movement with our academic leaders in scientific circles. This is a fatal fact that science is today surrounded by such a big belief in authority. Everything that is scientific exercises such an impressive power in all directions that a spiritual movement has a hard furrow to plough if the predominating part of the scholars, one can say, almost any academic circle treat such a movement like our spiritual-scientific one in such a way, as if it were dilettantism, blind superstition or anything else.

It may be deplorable, but understandable in any case, if one hears the judgements of such academic circles about theosophy or spiritual science. If one examines these judgements, it is obvious that they belong to the judgements that were obtained without any expertise. If we then still ask the so-called public opinion, as it is expressed in our journals, we need not to be surprised, if it faces the theosophical movement not quite understanding. For this public opinion is controlled completely by the impressive power of the scientific authority and is completely dependent on it.

There are different reasons, which make this clear to us. We can see one of these reasons concerning the German cultural life simply in the fact that the academic circles, actually, left an important impact on our German cultural life, a culminating point of our deepest life of thought completely out of consideration. Indeed, you find some notes about this in any manual of philosophy, in any history of literature; but a really penetrating understanding of this most significant side of our cultural life and of that which around the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries the most important German thinkers performed does not exist. In particular, there is a lack of understanding how these results of the German life of thought are rooted in the general German cultural life a hundred years ago.

If this fact were not such a one, if our academic circles were concerned with that deepening of the German life of thought around the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries, there would be, for example, an understanding of Fichte's, Schelling's, and Hegel's great life of thought among our philosophers. The compendia of philosophy would not contain only single inadequate extracts of the works, but one would know what generally thought achieved in Germany. Then one would also obtain access to the spiritual-scientific movement from the point of view of scholarship.

Of all pre-schools of theosophy or spiritual science which one can go through today this school of the German thought of the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries is the very best for the present human beings. Indeed, it is not accessible to anybody, because how should the bigger national circles understand the great German thinkers really if the university circles, the academic circles lead the way to this understanding so little, if they do so little to cause a real popularity of these thinkers. One is not allowed to reproach the big audience, those who should turn to theosophy that they are not able to do it. To those, however, whose occupation it would be to let flow in the spiritual treasures of the West in the national culture, to those must be said that they fulfil their obligations in this respect in no way.

I do not name unknown names to you, but I maybe have to represent the peculiar fact that one can relate names, which you find in every philosophical compendium, with theosophy. It is peculiar that one likes to say that it is senseless to use the title “Secret Doctrine.” The Western researchers, for example, who concerned themselves with Buddhism, have repeatedly denied that Buddhism contains a secret doctrine that anything would exceed what you can read in the books.

It is not at all surprising that such academic circles assert such things. For one can conclude from it that the most important things have remained a secret doctrine to them. How should they know that there is a secret doctrine, because they have never found access to it! The most important that was performed in connection with the great German thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte is to the majority, also even today, a deep secret doctrine. It is true, as deplorable as it may appear, the German spiritual life of the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries originated from the so-called Enlightenment. We may characterise this Enlightenment with a few words. It was a necessary event in the modern spiritual development. The most significant spirits of the 18th century had taken up the cause of it. Kant says, enlightenment simply means what can be summarised in the sentence: “Dare to use your own reason” (first by Horace: sapere aude). This enlightenment was nothing else than an emancipation of the personality, the relief of the personality from the traditions. What one has thought for centuries, what everybody has taken up from the common spiritual substance of the people should be checked. Only that should be valid which the single personality affirms. You know, great spirits developed from the Enlightenment. One only needs to remind of the name Lessing to call one of the best. Everything that is connected with the name Kant is nothing else than a result of the Enlightenment.

Someone who has broken with this Enlightenment in a peculiar way is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If I say, he has broken in peculiar way with this Enlightenment, and then you do not believe that I am determined to represent Fichte as an opponent of the Enlightenment. He has broken in the way that he examines all results of the Enlightenment and has continued building on its basis, but Fichte went quite thoroughly beyond that which is only enlightenment, beyond the trivial. Just Fichte gives somebody who has the possibility to become engrossed in his great lines of thought something that one can obtain among the newer spirits only from him.

After we have heard many merely popular talks, we want to hear a talk today, which seems to be far off the usual way, which our spiritual-scientific talks take in this winter. I will endeavour to show something as comprehensibly as possible that took place in the German life of thought, actually, at that time, around the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries. It can only be sketchy what I have to say. At first this German life of thought impeded the access to the real spiritual world and then to the living and immortal essence of the human being. Today I cannot go into the worth or worthlessness of Kant's philosophy. The official philosophy calls Kant the destroyer and regards his system of theories as a philosophical action first-rate. Today I would like only to remind of a word which is known perhaps also with those who do not have the opportunity to penetrate deeper into the matter, to the word of the “thing in itself.”

The human cognitive faculties are limited in the sense of Kant's philosophy. They cannot penetrate to the “thing in itself.” Whichever ideas and concepts we form, whatever we get to know in the world, we deal with phenomena and not with the true “thing in itself” in the sense of Kant's philosophy. This is always concealed behind the phenomena. With it, blind speculation is encouraged—and we have seen it in the spiritual development of Germany very well—which wants to define and restrict the human cognitive faculties in all directions. However, at the same time the trend of the human being to penetrate to the true, to explore the depths of existence should be stopped.

It should be shown that the human being cannot automatically approach the primary sources of existence. Now it may be true that such an attitude was necessary in the course of the spiritual life of the 18th century. However, Kant's philosophy put big obstacles in the way of the further development of the spiritual life. Indeed, I know very well that there are people who say, what did Kant different from all those great spirits who have always emphasised that we deal with phenomena that we cannot come to the “thing in itself!” That is apparently right, however, it is wrong. The real spiritual researchers of all times state quite different that the world only consists of phenomena.

No true spiritual researcher has ever denied that in such a way, as we investigate the world with senses, understand it with the intellect, it offers us only phenomena. However, higher senses are to be woken in us that go beyond the usual, which penetrate deeper into the sources of existence, can, and must lead slowly and gradually to the “thing in itself.” No Eastern philosophy, no Platonic philosophy, no self-understanding worldview penetrating into the spirit has ever spoken of the world as Maya in another sense. They always said only, to the lower human cognition, a veil is before the “thing in itself,” to the higher human cognition this veil is torn, the human being can penetrate into the depths of existence. The Enlightenment reached a blind alley concerning the question in certain respects, and this is characterised best of all with a remark which you find in the preface to the second edition of Kant's main work Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and with which the Enlightenment can be caught at its despondency because it does not want to advance further.

One reads: “I had to override knowledge to create space for faith.” This is the nerve of Kant's philosophy and of that thinking to which the 18th century came and beyond which our philosophical scholarship has not yet come which still suffers from it. As long as it suffers from this illness, philosophy is never destined to understand theosophy. What does that mean: “I had to override knowledge to create space for faith”? Kant says, the thing in itself remains concealed, consequently also the thing in our breast. We do not know what we ourselves are; we can never come to the true figure of the things. As from uncertain worlds the so-called categorical imperative sounds: you shall do this or that.—We hear it, we cannot prove it, however. We just have to believe it. We hear about the divine being. We have to believe it. Just as little as we know about the destiny of the soul, about immortality and eternity. We must believe them. There is only faith in these matters that connect the human being with the divine, because no knowledge can penetrate into the divine. The human being believes knowledge if he presumes to penetrate into the divine. This divine is thereby falsified, is cast in a wrong light due to wild speculation.

Therefore, Kant wanted to save all spiritual for the mere faith and apply cognition—what one can know—only to the external impressions, to the appearance. Whatever you may read and study, otherwise, about Kant's philosophy, this thought is the essentials that it depends on. This thought became the essentials in the further development of Kant's thinking. However, someone who broke with this thought definitely out of a courageous attitude was Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814).

It is a peculiar thing that the theosophical thinkers of modern India, the renovators of the Vedanta philosophy made an astounding discovery—namely that the Germans have a great thinker, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. An Indian says this who writes under the name Bhagavan Das (1869-1958). I have got to know German theosophists who have only found out from him that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is a deep German thinker.

You can experience a lot in this regard. Weeks ago, I was in a South German city. One of the theosophical friends there said to me, now we have a university lecturer here who means, it would be good if people studied Fichte, because he got the idea that many deep thoughts were in Fichte.—That is a strange confession of a German university professor! If more than one century after Fichte a German university professor makes the discovery that Fichte achieved something great, throws a characteristic light on this kind of German scholarship.

Fichte represented the doctrine of the ego, of the human self-consciousness not speculatively, but out of the whole depth of his being, among his Jena students in the last decade of the 18th century. He did not represent it in the same way as we do it today from the spiritual-scientific point of view. He represented it in such a way that a number of persons would have come to theosophy if they had educated themselves according to his great conceptual demands; they would have come to it in a healthy way, illumining the real inside brightly. Not without reason his speeches inspired the Jena students in those days. For the following lived in him. Although he walked on the heights of thought, although he spoke in the purest, clearest, and logically sharpest thoughts, a quite warm and deep immediate personality and being expressed themselves in his thoughts at the same time. He himself pronounced the word that characterises him deepest that everyone has a philosophy, depending on which sort of a person he is.

If one expresses this trivially, one could say, it does not depend on whether anybody can think logically well or badly, because one can reason a hollow philosophy very logically, it does not depend on astuteness but on the internal experience, on that which one has fathomed with all his soul forces. This expresses itself in the language. If one is also a flat materialist, nevertheless, he can be a sharp logician, and on the other hand, someone can be a spiritualist and be logically weak. One proves no worldview, but the worldview is the expression of the innermost human being, the inner experience. Fichte pronounced this not only, but lived it also. Kant stimulated him. However, as one is stimulated by that to which one can add the drawback in his inside—because there the deepest organs emerge in the human being—, nevertheless, this was clear to Fichte.

Now follow me, I would like to say, for a short moment into the icy, but not less important regions of thoughts from which Fichte got the being of self-consciousness. I do not describe with his own words, because this would be too difficult here, but in outlines, which do not contain less truth. I would like to say what he conjured before his Jena students at that time: there is one thing for everybody in which the “thing in itself” announces itself to him, in which he expresses himself. That is his own inside. Look into it and you discover something that you can discover nowhere else at first.—We see that Fichte knew that not anybody discovers what he has to discover there, because he says a very nice word, even if it is rude to most human beings. He says, if the human beings were able to come to real self-knowledge, they would find the most significant in themselves. However, a few are successful, because they rather regard themselves as pieces of lava on the moon than as self-conscious beings.

What is self-consciousness for our time? One shows it as a conglomerate of cerebral atoms. However, one does not strive for recognising himself; one does not do this. There is no great difference whether one says that it is a conglomerate of cerebral atoms or molecules or a piece of lava on the moon.—Here Fichte draws attention clearly to the fact that that knowledge of the inside which only wants to observe how it is not the right knowledge of the inside. For the nature of the human being differs in its inside from any other being. By which does it differ? It differs by the fact that decision and action belong to the nature of the human being. From this icy region of thoughts, we want to come to flowery fields soon. Fichte calls self-knowledge not brooding in oneself, not looking into oneself, no, Fichte regards it as action. This word leads you from the wrong self-knowledge to the true self-development. The human being is not able to look simply into himself in order to recognise who he is. He has to give that to himself, which he shall become. He must become engrossed in the divine of the world and get the sparks from the divine with which he has to kindle his self perpetually. We look at a stone. It is what it is. We recognise it. We look at the plant. It is what it is. We look at our own body, our etheric body, and astral body. They are also that which they are. The human being is only that which he makes of himself, and self-knowledge is an intimate activity, no dead knowledge. While Fichte uses the (German) word “Tathandlung” (~ self-conscious action and result of the action), he says something that only the old Vedanta philosophy says in this significant kind. He reached the point that just the theosophists seek again. Often and often, I have said here that theosophy wants to show how the human being soars the divine, how it should stimulate the divine strength slumbering in the human being with which then he also becomes aware of the divine round himself. Fichte completely strives for the same. The wrong self-knowledge, he says, consists of the fact that one says, look into yourselves and you find the god in yourselves.

The right self-knowledge says something completely different. It says, if you brood in yourself, it is in such a way, as if you look into your own eye. However, this is not the task of the eye. We get to know the light with the eye. Thus, we also get to know the light of the ego with the soul. One can compare the eye with waking the inner self. As little as you find the soul in the organism, the light in the eye, just as little you find the god in yourselves. However, we find the possibility to develop the organs to find this god. The activity in the ego, which develops our spiritual organs, is the being that the human being gives himself. This is the “Tathandlung,” this is Fichte's self-knowledge. From this point, Fichte advances gradually. If you completely settle down, you educate yourselves to his thoughts, then you find a healthy access to theosophy, and nobody has to regret it one day if he settles down into the clear lines of thought of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, because he finds the way to the spiritual life.

However, there is a peculiar fact. When Johann Gottlieb Fichte has ascended to these etheric heights of thought, he lacks the view to which he did not come at that time, which the spiritual-scientific worldview brought back like a solution of the world riddle: the teaching of karma and reincarnation. If you see this, then you know to apply it to your own development. The human beings would like to judge all times, according to the same pattern. However, the human spirit is in perpetual development, and every age has other tasks. That century whose end forms in conceptual respect Johann Gottlieb Fichte had the task to emancipate the human personality. This was the good side of the Enlightenment. However, the personality is that member of the human nature, which just does not return, as well as it is. Our deepest essence that expresses itself within the personality returns in the various earth-lives. However, the single life on earth expresses itself in the personality.

Let us consider the being of the personality properly. We have four human covers basically that are not to be imagined, however, like onion skins: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and in them that which the human being works for, his refined astral body, that part on which the human ego has already worked. We have these four covers. However, in them only the imperishable everlasting essence of the human being, the so-called spiritual triad exists: manas, buddhi, and atman—spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. These go from earth-life to earth-life and ascend then to higher states of existence. The last external cover expresses itself in the personality. It has still another importance and it has received it more and more in the human development. If we go back to the old times, we find that the human beings appreciated the individuality during the former centuries less and less; instead, the personality became more and more powerful. Today one easily confuses the concepts of individuality and personality. The individuality is the everlasting that runs through the earth-lives. Personality is that which the human being develops during an earth-life.

If we want to study the individuality, we have to look at the bottom of the human soul. If we want to study the personality, we have to observe how the essence expresses itself. The essence is born into the people, into the occupation. All that determines the inner being, it personifies it. With a human being who is still on a subordinated level of development one can perceive a little of the work on his inside. The mode of expression, the kind of the gestures and so forth is just in such a way as he has them from his people. However, those are the advanced human beings who give themselves the mode of expression and gestures from their inside. The more the inside of the human being is able to work on his appearance, the higher this develops the human being.

Now one could say, the individuality is expressed in the personality. Someone, who has his own gestures, his own physiognomy, has a peculiar character in his actions and in relation to the surroundings, has a distinct personality. Is that lost at death forever? No, this does not get lost. Christianity knows for sure that this is not the case. What one understands by resurrection of the flesh or of the personality is nothing else than the preservation of the personal in all following incarnations. What the human being has gained as a personality remains to him because it is attached to the individuality and this carries it further into the following incarnations. If we have made something of our body that has a peculiar character, this body, this strength, which has worked there, resurrects. As much we have worked on ourselves, as much we have made of ourselves, we do not lose it. Generating awareness of this knowledge is something that has not yet happened. This happens by theosophy. However, it was the task of the Enlightenment to acquire an uncertain feeling. It showed the task of the personality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte has put the idea of the personality in its everlasting importance in his construct of clear ideas. There the right thing immediately emerges for the epoch of the recognition of the everlasting and imperishable in the personality. Fichte accomplished that.

One has often said, the great human beings have the big mistakes of their big virtues, and because Fichte was able to measure out the personality with the thought uniquely, he did not penetrate to the individuality; also not his successors. However, they have implanted the thought in the personality. Someone who finds it there carries it in a healthy way through the repeated earth-lives if he approaches spiritual science. It does not depend on dogmas, but on the education that we can obtain in his spirit. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was an educator in the proper sense.

It does not depend on the fact that we become servile students of such a man, but that we also go through that strength which he went through. Then we may get other thoughts by his forces in another age. One faces such a spirit in this way. This was expressed in a certain way at his time. His personality can educate us and find pleasant expression in the distant future.

Spiritual science is so little dogmatic that it leads to the great human beings and shows that we can learn from them even more than what they have said. The expression of that which they are is the language. However, more than the expression lives in every human being, the immortal soul lives in them to which we can rise as to the true essence. Therefore, Fichte was already in the highest degree stimulating for those, at the end of the 18th century, who were sitting at his feet and listening how he measured out the human personality with world-spanning lines of thought. He inspired them to penetrate conceptionally to the soul and to acquire still quite other treasures from it than Fichte himself did.

One of those who sat at Fichte's feet and looked reverentially to him, one of those who got out the philosophical ideas, was the young short-lived German theosophist Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, German Romantic poet and author, 1772-1801). He died around the turn of 18th to the 19th century, not yet thirty years old. Who becomes engrossed in his works goes through the finest training of theosophy. Perhaps it could be to that who is educated in the western science a much better elementary training to go through his tremendous light flashes, than through the Bhagavad Gita or similar writings that remain more or less strange to the West. Just now, it is possible to become engrossed completely in that which this great soul achieved.

He wrote a book in which he describes how a young person is introduced in the subterranean structure of the earth, in the geologic layers of the rocks and minerals by great geologists and mineralogical works. There he readily gets thoughts such as, you, rocks, I look only for you, however, what you say I look for continually.—Runes, letters, words were the stones to him, which he investigated as a miner underground; spiritual beings created in the earth and produced every single rock. He saw the spirit and soul in the earth, and every stone was to him the expression of that which the earth has to say to him. Mineralogy and geology became a runic science to him, and he attempted to penetrate to the spirit of the earth, while his great teacher made the layers and resemblances of the rocks clear to him. Just those who work in the depths of the earth are often led to deeper worldviews. Not least, miners did deep looks into the spiritual world. Staying underground has a peculiar effect on the spiritual experience.

However, something else appeared with Novalis. To understand it we only need to remember that at the front gate of Plato's school one could read the words: let none but geometers enter here.—The Platonic school demonstrated its elementary knowledge in geometrical forms, and Novalis, who illumined the secrets of existence with so big light flashes, revered mathematics like a religion. It is something sacred to him. Take this as a psychological phenomenon of peculiar kind. These strange human beings are able to feel something sacred and something like music with the abstract lines of mathematics and geometry. How circles and angles form a group together, how the different forms like polyhedra, dodekahedra and such build themselves up, then one can feel something that comes from Novalis speaking about mathematics. However, you can only take up that if you do not take up it in such a way as in our schools, but if you become engrossed in the inner music of space. Mathematics is the access to the infinite truth.

Then he heard Fichte, and from him the great truth of the ego as a personality. Then we see in this strange spirit almost the whole occultism reflected in certain ways. For someone who has knowledge in this respect Novalis is a peculiar personality. He is a personality who had already experienced the deepest initiation in former incarnations. Everything was a recollection that he experienced in the last, the third decade of his life. It becomes apparent in his life that it was more recollection of former incarnations than of the current one. This comes out in his imagination. The former incarnations completely became imagination in Novalis because they cast their shadows and found their expression as pieces of art.

Thus, we have to understand Novalis as a peculiar, tender, and intimate being. If Fichte arranges his razor-sharp thoughts and carries us off by this sharpness, then Novalis is wonderfully gentle and shows the spiritual life from a completely different side. Thus, he is the necessary supplement for someone who wants to go through the German preliminary stage of theosophy. Our best went through this pre-school in those days. We can call names of many people who attempted to penetrate in their kind, according to their character in those days into the truth which spiritual science gives humanity back today. These are names that are known more or less, however, whose bearers one has to deeper consider.

At first, we have Schelling (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Sch., German philosopher, 1775-1854). If we open ourselves to his youth writings, where he became independent, he works so strongly on that who gets involved with him because he expressed a thought of Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, German-Swiss physician, occultist, 1493-1541) in the way usual at that time. This thought was expressed not only by Schelling, but also by the great Steffens (Henrik St., Danish philosopher, 1773-1845), and in particular by the naturalist Oken (originally Lorenz Okenfuß, 1779-1851), by the great predecessor of the modern theory of evolution and founder of the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians. This thought is an eminently theosophical one.

It was usual in natural sciences, also in the philosophy of Schelling and Steffens, also in that of Novalis. These thinkers said: if we look out at the world, we see a number of animals. Every animal shows certain human qualities one-sidedly developed. What the amphibians have, what the snails have is also found in the human being. Those snails, amphibians and so on have something one-sidedly physical. If one makes, however, a whole of it, one gets the harmoniously developed human body that summarises everything that is spread out outdoors. As Paracelsus says, we find letters outdoors in nature, and if we compose them, they yield a word and this word is the human being. A great theosophist—not a German one—of the 18th century (presumably Claude de Saint Martin, 1743-1803) just took this principle as the basis of his theosophical investigating. Therefore, he came so far to say, if we look at the human being, we see the remaining animal realm. This is the opposite principle of that how one studies these things today. The theorists of evolution of that time said something different from those of today.

They said, if you face a person about whom you do not know that he is, for example, a great watchmaker, and then you are not able to recognise the person. At first, you have to become engrossed in his astuteness that makes him create what he produces. What he produces, that is the point. However, nature has produced the human being as a keystone. There you have the compendium of the whole nature. If you understand this in such a way, you understand nature.—One must recognise the remaining nature from the human being and not the human being from nature. If you carry out that really, you also understand how it could emerge as a certain reflection with Schelling and Oken. With Schelling and Oken you can read, the snail is a groping animal, the insect is a light animal, the bird a hearing animal, the amphibian a feeling animal, the fish a smelling animal. Thereby they express how the senses are spread over the single animals. They are harmoniously contained in the human being. One only needs to distribute the qualities of the human being to understand the remaining nature.

In 1809, Schelling published a writing, which is of big significance for theosophy. He had got to know the deep German thinker Jacob Boehme. He became engrossed in him, and thus he got to know the nature of the bad and its coherence with freedom. You find this in his Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom. There he shows that God is the light and that from the light everything comes that shines that, however, the light has to shine into the darkness and that where light is shadow originates. Only by this comparison, one can realise what one reads in this writing. If you let the sun shine into darkness, there originates shadow; shadow must appear if the light is there, but the light does not generate it. Hence, he says, from the divine primal ground of the light everything great arises in the world. However, as well as the light is opposed to the darkness, the non-ground faces the primal ground, and from this the shadow of the good emerges, the bad. This is the indication of an infinitely deep involvement. Again, you can educate yourselves to the theosophical life if you take up that in yourselves.

Another writing by Schelling is still significant: Bruno or On the Divine and Natural Principle of Things (1802/1843). In pleasant dialogue form, like with Plato, he discusses here about the coherence of soul and spirit in the theosophical sense. Therefore, Schelling would be able to become a theosophist. He understood how to practice inner sight. Schelling was also an eager teacher at the Jena University first, and then he worked still at other sites and, finally, withdrew completely. In Munich, he lived a long time and was together with Baader (Franz Xavier von B., philosopher and theologian, 1765-1841), that spirit who renewed Jacob Boehme in such a fine way in the 19th century again. He stimulated Schelling. He wrote scarcely anything in that time. In 1809, his writing about freedom originated. Then he wrote almost nothing up to his call to Berlin by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who may be challenged in certain ways, who is not yet appreciated enough concerning insights into big, deep, and internal spiritual connections. In 1841, Schelling was appointed to Berlin. He should explain before the students what he had lived through such a long time.

He held two courses of lectures: about the Philosophy of Mythology (1856) and about the Philosophy of Revelation (1858). There he led into the essence of the old mysteries and showed how Christianity originated from them and what Christianity concerns. Then we who live more than half a century later are led automatically to reincarnation and karma. If you become engrossed in the philosophy of mythology and in the philosophy of revelation, you find, this is theosophy. However, all trivial people of that time railed against that. They could not understand what Schelling reported at that time. If the theosophists wanted to become engrossed in these writings, they would see from which depths all that is taken.

Fichte could speak of a special spiritual sense because he was one of those who wanted to open the eyes of the human beings. Fichte gave the definition of theosophy already in 1813. He said, “Appear as a sighted man in a world of blind people and speak to them of colours and light. Either you talk to them of nothing—and this is the more fortunate case if they say it, because in this way you soon notice the mistake and stop talking without success—or the more gifted people say, you are a daydreamer.”—All those experience that who are gifted with a special sense. They appear like among blind people. However, this sense can be evoked with everybody, slowly with the one, faster with the other. By the special sense, Fichte shows quite clearly that he knew what depends on in theosophy. This was the real definition of theosophy. Others scooped from such sources, from such currents of the spiritual life.

However, I would like to remind of Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich H., 1770-1831, philosopher) above all. I cannot get involved to explain Hegel's peculiar view. I would also like to remind of the name of an exceptionally gentle person, of Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (1780-1860, physician and naturalist), who wrote books about the essence of the soul. Schelling wrote to Schubert still in 1850 when the sixth edition of a book about the essence of the soul had appeared: you are, actually, in a more fortunate position than I am. I must get involved with the world-spanning thoughts, which introduce in the spiritual life. However, you live the intimate side that the human being meets if he investigates all intimacies of the soul.

Schubert studied that soul life which is the border area between consciousness, semi-consciousness and unconsciousness, but also the border area between everyday consciousness, dream, and clairvoyance. With Schubert, you already find explanations about the principle that controls the dream world. About that, you can find a lot with him. He studied Swedenborg (Emanuel S., 1688-1772, scientist, philosopher, and mystic) in the time in which it was possible to point to these characteristics of the human spiritual life with great thoughts in a healthy way. He represented the view that there is an etheric body and an even higher etheric body than that which decomposes after death with every human being. Schubert already pointed to that which the Vedanta philosophy calls the “fine body” (sukshma-shariram). He wrote a very nice consideration about this higher body of the human being. You can find there fine remarks with him.

You can see how at that time already the single currents flowed into each other, you can see this with a poet who interlaced these things in his poetries, with Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), who represented a peculiar prince in his Prince of Homburg and created Katie of Heilbronn, a peculiar figure, too. He was stimulated to them by talks on somnambulism and on higher spiritual life.

Schubert speaks of a pre-being of the soul; he also discusses the question of reincarnation. At that time, he did not yet regard it as Christian. However, he speaks of a pre-being whose destiny he exactly pursues. Then from this, the brilliant book originates by Justinus Kerner (1786-1862, practical physician, poet and writer): The Seeress of Prevorst (1829). When in the 19th century the book about this strange woman appeared, he used a lot of theosophy for its explanation. The occultist already recognises Justinus Kerner as an expert in the basic definition that he gives about this seeress (Friederike Hauffe, 1801-1829). He was an expert because he lived in the time, which had such thoughts as I characterised them. He says of the seeress of Prevorst—she had two children and was somnambulistic in the extreme—that the mental-spiritual world was open round her and that she could observe the spiritual side of the human beings. He describes her in such a way: imagine somebody retained at the moment of death, so that the peculiar state continues for some years; the emergence of the etheric body and the odd relationship of the astral body to the etheric body lasted for years. Because her soul condition was in such a way, she was able to behold the still existing part of the etheric body of someone who had lost a limb. She could also perceive many things besides. Kerner gives appropriate explanations even if they are not at the height of our time.

You can find explanations also with Eckartshausen (Karl von E., 1752-1803, philosopher, mystic) who also wrote about the inner spiritual development. Kosti's Journey or also The Hieroglyphics of the Human Heart are writings that are adapted to open the human soul to a higher vision. He also described what he calls a soul body appropriately. Another writer is sometimes rather stimulating: Ennemoser (Joseph E., 1787-1854, physician, mesmerist) who wrote theosophy, too, informed a lot of animal magnetism and the mysteries in his works, and contributed much to show the Greek mythology in the right light.

Thus, you see a painting of the first time of the 19th century, from the first thoughts that can work educationally on the human being up to the facts that bring theosophy together with immediate spiritualistic experiences. At that time, you find everything in a pure and sometimes nobler way expressed than it was shown later by the respective authors. You can learn much more about magic spiritual life there than in that which was published by Schindler (Heinrich Bruno Sch., 1797-1859, physician and author) and Albertus (?, perhaps hearing defect, probably Carus, Carl Gustav C., 1789-1869, physician, scientist, and naturalist).

Later the interest changed more and more into an interest, similar to curiosity, the mere urge for knowledge. In the first half of the 19th century, even such spirits who could not go very deeply had the desire of ascending to spiritual heights, developing inner soul organs, and knew something concerning self-knowledge and self-development. Novalis knew how to speak in miraculous tones in his Heinrich of Ofterdingen about that all. He put the big treasure of former initiation memory in that which he has like a recollection of former lives. In the Novices of Sais he shows how Hyazinth gets to know the girl Rosenblüth (rose flower). Only the animals of the wood know something of this extremely subtle love. A wise man comes and tells about the magic life, about spiritual secrets. Hyazinth and Rosenblüth get the desire to walk to the initiation temple of Isis. However, nobody can give some indication, which is the right way to the temple. He walks and walks. There he sits down, tired among nice physical things, in particular also because of that which nature speaks to him. He drops off to dream in a ghostly way.

The temple is round him. The curtain is lifted from the veiled picture, and what does he see? Rosenblüth. He lovely describes how Rosenblüth is that feeling of unity, that uniform idea of the whole nature, how it extends over the whole nature, and how he looks for the hidden secret that life often shows to us that we only need to understand. This is wonderfully indicated. Thus, you can prospect with Novalis wonderfully if you get yourselves in how intimately he expressed the experiences of the world at that time.

I was allowed here to speak about Goethe, Herder, and Schiller and to show how they were theosophists. In a theosophical way, Novalis just pronounces what is a characteristic trait of that time what controlled it like a theosophical motto spiritually. It is included in the words: “Someone succeeded; he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais.—However, what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—himself.”

Thus, the human being comes out, after he has developed the spiritual organs in himself, and searches for himself all over the world. He does not search for himself in himself, he searches for himself in the world, and with it, he searches for God. This search of God in the world, as he expresses it so nicely in this saying, is theosophy.

[ 1 ] From the foregoing considerations it follows that it is impossible to prove by investigating the content of our observation that our percepts are mental pictures. Such proof is supposed to be established by showing that, if the process of perceiving takes place in the way in which—on the basis of naïve-realistic assumptions about our psychological and physiological constitution—we imagine that it does, then we have to do, not with things in themselves, but only with our mental pictures of things. Now if naïve realism, when consistently thought out, leads to results which directly contradict its presuppositions, then these presuppositions must be discarded as unsuitable for the foundation of a universal philosophy. In any case, it is not permissible to reject the presuppositions and yet accept the consequences, as the critical idealist does when he bases his assertion that the world is my mental picture on the line of argument already described. (Eduard von Hartmann gives a full account of this line of argument in his work, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie.)

[ 2 ] The truth of critical idealism is one thing, the force of its proof another. How it stands with the former will appear later on in the course of this book, but the force of its proof is exactly nil. If one builds a house, and the ground floor collapses while the first floor is being built, then the first floor collapses also. Naïve realism and critical idealism is related as ground floor to the first floor in this simile.

[ 3 ] For someone who believes that the whole perceived world is only an imagined one, a mental picture, and is in fact the effect upon my soul of things unknown to me, the real problem of knowledge is naturally concerned not with the mental pictures present only in the soul but with the things which are independent of us and which lie outside our consciousness. He asks: How much can we learn about these things indirectly, seeing that we cannot observe them directly? From this point of view, he is concerned not with the inner connection of his conscious percepts with one another but with their causes which transcend his consciousness and exist independently of him, since the percepts, in his opinion, disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from things. Our consciousness, on this view, works like a mirror from which the pictures of definite things disappear the moment its reflecting surface is not turned toward them. If, now, we do not see the things themselves but only their reflections, then we must learn indirectly about the nature of things by drawing conclusions from the behavior of the reflections. Modern science takes this attitude in that it uses percepts only as a last resort in obtaining information about the processes of matter which lie behind them, and which alone really “are.” If the philosopher, as critical idealist, admits real existence at all, then his search for knowledge through the medium of mental pictures is directed solely toward this existence. His interest skips over the subjective world of mental pictures and goes straight for what produces these pictures.

[ 4 ] The critical idealist can, however, go even further and say: I am confined to the world of my mental pictures and [cannot] escape from it. If I think of a thing as being behind my mental picture, then thought is again nothing but a mental picture. An idealist of this type will either deny the thing-in-itself entirely or at any rate assert that it has no significance for human beings, in other words, that it is as good as non-existent since we can know nothing of it.

[ 5 ] To this kind of critical idealist the whole world seems a dream, in the face of which all striving for knowledge is simply meaningless. For him there can be only two sorts of men: victims of the illusion that their own dream structures are real things, and the wise ones who see through the nothingness of this dream world and who must therefore gradually lose all desire to trouble themselves further about it. From this point of view, even one's own personality may become a mere dream phantom. Just as during sleep there appears among my dream images an image of myself, so in waking consciousness the mental picture of my own I is added to the mental picture of the outer world. We have then given to us in consciousness, not our real I, but only our mental picture of our I. Whoever denies that things exist, or at least that we can know anything of them, must also deny the existence, or at least the knowledge, of one's own personality. The critical idealist then comes to the conclusion that “All reality resolves itself into a wonderful dream, without a life which is dreamed about, and without a spirit which is having the dream; into a dream which hangs together in a dream of itself.”¹

[ 6 ] For the person who believes that he recognizes our immediate life to be a dream, it is immaterial whether he postulates nothing more behind this dream or whether he relates his mental pictures to actual things. In both cases life must lose all academic interest for him. But whereas all learning must be meaningless for those who believe that the whole of the accessible universe is exhausted in dreams, yet for others who feel entitled to argue from mental pictures to things, learning will consist in the investigation of these “things-in-themselves.” The first of these theories may be called absolute illusionism, the second is called transcendental realism by its most rigorously logical exponent, Eduard von Hartmann.²

[ 7 ] Both these points of views have this in common with naïve realism, that they seek to gain a footing in the world by means of an investigation of perceptions. Within this sphere, however, they are unable to find a firm foundation.

[ 8 ] One of the most important questions for an adherent of transcendental realism would have to be: How does the Ego produce the world of mental pictures out of itself? A world of mental pictures which was given to us, and which disappeared as soon as we shut our senses to the external world, might kindle as earnest desire for knowledge, in so far as it was a means of investigating indirectly the world of the I-in-itself. If the things of our experience were “mental pictures”, then our everyday life would be like a dream, and the discovery of the true state of affairs would be like waking. Now our dream images interest us as long as we dream and consequently do not detect their dream character. But as soon as we wake, we no longer look for the inner connections of our dream images among themselves, but rather for the physical, physiological and psychological processes which underlie them. In the same way, a philosopher who holds the world to be his mental picture cannot be interested in the mutual relations of the details within the picture. If he allows for the existence of a real Ego at all, then his question will be, not how one of his mental pictures is linked with another, but what takes place in the independently existing soul while a certain train of mental pictures passes through his consciousness. If I dream that I am drinking wine which makes my throat dry, and then wake up with a cough,³ I cease, the moment I wake, to be interested in progress of the dream for its own sake. My attention is now concerned only with the physiological and psychological processes by means of which the irritation which causes me to cough comes to be symbolically expressed in the dream picture. Similarly, once the philosopher is convinced that the given world consists of nothing but mental pictures, his interest is bound to switch at once from this world to the real soul which lies behind. The matter is more serious, however, for the adherent of illusionism who denies altogether the existence of an Ego-in-itself behind the mental pictures, or at least holds this Ego to be unknowable. We might very easily be led to such a view by the observation that, in contrast to dreaming, there is indeed the waking state in which we have the opportunity of seeing through our dreams and referring them to the real relations of things, but that there is no state of the self which is related similarly to our waking conscious life. Whoever takes this view fails to see that there is, in fact, something which is related to mere perceiving in the way that our waking experience is related to our dreaming. This something is thinking.

[ 9 ] The naïve man cannot be charged with the lack of insight referred to here. He accepts life as it is, and regards things as real just as they present themselves to him in experience. The first step, however, which we take beyond this standpoint can be only this, that we ask how thinking is related to percept. It makes no difference whether or no the percept, in the shape given to me, exists continuously before and after my forming a mental picture; if I want to assert anything whatever about it, I can do so only with the help of thinking. If I assert that the world is my mental picture, I have enunciated the result of an act of thinking. and if my thinking is not applicable to the world, then this result is false. Between a percept and every kind of assertion about it there intervenes thinking.

[ 10 ] The reason why we generally overlook thinking in our consideration of things has already been given (see Chapter 3). It lies in the fact that our attention is concentrated only on the object we are thinking about, but not at the same time on the thinking itself. The naïve consciousness, therefore, treats thinking as something which has nothing to do with things, but stands altogether aloof from them and contemplates them. The picture which the thinker makes of the phenomena of the world is regarded not as something belonging to the things but as existing only in the human head. The world is complete in itself without this picture. It is finished and complete with all its substances and forces, and of this ready-made world man makes a picture. Whoever thinks thus need only be asked one question. What right have you to declare the world to be complete without thinking? Does not the world produce thinking in the heads of men with the same necessity as it produces the blossom on a plant? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts forth root and stem, it unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Set the plant before yourself. It connects itself, in your mind, with a definite concept. Why should this concept belong any less to the whole plant than leaf and blossom? You say the leaves and blossoms exist quite apart from a perceiving subject, but the concept appears only when a human being confronts the plant. Quite so. But leaves and blossoms also appear on the plant only if there is soil in which the seed can be planted, and light and air in which the leaves and blossoms can unfold. Just so the concept of a plant arises when a thinking consciousness approaches the plant.

[ 11 ] It is quite arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing through bare perception as a totality, as the whole thing, while that which reveals itself through thoughtful contemplation is regarded as a mere accretion which has nothing to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud today, the picture that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, I shall tomorrow get a very different picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see today's state change continuously into tomorrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages. The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance cross-section of an object which is in a continual process of development. If I do not put the bud into water, a whole series of states which lay as possibilities within the bud will not develop. Similarly I may be prevented tomorrow from observing the blossom further, and will thereby have an incomplete picture of it.

[ 12 ] It would be a quite unobjective and fortuitous kind of opinion that declared of the purely momentary appearance of a thing: this is the thing.

[ 13 ] Just as little is it legitimate to regard the sum of perceptual characteristics as the thing. It might be quite possible for a spirit to receive the concept at the same time as, and united with, the percept. It would never occur to such a spirit that the concept did not belong to the thing. It would have to ascribe to the concept an existence indivisibly bound up with the thing.

[ 14 ] I will make myself clearer by an example. If I throw a stone horizontally through the air, I perceive it in different places one after the other. I connect these places so as to form a line. Mathematics teaches me to know various kinds of lines, one of which is the parabola. I know the parabola to be a line which is produced when a point moves according to a particular law. If I examine the conditions under which the stone thrown by me moves, I find the path traversed is identical with the line I know as a parabola. That the stone moves just in a parabola is a result of the given conditions and follows necessarily from them. The form of the parabola belongs to the whole phenomenon as much as any other feature of it does. The spirit described above who has no need of the detour of thinking would find itself presented not only a sequence of visual percepts at different points but, as part and parcel of these phenomena, also with the parabolic form of the path which we add to the phenomenon only by thinking.

[ 15 ] It is not due to the objects that they are given us at first without the corresponding concepts, but to our mental organization. Our whole being functions in such a way that from every real thing the relevant elements come to us from two sides, from perceiving and from thinking.

[ 16 ] The way I am organized for apprehending the things has nothing to do with the nature of the things themselves. The gap between perceiving and thinking exists only from the moment that I as spectator confront the things. Which elements do, and which do not, belong to the things cannot depend at all on the manner in which I obtain my knowledge of these elements.

[ 17 ] Man is a limited being. First of all, he is a being among other beings. His existence belongs to space and time. Thus, only a limited part of the total universe can be given him at any one time. This limited part, however, is linked up with other parts in all directions both in time and in space. If our existence were so linked up with the things that every occurrence in the world were at the same time also an occurrence in us, the distinction between ourselves and the things would not exist. But then there would be no separate things at all for us. All occurrences would pass continuously one into the other. The cosmos would be a unity and a whole, complete in itself. The stream of events would nowhere be interrupted. It is owing to our limitations that a thing appears to us as single and separate when in truth it is not a separate thing at all. Nowhere, for example, is the single quality “red” to be found by itself in isolation. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities to which it belongs, and without which it could not subsist. For us, however, it is necessary to isolate certain sections of the world and to consider them by themselves. Our eye can grasp only single colors one after another out of a manifold totality of color, and our understanding, can grasp only single concepts out of a connected conceptual system. This separating off is a subjective act, which is due to the fact that we are not identical with the world process, but are a single being among other beings.

[ 18 ] The all important thing now is to determine how the being that we ourselves are is related to the other entities. This determination must be distinguished from merely becoming conscious of ourselves. For this latter self-awareness we depend on perceiving just as we do for our awareness of any other thing. The perception of myself reveals to me a number of qualities which I combine into my personality as a whole, just as I combine the qualities yellow, metallic, hard, etc., in the unity “gold.” The perception of myself does not take me beyond the sphere of what belongs to me. This perceiving of myself must be distinguished from determining myself by means of thinking. Just as, by means of thinking, I fit any single external percept into the whole world context, so by means of thinking I integrate into the world process the percepts I have made of myself. My self-perception confines me within certain limits, but my thinking is not concerned with these limits. In this sense I am a two-sided being. I am enclosed within the sphere which I perceive as that of my personality, but I am also the bearer of an activity which, from a higher sphere, defines my limited existence. Our thinking is not individual like our sensing and feeling; it is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each separate human being only because it comes to be related to his individual feelings and sensations. By means of these particular colorings of the universal thinking, individual men differentiate themselves from one another. There is only one single concept of “triangle”. It is quite immaterial for the content of this concept whether it is grasped in A's consciousness or in B's. It will, however, be grasped by each of the two in his own individual way.

[ 19 ] This thought is opposed by a common prejudice very hard to overcome. This prejudice prevents one from seeing that the concept of a triangle that my head grasps is the same as the concept that my neighbor's head grasps. The naïve man believes himself to be the creator of his concepts. Hence he believes that each person has his own concepts. It is a fundamental requirement of philosophic thinking that it should overcome this prejudice. The one uniform concept of “triangle” does not become a multiplicity because it is thought by many persons. For the thinking of the many is itself a unity.

[ 20 ] In thinking, we have that element given us which welds our separate individuality into one whole with the cosmos. In so far as we sense and feel (and also perceive), we are single beings; in so far as we think, we are the all-one being that pervades everything. This is the deeper meaning of our two-sided nature: We see coming into being in us a force complete and absolute in itself, a force which is universal but which we learn to know, not as it issues from the center of the world, but rather at a point in the periphery. Were we to know it at its source, we should understand the whole riddle of the universe the moment we became conscious. But since we stand at a point in the periphery, and find that our own existence is bounded by definite limits, we must explore the region which lies outside our own being with the help of thinking, which projects into us from the universal world existence.

[ 21 ] The fact that the thinking, in us, reaches out beyond our separate existence and relates itself to the universal world existence, gives rise to the fundamental desire for knowledge in us. Beings without thinking do not have this desire. When they are faced with other things, no questions arise for them. These other things remain external to such beings. But in thinking beings the concept rises up when they confront the external thing. It is that part of the thing which we receive not from outside but from within. To match up, to unite the two elements, inner and outer, is the task of knowledge.

[ 22 ] The percept is thus not something finished and self-contained, but one side of the total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of knowing is the synthesis of percept and concept. Only percept and concept together constitute the whole thing.

[ 23 ] The foregoing arguments show that it is senseless to look for any common element in the separate entities of the world other than the ideal content that thinking offers us. All attempts to find a unity in the world other than this internally coherent ideal content, which we gain by a thoughtful contemplation of our percepts, are bound to fail. Neither a humanly personal God, nor force, nor matter, nor the blind will (Schopenhauer), can be valid for us as a universal world unity. All these entities belong only to limited spheres of our observation. Humanly limited personality we perceive only in ourselves; force and matter in external things. As far as the will is concerned, it can be regarded only as the expression of the activity of our finite personality. Schopenhauer wants to avoid making “abstract” thinking the bearer of unity in the world, and seeks instead something which presents itself to him immediately as real. This philosopher believes that we can never approach the world so long as we regard it as “external” world.

In point of fact, the sought for meaning of the world which confronts me is nothing more than mental picture, or the passage from the world as mere mental picture of the knowing subject to whatever it may be besides this, could never be found at all if the investigator himself were nothing more than the purely knowing subject (a winged cherub without a body). But he himself is rooted in that world: he finds himself in it as an individual, that is to say, his knowledge, which is the determining factor supporting the whole world as mental picture, is thus always given through the medium of a body, whose affections are, for the intellect, the starting point for the contemplation of that world, as we have shown. For the purely knowing subject as such, this body is a mental picture like any other, an object among objects; its movements and actions are so far known to him in precisely the same way as the changes of all other perceived objects, and would be just as strange and incomprehensible to him if their sense were not made clear for him in an entirely different way. ... To the subject of knowledge, who appears as an individual through his identity with the body, this body is given in two entirely different ways: once as a mental picture for intelligent consideration, as an object among objects and obeying their laws; but at the same time, in quite a different way, namely as the thing immediately known to everyone by the word will. Every true act of his will is at once and without exception also a movement of his body: he cannot will the act without at the same time perceiving that it appears as a movement of the body. The act of will and the action of the body are not two things objectively known to be different, which the bond of causality unites; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect; they are one and the same, but they are given in two entirely different ways: once quite directly and once in contemplation for the intellect.⁴

Schopenhauer considers himself entitled by these arguments to find in the human body the “objectivity” of the will. He believes that in the activities of the body he feels an immediate reality—the thing-in-itself in the concrete. Against these arguments it must be said that the activities of our body come to our consciousness only through percepts of the self, and that, as such, they are in no way superior to other percepts. If we want to know their real nature, we can do so only by a thinking investigation, that is, by fitting them into the ideal system of our concepts and ideas.

[ 24 ] Rooted most deeply in the naïve consciousness of mankind is the opinion that thinking is abstract, without any concrete content; it can at most give us an “ideal” counterpart of the unity of the world, but never the unity itself. Whoever judges in this way has never made it clear to himself what a percept without the concept really is. Let us see what this world of percepts is like: a mere juxtaposition in space, a mere succession in time, a mass of unconnected details—that is how it appears. None of the things which come and go on the stage of perception has any direct connection, that can be perceived, with any other. The world is thus a multiplicity of objects of equal value. None plays any greater part in the whole machinery of the world than any other. If it is to become clear to us that this or that fact has greater significance than another, we must consult our thinking. Were thinking not to function, the rudimentary organ of an animal which has no significance in its life would appear equal in value to the most important limb of its body. The separate facts appear in their true significance, both in themselves and for the rest of the world only when thinking spins its threads from one entity to another. This activity of thinking is one full of content. For it is only through a quite definite concrete content that I can know why the snail belongs to a lower level of organization than the lion. The mere appearance, the percept, gives me no content which could inform me as to the degree of perfection of the organization.

[ 25 ] Thinking offers this content to the percept, from man's world of concepts and ideas. In contrast to the content of percept which is given to us from without, the content of thinking appears inwardly. The form in which this first makes its appearance we will call intuition. Intuition is for thinking what observation is for percept. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge. An observed object of the world remains unintelligible to us until we have within ourselves the corresponding intuition which adds that part of reality which is lacking in the percept. To anyone who is incapable of finding intuitions corresponding to the things, the full reality remains inaccessible. Just as the color-blind person sees only differences of brightness without any color qualities, so can the person without intuition observe only unconnected perceptual fragments.

[ 26 ] To explain a thing, to make it intelligible, means nothing else than to place it into the context from which it has been torn by the peculiar character of our organization as already described. A thing cut off from the world-whole does not exist. All isolating has only subjective validity for our organization. For us the universe divides itself up into above and below, before and after, cause and effect, thing and mental picture, matter and force, object and subject, etc. What appears to us in observation as separate parts becomes combined, bit by bit, through the coherent, unified world of our intuitions. By thinking we fit together again into one piece all that we have taken apart through perceiving.

[ 27 ] The enigmatic character of an object consists in its separateness. But this separation is our own making and can, within the world of concepts, be overcome again.

[ 28 ] Except through thinking and perceiving nothing is given to us directly. The question now arises: What is the significance of the percept, according to our line of argument? We have learnt that the proof which critical idealism offers of the subjective nature of perceptions collapses. But insight into the falsity of the proof is not alone sufficient to show that the doctrine itself is erroneous. Critical idealism does not base its proof on the absolute nature of thinking, but relies on the argument of naïve realism, which when followed to its logical conclusion, cancels itself out. How does the matter appear when we have recognized the absoluteness of thinking?

[ 29 ] Let us assume that a certain perception, for example, red, appears in my consciousness. To continued observation, this percept shows itself to be connected with other percepts, for example, a definite figure and with certain temperature- and touch-percepts. This combination I call an object belonging to the sense-perceptible world. I can now ask myself: Over and above the percepts just mentioned, what else is there in the section of space in which they appear? I shall then find mechanical, chemical and other processes in that section of space. I next go further and study the processes I find on the way from the object to my sense organs. I can find movements in an elastic medium, which by their very nature have not the slightest in common with the percepts from which I started. I get the same result when I go on and examine the transmission from sense organs to brain. In each of these fields I gather new percepts, but the connecting medium which weaves through all these spatially and temporally separated percepts is thinking. The air vibrations which transmit sound are given to me as percepts just like the sound itself. Thinking alone links all these percepts to one another and shows them to us in their mutual relationship. We cannot speak of anything existing beyond what is directly perceived except what can be recognized through the ideal connections of percepts, that is, connections accessible to thinking). The way objects as percepts are related to the subject as percept—a relationship that goes beyond what is merely perceived—is therefore purely ideal, that is, it can be expressed only by means of concepts. Only if I could perceive how the percept object affects the percept subject, or, conversely, could watch the building up of the perceptual pattern by the subject, would it be possible to speak as modern physiology and the critical idealism based on it do. Their view confuses an ideal relation (that of the object to the subject) with a process which we could speak of only if it were possible to perceive it. The proposition, “No color without a color-sensing eye,” cannot be taken to mean that the eye produces the color, but only that an ideal relation, recognizable by thinking, subsists between the percept “color” and the percept “eye”. Empirical science will have to ascertain how the properties of the eye and those of the colors are related to one another, by what means the organ of sight transmits the perception of colors, and so forth. I can trace how one percept succeeds another in time and is related to others in space, and I can formulate these relations in conceptual terms, but I can never perceive how a percept originates out of the non-perceptible. All attempts to seek any relations between percepts other than thought relations must of necessity fail.

[ 30 ] What, then is a percept? The question, asked in this general way, is absurd. A percept emerges always as something perfectly definite, as a concrete content. This content is directly given and is completely contained in what is given. The only question one can ask concerning the given content is what it is apart from perception, that is, what it is for thinking? The question concerning the “what” of a percept can, therefore, only refer to the conceptual intuition that corresponds to this percept. From this point of view, the question of the subjectivity of percepts, in the sense of critical idealism, cannot be raised at all. Only what is perceived as belonging to the subject can be termed “subjective.” To form a link between something subjective and something objective is impossible for any process that is “real” in the naïve sense, that is, one that can be perceived; it is possible only for thinking. Therefore what appears for our perception to be external to the percept of myself as subject is for us “objective”. The percept of myself as subject remains perceptible to me after the table which now stands before me has disappeared from my field of observation. The observation of the table has produced in me a modification which likewise persists. I retain the faculty to produce later on an image of the table. This faculty of producing an image remains connected with me. Psychology calls this image a memory-picture. It is in fact the only thing which can justifiably be called the mental picture of the table. For it corresponds to the perceptible modification of my own state through the presence of the table in my visual field. Moreover, it does not mean a modification of some “Ego-in-itself” standing behind the percept of the subject, but the modification of the perceptible subject itself. The mental picture is, therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept which occurs when the object is present in the field of vision. Confusing the subjective percept with the objective percept leads to the misconception contained in idealism—that the world is my mental picture.

[ 31 ] Our next task must be to define the concept of “mental picture” more closely. What we have said about it so far does not give us the concept of it but only shows us whereabouts in the perceptual field the mental picture is to be found. The exact concept of mental picture will make it possible for us also to obtain a satisfactory explanation of the way that mental picture and object are related. This will then lead us over the border line where the relationship between the human subject and the object belonging to the world is brought down from the purely conceptual field of cognition into concrete individual life. Once we know what to make of the world, it will be a simple matter to direct ourselves accordingly. We can only act with full energy when we know what it is in the world to which we devote our activity.

Author's addition, 1918

[ 32 ] The view I have outlined here may be regarded as one to which man is at first quite naturally driven when he begins to reflect upon his relation to the world. He then finds himself caught in a system of thoughts which dissolves for him as fast as he frames it. The thought formation is such that it requires something more than mere theoretical refutation. We have to live through it in order to understand the aberration into which it leads us and thence to find the way out. It must figure in any discussion of the relation of man to the world, not for the sake of refuting others whom one believes to be holding mistaken views about this relation, but because it is necessary to understand the confusion to which every first effort at reflection about such a relation is apt to lead. One needs to arrive at just that insight which will enable one to refute oneself with respect to these first reflections. This is the point of view from which the arguments of the preceding chapter are put forward.

[ 33 ] Whoever tries to work out for himself a view of the relation of man to the world becomes aware of the fact that he creates this relation, at least in part, by forming mental pictures about the things and events in the world. In consequence, his attention is deflected from what exists outside in the world and is directed towards his inner world, the life of his mental pictures. He begins to say to himself: It is impossible for me to have a relationship to any thing or event unless a mental picture appears in me. Once we have noticed this fact, it is but a step to the opinion: After all, I experience only my mental pictures; I know of a world outside me only in so far as it is a mental picture in me. With this opinion, the standpoint of naïve realism, which man takes up prior to all reflection about his relation to the world, is abandoned. So long as he keeps that standpoint, he believes that he is dealing with real things, but reflection about himself drives him away from it. Reflection prevents him from turning his gaze towards a real world such as naïve consciousness believes it has before it. It allows him to gaze only upon his mental picture—these interpose themselves between his own being and a supposedly real world, such as the naïve point of view believes itself entitled to affirm. Man can no longer see such a real world through the intervening world of mental pictures. He must suppose that he is blind to this reality. Thus arises the thought of a “thing-in-itself” which is inaccessible to knowledge.

So long as we consider only the relationship to the world, into which man appears to enter through the life of his mental pictures, we cannot escape from this form of thought. Yet one cannot remain at the standpoint of naïve realism except by closing one's mind artificially to the craving for knowledge. The very existence of this craving for knowledge about the relation of man to the world shows that this naïve point of view must be abandoned. If the naïve point of view yielded anything we could acknowledge as truth, we could never experience this craving.

But we do not arrive at anything else which we could regard as truth if we merely abandon the naïve point of view while unconsciously retaining the type of thought which it necessitates. This is just the mistake made by the man who says to himself: “I experience only my mental pictures, and though I believe that I am dealing with realities, I am actually conscious only of my mental pictures of reality; I must therefore suppose that the true reality, the 'things-in-themselves', exist only beyond the horizon of my consciousness, that I know absolutely nothing of them directly, and that they somehow approach me and influence me so that my world of mental pictures arises in me.” Whoever thinks in this way is merely adding another world in his thoughts to the world already spread out before him. But with regard to this additional world, he ought strictly to begin his thinking activity all over again. For the unknown “thing-in-itself”, in its relation to man's own nature, is conceived in exactly the same way as is the known thing in the sense of naïve realism.

One only avoids the confusion into which one falls through the critical attitude based on this naïve standpoint, if one notices that, inside everything we can experience by means of perceiving, be it within ourselves or outside in the world, there is something which cannot suffer the fate of having a mental picture interpose itself between the process and the person observing it. This something is thinking. With regard to thinking, we can maintain the point of view of naïve realism. If we fail to do so, it is only because we have learnt that we must abandon it in the case of other things, but overlook that what we have found to be true for these other things does not apply to thinking. When we realize this, we open the way to the further insight that in thinking and through thinking man must recognize the very thing to which he has apparently blinded himself by having to interpose his life of mental pictures between the world and himself.

From a source greatly respected by the author of this book comes the objection that this discussion of thinking remains at the level of a naïve realism of thinking, just as one might object if someone held the real world and the world of mental pictures to be one and the same. However, the author believes himself to have shown in this very discussion that the validity of this “naïve realism” for thinking results inevitably from an unprejudiced observation of thinking; and that naïve realism, in so far as it is invalid for other things, is overcome through the recognition of the true nature of thinking.

• 1. See Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen.
• 2. Knowledge is called transcendental in the sense of this theory when it believes itself to be conscious that nothing can be asserted directly about the thing-in-itself, but makes indirect inferences from the subjective, which is known, to the unknown which lies beyond the subjective (transcendental). The thing-in-itself is, according to this view, beyond the sphere of the directly knowable world; in other words, it is transcendent. Our world can, however, be transcendentally related to the transcendent. Hartmann's theory is called realism because it proceeds from the subjective, the ideal, to the transcendent, the real.
• 3. See Weygandt, Entstehung der Träume, 1893.
• 4. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Book 2, par. 18.

That Buddhism and the teaching of Buddha should frequently be discussed to-day, is a fact of special interest in the study of human evolution; for an understanding of the essential nature of Buddhism—or rather the longing for such an understanding—has only made itself felt comparatively recently in the spiritual life of the West. Think for a moment of Goethe, who so powerfully influenced Western culture at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When we examine Goethe's life and writings we find no trace of the influence of Buddhism; yet shortly afterwards there are distinct traces of Buddhist influence in one who was in a certain sense a disciple of Goethe—I refer to Schopenhauer. Since his time, interest in the spiritual life of the East has steadily increased, until in our age many people feel an inherent desire to understand what really entered human evolution through all that is connected with the name of the great Buddha.

It is true that most people connect Buddhism, among other things, with the idea of reincarnation. Yet with regard to its essentials one cannot do so—at all events in the form in which this truth is now often conceived. For to those who have deeper insight, this linking up of Buddhism with the teachings of repeated earthly lives is almost tantamount to saying that the deepest understanding of ancient works of art is to be found among those peoples who set about destroying them at the beginning of the Middle Ages! Grotesque as this may sound, it is nevertheless true, and its truth is brought home to us by the realisation that the whole mood of Buddhism is to undervalue earthly lives, indeed its aim is rather to reduce their number. Liberation from rebirth—this is the innermost nerve of Buddhist thought. To be freed from repeated earthly lives—reincarnation being of course an already recognised truth—is the essence of Buddhism.

Even a superficial study of the history of Western spiritual life should tell us that the idea of reincarnation is not really essential to the understanding of Buddhism—and vice versa. For within our Western culture we find that Lessing had a magnificent conception of the idea of reincarnation and yet was quite uninfluenced by Buddhistic thought. His most mature work The Education of the Human Race concludes with a confession of belief in repeated earthly lives. “Is not all Eternity mine?” he exclaims, feeling that man's sojourn on earth may become fruitful if earthly lives are repeated. We are not on this earth for nothing. We are active in earthly life and we may look forward to an ever fuller life wherein the fruits of past lives may ripen. The prospect of a rich and greater future, the consciousness of continuous activity—these are the essentials of Lessing's thought. On the other hand, the essence of Buddhism is that it urges man to strive for such knowledge and wisdom as will free him from all desire for rebirth. Only when in one such earthly life he can liberate himself from this necessity—only then will he enter the state that may be called “Eternity.”

I have endeavoured to show you in the course of these lectures that Spiritual Science has taken the idea of reincarnation neither from ancient tradition, nor from Buddhism, for the idea of reincarnation arises of necessity from an unprejudiced observation of life in the sense of Spiritual Science. It would therefore seem superficial to connect Buddhism directly with the idea of repeated earthly lives, for to understand the essence of Buddhism we must turn our gaze in quite another direction. Here I must again remind you of the law of human evolution which we considered in connection with the great Zarathustra. [See Anthroposophy, Easter, 1927.]

In the course of the ages the whole constitution of man's soul has passed through different stages and conditions. The events of which outer history and outer documents tell are really a comparatively late phase in the evolution of mankind, and when with the help of Spiritual Science we go back to prehistoric ages, we find that the nature of the soul and of man's consciousness in those early times was very different indeed from what it is to-day. Let me briefly recapitulate.

In normal human life to-day we examine objects with our senses and form chains of thought with our practical wisdom and science (in effect our essentially intellectual consciousness), which has developed from quite a different kind of consciousness. In the chaotic medley of the dream we have a last remnant—an atavistic heritage—of clairvoyant faculties that were normal in the soul of prehistoric man. In those early times the nature of the soul was such that in a condition midway between waking and sleeping, man gazed into all that lies hidden behind the world of sense. Our consciousness to-day alternates between the waking and sleeping states and we think of “intelligence” in connection with waking life only, but in more ancient days pictures continually arose and passed away before the soul of man. These pictures were not as void of meaning as are our dream pictures to-day but were related to super-sensible events. Out of the condition of consciousness arising from these flowing pictures, our present so-called intellectual consciousness gradually evolved. A kind of primeval clairvoyance preceded the gradual development of our modern consciousness. Prehistoric man, gazing into the super-sensible worlds with this dreamlike clairvoyance, not only acquired knowledge but experienced a deep inner satisfaction and bliss as he felt the connection of his soul with a spiritual world. In his intellectual consciousness to-day man knows with certainty that his blood is composed of substances which also exist externally in physical space, indeed that his whole organism is built up materially. With equal certainty, prehistoric man knew that, so far as his soul and Spirit were concerned, he had come forth from the spiritual world into which he gazed with his clairvoyant consciousness.

I have said before, that certain phenomena in human history, of which external facts also speak, can only be understood if this spiritual origin of man's earthly life is admitted. Even science is less inclined to agree with the assumption of materialistic anthropology, that in prehistoric ages the general condition of humanity was such as we find still existing among the most primitive peoples to-day. It is becoming more and more evident that sublime conceptions of a spiritual world were current among ancient peoples, though clothed in pictorial forms. Myths and legends are only intelligible if we trace them back to a primal wisdom which was altogether different in its nature from the intellectual science of to-day. True, there is not much sympathy as yet with the view that primitive peoples to-day are not typical of the original spirituality of man but represent the decadence of an earlier time. Neither is it generally admitted that originally all peoples possessed a lofty wisdom, derived from clairvoyant powers. But facts will in time compel thinking people to admit, hypothetically at all events, some of the truths investigated by Spiritual Science and fully corroborated by Natural Science. What Spiritual Science has to say about the future evolution of man will also one day be verified. Thus we must look back, not only to a kind of primeval wisdom, but also to primeval feelings and perceptions in man whose clairvoyant powers gave him knowledge of his connection with the spiritual world.

Now it is easy to understand the possibility of two streams arising in the gradual transition from this ancient clairvoyance of the human soul to our modern intellectual mode of observing the material world. The one stream can be traced among peoples in whom the memories and instincts were preserved, and who felt that through his clairvoyant perception, man was once united with the spiritual world but has descended into the world of the senses. This feeling gradually extended into a general attitude of soul, till it could be said: “We have entered the phenomenal world but this world is maya, illusion.” Only when he was linked with the spiritual world could man know his true being. And so among those peoples who had preserved this dim remembrance of ancient clairvoyant powers, there arose a sense of loss, and a certain indifference to their material environment and all that can be apprehended by the intellect.

On the other hand there is a second current, of which the religion of Zarathustra is typical.—“We must adapt ourselves to the new world which now enters our consciousness for the first time.” These men did not look back with regret to something that man had lost. On the contrary, they felt impelled to seek and acquire all the powers that would enable them to penetrate and understand the surrounding world of sense. The urge arose within them to unite themselves with the world, not to look back with regret, but to look forwards, to be warriors. “The same Divine-Spiritual essence of which we were once a part is also poured into the world immediately surrounding us. It is in this surrounding world that we must seek it. Ours [is] the task to unite with the good spiritual elements and so help forward the evolution of the world!” This conception is typical of the stream of thought which had its rise in Asiatic regions lying north of the lands where men looked back with sorrow to what man had once possessed.

In India arose a spiritual life which was the natural fruit of this backward-turning gaze to men's former union with the spiritual world. Consider the Sankhya philosophy or the Yoga system and discipline. It was the constant endeavour of the ancient Indian to rediscover his connection with the spiritual world whence he had come forth; he tried to disregard all that surrounded him in the world, to free himself from the links binding him to the world of the senses and by eliminating this world to find again the spiritual realms whence he had descended. Reunion with the world of Spirit, release from the world of sense—this is Yoga.

Only when we see these principles as the fundamental tendencies of Indian spiritual life can we understand the mighty impulse of the Buddha as it flamed up in a last gleam across the evening skies of Indian spiritual life a few centuries before the Christ Impulse was destined to dominate Western thought. We can only understand the figure of Buddha when we contemplate him in this setting. On the soil of India it was possible for a mode of thought and consciousness to arise which gazed at a world in the throes of decline, of a descent from Spirit into maya—the great “Illusion.” It is also natural that as the Indian looked at the external world with which human life is so closely interwoven, he should have evolved the idea that this descent from Spirit into the world of maya had proceeded stage by stage, as it were, passing from epoch to epoch. We can now understand the deeply devotional mood of Indian culture—albeit a culture representing the glow of sunset—and how the concept of Buddhahood there finds a natural place. The Indian looked back to an age when man was united with the spiritual world; he then descended to a certain level, rose once more and again sank, rose, sank—but in such a way that each descent was deeper than the last.

According to ancient Indian wisdom, a Buddha arises whenever an epoch of decline draws to its close. The last of the Buddhas—Gautama Buddha—was the Being who incarnated as the son of King Suddhodana. The Indian, therefore, looked back to former Buddhas, of whom five had already appeared during the time of man's gradual descent from the spiritual world, and who, coming again and again into the world of men could bring them something of that primordial wisdom whereby they could be sustained in earthly life and not utterly lost in maya. In his descending path of evolution man loses hold of this wisdom and when it is lost, a new Buddha appears. Of these, Gautama Buddha was the last.

In the course of many earthly lives such a being as a Buddha must previously have reached the level of a Bodhisattva before he can attain to Buddhahood. According to Eastern Wisdom, Gautama Buddha was first a Bodhisattva, and as such was born into the royal house of Suddhodana. By dint of inner effort he attained, in his twenty-ninth year, the illumination symbolically described as “sitting under the Bodhi tree.” The wisdom arising from this could then be revealed in the great Sermon of Benares. In his twenty-ninth year, this Bodhisattva rose to the dignity of Buddhahood and was then able, as Buddha, to bring again to mankind a last remnant of the Ancient Wisdom. And when in the following centuries man again sinks so low that the last remnant of the wisdom brought by Buddha disappears, another Bodhisattva, Maitreya Buddha, who, according to Eastern Wisdom, is expected to appear in the future, will rise to the dignity of Buddhahood.

Legends tell us of all that was enacted in the soul of the last Bodhisattva who was to become Gautama Buddha. Up to his twenty-ninth year he had known only the surroundings of his royal home. Human misery and suffering—all life's sorrows—were hidden from him. He grew up seeing only the joys of life. But the Bodhisattvic consciousness was ever present—a consciousness teeming with the inner wisdom of former earthly lives. The legend is well-known and we need only consider the main details. We read how Gautama left the royal Palace and saw something he had never seen before—a corpse. At the sight of the corpse he realised that death consumes life, that the element of death enters life with its fruitfulness and power of increase. He saw a sick man—disease eats its way into health. He saw an old man tottering wearily along his way—age creeps into the freshness of youth.

We must of course realise that he who was to become Buddha passed through all these experiences with Bodhisattvic consciousness. Thus he learned that the destructive element of existence has its place in the wisdom-filled process of “being and becoming,” but so deeply was his soul affected that he cried out—so the legend runs—“Life is full of suffering!” Let us try to enter into the soul of Gautama the Bodhisattva. He possessed mighty wisdom, although he was not as yet fully conscious of this wisdom. In his earlier years he had seen only the fruitfulness of life. Then his eyes fell on the image of destruction, of corruption, and within his soul the feeling arose that all attainment of knowledge and wisdom leads man to increasing life. His soul is then filled with the idea of “Becoming”—a process of perpetual fruitfulness. The idea of fruitful growth proceeds from wisdom. Gazing into the world, what do we behold? Forces of destruction, sickness, old age, death. Knowledge and wisdom cannot surely have brought old age, sickness and death into the world. Something else must have been their cause! And so the great Gautama felt—because he was not yet fully conscious of his Bodhisattvic wisdom—that man may be filled with wisdom and through this wisdom be filled with ever-fruitful forces of growth, but life reveals decay, sickness, death and many other destructive elements. Here was a mystery unfathomable even to the Bodhisattva. He had passed through many lives, through incarnation after incarnation had accumulated an ever-increasing store of wisdom, until he had reached a point whence he could survey life from the very heights of existence. Yet when he left the palace, and life in its grim realities stood before him, the meaning of it all did not wholly penetrate his consciousness. The accumulated knowledge and wisdom of earthly lives cannot, in effect, lead to the solution of the ultimate mysteries of existence, for these mysteries lie hidden beyond the region of the life that passes from incarnation to incarnation.

This conception, quickening in the soul of the great Gautama, led him finally to full illumination “under the Bodhi tree.” We may express the results of his wakened consciousness as follows: “We are living in a world of illusion. Life after life we live in this world of maya whither we have passed from a spiritual existence. In this life we may rise in Spirit to infinite merit—yet the wisdom of innumerable lives will never solve the great riddles of old age, of sickness, death.” He then realised that the doctrine of suffering was greater than the wisdom of a Bodhisattva. In his illumination he knew that all that is spread abroad in the world of illusion is not true wisdom, for even after countless births, outer existence gives us no understanding of suffering, nor can we release ourselves from pain. Outer existence contains something that is far removed from true wisdom. And so it came about that the Buddha saw an element void of wisdom as the cause of old age, sickness and death. The wisdom of this world could never bring liberation; liberation could only proceed from something this world cannot give. Man must withdraw from outer existence and from his repeated births.

From this moment onwards Buddha saw that the doctrine of suffering was the principle necessary for the further progress of humanity. Devoid of wisdom was the “thirst for existence,” which seemed to him the cause of the suffering that had entered into the world. Wisdom on the one hand, a meaningless thirst for existence on the other. And so he realised: “Only when Man is liberated from the wheel of births can he be led to true redemption, to true freedom, for of itself the highest earthly wisdom cannot save him from suffering.” Buddha then sought the means whereby man could be led away from the scene of his successive births to a world which we must learn to understand aright, for many fantastic and grotesque ideas have arisen as to the meaning of “Nirvana.” One who has reached a point in life where there is no more a thirst for existence and no desire for rebirth, passes into Nirvana. What is the nature of this world?

According to Buddhism, the world of redemption and bliss eludes all descriptions derived from the world sense and space man knows in earthly life. Nothing in the physical world of space points to liberation. All the words man uses to describe the world around him must be silenced; they do not and cannot apply to the world of bliss. It is absolutely impossible to form an idea of the realm entered by one who has been liberated from the necessity for re-birth, for since it has no resemblance to anything in the objective world, it can only be characterised by a negative term—Nirvana. A man enters Nirvana only when everything that connects him with earthly existence has been blotted out.

Yet for the Buddhist, Nirvana is no empty void. Rather is it a life of bliss no words can describe. Here we have the root-nerve of Buddhism and an expression of its pervading mood. From the Sermon of Benares where it was taught for the first time, this doctrine of the suffering of life, of suffering and its cause in the “thirst for existence” permeates all that we know of Buddhism. One thing alone can lead to human progress, and that is redemption from rebirth. And the first step is the following of a path of knowledge which leads beyond earthly wisdom. Treading this path a man will find the means gradually to reach and enter Nirvana. In other words, he may learn so to use his earthly incarnations that he is finally freed from their necessity.

Turning now from this somewhat abstract conception of Buddhism to its fundamentals, we find that such an attitude towards life tends to “isolate” man; it raises the question of the aims and destiny of his life as an individual personality in the world. How could it be otherwise in a conception of the world built upon such a foundation? It was believed that man had descended from spiritual heights to find himself in a world of maya from which the wisdom of a Buddha now and again can rescue him, as the last Buddha had taught. Such a conception of the goal of all human striving could be characterised in no other way than as an isolating of man from his whole environment, for his earthly embodiments followed a descending path in a descending earthly order. How did Buddha himself seek illumination? Unless we consider this, we shall never understand Buddha himself, or Buddhism. He sought illumination, as we know, in complete isolation. He went out from his father's palace into solitude. All knowledge gained from previous lives must be silenced in a life of solitude, where he must seek an inner illumination of the soul which shall reveal the mystery of the suffering world. In isolation the Buddha awaits the enlightenment which reveals: The cause of suffering inheres in the thirst for existence and rebirth which burns in every individual soul. The world too thirsts for existence and this is the cause of all the suffering and all the destructive elements in life.

Now we cannot understand the essential nature of Buddha's illumination and teaching unless we compare it with Christianity. Six hundred years after the appearance of the great Buddha, quite different conditions are present. Man's whole attitude to the world and to his environment has changed. How has it changed? Oriental thought contemplates one “Buddha-epoch” after another. “History” is not a process of descent from a higher to a lower level; rather is it an effort to attain a definite goal, a possibility of union with the whole world, with the past, and with the future. Such is the oriental conception of history. But the Buddhist stands there isolated and alone and is concerned only with his individual life. In his individual existence he strives for liberation from the thirst for existence and hence from the cycles of his births.

Six hundred years later, the Christian has quite a different attitude. Putting aside prejudices now widely spread in the world, we may describe the Christian conception as follows. In so far as the Christian conception is based on the Old Testament, it points to a primal humanity when man's relationship to the spiritual world was not at all the same as in later times. We read of this in the mighty pictures of the Book of Genesis. The attitude of the Christian to the world is very different from that of the Buddhist. The Christian says: “Wisdom lives within my soul and this wisdom arises from the very nature of the soul. Wisdom, knowledge and morality—all these arise within me as a result of the way in which I observe the world of sense and co-ordinate my impressions by means of my reasoning faculties.” But in an older age the constitution of the human soul was altogether different. Something happened then which cannot merely be called, in the Buddhistic sense, a descent from Divine-Spiritual heights into a world of maya, but must be spoken of as the “Fall of man.” The Fall is bound up with the whole of human existence. Man feels that there are forces within him which had their origin in a far-off past and were part of a process which caused the human being not merely to “descend” but to descend in such a way that his relationship to the world was completely changed. If the conditions obtaining before this event had prevailed, man would have been a different being to-day. The Fall was due to man's own sin, even though he sinned unconsciously.

Thus in Christianity we are concerned not merely with the direct descent of which the Buddhist thought but, with an altered state of things in which the factor of temptation plays an essential part. The Christian who pierces the surface of Christianity into its depths must say that because of an event which happened untold ages ago, the subconscious workings of his soul are different from what they were designed to be. The Buddhist says:—“From a state of union with the Divine-Spiritual world, I have been transported into this world of maya and illusion;” the Christian:—“I have descended into this world. If I had descended in the original state of my soul I should everywhere be able to look behind the illusion of physical ‘appearances’ into reality and find the truth. But since another factor has entered into the process of descent I myself have turned this world into illusion.” The two modes of thought are very different. The Buddhist asks why this world is illusion and is taught that illusion is its very nature. The Christian asks the same question but realises: “The fault is mine! My powers of cognition and the state of my soul no longer enable me to see the original reality. My actions are not fruitful. I myself have drawn a veil of illusion over the world.” The Buddhist says that the world is in itself the Great Illusion, therefore he must overcome the world, but the Christian feels himself in the world, and in the world he must seek his goal.

When the Christian realises that Spiritual Science can lead him to the knowledge of successive earthly lives, he can resolve to use them as a means whereby the goal of life may be attained. He knows the world to be full of sorrow and error, because man himself has wandered so far from his primal state that his vision and his actions have changed the world around him into maya. Yet he need not alienate himself from this world in order to enter into blessedness. Rather must he overcome the forces which make him see the world as illusion and thus be led back to his true original nature. There is a higher man. If this higher man could look upon the world, he would see it in its reality; he would not pass through an existence of sickness and death but a life of health, full of the freshness of youth. A veil has been drawn before this inner man because humanity took part in a certain event in the evolution of the world. Man is not an isolated entity, an individual, nor is thirst for existence responsible for his present state. He is indeed one with all humanity and shared in the original sin of the whole human race.

And so the Christian feels himself bound up with the whole historical course of humanity, realising as he gazes into the future that he must find once more that higher nature which man's process of descent has veiled. He says: “I must seek, not Nirvana, but the higher man within me. I must find the way back to my Self. Then will the surrounding world no longer be illusion but reality—a world in which I am able to overcome sorrow, sickness and death by my own efforts.” The Buddhist seeks liberation from the world and from rebirths by overcoming the thirst for existence. The Christian seeks liberation from the lower man, seeks to awaken the higher man within, whom he himself has veiled, in order that he may behold the world in its truth. How great a contrast lies here between the wisdom of Buddha and Paul's words: “Not I, but Christ in me!”—words which express a consciousness that places man in the world as an individuality! The Buddhist says: “Man has descended from spiritual heights because the world has urged him downwards; therefore a world that has implanted in him the thirst for existence must be overcome. He must leave this world!” But the Christian says: “It is not the fault of the world that I am as I am. Mine is the fault!” The Christian stands in the world acknowledging that beneath his ordinary consciousness a power is at work which once gave him a clairvoyant picture-consciousness. Man “sinned” and lost this spiritual vision. For this he must make amends if he would reach his goal. In later life a man does not feel it unjust that he should suffer from the faults of youthful actions committed in a different consciousness. Equally, he should not feel it an injustice that he should atone in his present state for an act arising out of an earlier consciousness. This former consciousness he no longer possesses, for his intellect and reason have usurped its place. Atonement is only possible when the will arises in man to press forwards with his present Ego-consciousness, to that higher state described in Paul's words: “Not I, but Christ in me!” The Christian should say: “I have descended into conditions other than those ordained for me from the beginning. I must re-ascend—not with the help of the Ego I now possess but through a power which can live within me and lead me beyond my human Ego. This I can only do if Christ works in me, leading me to behold the world in its reality and not in illusion. The forces which have brought illness and death into the world can be overcome by what Christ fulfils in me.”

The innermost heart of Buddhism only reveals itself when we compare it with Christianity. Then we realise the words of Lessing in his Education of the Human Race: “Is not all Eternity mine?” That is to say: If I use the opportunities of successive embodiments to bring the Christ Power to life within me, I shall reach at last the sphere of the Eternal. This has hitherto eluded me because I have covered myself with a veil.

Reincarnation shines with a new radiance in the sunlight of Christianity and will indeed in the future penetrate Christian culture more and more deeply as an occult truth. This however is not the point at issue. The point is that the essential attitude of Buddhism makes the world responsible for maya or illusion, while the Christian holds himself, as man, responsible—knowing that the path to “redemption” lies in his own innermost being. In the Christian sense, redemption is also a “resurrection” because the Ego is raised to a higher Ego whence it has descended. The Buddhist believes in the “original sin” of the world and seeks liberation from the world. The Christian's conception is an historical one, for human life is seen as linked both with an event of a prehistoric past and with a future event through which he may reach a point where his whole life will be illuminated by the Being of Christ.

Thus Christianity does not point to successive Buddhas, recapitulating more or less the same truths through the successive epochs, but to a unique event occurring in the course of human evolution. While the Buddhist pictures his Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree, rising to enlightenment as an isolated individual, the Christian looks to Jesus of Nazareth, into whom the Spirit of the Cosmos descended. The enlightenment of the Buddha under the Bodhi tree—the Baptism by John in Jordan—these two pictures stand clearly before us. Buddha sits under the Bodhi tree in the solitude of the soul. Jesus of Nazareth stands in the waters of Jordan and the very Spirit of the Cosmos descends into his inner being—the Spirit in the image of the Dove.

The Buddha deed contained for his followers the message: “Quench the thirst for existence; tear thyself away from earthly existence and follow Buddha to realms which no earthly words can describe!” The Christian realises that from the Deed of Christ flows redemption from the original sin of man, and he feels: If the influx of the spiritual world behind the physical grows as strong within me as it was in Christ Himself, I shall carry into my future incarnations a force that will enable me to cry with St. Paul, “Not I, but Christ in me!” And so I shall rise to the spiritual world whence I descended.

Deeply moving in this light are the words of Buddha to his intimate disciples: “Page after page I look back upon my former lives as upon an open book; I see how in life after life I built a material body wherein my Spirit dwelt as in a temple. Now I know that this body in which I have become Buddha, is the last.” And referring to Nirvana, whither he was to pass, he said: “The beams are breaking, the posts are giving way; the material body has been built for the last time and will now be wholly destroyed.” Compare these words with an utterance of the Christ recorded in the Gospel of St. John. Christ indicates that He is living in an outer body: “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will build it up again.” Here we have exactly the opposite conception, for it can be thus interpreted: “I shall accomplish a deed that will make fruitful and living all that from God—from primeval humanity—flows into this world and into us.” These words indicate that the Christian, through repeated earthly lives, comes to cry in truth, “Not I, but Christ in me!” We must however understand that the re-building of this Temple has an eternal significance in that it points to the in-pouring of the Christ Power into all who share in the collective evolution of mankind. There can be no repetition of the Christ Event in the course of evolution. The true Buddhist assumes a repetition of earthly epochs, a succession of Buddhas having each a fundamentally similar mission, but the Christian looks back to the Fall of Man and must point also to a further and unique event—the Mystery of Golgotha and man's redemption from the Fall.

There have been times in the past, and indeed in our own days, when men have looked for a renewal of the Christ Event; but such an expectation can only arise from a misunderstanding of the basic facts of man's historical progress. True history must take its start and pursue its course from a central point. Just as there must be one equilibrating point on a pair of scales, so in “history” there must be one event to which both the past and the future point. To imagine that the Christ Event could be repeated is as meaningless as to suppose there could be two focal points in a balance. Eastern wisdom speaks of a succession of similar individualities, the Buddhas, and herein lies the difference between the Eastern and the Western conceptions of the universe, for the Christ Impulse is a unique event and to deny this is to deny an historical progress in evolution—that is, to have a false idea of history.

The consciousness that the individual is indissolubly bound up with humanity as a whole, that not mere repetition but a great purpose rules throughout the course of evolution is Christian in the deepest sense and cannot be separated from Christianity. Human progress inheres in the fact that an older Eastern conception has evolved into a new one. Man has advanced from thinking that the wheels of world-events roll on in an endless repetition to the belief that there is meaning and an onward-flowing significance in the changing events of human existence.

Thus Christianity first gives reality to the doctrine of repeated earthly lives. For now we say that man passes through repeated lives on earth in order that the true meaning of human life may again and again be implanted in him, each time as a fresh experience. Not only the isolated individual strives upwards, for a yet deeper meaning lies in the striving of humanity as a whole, and we ourselves are bound up with this humanity. No longer feeling himself united with a Buddha who urges liberation from the world, man, gazing at the central spiritual Sun, at the Christ Impulse, grows conscious of his union with One Whose Deed has balanced the event symbolised in the “Fall.”

Buddhism can be best described as the sunset of a mode of thought that was nearing its decline but flamed into a mighty afterglow when Gautama Buddha appeared. This is not to honour the Buddha less; we revere him as the great Spirit who once brought to man a teaching pointing to the past, and the sense of union with a primeval wisdom. The Christ Impulse points with the hand of power to the future, and must live with ever increasing strength in the soul till man realises that not redemption but resurrection—the “transfiguration” of material existence can alone give meaning to man's earthly life.

Concepts or dogmas are not the only driving forces in life, though many may feel more drawn to Buddhism than to Christianity. Rather are the essentials such impulses, perceptions and feelings as give meaning to human evolution. There is indeed something of a Buddha-mood to-day in many souls, drawing them towards Buddhism. Goethe could not feel this mood, for through his recognition that the Spirit which is the source of the human Spirit permeates also all external things, he could greatly love life. During his first stay in Weimar, freeing himself from all narrowness and prejudice, he closely studied the outer world. He passed from plant to plant, from mineral to mineral, seeking behind all these that Spirit whence the Spirit of man descends, and with this all-pervading Spirit he sought to unite himself. Goethe once said to his pupil Schopenhauer: “All your splendid conceptions will be at war with themselves directly they pass into other minds.” Schopenhauer's motto can be expressed in his own words: “Life is full of perplexity. I try to make it easier by contemplation.” Trying to find an explanation of the origin of existence he turned naturally to Buddhism, and his ideas assumed a Buddhistic colouring.

In the course of the nineteenth century the different branches of culture yielded such great and mighty results that the human mind did not feel able to assimilate the mass of scientific achievements pouring in from external research. The sense of helplessness grew greater and greater before the overwhelming mass of scientific facts. True, this world of facts tallies in a wonderful way with Spiritual Science, but we see at the same time that thought in the nineteenth century was not equal to coping with it. Man began to realise that his faculties of knowledge could not assimilate all the facts nor could his mind gauge them. And so he began to seek a philosophy or a world-conception that did not attempt to wrestle with all the facts of the outer world. In contrast to this, Spiritual Science takes its start from the deepest principles and experiences of spiritual knowledge; it is able to compass and elaborate all the facts brought to light by outer science and to show how the Spirit lives in outer reality. Now many people do not like this, So far at least as knowledge is concerned, they draw back from the investigation of the world of facts and strive to reach a higher stage merely in the inner being, by a development of soul. This has led to an “unconscious Buddhism” which has been in existence for some time now. We can find traces of it in the philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When such people—and they are really unconscious Buddhists—come into contact with Buddhism, their longing for ease makes them feel more readily drawn to this mode of thought than to Spiritual Science. For Spiritual Science deals with the whole mass of facts, with the knowledge that Spirit manifests in them all.

It is really, therefore, an element of unbelief and paralysis of will, born of a feebleness of spiritual knowledge, that awakens the attraction to Buddhism to-day. Whereas the Christian conception of the universe—as it lived in Goethe, for instance—demands that man should not give way to his own weakness and speak of “boundaries of knowledge,” but rather feel that something within him can rise above all illusion and lead to truth and freedom. True, a certain amount of resignation is demanded here, but not the resignation which shrinks back before “boundaries of knowledge.” In the Kantian sense resignation means that man is altogether unable to penetrate the depths of the universe. This is a resignation born of weakness, but there is another kind whereby man can say with Goethe: “I have not yet reached the stage where the world can be known in its truth, yet I can evolve to it.” This resignation leads him to the stage where he can bring to birth the “higher man”—the Christ-man. He is resigned because he knows that for the moment he has not reached this highest level of human life. This indeed is a “heroic” resignation, for it says: “We pass from life to life with the feeling that we exist, and we know as we look towards the future that in the repetition of earthly existence all Eternity is ours.”

And so two great streams of thought can be seen in human evolution. The one is represented by Schopenhauer who says: “This world with all its suffering is such that we can only know man's real position through the works of great painters. They portray figures whose asceticism brought something like freedom from earthly existence, who are already lifted above terrestrial life.” According to Schopenhauer, the greatness of this liberated human being consists in the fact that he is able to look back upon his earthly existence and feel: This bodily covering is now nothing but an empty shell and has no significance for me. I strive upwards, in anticipation of the state I shall attain when earthly existence has been conquered and I have overcome all that is connected with it. Herein is the great liberation—when nothing remains to remind me in the future of my earthly existence. Such was Schopenhauer's conception, permeated as he was with the mood Buddhism had brought into the world. Goethe, stimulated by a purely Christian impulse, looks out upon the world as Faust looks out upon it. And if we in our time rise above external trivialities, though realising that our works will perish when the earth has become a corpse—we too can say with Goethe: We learn from our experiences on earth; what we build on earth must perish, but what we acquire in the school of life does not perish. Like Faust, we look not upon the permanency of our works but upon their fruits in the eternity of the soul, and gazing at horizons wider than those of Buddhism, we can say with Goethe: “Aeons cannot obliterate the traces of any man's days on earth.”—

“Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdentagen
Nicht in Aeonen untergehen!”

Recently, I have presented a number of important facts about the human being that can be investigated by spiritual science. I attach less importance to the details of these facts being grasped – for I have often spoken about the nature of these facts – than to a certain impression being awakened by them: the impression of the nature of what may be called the deception of the physical physical world, so that you get a sense of what is actually meant when one speaks of the outer world as we see it around us - I say see, not have - is deception at first, and behind it lies the true, the real world. And I wanted to evoke a more thorough sense of what is meant when one speaks of the real world on the basis of spiritual science. So it is more about these general feelings. And with that, I have arrived at the point where we have, so to speak, another opportunity to tie our spiritual-scientific observations to important and significant interests in the spiritual life of the present, whereby I am thinking, of course, of a broader present, not just of today, but of the centuries in which we live.

Our intellectual life is caught in a conflict, a conflict that can be characterized in a variety of ways, that can be defined in many ways. But all these definitions must ultimately converge into a kind of feeling for two currents that we must form for ourselves as currents of ideas from the intellectual culture of the present, and that, to a certain extent, cannot be properly united. Two currents of ideas are present. One of them, we may call it in the broadest sense the scientific current, by which I do not mean merely what is thought and asserted in the circles of natural scientists, but that scientific current which today lives more or less in the perception of all mankind. This scientific current has gradually become a popular, widespread view. It produces concepts that have become deeply, deeply rooted in the soul life of people today. One can best see how this scientific world view has taken root when one considers that it is most deeply rooted where one believes one is penetrating to spiritual life. After all, what is commonly called spiritualism and what is advocated by very many as a theosophical theory is nothing more than an emanation of a materialistic worldview. What is generally known about the etheric body and the astral body, what is produced experimentally in spiritualistic séances, is entirely captured in concepts borrowed from the scientific world view, which is best demonstrated by people like du Prel, who believes he is addressing the spiritual world. But everything he says about the spiritual world, he thinks in scientific terms, that is, in terms in which one should think only about nature, not about the spirit. Similarly, it is downright laughable how materialistic the theories of most Theosophists are, how they positively endeavor to attach conceptions such as etheric body or even astral body to the scientific concepts that should only be applied to nature. The etheric body is very often imagined as something quite material, as a fine haze or the like. Now, I have often spoken about these things.

This is the one conceptual mass, I would say, that we have: the concepts of natural science. And, to avoid being misunderstood, I would like to emphasize once more that it is not so important that these scientific concepts be found in the natural sciences themselves, where they are largely justified. Rather, the important thing is that they creep into the general world and that they are used to understand spiritual matters, so that some people are even under the delusion that they are saying something special when they emphasize the similarity between the concepts they have in spiritual matters and the concepts of natural science.

The significant fact that we have to consider is that these scientific concepts can only capture a certain sphere of our world, a certain sphere of the world in which we live, in our understanding, that another world must remain beyond our understanding if we only apply scientific concepts. These scientific concepts thus form one current.

The other current is formed by certain concepts that we form about the ideal or the ideal, and probably also today, for a long time, about the moral. Take a scientific concept such as the concept of inheritance or the concept of development. You think scientifically when you think these concepts purely and cleanly; you think in terms when you extend these concepts of inheritance and development, as they are commonly used in science, to spiritual matters. Take certain concepts that are needed in life, for example, the concept of the inner freedom of our soul, the concept of goodwill, the concept of moral perfection, or higher concepts, the concept of love and the like, and you again have a stream of ideas, of concepts, that are also justified because they are needed for life. But only by indulging in self-deception can one build a bridge from the way of scientific thinking today to the way of thinking in terms of ideals, ideas or morals today. If someone thinks purely scientifically, that is, if they seek a scientific world view, as is the ideal of many people today, then within a world that corresponds to this world view there is no place for anything that is understood by terms such as goodwill, or, for that matter, happiness, love, inner freedom, and so on. A certain ideal of scientific thinking is to bring everything, as they say, under the concept of causality, to think of everything in terms of cause and effect. And a very popular generalization is – I have already mentioned this here – the law of the conservation of energy and of matter. If you form a worldview using only the concepts of cause and effect in the scientific sense, or of the conservation of energy and matter, then you can only either be ideologically dishonest or you have to say: Within such an order of the world, in in which only the law of causality, only the law of cause, applies, or in which the law of the conservation of matter and force applies, in such a world everything that is an ideal, that is an idea, that is a moral concept, is basically just nonsense. For a worldview that universally conceives of the law of the conservation of energy and matter, nothing else makes sense except to say: our world order develops according to this law of the conservation of energy and matter. Out of certain causes, the human race has also emerged within this world order. This human race dreams of goodwill, of love, of inner freedom, but all these are concepts that people make up, and when the time comes that such a state of affairs must occur in our world system according to scientific conceptions, then there is actually a general grave for all such ideas of goodwill, inner freedom, of love and so on. These are dreams that people dream while they are completing their existence within the evolution of the earth in accordance with the pure natural-law order, and there is no point in speaking of anything else in terms of the validity of ideals and ideas other than that they are dreams of people, because within such a natural-scientific world view, ideas and ideals have no power to realize themselves. What then should become of ideas and ideals if the world really corresponds to the scientific world view, once the state has been reached that one must necessarily think if one thinks only in scientific terms? They are buried, the ideas and ideals! But today people think in such a way — even if they do not admit it — that they have no inner power to realize themselves. They are mere thoughts that are realized when people attach their feelings to them, when people behave towards each other in a way that corresponds to the ideas. But they have no inner power to realize themselves, as magnetism, electricity or heat have – they have inner power to realize themselves! Ideas as such – so always think of moral ideas for my sake – do not have such inner power to realize themselves within our world view if we think only scientifically.

Of course, very few people are aware of the dichotomy that exists between these two currents of our present time, but it is there, and the fact that it is at work in the subconscious of people is much more important than being aware of it in theory. Only one class of people is theoretically aware of what I have just said, and it is this one class of people that we should keep an eye on in the present day. Clearly stated, the fact of the matter is that the whole world is only scientifically ordered and that ideas and ideals only have a meaning because people feel that they must follow them in their mutual behavior, this view can only be found within the socialist theory of the present. Contemporary socialist theory therefore rejects all spiritual science, even regards the traces of old spiritual science that can still be found in jurisprudence, morality and theology as prejudices that belong to the infancy of human development, and it wants everything that could be called spiritual science to be understood as social science: it wants to form socialist social science as merely valid for the mutual behavior of people. The world is organized by natural science, and apart from the natural scientific explanation of the world, there is only one social science left. This is the fundamental conviction of every self-aware socialist.

If you want to get to the bottom of such things, you cannot indulge in confused concepts. Of course I know that one can come and say: Yes, but that is not how socialists think! But that is not the point. As I explained in the first few days of my return here, it is not the content of ideas that is important, but how ideas are put into practice, how they penetrate and take root. And the socialist idea takes root by rejecting any talk of any spiritual world content, by claiming that the world content is only scientifically organized and that spiritual science is to be replaced by mere social science.

Now man feels that mere ideas and ideals, if they are thought as they are thought in the present, really have no more power than to find their way into the human emotional life and thereby to realize themselves, to realize themselves as a dream that humanity dreams within the evolution of the earth. No idea, however beautiful or ideal, has the power to bring anything into being, to generate warmth anywhere, to move a magnet or the like. Thus it is already condemned to be a mere dream, because — as long as one thinks of the world order only as the sum of electrical, magnetic forces, of light forces, heat forces and so on — it cannot intervene in the structure of these forces, especially if one postulates the law of the conservation of force and matter, according to which force and matter are supposed to have eternal validity. Because then they are always there, and then ideas can't intervene anywhere, because force and matter then have their own eternal laws.

With this law - I say only in parentheses - of the conservation of force and matter, a lot of nonsense is done. As one finds spoken of in the literature today of the law of conservation of force and matter, namely of force and energy, it is also often attributed to Jz / ius Robert Mayer. Anyone who is really familiar with Julius Robert Mayer's writings knows that it is just as foolish to attribute the law of the conservation of energy and matter to Julius Robert Mayer, as is done in the literature today, as it would be to attribute the invention of the printing press to Gutenberg in the case of pulp fiction. For what is presented in textbooks and popular manuals as the law of conservation of energy and matter has nothing to do with the law of Julius Robert Mayer, who was locked up in an insane asylum for his work.

Now, for anyone who takes spiritual science seriously, the question arises from all that I have presented: what is the relationship, what is the connection between what can never be united within the present world view: moral idealism and naturalistic observation of the world? This question cannot be answered theoretically without further ado. In many cases, the present age craves theoretical answers, and even those who turn to theosophy or anthroposophy sometimes crave theoretical and dogmatic answers more than anything. But the answers that are to be given on the basis of spiritual science must be answers based on direct perception. In this respect, it is not acceptable to carry the present age's preference for dogmatism into spiritual science. Spiritual science demands something else. Of course, in many cases scholars demand that other dogmas be established, but spiritual science cannot agree at all with the view that other dogmas should be established than those that already exist. Rather, it demands that thought be approached differently and viewed differently, that certain things be thought of from completely different points of view. What is often practiced today as spiritual science, especially as theosophy, can often give the impression of a somewhat modified scholasticism of the Middle Ages. I do not want to speak out against scholasticism, because scholasticism has things in it that are much more significant than what is produced philosophically in the present. But the tendency of many people today is to have only other dogmas, about God and immortality and heaven and hell, and to think differently about these things, but only to think, not to arrive at views that are based on quite a different ground than earlier ideas. If one is truly grounded in spiritual science, one says to oneself: During the scholastic period, there was enough speculation about the Trinity, about the nature of man, about his immortality, about the Christ problem, if I do not use the term now with any kind of unpleasant connotation. For the real value of this scholasticism does not lie in the dogmas it has established, but in the technique of thinking, as I once described it in my writing 'Philosophy and Anthroposophy', which is now being republished in a new edition that has been significantly expanded; it lies in the way of thinking about things. But nowadays it is actually better to learn this thinking by going to the scholastics than by turning to the often confused ideas that have been called theological or philosophical in recent times. There has been enough theorizing about these things in the Middle Ages. For example, the Christ-problem was wrestled with in such a theoretical way. Those who know the nature of this struggle cannot derive much benefit from a somewhat modified scholasticism, as it has been practiced in theosophy, for example, where, instead of having, in the past, trinity, immortality or other things, one now has again physical body, etheric body, astral body. It is a different kind of theotizing, but basically it is qualitatively the same thing. Those who are well informed about this school of the Middle Ages know that it is a moot point to want to penetrate, let us say, to the Mystery of Golgotha. Today it is much more important, for example, to penetrate to the figure of Christ Jesus, which is being attempted by us here in the center of the structure, where we are trying to really find the figure of Christ Jesus again. Those who are really interested in earlier dogmas will be much more interested today in bringing the figure of Christ out of spiritual life, because today is the time to do so. The Middle Ages were the time for keen reflection and the spinning out of scholastic concepts; today — as I have already characterized many times — is such a point in the fifth post-Atlantic period, where man's view must be directed towards spiritual forms. What was previously sought as the form of Christ are, after all, fantastic forms. I have often spoken here about the development of the figure of Christ. The form of the Christ will be found again through spiritual vision. Each time has its special task. It is not important that something is fixed, but that humanity seeks in its development and thereby reaches ever further and further stages of its development.

What is important, then, is to find a kind of bridge where the modern world view cannot find a bridge, but where, if it understands itself correctly, it must necessarily come to socialism, that is, to socialist theory – not to socialism in its justification; I have spoken about this before. But this bridge can only be found if one has the honest will to penetrate into what happens between birth and death, and also into what happens between death and a new birth, if one does not just have the will to analyze the world here, so to speak, but if one has the will to really engage with the spiritual. One speaks of man and says: Man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, the I and so on. That is certainly justified; but it is justified for the human being who lives here between birth and death. However, what I explained last time and the time before that can already point out to you that one can now speak in a similar way about the human being after death, about the human being between death and a new birth. If you want to ask: What does the human being consist of? you cannot merely ask: What does the human being consist of here on earth? And answer: He consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego. Rather, we must now also raise the question: What does the human being consist of when he is not on earth, but in a spiritual world between death and a new birth? How can one speak of the members of human nature there? One must be able to speak of the members of human nature in just as real a way there. And if one is completely honest with oneself in such a matter, one must realize that each age has its special task.

People do not really realize that the way they think, imagine, even feel, yes, even look at the outside world – just remember certain statements I made in my “Riddles of Philosophy” about the relatively short period of six hundred years before our era to us – is only like this now. We cannot go back over the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha with the thinking and the feeling and the looking that we have now. I have given you the exact year: 747 BC before the Mystery of Golgotha is the true founding date of the city of Rome. If we go back beyond this 8th century BC, then the whole way of human life is different from the one we now know as the life of the soul. All ways of looking at the world become different. There is, however, one boundary that can be observed better than the others, which can actually be observed well, but not yet for the present-day human being: the boundary that lies in the 15th century. The 15th century is too close for present-day people; they cannot really put themselves in the place of the great change that occurred there. On the whole, people imagine: they have always thought and felt the same way as they do now, even if they go further and further back; but how little they go back! Well, the thing is that as soon as you go back beyond the 8th century BC, you have a completely different way of thinking. And now we can ask the question: why did they have a different way of thinking back then? Nowadays, when people imagine things, they come up with rather foolish ideas, one might say. When people of the present day hear how, let us say, in the Egyptian mysteries — which were the most sought-after in those days — it was taught, when they hear how the truths were discussed there, they think: Well, that corresponds to the fantastic times of yore, when people were not as clever as they are now, when they still had childish ideas; now we have the right thing! It is particularly easy for a modern person to think this way, because they cannot imagine anything different, since they have sunk so terribly into this way of thinking in the present. Let us assume that a Greek, Pythagoras for example, came to Egypt and studied there, just as someone today goes to a famous university to learn. But what did he learn? I will tell you something that Pythagoras really could have learned there: He learned that in primeval times Mercury once played chess with the moon, and in this chess game Mercury won. He won twenty minutes from the moon for each day, and these twenty minutes were then added up by the initiates. How much do these twenty minutes amount to in three hundred and sixty “days”? They amount to exactly five days. Therefore, the year was not counted as three hundred and sixty days, but rather as three hundred and sixty-five days. These five days are what Mercury won from the moon in the game and what he then gave to the other planets and to the whole human race, in addition to the three hundred and sixty days in a year.

Now, if you say that Pythagoras could have learned something like this from the wise Egyptians, then every person in the present will laugh, quite naturally. Nevertheless, it is only another clothing for a deep spiritual truth - we will speak of it again in these days - that the present has not yet rediscovered at all, but it is a truth.

You may ask: Why was it calculated quite differently in the past? Compare the lecture of such an Egyptian sage, who lectures the clever fox Pythagoras: Mercury has won twenty minutes from the moon for each day in the game of chess – with a lecture on modern astronomy, which is held in a lecture hall, you will better notice the difference. But if you ask yourself why there is such a difference, then you have to delve a little deeper into the whole nature of human development. For if we go back to the 8th century BC – Pythagoras does not belong to this early time, but in Egypt the remnants of a wisdom have been preserved that was founded well before the 8th century BC, when it could still be imprinted – if it was taught in this ancient time, there is a profound reason for it. The whole relationship of man to the world had been viewed differently, and had to be viewed differently in those days.

I would like to point out that various remnants of old views have been renewed again and again atavistically, whereby I do not mean or understand the word “atavistically” to mean anything derogatory. Anyone who, for example, reads a work like Jakob Böhme's “De signatura rerum” will, if he is honest, actually say today: he cannot do anything with it. For there are given very strange arguments that either have to be judged from a higher point of view – then they make sense – or that, from the point of view of a modern-thinking person, should actually be rejected as the unreasonable stuff of a layman who has gone a little crazy. All the fantastic talk that is often heard in immature theosophical circles about Jakob Böhme is actually harmful. Nevertheless, from a higher point of view, Jakob Böhme is reminiscent of modern science in his whole way of thinking, in the way he analyzes certain words, for example, when he breaks down words like sulfur and searches in the broken-down parts for something. We do not want to look at the material but on the way he proceeds in his work 'De Signatura rerum', he reminds us much more of a certain concrete connection of the human being with the entire spiritual world than any of the abstract sciences, which only exist in public today. He, Jakob Boehme, is much more immersed in this spiritual world. And this immersion in the spiritual world is characteristic of thinkers who lived before the 8th century BC, before our era. They did not think with the individual, separate reason with which we think today. We all think with our individual reason; they thought more with cosmic reason, with creative reason, with the reason that one must, I would like to say, still listen to in some of its creations if one wants to come upon it.

Today there is actually only one area in which one can perceive a little bit of how something like creative reason still pours into and works in human life. One can still perceive something of a realization of the ideal in one area; but, I would like to say, there is only a shadow of it left, and this shadow is mostly not taken into account. Today, there are a number of naturalistic anthropological theories about the origin of language and how it is thought to have developed. As you know, there are two main theories, as I have mentioned before. One is called the 'wauwau' theory, the other the 'bimbam' theory. The woof-woof theory is advocated more by continental scholars, while the Max Müller school of thought favors the ding-dong theory. The woof-woof theory is based on the idea that humans started out in a very primitive state and that their internal organic experiences barked out like a dog when it goes “woof woof.” Through a corresponding development evolution - everything develops, doesn't it, from the primitive to the perfect - the dog's “bow-wow”, which can still be seen in humans at its primitive level, has become human language. If you follow the development from the baying of the dog to today's speech, in a similar way to the theory of evolution, Darwin or Haeckel, starting with the simplest monera, that is, from the simplest, most inarticulate form to today's language, then that is just the baying theory. Another theory says that one can develop a certain feeling of kinship with the tones of the bell: ding dong; one would have a certain inner sound each time that one imitates. According to this, one would follow more of an evolutionary theory with the woof woof, and more of an adaptation theory with the ding dong, an adaptation of the human being to the inner nature of the material words. Then you can also combine things in a witty way, the Bim-Bam theory with the Bow-Wow theory, which is then something more perfect, then you have combined development with adaptation. Well, these things are more or less common practice today. There are also those who laugh at these two theories and have other theories; but in principle they are not much different either.

From a spiritual point of view, there can be no question of the development of language being as it has just been characterized. Rather, purely externally, the structure of language shows that real reason prevails in the formation and development of language. And it is interesting to trace the workings of reason precisely in language, for the simple reason that it is still in language that an ideational element lives most vividly, that is to say, that which is observed in the one current today, and because language does not merely address itself to the human mind, but has its own laws, so that the ideational is already realized in it in a certain way, even if only shadowily, in relation to natural laws. Take, for example, a word – I will only draw your attention to a few very elementary cases – where you can see how inner reason prevails in the emergence of language; take a word like: oratio, speech. It is remarkable when we take a word like oratio, speech, and then observe what becomes of this word in the life of man after death, for there is a remarkable similarity with what has been the work of nascent reason in the development of language. This gives us a certain certainty that today can hardly be gained in any other way. At best, we can only arrive at hypotheses by other means. The dead person will rarely, at least after a certain time has passed since death, still understand the word oratio; he will no longer understand it, he loses the understanding of it. On the other hand, he will still understand a contemplation, an imagination that leads back to what can be expressed by the words: Os, Oris, Mund, and: Ratio, Vernunft. The dead man breaks down the word oratio into os and ratio. And in evolution the reverse process has actually taken place: the word oratio has actually come into being through a synthesis of original words, os and ratio. Oratio is not as original a word as os, oris and ratio, but oratio is formed from os and ratio.

I would like to give you a few more examples of such elementary things. These things can be most vividly studied in the Latin language because they are most clearly evident there, but the laws that can be found are also important for other languages. Take, for example, three original words: Ne ego otior; that would mean, if taken as a word: I am not idle. Ego otior: I am idle; ne ego otior: I am not idle. These three words are composed through the ruling cosmic reason in Negotior, that is, doing business. There you have three words put together into one, and you see the structure of the words in a rational way. You see reason at work in the development of language.

I would not, as I said, assert this so strictly if the remarkable fact did not occur that the dead dissolve what has been put together here in the world. The dead dissolve something like negotior into: Ne ego otior, and he understands only these three words or ideas, which he combines from this trinity, and he forgets that which was created by the combination.

Another obvious example is: unus, the one, and alterque, the other; this is combined into the Latin word uterque, each of the two. We would be quite happy if we had a word in modern languages like Uterque, which gives that concept; the Frenchman can only express it by staying with the upper one: I'un ct l'autre; he doesn't have a single concept to express that. But Uterque expresses it much more precisely.

Take an example to illustrate the principle I am talking about. You all know the word “se”, the French word “se”: to oneself. You know the word “hors” (out): you could also say “hors de soi” (out of oneself), and “tirer” (to draw) – I'll just keep the “tir” – “tir”: to draw, to draw away. If you then combine these three things according to the same principle, you get “sortir”, to go away, which is nothing more than a combination of “se hors tir”; “tir” is the rest of the word “tirer”. So you can still see the same governing reason at work in a modern language. Or take an example where the matter is somewhat obscured by the fact that different levels of language are at work: “coeur, the heart; ‘rage’, that is the lively, the invigorating, the enthusiasm that comes from the heart; composed: ‘courage’. These are not just any inventions, but real events that really happened. That is how the words are formed.

But the possibility of forming words in this way no longer exists today. Today, man has stepped out of the living connection with cosmic reason, and therefore there may be a possibility at most in very sporadic cases of venturing to approach language in order to extract from it words that are, as it were, in the spirit of language. But the further back one goes, and especially the further back one goes behind the 8th century BC, also in the Greek and Latin languages, the more the principle is active in real life that language develops in this way. And what is significant here is that one has to point to this as if it were eurythmic, by discovering in the dead person: he pulls the words apart again, he breaks them down again into their parts. He has more feeling, the dead man, for these parts of the words than for the whole words. If you think about it consistently, you would break the words apart into the sounds, and if you then translate the sounds, not into movements in the air but into movements of the whole human being, then you have eurythmy. Eurythmy is therefore something that the dead can indeed understand very well when it is practised perfectly. And you can see that such things, like eurythmy, cannot be judged externally, but that one can only understand their place in the overall structure of human development if one is also able to enter into this overall development of the human being.

Much more could be said about what eurythmy actually aims to achieve, but there will be an opportunity to do so later. For now, I wanted to draw your attention to a field, however shadowy, where, even in ancient times, the ideal was still reflected in the real through the living activity of human beings themselves. I said at the beginning today: In today's world view, we no longer find the possibility of building a bridge between the ideal, the moral, and that which lives in nature. The bridge is missing. It is also quite natural for the bridge to be missing in the current cycle of human development. The ideal no longer creates. I wanted to show you an example in the human realm itself, even if, as I said, it is a shadowy one, where something ideal still exists in the human being himself. For in the composition of such words, it was not the agreement of people or the consideration of a single human individuality or personality that was at work, but reason, without the human being being really present. Today, people want to be present in everything they do: Now, if something as beautiful, great and meaningful as this were to be done – you should see what would come of today's human wisdom if language were to be formed today! But it was precisely in those times when man was not yet so self-aware that these great, wise, significant things happened in humanity, and they happened in such a way that in this event, a close coexistence of the ideal and the real interacted, namely, ideal, that is, rational becoming, and real movement of air through the human respiratory organs. Today we cannot build a bridge between the moral idea and, for my sake, the electrical force; but here a bridge is built between something that happens and something that is rational. Of course, this does not lead us to build the same bridge – I will elaborate on this tomorrow – it must be built in a completely different way today. But you can see from this that humanity has progressed to its present state from a different state: from being inside a living web that was close to what, in a certain way, takes place in reverse post mortem, that is, after the death of human beings. Today, after death, in order to find his way between death and a new birth, man must again take apart what has been so joined together by forces - we will speak of this again tomorrow - that this joining together can still be clearly seen if one goes back to the older stages of speech formation.

These are important things, things that we really must consider when we turn our attention to the question of how spiritual science can be integrated into the whole structure of contemporary spiritual life. We have often spoken about this, and it is something we must consider. And if we repeatedly speak of the importance of integrating spiritual science into the whole of evolution, then we must also think concretely in this field. In these lectures I would now like to contribute something to this concrete thinking. If it were possible for spiritual science to be carried by a certain movement in the present day, by a human movement, then this spiritual science would be able to have a fruitful effect in all fields. But above all, there would have to be the will to respond to such subtleties, as they are often emphasized here. For it is on these subtleties, which always relate to the relationship of our spiritual science to contemporary spiritual culture, that we must base what we can call our own engagement with the spiritual movement of the present day through spiritual science. It is truly the case that the sad, catastrophic events of the present should make people aware that old worldviews have gone bankrupt. Not from spiritual science alone, but from its relationship to these old worldviews, one could see what has to happen for us to emerge from the bankruptcy of the present time.

To do this, it would of course be necessary to finally address the intentions that I have often expressed as those of the spiritual scientific movement. It would truly be necessary to recognize the reasons why, for example, working on the building has become so fruitful within certain circles, while other endeavors of the Anthroposophical Society have remained equally fruitless, so to speak; why, if one disregards what it has really achieved, namely the Dornach building, the Society often fails. On the one hand, if it is not to evoke the opposite, such an achievement always requires that many other things happen. It is necessary that the Anthroposophical Society should not fail in other respects, as it has completely failed in during the years of its existence. This failure need not be emphasized again and again if the opinion were much more widely spread that one must reflect on why the Anthroposophical Society fails in so many other respects. If people would reflect more deeply, they would recognize, for example, why the opinion keeps spreading in the world that I only lead the Anthroposophical Society by the hand and give everything away; while there is hardly a society in the world where less happens that a so-called leader wants than in the Anthroposophical Society! As a rule, the opposite of what I actually intend happens. So, it is not true that the Anthroposophical Society in particular can show how far reality is from its so-called ideals in practice. But then one must also have the will to stand on the ground of reality. In a society, there are naturally personal issues; but one must also understand these personal issues as personal. If people in some branch are fighting for purely personal reasons, one should not make black out of white or white out of black, but one should calmly admit: We have personal reasons, we do not like so-and-so for personal reasons. Then one is speaking the truth; there is no need to distort reality into an ideal. It is therefore necessary to recognize that while on the one hand I am endeavoring to lift everything of an intellectual nature out of the sectarian, to strip away everything that is sectarian, the Anthroposophical Society is increasingly sinking into sectarianism and has a certain love for the sectarian. If there is anywhere an effort to get out of the sectarianism, then this very desire to get out of the sectarianism is hated.

Of course, I do not want to criticize anyone, nor do I want to be ungrateful for the beautiful aspirations that are everywhere, I fully recognize everything, but it is necessary to reflect a little on some things, otherwise things will arise again and again, and I have been told about them again in these days. Isn't it true that the personal is also intimately entwined with the matter? If some kind of disaster occurs in a country, the constitution of the Anthroposophical Society is such that I might say the Society has the sensation of quarreling a little, and from all this quarreling, I myself am personally insulted in the most disgraceful way. Yes, if this repeats itself over and over again, we will not get anywhere. If I am always insulted in the most vicious way because the others quarrel and I am played out, if it always comes down to me being played out, then of course I can no longer hold the anthroposophical movement in the world. It would be possible to work in a positive way if one wanted to focus more on the positive, which I am always hinting at enough. It would be possible to keep such things in the background, which are mostly based on terribly inferior things. But in many circles there is much more desire to quarrel, much more desire for dogmatic disputes, out of which personal quarrels often develop. And then it happens that the cursing usually turns against me – which of course leaves me personally highly indifferent, but the movement cannot continue if it is to go on like this. It is not that I am criticizing what the friends have done in such a case, but I would point out that they have not done something else, which is not for me to suggest in a blunt way, but which would much more surely prevent what is constantly happening than the way it is constantly being attempted. Today it is already the case that one can say: We have only given cycles to members of the Society, and I know how I myself am often strangely approached by this or that member of the Society when I am much more liberal than members on the fringes often want to be in giving cycles. Yes, what has been brought into the world through the cycles could never have fared worse through outsiders than it has through members of the Anthroposophical Society! This must also be taken into account. Today we have already reached the point where the cycles are being abused by members, by apostate members of the Anthroposophical Society, to such an extent that it may soon be said that we no longer set any limits, we sell the cycles to anyone who wants them. It cannot get much worse.

I am not saying that it will happen tomorrow, but I am merely hinting that society does not work as a society at all – always except for the building and except for individual circles – that it does not actually do what a society would otherwise do. As a result, society is of no help at all; it is not at all what a movement would result in.

Here it is so clear that I cannot mean anyone personally, that I can discuss this here quite impartially, for the simple reason that this is precisely the place where work is being done fruitfully out of society, namely on the building. This is already a real thing that has emerged out of society. And if other things that could be much cheaper than construction were to be worked on by such a social spirit as the workers on our construction site, then the Anthroposophical Society would be able to produce tremendous blessings. But then one must call white white and black black. One must also really say when personal matters are at hand: these are personal matters — and not inflate them into lofty idealism; otherwise one will just have to consider what needs to be put in the place of the Anthroposophical Society. A society could not be substituted, because it would be the same old misery all over again! Right? The society cannot be just a means to an end, a way of dealing with all kinds of inferior personalities. But it has become a means that forces you to take into account all kinds of inferior stuff.

Well, I don't want to bore you any longer with this matter today, but I just wanted to add it after the time was up. I finished the lecture beforehand; I only say such things when the lecture time is up, afterwards as an appendix.

If we set out to compare the way in which people of today speak about matters of the soul and of the body, with how the Greeks once spoke of these things, we will discover a time, not very long ago, when the Greeks were much more aware of the relationship between body and soul than is the case today. In so doing, it is extraordinarily important for us to be clear that, given the Greeks' view of the world, a materialistic explanation of the connections between body and soul would have been out of the question. Today, when someone says that this or that convolution of the brain is the speech centre, he is thinking about the location of the faculty in a very materialistic way. For the most part, such a person is only thinking of how the speech sounds might be produced, purely mechanically, at some particular place in the brain. Even if he is not explicitly a materialist, at the very least he will think that anyone who wants to understand the real connections must conceive of the act of speaking in more or less materialistic terms. The Greeks could speak much more extensively about the inner connections between body and soul without arousing any materialistic assumptions, for they still felt that the things of the external world could be seen as revelations and manifestations of the spirit.

Today it does not occur to someone who is speaking about the speech centre in the brain that this speech centre is, in the first instance, built in the spirit. Nor does he think of what is there materially as being a sign or symbol or likeness of the spirit that is behind it and exists quite independently of those spiritual events that are played out in the human soul. The Greeks always saw the entire, physically existing human being as a likeness and a symbol of the super-sensible, spiritual reality that stands behind him. It must be conceded that most people of today would not find such a conception at all easy, for even though we may not want them, many materialistic notions have adhered to our souls. Just consider what was said in the last lecture about how a person's head has actually been formed in the spiritual world, how its source is in the spiritual world, and how, essentially, it was prepared in the spiritual world in the time between the previous death and this birth. These days, it would be astonishing to meet someone who does not say, ‘We know for certain that the head is formed in the mother's body during the time of pregnancy; it is mad to say that it is really formed during the long period between the last death and this birth or conception.’ Anyone who thinks in wholly materialistic terms—‘thinks naturally’, one is almost bound to say—must view these aforementioned assertions as a form of madness.

But, as you shall see, if you picture matters in the manner of what follows, it will nevertheless be possible for you to arrive at the appropriate thoughts.

Naturally, prior to conception everything to do with the head is invisible. No meteor descends from the heights of heaven to lodge in the mother's body—of course not. But the forces required for the human head, namely, the forces that form and shape it, are active during the time between death and a new conception. Think of it as a more or less invisible, but already shaped, head. Of course, when I use lines to draw it, they represent something invisible. Only forces are present. (See drawing.)

Nor should these forces be imagined as having the shape of the physical head. But they are the forces that cause the physical shape of the head—bring it about. And these begin to work on matter during the time in the mother's body; the matter takes on form in accordance with these forces. The form of the head is not made there, but the head that is built there is built according to the form that has moved into the mother's body from out of the expanses of the cosmos. That is the real truth. Of course it is only when physical matter comes into this form that it becomes visible for the first time. The physical matter crystallises more or less within the field of certain invisible formative forces. The forces connected with inheritance also play into this, but the principal formative forces of the head are of cosmic origin. In the mother's body, matter is drawn into the field of these forces, which I would like to describe as forces of crystallisation.

Thus, one must keep in mind that what is visible is extraneous material that has, so to speak, been shot into a field of forces. The lines of force originate in the cosmos. Thus you can see how the material part of the head really can he pictured as analogous to iron filings within a magnetic field. The iron filings align themselves in accordance with the magnet's invisible lines of force. The form of the head is to be imagined as radiating in from the cosmos, invisibly, like the force-field emitted by a magnet. What the mother contributes is incorporated into the head in accordance with the cosmic patterns, like iron filings in a magnetic field.

Picturing things in this way will help you to fashion the concepts you need for understanding how the human head is shaped during the period between death and a new birth, and how the formative forces that shape the rest of the organism—not totally, but more or less, as in the previous case—originate in the earthly sphere, in the stream of inheritance passed through the generations. By origin, a human being is both cosmic and earthly: cosmic with respect to the principal source of the head, earthly with respect to the rest of the body. These things are manifestations of the most profound mysteries, so one always has to limit oneself to speaking only about particular aspects. They are unimaginably far-reaching mysteries which contain keys to understanding the origins not only of humanity, but of the whole cosmos. The mysteries at work here actually are keys to understanding the whole cosmos.

So, from this point of view, we can already conceive of man as a being with a dual nature. Because humanity has this dual nature, it is necessary to our studies that we draw a sharp distinction between everything that is a part of the head, or is connected with it, and what is a part of the rest of the organism, or is connected with that.

This brings us to a subject that a contemporary mind finds particularly difficult to understand, for people of today like to explain everything in the same way, to stuff everything into one pigeon-hole. One cannot do this if one keeps the realities in view, but keeping realities in view is the last thing our modern science does! The whole body except for the head—everything to do with the human body with the exception of head—must be seen as a pictorial representation of the spiritual forces standing behind it. What is related to the head, however, is not a pictorial representation in the same sense, but is more like the kind of representation you have in a drawing. A picture resembles its subject more closely than a mere drawing. The painter and the sculptor try to reproduce certain aspects of the original; someone writing a description of a thing uses letters that have very little similarity to the original. Letters are the most extreme example of drawings; paintings and works of sculpture are pictures and resemble their originals much more closely.

Now the difference we are considering here is not so great as the difference between a picture and a written description, but the situation is similar. The rest of the body, excluding the head, is a picture of what stands behind it; the head and all that concerns it is more like a drawing. The head we see with our physical eyes has less resemblance to what stands behind it than does the rest of the body; the body our physical eyes see is more like what stands behind it. The discrepancy is already very pronounced if you observe the etheric body; it is even more pronounced when you observe the astral body—not to mention the ego. Thus, as regards the head—its shape, expression, and so on—we are dealing with something that is more like a drawing; when we look at the rest of the body with our physical eyes we are seeing something that more closely resembles what stands behind it spiritually—it is a closer copy of the super-sensible, invisible forces in which it originated. We must maintain this distinction, for today there is a tendency to observe these two things in the same way. People are fond of reminding themselves of the old saying, ‘Everything transitory is but a likeness.’ And that is rightly said—but there are different degrees of likeness. I want to consider the whole human being as a likeness of the super-sensible, but in such a way that the body is a likeness in the manner of a picture, whereas the head is a likeness in an even higher sense. This follows from the way the rest of the body is formed by the forces in whose midst we live during the period between birth and death, while the head is more the product of the forces in whose midst we live during the period between death and a new birth, or conception. If we want to consider the human being as a whole, both as the being who goes through the life between death and a new birth as well as the being who lives between birth and death, we cannot leave the parts of the human being that remain strictly super-sensible—even when he is here in the physical world—out of our considerations.

I would like to use three words to describe the part of the human being that always remains strictly super-sensible—words that have been particularly significant since time immemorial. During certain periods they have degenerated into mere phrases, as have many such words, but they need not be taken as mere phrases if one gives them their full meaning. In the course of his development, a person comes into contact with truth, beauty and goodness. Truth, Beauty and Goodness are the three concepts to which I refer and which have been spoken about since time immemorial. Even a superficial examination begins to reveal something of these ideas to us. What is normally called truth is related to the life of thought, what one calls beautiful is related to the life of feeling, and what one calls good is related to the life of the will. One can also say: the life of the will brings us into a relationship with morality. Everything to do with aesthetic enjoyment and creativity is related to the life of the feelings. All matters of truth are related to the life of thought.

Naturally, these things are always meant to be taken in a restricted sense. One thing plays over into the other. So is it always with the significant truths. A person develops here on the physical plane by participating in the moral life, in the aesthetic life, and in the life that is concerned with truth. But only the most crass of materialist could believe that the ideas of morality, of aesthetic worth, and of truth, refer to a concrete physical thing. Even for the man living here in the physical world, these three things point to the super-sensible.

Now, in this respect, it is instructive to become acquainted with the spiritual-scientific results that come to light when one addresses the questions: What is the origin of the truth for which man strives? What is the origin of that for which he strives in his artistic, aesthetic enjoyment or in his creative artistic and aesthetic efforts? And what is the source of the morality for which he strives? For you see, in the physical world, everything to do with truth is related to the forces that are developed by means of the physical head. Indeed, it is related in such a way that matters of truth depend on the interaction between the physical head and the external, earthly world—extended, obviously, to include the cosmos, but the earthly, external world all the same. Thus, one can say: Matters of truth involve a relationship between our head and the outer world.

What do we observe when we turn to matters of beauty, to the aesthetic? All these things rest on interactions and relationships. If truth is based on the relationship of the head to the external world, then what relationship provides the basis for aesthetic experience, for artistic experience? In the one case, our experience depends on the relation between the head and the rest of the body. It is very important to be entirely clear about this. Consider how here, in this world, a total, unqualified, absolutely awake consciousness is necessary for grasping the truth. Anyone who without further ado accepts a dream as truth,—truth in the same sense that we acknowledge it on the physical plane—is ill, is he not? Thus, in matters of thorough-going waking consciousness, our head is the organ that comes into consideration. And the consciousness of truth that we develop here on earth, or need to develop, is based primarily on the interaction between our head and the outer world. Of course this includes the spiritual parts of the external world in so far as we can come into contact with them, but they, also, belong to the world that surrounds us. With aesthetic experience, what comes into consideration is what lives in the head and in the rest of the organism, for aesthetic experience arises either when the head dreams about what is going on in the rest of the organism, or when the rest of the organism dreams about what is going on in the head. These are interactions that involve more than can be contained in our normal life of ideas. The roots of these experiences reach beneath the conscious levels and they depend on the inward, more unconscious way our body and head interact when we enjoy something beautiful. The same elements that we are otherwise aware of in dreams surge back and forth, back and forth. This is the primary thing with aesthetic enjoyment: either the head is dreaming about the contents of the rest of the body, or the rest of the body is dreaming about the contents of the head. And then, afterwards, we bring this back from our inner world into waking consciousness. The waking consciousness comes second. The occult basis of all aesthetic and artistic enjoyment is this surging and weaving back and forth between the head and the rest of the organism. In the case of lesser aesthetic pleasures, the head is dreaming of the body; with the higher and highest aesthetic pleasures, the body is dreaming about the head.

What I have just been explaining to you is the source of much of what I would like to call—if you will forgive the barbaric expression—the extensive spread of Botocudianism,⁸ of the botocudian attitude people have regarding aesthetic matters. Everyone strives for truth, do they not, and also to do the good and follow the dictates of conscience, but when it comes to the aesthetic sphere we find botocudian attitudes in many circles. The feeling for beauty is not regarded as being necessary for a human being here in the physical world in the same way that truth and goodness are regarded as necessary. A person who does not strive for truth displays a human defect; a person who opposes the good also displays a human defect; but a person who is unable to understand the Sistine Madonna would not be seen as humanly defective because of this—and you will have to agree that there are many people who are unable to approach the artistic side of such a work of art. This is because the aesthetic sphere is something very inward, it involves something that must be done within oneself; it involves an interaction between our two parts, the head and the rest of the body, and in this we are answerable to no one but ourselves. A person without regard for the truth is harmful to others; a person who has no regard for the good is harmful to others, as well as to the spiritual world, as we know. But a person who is a Botocudian in his attitude to the sense of beauty deprives himself without harming the rest of mankind—except for those few who find it distinctly not beautiful for there to be so few who can respond openly to beauty.

Actually, our materialistic age has a false conception of the good, for it is assumed that the good approaches us in the same way as truth approaches us. But that is utter nonsense. The good signifies an interaction between the human body and the outer world, but in this case the body includes the head.

So these things are naturally interwoven! When we speak of the striving for truth, we are talking about the head in relation to the external world. When we speak of the striving for beauty, we are talking about the head in relation to the body. And when we speak of morality, we are talking about the relation of the body to the rest of the world. But in this case we are including the head as part of the body, so that we are talking about the relation of the entire human being to an external world—and, indeed, in this case a purely spiritual outer world. Morality is concerned with the relation of the entire human being to the external world—not, however, to the physical external world, but rather to the spiritual forces and powers that surround us.

My dear friends, you know that when I speak of materialistic science I am speaking of something that has its rightful place, not of something that has no justification for existing. I have given many lectures here about the rightful place of materialism in the external sciences provided it remains within its own borders. But for a long time it has been impossible for scientific materialism to speak correctly about the relation of morality to humanity. It has not been possible for the simple reason that our materialistic science has long been suffering—and still suffers—from a fundamental disease and it will not be able to speak until the illness has been removed. I have mentioned this fundamental illness frequently, but when one, speaks of it our scientifically-minded people regard one as a thorough-going dilettante.

You will be aware of the fact that present-day science talks about two kinds of nerves: the so-called sensory nerves that serve feeling and perception, and the nerves connected with the motor system which are supposed to serve human will impulses and acts of will. The sensory nerves are said to connect the periphery with the inner parts, the motor nerves to connect the inner parts with the periphery. A nerve that issues from the brain and mediates the lifting of my hand is called a motor nerve; whereas it is a sensory nerve that is supposed to be involved when I touch something and feel that it is warm or smooth. Thus, the anatomy and physiology of today assumes there are two kinds of nerves. This is utter nonsense. But it will be a long time before it is recognised as nonsense. Even though it is known that there is no anatomical difference between the motor and the sensory nerves, it will be a long time before people admit that there is only one kind of nerve and that the motor nerves are not different from the sensory nerves. Actually, arousal of the will does not depend on these motor nerves, which serve rather for perception of the processes brought about by the will. For in order to be fully conscious when I lift my hand, I must be able to perceive the movement of my hand. The only thing this involves is an inner sensory nerve which perceives the movements of the hand. I am of course very well aware of all the objections that one can raise against this, based on diseases of the spinal cord, and so on; but when these cases are properly understood they do not furnish contrary evidence, but rather are proof for what I am saying.

Therefore, there is only one kind of nerve, not the two kinds that haunt today's materialistic science. The so-called motor nerves are only there to serve our perception of movement. They also serve perception. They are internally situated nerves of perception which reach towards the periphery of the body for the purpose of perception. But, as I said, this will only gradually come to be recognised, and only when it has been recognised will it be possible to have some understanding for the connection between morality and the will, or for the direct connection between morality and the entire human being. For morality really works directly on what we call the I. Working down from there, it affects the astral body, the etheric body and, finally, the physical body. Therefore, if a moral act is committed, the moral impulse radiates, so to speak, from the I into the astral body, then into the etheric body, and then into the physical body. Now it becomes movement, becomes something that happens outwardly; and it is only at this stage that it can be perceived by means of the so-called motor nerves.

Morality is truly something that works into humanity directly from the spiritual world. It comes more directly out of the spiritual world than, for example, beauty and truth. In the case of truth, truths have to be approached in a sphere where physical truths, as well as the pure spiritual truths, have a say. In order to enter us, spiritual truths have to make the same detour through the head that is necessary for ordinary physical perceptions mediated by the senses. Moral impulses involve the entire human being, even when we take hold of them in a purely spiritual fashion as moral ideas. That is the fact to keep sight of: they affect the entire human being.

In order to understand this matter more fully we must look further into the way the difference between the head and the rest of the body is revealed. As regards our uppermost part, the head, the things that most come into consideration are the parts we refer to as the physical body and the etheric body. These are revealed distinctly, here in the physical plane, by the head. When I have a physical head before me, I must say to myself: ‘Yes, here I have something expressed like in a drawing. There is a physical shape, the physical body, and the etheric body. But there is already less of the astral body present. And as for the I, it is almost entirely absent; it cannot come very strongly at all into the formative forces of the head. Its presence there is almost entirely restricted to the soul level.’ Thus, the presence of the I in the head is very much on the soul level; although it saturates the head with its soul forces, it remains fairly independent of it. This is not the case with the rest of the body. There—paradoxical and strange though it may seem—there the physical body and etheric body are much less physically, bodily present. There the astral body and I are more strongly active. The I is active in the circulation of the blood. Everything else that lives in the body is a strong expression of the astral. On the other hand, the parts of the physical body that are actually physical cannot even be directly observed. (I refer to, as physical, those parts that are governed by physical forces, those subject to physical forces.)

Naturally, it is terribly easy to deceive oneself in this regard. Anyone who accepts materialistic criteria will say that breathing is a physical process in the human being: a person takes in air and then, as a consequence of the breath, certain processes occur in the blood, and so on, all of this being physical processes. Of course these all are physical processes, but the forces on which the chemical processes of the blood are based come from the I. It is precisely in the human body that what is really physical is less involved. For example, physical forces are expressed in the human body when a child begins to crawl and then to assume an upright position. That is a kind of victory over gravity. These extraordinary relationships with balance and with the effects of weight are always present, but they are not physically visible. They are what spiritual science refers to as the physical body: they are physical forces, to be sure, but they are, essentially, forces that cannot be observed. It is like having a balance on a stand; in the middle is the hypomochlion; forces are acting on one side because of the weight that is there; other forces are working on the other side where another weight is hanging. The strings by which the weights are attached are not identical with the forces at work there; even though the forces are physical, they are invisible. This is the sense in which parts of the human body can be called physical—for the most part, they are to be thought of as forces.

When we come to the etheric sphere, there is still a considerable amount that remains unobservable. There are physical processes that are brought into play by sense perceptions, as when perception of taste affects the taste-nerves. All of these, however, are basically very subtle processes.

Then we come to what happens in the muscles, and so on. Although the muscles provide us with a likeness, a picture that we can physically perceive, this picture depends on astral forces. The processes that occur in the nerves also depend on the astral.

And then we come to the circulation of the blood, to the forces of the I. The forces of the I and the astral body are at work in everything associated with the processes of inheritance through the succession of the generations. But astral body and I do not work in the same way in the human head, especially not the I. You could say that the I is very active in man's head when he is awake, but it never brings about any inner processes there in the way it does in the rest of the body, in the blood. The blood that goes to the head is dependent on the rest of the body—that is the kind of thing I meant when I said that one cannot separate things absolutely. One thing plays over into the other. Although blood flows to the head, the actual impulse of the blood does not originate in the head; the blood is pressed into the head. To the extent that this is a bodily process it originates in the I.

Thus, one really can say that when we look at a person's head, the most prominent and most important things to be seen are those that have been pressed outward into the physical and etheric bodies. If we look at the rest of the body, the most important things are the impulses and forces that are at work in it. These originate in the I and the astral body. Therefore, when you contrast the head, on the one hand, with the rest of the body on the other, it is the physical and etheric bodies that are relatively prominent in the head, whereas the astral body and the I that flow through it remain relatively independent. With the rest of the body it is the I and the astral body that are directly at work in the physical processes, whereas the remaining members are only present as the basis of an invisible framework—a physical and etheric framework that is not normally even considered. The place where the I is really present is in the circulation of the blood.

And now, what about the part we could call the moral-etheric aura? First of all, this part works on the entire human being. But it works on the I and the I works on the bodily part of man—for example in the blood. As we saw, the most important thing in the blood is the I. Morality affects the blood. You should not concentrate too much on the physical aspects of the blood; the physical blood is only there to occupy, so to speak, a position in space where the forces of the I can work. Instead, consider the blood in the light of what I have described. Morality, therefore, affects the I. In the blood, the forces of the I encounter the forces of morality. This is true for the man who stands here in the physical world: there is a spiritual encounter between what pulses in his blood and the moral forces that radiate into it. In the course of this encounter, the really moral impulses drive out what otherwise would emanate from the blood. Picture this as the bloodstream: the I flows in it and morality is at work there, too. (See the drawing.) Morality, then, has to counter the initial stream of the I. Therefore it must be a counter-force to this flowing force of the I. And so it is. When someone has the impulse to take a strong moral stand, this moral impulse has a direct effect on his blood. This effect even precedes the perception, mediated by the head, of the moral event and the moral process. This is what led Aristotle to make a wonderful observation. (Aristotle always took note of these things, both the physical and the moral, with an exacting eye.) He said that morality depends on a skill and that actual moral practice is the child of something further—it is the child of intellectual judgement.

To put it radically, the head is a spectator. And so, as we move about here on the physical plane, the forces of the I that are the basis of the circulation of the blood interact with moral impulses pressing in upon us from out of the spiritual world. Essentially, this interaction is based on the fact that we occupy our entire body with our waking consciousness. The I really does have to be present as conscious ego in the pulsing of the blood. Perhaps you are wanting to say—I will slip this in parenthetically—Yes, but the I and the astral body are outside of the physical body and etheric body when one is sleeping. How can the I and the astral body be the prime active forces here, since the shapes and movements still persist during sleep, during the time the astral body and I are absent! To be sure, the essential parts are outside the body, but, as I have often emphasised, this withdrawal from the body only applies essentially to one part of it, the head. I have said explicitly that the interaction of the I and astral body with the rest of the organism is all the more intensive when these are not at work in the head. That has often been said here. The I and the astral body are not separated from the rest of the organism in the same way as they are from the head.

But it is through the head that morality pours in when it encounters the ego forces in the blood. That is why I said earlier that the head must be included here as part of the entire body. For moral impulses cannot pour into the body directly, but have to enter by way of the head. This implies that the person must be awake. If a man is asleep and his I and his astral body have withdrawn from his head, morality would have to pour into the head and body by way of the physical and etheric, rather than spiritually. But this is not possible, for these have nothing to do with morality.

Now, if you will be entirely honest with yourself, there is a simple thing that will convince you of the truth of what I am saying. Just ask yourself how moral you are in your sleep or in your dreams—assuming that morality is not just a reminiscence of physical life! Now and then morality and everything to do with morals has rather a bad time in the world of dreams, does it not? Things can be quite amoral there; the criteria of morality are no more applicable there than they are in the world of plants. As such, moral impulses can only be applied to waking life. So you can see that morality involves a direct influence of our spiritual environment on the forces within us radiating from the I.

Now let us turn to beauty and to the things that have aesthetic effect. We already know that this depends on an interaction between the head and the rest of the body. The head dreams about the rest of the body, the rest of the body dreams about the head. If one investigates what lies behind this, one discovers that everything aesthetic originates in certain impulses that come from the spiritual world and stimulate that interaction. Those representatives of botocudianism to whom I earlier referred are less susceptible to these impulses; they do not allow themselves to be inwardly moved by the impulses that summon up such interactions. These impulses, however, do not affect the I. They work directly on the astral body, as distinguished from moral impulses, which work directly on the I. And that lack of consciousness associated with morality, that half-unconscious quality of conscience, is a result of the way morality must pass through the head—to which the I is not so intimately bound—and thence into the more subconscious realm of the body, seizing the whole person. The aesthetic sphere works directly on the astral body. There it brings about that extraordinary interplay between the part of the astral body that is intensively connected with wakefulness, whether it be wakefulness of the nerves or wakefulness in the muscles of the body, and the part of the astral body that is connected with the head and has less to do with wakefulness in the nerves or muscles of the body. For the head and the rest of the body are related in different ways to the astral body. This is why there are two kinds of human astrality; the more or less free astrality associated with the head, and the astrality that is bound to the physical processes in the rest of the body. The aesthetic impulse causes the free and the bound parts of the astral to interact and play into one another. They weave and surge, back and forth, through one another.

And when we enter the realm of truth, we find that truth, also, is something super-sensible. But it affects the head directly. Truth as such is directly connected with the activities and processes of the head. But the most curious thing about truth is that a human being grasps it in such a way—and truth affects him in such a way—that it flows directly into the etheric body. You may infer this from our numerous discussions of the past. In so far as truth lives in human thoughts, it lives in the etheric body. As I have often said, truth lives with thoughts in the etheric body. Truth enters the etheric part of the head directly. From there, naturally, it is passed on, as truth, to the physical part of the head.

This, you see, is the human being as he is when he is possessed by truth, beauty and goodness—by knowledge, by the aesthetic, by morality. When a person is in the grip of knowledge, or perception, or truth, the external world flows directly into his etheric body from outside-flowing through the I and the astral body in so far as the head is involved in the process. And because a person is not able to submerge himself consciously in his etheric body, the truth appears to him as a thing that is already complete in itself. One of the overwhelming and surprising experiences of initiation comes when one begins to experience truth as a free impulse that resides in the etheric body, in the same way as one experiences morality or beauty in the astral body. This is overwhelming and surprising because the one who goes through an initiation enters into a much freer relationship to truth and, as a consequence, into a much more responsible relationship with truth. As long as we remain unaware of truth as it enters us, it appears as something already completed. Then we simply say, applying the normal logic: this is true, that is false. As long as this remains the case, one has much less of a sense of responsibility towards the truth than one has after discovering that the truth is just as dependent on deeply-rooted feelings of sympathy and antipathy as are morality and beauty. Then one begins to relate to truth in freedom.

At this point we touch on yet another mystery, an important mystery of the subjective life. It manifests itself in the fact that the feeling for truth of some who approach initiation in an improper, unworthy way does not increase. They do not develop a greater sense of responsibility toward the truth. Instead, they cease to feel responsible about violating the truth and come under the influence of a certain element of untruth. Oh, herein lies much of significance regarding mankind's evolution towards spiritual truth, which in its purest form is wisdom. To the extent that it flows into the I and the astral body, truth directly enters the etheric, the human etheric. Beauty affects the human astral body; morality penetrates to the I—it is admitted into the ego. Thus, when truth pours into us from out of the cosmos it still remains for it to work on into the physical body. It must still imprint itself on the physical body—in other words, on the physical brain. There, in the physical realm it becomes perception. When beauty streams into our astral body from out of the cosmos, it still has to work its way into the etheric body and thence into the physical body. The good works into the I, and must imprint itself so strongly on the I that its vibrations are able to penetrate the astral body, the etheric body and, finally, the physical body. Only there, in the physical body, can it finally become effective.

Thus is mankind related to the true, the good and the beautiful.

In truth, man opens his etheric body directly to the cosmos—initially, it is the etheric part of the head. In beauty, he opens his astral body directly to the cosmos. In the sphere of morality, he opens his I directly to the cosmos. Of these, truth is the one that has been in preparation for mankind for the longest time. We will speak further about these things tomorrow and see how they are related to the laws that govern life between death and a new birth, as well as life between birth and death. Relatively speaking, beauty has been in preparation for a shorter time. Morality is something that is only now in its first earthly stages. What lives in the truth and, in its purified state, becomes wisdom, underwent its first stages during the Sun stage of human evolution. It achieved its highest point during the Moon stage, lives further during the Earth stage, and will essentially have reached completion by the period that we call the Jupiter stage of evolution. By then, mankind will have more or less completed the aspects of its development that have to do with the contents of wisdom. Beauty—which is a very inward thing for man—had its first beginnings during Moon evolution. It continues to develop now, during Earth evolution, and it will reach its final completion during Venus—during what we call the Venus stage of evolution. In all these cases where we have had recourse to the occult in assigning names to things, there are good reasons for choosing the names. It is not for nothing that I call one stage of development ‘the Venus stage’; it is so named to correspond with what will then be the dominant process.

During the Moon stage of development there was nothing that could be called morality. At that time, the bonds of necessity, of what was virtually a natural necessity, connected human beings to their acts. Morality could only begin on Earth. It will reach its culmination during the Vulcan stage when the purified I—the I that has been purified by morality and entirely moulded by it—will be the only thing that pulsates in the fiery processes of the blood. Then the forces of the human ego and the forces of morality will have become one and the same thing. Then the blood of mankind—in other words, the warmth of the blood, for matter is just an external sign of this warmth—will have become the holy fire of Vulcan.

Tomorrow we will speak further about these things.

• 8. Botocudian: The Botocudos are an Indian tribe of eastern Brazil. According to Chamber's Encyclopaedia of 1901 (Vol. 11, pp., 356-7), they are ‘the most barbarous of the Indian tribes of Brazil’. The tenor of the description that follows suggests how ‘botocudian’ could have become synonymous with extreme barbarism. The article concludes with the comment, ‘Ungovernably passionate, they often commit outrageous cruelties; but through systematically cruel treatment they have been almost annihilated, and now number not more than 4,000.’