The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear Friends,

If spiritual science is to be, as it can be, a life-draught for our souls, it must prove to be strong and also suited for times as important as our present epoch, in which so many things are taking place which widen the soul-spiritual vision of those who have dedicated themselves to spiritual science. This enables us to see events in a clearer light than our contemporaries, for their outlook is frequently—I repeat, frequently—kept within narrow limits by materialism. All that has been cultivated for so many years in our spiritual-scientific movement shows us that one of our goals is to increase the soul's life of feeling, so that we become emancipated from mere thought, thus transcending the narrower limits of our own being and its environment; we may then envisage to some extent the great impulses, the great manifestations of forces which pervade the whole development of mankind on earth. When we have thus striven to increase, as it were, the tension of our feelings, then the forces acquired through spiritual science should enable us to see something of all that remains externally invisible in the events, and still more, all that the ordinary intellect is unable to see. This is above all necessary in the present time with its tempestuous waves beating so painfully against our soul, but raising it, on the other hand, to special heights, just because they conceal so many significant things. We should be able to face above all the following question: Is there a prophetic meaning in the terrible torch of war burning above our heads, does this have a prophetic meaning for the whole development of the earth?

Only those who look upon these events in a light as significant as possible can face them in the right way. Some of our friends may often have asked themselves why we have in recent years spoken in these circles of times to which we must look ahead with special attention, times which will break in upon us daring the 20th century. The children and grand children of those who are now living will have to pass through great and important and at the same time tragic and painful events, and those who are now entrusted with the task of giving the souls of these children and grandchildren forces which enable them to hold out in the midst of the events which will befall mankind in the 20th century must realise that a strong inner spiritual force must be given to these children. In the 20th century our descendants will need strong inner forces as a support for their souls, to a far greater extent than can be imagined in the ordinary life of to-day, so that they may take along with them the treasures of mankind which have been accumulated throughout the centuries of human development. And other storms will also have to be experienced by the descendants of the present inhabitants of the earth! I have said that people may wonder why we speak of such things among ourselves, but now they will more easily have a feeling for such things because we are living in the midst of the greatest and most terrible war-events which have ever occurred in the historical course of development upon the earth, in the course of history of which mankind is conscious.

Indeed, it would be quite wrong, my dear friends, not to pervade ourselves as intensely and strongly as possible with the significance of the present moment and not to envisage the question: What has spiritual knowledge—the object of our soul's deepest longing—what has spiritual knowledge to do with the events which will break in upon the development of mankind? Even when considering things quite superficially, is it possible to ignore the storm which has arisen long ago in the East and which is now threatening to break out over the modern culture and civilisation of Europe. We should at least know that very strong and powerful forces live in the womb of the East and by the way in which they now assert themselves it is already possible to see that they are forces aiming at the destruction, at the breaking up of European culture. To-day we can only have a pale idea of the full extent of this danger.

We now live in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture. This is the epoch of the consciousness soul and in it live souls that have something to give to mankind. If we look back upon the Graeco-Latin epoch, we see that it is essentially, but in an entirely different form, an echo, a repetition upon a higher stage, of what once existed upon Atlantis. Although there it appeared in a different form, the fourth postAtlantean epoch of culture is a kind of repetition of Atlantis. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture in which we are now living is a new form; it is something quite new which has been added to the course of development which mankind has followed so far. We are now living in the midst of this epoch.

This should not be taken as an abstract truth, as a theory, but it should be grasped with the deepest and most intense feeling of responsibility, and we should realise that a long time will have to go by in the evolution of the earth before the hearts and souls of men can bring forth all that the divine order of the world has given mankind during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture. The impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha arose during the fourth epoch of culture, as the most important event in the whole development of the earth. During the fifth epoch of culture the Mystery of Golgotha will not work in the same way in which it worked during the fourth epoch. For the task of the fifth epoch of culture is to approach the Mystery of Golgotha little by little with full spiritual understanding, with all the forces which the human soul contains, not only with the religious forces based merely upon feeling, but with all the forces of the soul. Little by little all the truths and forces of knowledge which the soul can develop of its own accord will serve to grasp Christ fully, the Christ who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, so that St. Paul's words, “Not I, but Christ in me”, will become a reality in a new way. After all, everything we develop through spiritual science prepares us to grasp the true essence of Christ with all the soul's inner forces of knowledge. This is a significant, important task of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture.

Let us now try to penetrate somewhat into the meaning of these words. If this is the task of the fifth epoch of culture, let us first bring before our souls the way in which the Christ-Impulse has influenced mankind since the Mystery of Golgotha. If its influence were limited to what people have grasped in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha throughout the centuries which have elapsed since that time, the Christ-Impulse could only have exercised a weak influence upon men. Yet the Christ-Impulse does not only appeal in an intellectual way to human reason or to an understanding based on feeling, but it is a real impulse. The Christ-Impulse streams with living strength into the course of history itself. The Mystery of Golgotha, the external symbol of which is the blood that flowed on Golgotha, is a living force streaming into the history of mankind.

Let us take a historical event in order to understand how the Christ-Impulse worked in man before he was able to grasp it; let us try to understand how it worked, as a living, driving force in the evolution of mankind. The fifth epoch of culture is called upon to bring into human consciousness the whole inner nature and essence of the Christ-Impulse; but this Impulse already worked as a living force in the sub-conscious soul-forces of man before it could rise to full consciousness in him. And a historical character who picked out, I might say, the Christ-Impulse and brought about through it important events in history is, for example, the Maid of Orleans. But other characters might also be taken as an example. When we trace back the history of Europe to the event connected with the personality of the Maid of Orleans we must say, even if we only consider the external course of history: What the Maid of Orleans did, when she rose up from the heart of the French nation and vanquished the English forces—for she actually achieved this—really implied that the map of Europe took on the aspect which it afterwards gradually assumed. Any other concept of history relating to the past centuries, in so far as it refers to the European distribution of nations and states, is an invention that does not take into account the fact that the Christ-Impulse lived in the Maid of Orleans that a living Impulse brought about the distribution of the European nations and national forces.

One might say that while the learned people disputed over many things—for example, they already began to dispute on the question as to whether the Holy Supper should be eaten in this or in that form, and whether this or that should be interpreted by this or that formula,—while the learned people showed that their understanding, their conscious understanding could not the Christ-Impulse, this impulse worked through the medium of a simple country maid, through the Maid of Orleans; it worked in such a way as to mould and shape the history of Europe. The influence of the Christ-Impulse does not depend on the comprehension we have for it. I might say that the Christ-Impulse penetrated into the Maid of Orleans through Michael, its representative.

For this purpose the Maid of Orleans had to pass through a kind of initiation. To-day we speak of initiation, and in addition we give to human consciousness the rules collected in my book, “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds”. Of course, one cannot speak of such an initiation in the case of the Maid of Orleans. In her case we can only speak of an initiation which is a remnant of old initiations that took place more in man's sub-conscious soul-forces. These old initiations continued to exist up to the present time almost like elemental forces, and many things described in old legends and fairy-tales, for example that some people passed through experiences which roused their inner soul-forces so that they could perceive certain things connected with the spiritual world, indicate that independently of man, and through the influence of divine-spiritual forces which pervade the world, certain people are, I might say, predisposed by Karma to be natural initiates, thanks to the place given to them by the general Karma of humanity, where their own Karma flows together with the Karma of humanity.

A very beautiful echo of such a natural initiation, as one might call it, is contained in a Norwegian poem that speaks of Olaf Asteson, “the Son of the Sun”, who lived in a kind of sleep during the thirteen nights and days between Christmas Eve and January 6th, the festival of Christ's appearance. Olaf Asteson's very name indicates that he possessed unconscious hereditary forces of knowledge, for its real meaning The man in whose veins flows the blood of his ancestors. The Son of the Sun, Olaf Asteson, sleeps and dreams through the thirteen nights which are the darkest of the year's course on earth and which go from the day of Christ's birth to the day of Epiphany on January 6th.

These old legends dealing with the thirteen holy nights are not based on superstition. For it is indeed a fact that there are two seasons of the year which are cosmically like opposite poles in relation to the soul-life of man living in his physical body. The festival around St. John's day, which, is celebrated in the summer, is specially suited to draw out into the cosmos, through the forces of the sun which then reach their greatest strength, all the passionate impulses of the human soul, so that it becomes united with the cosmos: In ancient times, when people forgot themselves and lost themselves in the strong physical forces outside in the cosmos, the festival of St. John was called upon to pour into the human souls the divine-spiritual forces surging through the cosmos. But the spiritual forces which are also active in the darkness unfold their greatest strength in the middle of the winter, when the sun's forces reach the lowest point of their physical unfolding. And one may rightly say that it is in accordance with cosmic laws that the festival of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth should be celebrated in the winter season. When the external physical world is darkest of all, then the soul that unites with the forces spiritually pervading the aura of the earth, may have the strongest experiences. It is during these days that Olaf Asteson sleeps and sleeps and experiences everything connected with what we call Kamaloka, also what we designate as the Soul-World, and finally what we call the Spirit-land. The Norwegian legend relates that when Olaf Asteson woke up again after thirteen nights, he could describe what he had experienced and what souls he had met in the Soul-world and in the Spirit-land. These are pictures corresponding to an imaginative knowledge, but they indicate living realities which are accessible to human souls when they transcend the body during these days of physical darkness, which are, however, days of spiritual enlightenment,—when the human soul lives in forces that surge and weave through the aura of the earth. And the end of the legend describes the forces of the Christ-Impulse which strongly take hold of Olaf Asteson, but of his sub-conscious understanding.

These legends speak, as it were, of natural initiations which could still be attained in ancient times; they speak of the spiritual world into which one could still look in the darkest season of the year. The earth's aura then truly acquires forces which it does not have when it is flooded and illuminated by the physical forces of the sun. And because Christ is united with the aura of the earth ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, also the forces of the Christ-Impulse can in those days particularly influence human souls, if only they are open to receive them.

I might therefore say that before investigating anything historically, one should take for granted that the Christ-Impulse must have worked subconsciously for thirteen days also in the soul of a character such as the Maid of Orleans; she too must have experienced, as it were, what Olaf Asteson experienced in a sleeping condition during those thirteen days and nights; her sub-conscious soul-forces must, as it were, have been enlightened by the Christ-Impulse. In that case, the Maid of Orleans must once have been in a kind of sleeping condition during the thirteen days which lie between December 25th and January 6th, and on January 6th the Christ-Impulse must have taken hold of her soul, after a sleep-like state of existence.

What we may thus take for granted, really exists in a strange way, but during a special period, when the human being lives in a kind of sleep. Before he draws his first breath in earthly life, before he leaves his mother's body and is able to receive the first earthly-physical ray of light, he passes through a state of development which is really a sleeping state of experience. When we are within our mother's body, we live in a dreamlike sleep, a state of existence into which we enter at night when we fall asleep, and the last days of existence within our mother's body are those which are, so to speak, most accessible to the unconscious influences coming from the spiritual world.

In the Maid of Orleans these must have been the days chosen to implant the Christ-Impulse into her being, the days before she opened her physical eyes to the physical sunlight and before she drew her first breath outside her mother's body. This was indeed the case, for the Maid of Orleans was born on January 6th. On that day something occurred which caused a stir in her whole village; there was something undefined in its aura. This is a historical fact. The villagers did not know what had happened; they did not know that the Maid of Orleans had been born.

A great deal lies concealed in such facts. Only when these mysterious things are seen in their true light will it be possible to understand what is really taking place below the surface of the external physical world. The divine forces seek many different ways of entering human souls. Of course, the Karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be suited to these events. Because her Karma brought about the fact that she was born on January 6th, it provided the historical basis which enabled the Christ-Impulse to influence history in a special way through the Maid of Orleans. This fact gave Europe a completely new form.

When history is studied with a little more understanding it is possible to investigate such happenings. A spiritual way of looking at the world will in future enable us to refer to such facts, for by that time the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture will really have extracted from human souls all their latent forces of knowledge. Human souls will then experience more and more consciously the existence of the Christ-Impulse, but only if mankind will cease to look upon spiritual science as an abstract theory and will instead feel it livingly, experience it inwardly. Spiritual science will then be able to fulfill its true mission in the development of humanity.

We must be conscious, especially in a time such as the present one, that it is necessary to bridge the chasm between the human souls living here on earth in a physical body and those that have already gone through the portal of death. In a materialistic age this chasm widens. We shall more and more learn to consider as part of mankind as a whole not only the souls that live in a physical existence between birth and death, but also the souls that live between death and a new birth. The consciousness that throughout the earth's round we are united, also united with the souls that have passed on before us into the super-sensible worlds and that these souls are working in our midst, only with different forces than those of the souls still living in physical bodies,—this consciousness will gradually grow and become more intensive. It calls for an understanding of spiritually active forces and that we should learn to consider earthly phenomena in the new light which spiritual science alone can shed upon them.

Because spiritual science, my dear friends, should be something that stirs our hearts while our souls advance in knowledge, I want to speak to you of a recent occurrence here in Dornach throwing light upon the path which at the same time leads to many things that have occupied us during these last weeks and that belong to the wider compass of our spiritual-scientific stream of knowledge. I might also choose other cases, but the following are so immediately connected with our Karma that I am again able to speak of them to-day. What I shall tell you now, may then be extended also to other souls inside and outside our spiritual-scientific movement and related to it by destiny and by the way in which death occurred in it.

Last autumn we experienced a deeply moving case here in Dornach, in the surroundings of our Building. Dear friends had moved to Dornach with their children and had settled down as gardeners near the Building. Their eldest child, a boy of seven, spiritually wide-awake and with unique heart-qualities, was a veritable Sun-child. One felt deeply attracted by the child's soul, even if one only met the boy, now and then, for brief moments. When his father had to enlist, to do his duty on the battlefield as a German citizen, the boy of seven stood, I might say, whole-heartedly in the midst of this situation and he made a special effort to replace his father as best as he could by helping his mother with all kinds of small services. He went to town by train and did the shopping quite alone, although he was only seven. One evening he did not come home. There was a lecture that evening. At about ten o'clock a friend came along and told us that the boy was missing. There was no doubt that his disappearance had to be connected with a furniture-van which had overturned. This had happened near the Building, at a place where no van had ever passed before and where no van was likely to pass again for a long time. It had fallen down a small slope and capsized in the adjoining field. The drivers had given up the attempt of lifting it that same evening and had left the van there, after unharnessing the horses, for which they were very anxious. They wanted to lift the heavy van the next day, for they were sure that it would imply a whole day's work. It was now ten p.m. The child's disappearance had to be connected with that furniture-van. All kinds of tools were fetched and everyone able to work helped. In two hours the van was standing. At midnight the boy was discovered under the van—dead.

If we consider the external facts and the whole sequence of events leading up to the circumstance that the boy, who always came home by a way which would have led him past the right side of the furniture-van, on that day choose a path which led him past its left side at the very moment when the van capsized on top of him, if we consider moreover that on the way home he was held up in a friendly way by people, so that he was a quarter of an hour late (he had gone to the so-called Canteen, to fetch something for supper)—if we bear in mind that in this accident it was a question of just a few minutes which caused the boy to be on that spot at the very moment when the van capsized and that no one had noticed the accident (people were standing not far off, and although they had seen the van toppling over, no one had seen the boy)—the external facts as such will appear to us as an outstanding example of how easily we may fall a prey to a logical illusion. I have often spoken to you about this and shown you how easily we may delude ourselves in external life and mix up cause and effect. Once I described to you the following case: In the distance you see a man walking along the bank of a river. Suddenly you see him swaying and falling into the water. Soon after he is drawn out dead. The external circumstances could justify the assumption that he fell into the river and was drowned. And you will remain by this verdict if you do not investigate things further. But in the above case you could change your view simply by drawing in an external aid, although you were strengthened in it by the fact that a stone was found on the spot where the man fell into the water. But on dissecting the corpse it will appear that the man had had a stroke; consequently he had fallen into the river because he was dead; he did not die because he had fallen into the river. Here cause and effect are reversed. People with insight into such things will frequently come across such illusions—particularly in the scientific field.

In regard to the boy's death we must therefore say: The boy's Karma had ordered the van to be there; it was his Karma that had brought it to that spot. It is wrong to think that this was accidental. For in his present incarnation the boy was not to live beyond his seventh year of age. I might say that everything was arranged accordingly. We must get accustomed to see cause and effect differently than is ordinarily the case. When we look clairvoyantly upon the boy's life, upon the life of his soul, we discover a significant fact which moves us deeply, but at the same time it can throw light upon the divine-spiritual mysteries of the universe. Soon after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach Building changed. In telling you this I am relating [to] you something connected with my own experience. When one has to work for the Dornach Building of the Anthroposophical Society, when one has to arrange what should take place within it, then one knows how much one owes to the helping forces that stream into one's soul from such an aura. After the boy's death, his still unused etheric body became united, really united with the aura of the Goetheanum Building. For the etheric body is something that man discards. The individuality consisting of the Ego and of the astral body continues—this is something quite different—but the etheric body put aside at such a tender age contains forces which might have sustained the physical body and physical life for many decades. These forces have gone through the portal of death unused. After a few days they are discarded. These very forces are now active in the aura of the Building and work with it. Consequently we cannot say that the soul of this individuality works in the aura, but only his unused etheric body. Nothing is lost, even in the spiritual world. That no physical forces are ever dispersed is a fact well known to physicists; these forces only undergo a change. Also in the spiritual world we must look for transformed forces; they are the unused etheric forces of men that have died young and these forces rise up to the spiritual world. We approach such things by studying concrete examples. It is for this reason that I am describing them to you.¹

You see, the essential thing is not only to absorb thoughts and ideas concerning the spiritual worlds, but we should learn a certain way of living and penetrate into it. As human beings of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch of culture we should envisage the 6th and 7th epochs. It is essential to bridge the abyss separating the living from the so-called dead; it is essential that mankind should become more and more united, not only when men are incarnated in a physical body, but also when they take on forms of existence through which they have to pass between death and a new birth. Spiritual science exists not only for the purpose of bringing new possibilities to mankind, but in the life which awaits the earth for the remainder of its post-Atlantean development spiritual science is a first, I might say, stammering, attempt: all that spiritual science is now able to give, is really a stammering, when compared with everything that future human races will experience through spiritual science.

With this description, attempting to convey through the heart's forces certain ideas on the conditions of life and death, I want to point out to you an element of spiritual science which considers life itself, so that an understanding which is not that of the head may rise up within you, the understanding of the heart. This we should seek in a living way through spiritual-scientific immersion, for this kind of understanding is the task of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch of culture. It will be followed by the 6th and 7th epochs. But we fully grasp all that the Central-European civilisation must uphold, when we feel that the civilisation of Central Europe above all, is intimately connected with the goals that must be reached during the 5th epoch of culture. This may lead to something which I have mentioned at the beginning of to-day's lecture: to a deepened insight into things which lie concealed within our times so heavily fraught with destiny.

In the East, a soul-life is preparing which will be very significant in the future. In this connection, read what I have explained in the lectures I once gave at Christiania on the mission of the Folk-souls. The soul-character of the inhabitants of Eastern Europe is fundamentally different from that of Central Europe, not to mention that of the distant Orient. It is fundamentally different. All that spiritual science means to us should enable us to have an open spiritual eye for such things. We have often heard the legend that the Russian-Slav populations called in the Varangians and said to them: “We have a fine country, but no order. Come and make order for tip, Arrange a kind of government for us.” This, tale, born out of feeling and relating to the origins of Russian history, is a legend without any historical background, for these events have never occurred. In reality, the Varangians went out as conquerors and were never invited by the Russians! Yet these legends in history have a meaning far deeper than any historical reality behind them,—they have a prophetic meaning, a truly prophetic meaning, for they indicate something that has not yet occurred, but that will occur in the future. What will unfold in the East, will have to unfold in such a way that the capacities, of the Easterners will be used to absorb what has been developed in the civilisation of the West and to elaborate it further, so that the gifts existing in the East may be fructified by what has been produced in the West. This will one day be the task of the Eastern populations. We may, as it were, briefly characterize the nature of, the Russians of Eastern Europe by saying: If we consider the Russians, not that hypocritical community which now governs it, but the people, we must realise that the Russian soul contains a whole store of gifts; it is, so to speak, gifted in every direction, but just when it unfolds its mission within the development of the world and of mankind it will appear that within it lives something which may be called talent without any productive force. These talents will grow and increase more and more. But what preeminently characterizes the Central-European, the spiritual forces that pervade his gifts and the mood of “Constantly striving”, of living, as it were, intimately united with the Spirit of his nation, the striving to grasp what he produces—a striving that appears so, sublimely in Fichte's philosophy, where he speaks of the Ego that must constantly create itself in order to understand itself (indeed, future epochs will grasp the greatness of Fichte's philosophy!):—these very qualities which characterize Central Europe are the very opposite of what exists in Russia, in the East of Europe. The Russian souls are absolutely receptive; their greatest gift consists in absorbing things, but if anyone says that they are productive, this is an illusion. They are called upon to develop gifts which have no productive force. This idea is difficult in itself, because such things have never existed in human development, yet they must gradually unfold. In future the East will call out to the West: We have a beautiful country, but no order, (disorder will increase), come and make order.—Central Europe is called upon to bring to the East the productiveness of the Spirit. And what is happening now is an unreasonable rebellion against things which must take place in [the] future. People try to tread down things which must be reached, for in future they will say: Come to us and bring us order! In the history of mankind's development we find that what we most long for and strive after, is the very thing we reject most strongly.

The greatest misfortune that could befall us is that Russia, the East, should win in this process. It would be the greatest misfortune, not only for Central Europe, but, for Russia itself—the very greatest misfortune from an inner standpoint, because this victory would have to be reverted. Its effects could not remain. We are thus facing a tragic moment in the history of mankind's development, when the East will rebel against something which in future it will long for with all its might. For it would be doomed to decay if it refused to be fructified by the spiritual life of the peoples living on its western boundary. In the further course of civilisation the West must produce a living spiritual life, not only in the form of idealism, but a 1iving spiritual life. It will be like a spiritual sun moving from West to East, in the opposite direction of the sun's ordinary course. And in the external world the Russians will more and more realise how little they are able to do through their own forces and that they must really set themselves into the whole process of human development; also that they would commit the greatest sin by laying hands on the civilisation of the West, of the peoples of western Europe. Indeed, we may see strange, foreboding flashes of light! Did not something rise up in the East which would have been impossible in the West, the so-called, “Barefooted” world-conception, This is a kind of philosophy going out from the Barefooted Brothers, which quickly spread and took hold of many circles, although a few years ago it did not exist at all. The conception of the Barefooted! It is a conception adopted by men who make a philosophy out of their own absolute lack of faith in man, and humanity, who think that man is nothing but a poor wretch wandering about between birth and death, wandering in terror—hint pain, so that the words, freedom, brotherliness, compassion, pity, love, are empty phrases. Their only wisdom consists in roaming through the world as barefooted pilgrims who look upon the whole civilisation as a great illusion—the whole foul civilisation of western Europe, to use the words of these barefooted pilgrims—who only see the World in the ragged clothes, the stuffy room and the wide road—the world through which man roams when he has reached world-conception of the Barefooted Brothers. Indeed, it affects us, strangely when a poet gives to this “barefooted” conception in significant words spoken by one of his characters, it must affect us strangely, inasmuch as our Central-European world-conception always makes us strive to discover something which may kindle for mankind the light of the future. How does it affect us when a poet lets, one of his characters utter words that appear to sum up the world-conception and the philosophy of the Barefooted Brothers?

“Indeed, what can man mean to you?—He takes you by the scruff of the neck, he squashes you like a flea with his finger-nail! Pity him if you can! Show him how foolish you are! In return for your pity he will torture you, wind your intestines round his hand, tear every vein out of your body, an inch an hour. You fool ... pity? Pray God that they may whip you pitilessly, and there's an end to it! Pity? ... Fie!”

Gorki, of whom you will already have heard many things, comments these, words with: “Cruel, but true”, by rendering not only the world-conception of a poet in a poet's words, but his own world-conception, resulting from his own observation of the world. This is the conception of a Barefooted Brother, and it may be discussed like, any other world-conception. Yet it is one that has lost the possibility of transcending itself, of reaching something greater than itself and of sending light into life; before it can fulfill its mission in the evolution of mankind, it will have to wait until it is fructified by the light. At present, however, it is rebelling against the very things it should accomplish. Many empty words have been uttered in the world, but one of the most tragic experiences I can relate is connected with the phrases uttered by the different political parties at the war-assembly of the Russian Duma in August 1914; they surpass everything in emptiness! Such empty words can only be uttered when every living productive force of the soul is exhausted. The East is really standing upon the threshold of things to come, and it is now unfolding forces which are opposed to, those which will one day be the source of its greatness. And we in Central Europe must say to ourselves: In spite of all, the East is waiting; for the spiritual wisdom which must rise up from Central Europe.

My dear friends, try to transform into feeling what I have indicated in words fraught with heavy feelings. I have shown you what spiritual science may become if we intensify feeling and penetrate with it into spiritual science, in order to grasp the true necessity, indeed the historical necessity of a spiritual-scientific world-conception. We shall then be pervaded by thoughts filled with understanding, that rise up from our souls into the world's spaces, thoughts that will meet the forces which will soon send down their influences from the spiritual worlds, when peace will once more reign over the earthly spheres.

To-day I have shown you the influence of the etheric bodies which sever themselves from the human souls before their forces have been used up, of etheric bodies that might still have worked for many years and decades within physical bodies here on earth, and on behalf of physical life. We cannot help thinking of the many unused parts of etheric bodies rising up to the spiritual world, in addition to all other influences rising up from the individualities of men passing through the portal of death on the battlefields. These etheric bodies will form a great complex of forces, of spiritual forces, that will cooperate from spiritual regions in the formation of a spiritual world-conception which will gradually take hold of mankind. But in order that the forces proceeding from the unused etheric bodies may send flown their influence from spiritual spheres, they mum be net by the thoughts of human beings on earth, by thoughts filled with understanding for the secret working of the spiritual world which is interwoven with the forces of these unused etheric, bodies. This should be a real encouragement inducing us to fill ourselves with the great truths of spiritual science. For they will stimulate within us thoughts which will go on working in other people. The burdensome, fateful content of the life now unfolding within and around us will be followed by days of peace, when the truths which we have implanted into our souls through spiritual science will rise up before us and meet the forces gathered by the etheric forces of those who have passed through the portal of death upon the battlefields of present-day events, forces which stream down to the earth. And the result; will be something which I want to recapitulate in a few words, a result that reveals itself to spiritual, scientific research. If the fruits of spiritual science can be rightly included in the development of the times, the result will be something I want to express in the following words:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlass'ner,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten,
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht—
Lenken Seelen geistbewußt
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

(From the courage of the, fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Shall spring forth a fruit of the Spirit,
If souls, spirit-consciously
Direct their mind and soul towards the Spirit-realm.)

• 1. The description of the other concrete cases is contained in “Rudolf Steiner und unsere Toten”. They are too intimate for publication in the News Sheet.

This is the 1st of 15 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach in 1920. The series of lectures is entitled: Physiological Therapy Based on Spiritual Science. Another name of this lecture is: Health Care as a Social Issue.

It is never doubted that the Social Question is one of the problems that is looming largest in the thought of the present age. Wherever there is any understanding at all of the events that occur in the course of the evolution of human history, of the sinister or incipiently fruitful impulses for the future—all these matters are included under the “Social Question.” It must, however, be said that the point of view from which these social problems are regarded and the way in which they are handled at the present time, suffers from the basic evil inherent in so many spheres of our mental and moral life—I mean the intellectualism obtaining in our age. For these problems are indeed so often limited by the angle of intellectualistic study. No matter whether the social question is approached from the “left” or “right” wing, the purely intellectualistic nature of the different conceptions is revealed in the fact that people start from certain theories: this or that ought to be done, this or that ought to be stamped out.

Little account is taken of the human being himself. Human beings are treated just as if there were one generality—“Man.” No attention is paid to the personal and distinctive qualities of individual human beings. And this is why our whole conception of the social question has become abstract, so seldom grasping the social feelings and sentiments playing between man and man. This lack of social observation becomes most clearly evident when we turn to a special domain like that of hygiene—a domain which possibly is more prone than many others to be the subject of sociological study, inasmuch as it is a public affair, concerning not the individual human being alone but the whole of society.

True, there is no lack of advice on the subject of hygiene, no lack of treatises and writings on the subject of the care of health as a public concern. Yet one cannot help asking: What is the real attitude of social life to all these injunctions and regulations about hygiene? And the answer is, that when the conclusions reached by medical or physiological science on this matter are made public either by the written or by the spoken word, it is the trust reposed by man in a “profession,” the inner nature of which he is not able to put to the test, which is supposed to be the basis upon which such precepts may be accepted. Wide circles of people whose concern it is—as indeed it is the concern of everyone—accept simply on authority all that finds its way on the subject of hygiene, from medical laboratories to the outside world. But those who are convinced that in the course of modern history during the last four centuries a longing has arisen among mankind for a democratic ordering of affairs, find themselves faced with the entirely undemocratic nature of this “trust in authority” that is demanded in the sphere of hygiene. In short, this undemocratic attitude confronts the longing for democracy which has reached its height to-day, although frequently in a highly contradictory form.

I know that what I have just said may seem paradoxical, for people do not place the unquestioning acceptance of everything related to the care of health side by side with the democratic demand that affairs of public interest concerning every mature man and woman shall be arbitrated by the people in general, either directly or indirectly through their representatives. True, it may be impossible to apply essentially democratic principles in the sphere of public hygiene, because these things depend on the judgment of specialists. But on the other hand one cannot help asking: ought not an attempt be made to apply such democratic principles as are possible in modern conditions to a sphere like that of public health which so intimately concerns both the individual and the community?

A great deal is said to-day about the necessity for proper air, light, nourishment, sanitation, and so forth, but the regulations laid down in regard to these things cannot, as a rule, be tested by those to whom they apply. Now please do not misunderstand me. I do not want to be accused in this lecture of taking any particular side. I have no desire to uphold ancient superstitions of devils and demons passing in and out of human beings in the form of disease, nor to support the modern superstitions that bacilli and bacteria cause the different diseases. We need not consider to-day whether we are really faced with the results of the spiritualistic superstitions of earlier times, or with the superstitions of materialism. I want rather to consider something that permeates the whole culture of our age, especially in so far as this culture is determined by the convictions of modern science. We are assured to-day that the materialism of the middle and last third of the nineteenth century has been overcome, but this statement does not pass muster with those who really know the nature of materialism and of its opposite. The most one can say is that materialism has been overcome by a few people here and there. These people realise that the facts of modern science no longer justify the general explanation that everything in existence is merely a mechanical, physical or chemical process taking place in matter. But the fact that a few people here or there have come to this conclusion does not mean that materialism has been overcome, for it is equally true that when it is a question of concrete explanation or concrete thought, even these people—and the others as a matter of course--still reveal a materialistic tendency. True, it is said that atoms and molecules are only convenient units of calculation (and here what is implied is that atoms and molecules are made of the substance of thought)—but the mode of observation is nevertheless atomistic and molecular in character. When we are explaining world-phenomena from the behaviour and relations of atomic and molecular processes, the point is not whether we conceive any thought, feeling or activity to be inseparable from material processes in atoms or molecules. The point is the orientation of the attitude of our soul and Spirit when our explanation is based upon the atomic theory—the theory of smallest entities. The point is not whether verbally or mentally a man is convinced that there is something more than the material action of atoms, but whether his mind and spirit can give explanations other than the atomic basis of phenomena. In short, the essential thing is not what we believe, but how we explain—in a word, our attitude of soul. And here it must be said that only a true Anthroposophical Spiritual Science can help to get rid of the evil of which I have spoken.

I want to prove concretely that this is so. There is hardly anything more confusing than the distinctions which are so often emphasised to-day between man's bodily nature and his nature of soul and Spirit, between physical diseases and so-called psychical or mental diseases. The concrete distinctions and relations between such facts of human life as a diseased body and an apparently diseased soul, suffer from the materialistic, atomistic mode of thought. For what is the real essence of the materialism that has gradually come to be the world-conception of so many modern men, and that far from being overcome, is to-day in its prime? The essence of this materialism is not that people observe the material processes in the body and reverently study the marvellous structure and functions of the nerves and other organs, but that the Spirit has departed from the study of these material processes. People look into the world of matter and see only matter and material processes.

What Spiritual Science must emphasise, however, is briefly this: Wherever material processes are presented to the senses—and these are the only processes which modern science will admit as valid and exact—they are but the outer manifestation, the outer revelation of active spiritual forces lying behind and within them. Now it is not typical of Spiritual Science to observe a human being and say: “There is his physical body—a sum-total of material processes—but he does not consist of this alone. Independently of this he has an immortal soul.” It is far from being characteristic of a spiritual conception of the world to speak like this and then build up all manner of abstract, mystical theories about this immortal soul that is independent of the body.

We can only be spiritual scientists in the true sense when we realise that this material body, with its material processes, is a creation of the Spirit and soul. We must learn to understand in every detail the way in which the soul and Spirit—which were there before birth, or rather, before conception—are fashioning and moulding the structure and the “material” processes of the human body. We must be able to perceive the immediate unity of the body and the soul-and-Spirit, and realise that through the working of these principles the body as such is gradually destroyed. The body undergoes a partial death with every moment that passes, but it is only at actual death that there is a radical expression of what has been happening to the body all the time, as a result of the working of the soul-and-Spirit. We are not spiritual scientists in the true sense until we have concrete realisation of this living interplay, this living interaction between the soul and every single part of the body, and are able to say: The soul and Spirit descend into concrete processes, into the functions of liver, breathing, the action of heart, brain and so forth. In short, when we are describing the material part of man, we must know how to portray the body as the direct offspring of Spirit. Spiritual Science is able to place a true value on matter because, in the different concrete processes, it does not merely observe what is there before the eye or conjectured by the abstract concepts of modern science, but because it shows how the Spirit works in matter, and it looks with reverence at the material workings of the Spirit.

That is one essential point. The other is that such a conception guards man against all the abstract tittle-tattle about a soul independent of the bodily nature—for so far as the life between birth and death is concerned, man can only spin fantasies about this. Between birth and death (with the exception of the time of sleep), the being of soul and Spirit is so utterly given up to the bodily activities that it lives in them, manifests in them. We must be able to observe the being of soul and Spirit outside the range of earthly life, realising that existence between birth and death is but the outcome of the soul and Spirit. Then we can behold the actual unity of the soul and Spirit with the physical elements of the body. This is Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, for we know in very truth that the human being as we perceive him with all his organs and structures has been created by the soul and Spirit. Mystical and theosophical ideas may evolve all manner of high-sounding theories about a spirituality that is free of the body, but such ideas can never serve the concrete sciences of life. They can only pander to an intellectualistic or psychic craving which would like to be rid of outer life and then weave fantasies about the soul and Spirit in order to induce a state of inner satisfaction.

In this Anthroposophical Movement of ours it behoves us to work earnestly and sincerely to develop a Spiritual Science which will be able to bring life into physics, mathematics, chemistry, physiology, biology, anthropology. No purpose is served by making statements in a religious or philosophical sense to the effect that man bears an immortal soul within him, and then working in the different branches of science just as if we were concerned merely with material processes. Knowledge of the soul and Spirit must be applied to the very details of life, to the marvellous structure of the body itself. You will come across many mystics and theosophists who love to chatter about man being composed of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. And yet they have no idea what a wonderful manifestation of soul-life it is when one blows one's nose! The point is that we must see in matter a manifestation of the Spiritual. Then we have healthy ideas of the Spirit—ideas that are full of content, and with them a Spiritual Science that may be fruitful for all the ordinary sciences of life.

This again will make it possible to overcome elements which, on account of the materialistic trend of scientific knowledge, have led to specialisation in the various branches of science. Now I have no desire whatever to deliver a philippic against specialisation, for I am well aware of its usefulness. Certain domains of life must be dealt with by specialists simply because they need a specialised technique. The point I would make is that a man who holds fast to the material can never reach a conception of the world applicable to the practical details of life when he becomes a specialist in the ordinary sense. For the range of material processes is infinite, both outside in Nature and within the human being. We may devote a long time—as long at any rate as professional people devote to their training to the study of the nervous system in man, for instance, but if material processes are all that we see in the working of the nervous system—processes which are then described according to the abstract concepts of modern science—we shall never be led to any universal principle or to anything upon which a conception of the world can be based. Directly we begin to study the nervous system in the sense of Spiritual Science we shall inevitably find that the Spirit we see active there, leads us to the soul and Spirit underlying the systems of muscles, bones and senses and so forth. For the Spirit does not “separate off” into single parts as does the material. Very briefly expressed, the Spirit unfolds like an organism. Just as we cannot truly study a human being if we merely look at his five fingers and cover the rest of him up, so in Spiritual Science we cannot observe a single detail without being led by the soul and Spirit within this detail, to a Whole. If we should happen to become brain or nerve specialists, we should then still be able, in observing the single part, to form a picture of the human being as a whole. We should reach a universal principle able to form part of a conception of the world, and then we could begin to speak of specialised subjects in a way intelligible to every healthy-minded, reasonable human being.

This is the great difference between the way in which Spiritual Science is able to speak about the human being and the way in which materialistic science is bound, by its very nature, to speak. If as men and women who in the ordinary course of things do not know very much about the nervous system, you try to read a scientific text-book on the subject, you will probably soon lay it aside. At all events you will not learn much that will help you to realise the worth and dignity of the being of man. If, however, you listen to what Spiritual Science has to say about the nervous system you are everywhere led to the whole being of man. Such illumination is cast on the nature of man that the idea arising within you suggests the worth, the essence and the dignity of the human being.

We realise the truth of this not so much when we are observing merely a single part of the healthy human being, but when we are observing the man who is ill—where there are so many deviations from the so-called normal condition. Now if we can observe the whole human being under the influence of some disease, all that Nature reveals to us in the sick man leads us deeply into cosmic connections. We understand the particular constitution of this human being, how the atmospheric and extra-earthly influences are working on him as the result of his particular constitution, and we are then able to relate his organisation to the various substances of Nature that will have a remedial effect. When we add to our understanding of the healthy man all we learn from observation of the sick man, profound insight into the deeper connections and meaning of life will arise.

And such insight becomes in turn the foundation for a knowledge of man that is intelligible to everyone. True, we have not as yet accomplished very much in this direction, for Spiritual Science as we intend it, has only been in existence for a short time. The lectures given here therefore must only be thought of as a beginning.¹ But, by its very nature, Spiritual Science is able to work upon and develop what is contained in the several sciences in such a way that a knowledge which everyone ought to possess of the being of man, can really be offered to the world.

And now think what it will mean if Spiritual Science succeeds in transforming science in this way—succeeds in developing forms of knowledge relating to men in health and disease that are accessible to ordinary human consciousness. If Spiritual Science succeeds in this, how different will be the relations of one human being to another in social life! There will be far greater understanding in the relation of human beings to each other than there is to-day when men pass each other by without either having the slightest understanding of the individuality of the other. The social question will be lifted away from its intellectualistic character when the several branches of life are based upon objective knowledge and concrete experience. This applies very specially to the domain of health and the care of health. Think of the effect which a true understanding of health and disease in our fellow-men would have in social life. Think what it would mean if the care of health were taken in hand by the whole of humanity with understanding! Of course there must be no scientific or medical dilettantism—most emphatically not. But if understanding for the health and ill-health of our fellow-beings can be awakened—understanding that grows from a true conception of man think of the effect it would have in social life. Then indeed it would be realised that social reform and reconstruction must proceed in their different branches from real knowledge and not from Marxian theories and the like. Such theories lose sight of the human being as such, and want to organise the world on the basis of purely abstract concepts. Healing can never spring from abstract concepts, but only from a true knowledge of the different spheres of life. And hygiene, the care of health, is a very important domain, for it leads us immediately to all the joy that falls to the lot of our fellow-men when their mode of life is healthy and to their sufferings and limitations when the elements of disease lie within them.

When those who are concerned in developing a knowledge of man in health and disease, and those who actually become doctors, have this attitude towards social life, they will be able to shed light on its problems, for they will have true understanding. The position of the doctor nowadays is that those who are not his personal friends or relatives go to his surgery to fetch him when someone is in pain or has broken a leg. When men have knowledge of the kind I have described, the doctor will be a teacher who is continually giving instruction and indicating means for prophylactic hygiene. The doctor will not only be called in to heal when disease has reached a point where men realise they are ill, but he will always be working to keep them healthy—so far as this is possible. In short there will be a living, social relationship between the doctors and the rest of the community. And, moreover, this healthy influence will make itself felt in the domain of Medicine itself.

For the very reason that materialism has also spread into the medical conception of life, we have developed extraordinary ideas about illness. On the one side we are faced with all the physical diseases. They are investigated by observing the different organs, or the various processes which are thought to be of a physical nature and are to be found within the confines of the human skin. Then the goal is to seek to rectify what is wrong. In this case, thought about the body of men in its normal and abnormal conditions is wholly materialistic.

Then there are so-called psychical or mental diseases. As a result of materialistic thinking these are considered to be diseases of the brain or nervous system, although efforts have been made to find the causes in other organic systems of the human being. But because people are quite ignorant of the way in which the Spirit and soul work in the healthy body, they are unable to connect these diseases of the Spirit and soul in a rational way with what is actually taking place in the human organism.

Spiritual Science is able to show in every detail how all so-called mental and psychical disease has its source in disturbances of the organs, in enlargements and contractions of the organs in man. A so-called mental or psychical disease is always the result of some irregularity in an organ, in the heart, the liver, the lungs and so on. A Spiritual Science that has developed to the point of knowing how the Spirit acts in a normal heart, is also able to discover in the deterioration or irregularity of the heart, the cause of a diseased life of Spirit or soul.

The greatest fault of materialism is not that it denies the existence of the Spirit. Religion can see to it that due recognition is paid to the Spirit. The greatest sin of materialism is that it gives us no knowledge of matter because, in effect, it only observes the outer side of matter. What is lacking in materialism is that it has no insight into matter! Take, for instance, psycho-analytical treatments, where attention is wholly directed to something that has taken place in the soul and is described as a “complex”—a pure abstraction. Whereas the right way to proceed is to study how certain impressions which have been made on the soul of the human being at some period of his life and which are normally bound up with a healthy organism, have come into contact with defective organs, with a diseased instead of a healthy liver, for example. And it must be remembered that this may have happened a very long time before the moment when the defect becomes organically perceptible.

There is no need for Spiritual Science to be afraid of showing how so-called mental or psychical disease is invariably connected with some organic phenomenon or other in the body of man. Spiritual Science must show with all emphasis that when a “soul-complex”—a deviation from the so-called “normal life of soul”—is studied, the most that can be achieved is a one-sided diagnosis. Psycho-analysis, therefore, can never lead to anything more than a diagnosis, never to a real therapy in this domain. In mental or spiritual diseases therapy must proceed to administer a cure for the body and for this reason there must be exact knowledge of the ramifications of the Spiritual in the material. We must know where to take hold of the material body (which is permeated with Spirit) in order to cure the disease of which abnormal conditions of soul are but the symptoms. Again and again it must be emphasised by Spiritual Science that the root of so-called mental or psychical diseases lies in the organic system of the human being. But it is only possible to understand abnormal organology when the Spirit can be traced in the most minute parts of matter.

And again: phenomena of life which seemingly affect or function in the element of soul, all that is expressed in the different temperaments, for instance, and the activity of the temperaments in the human being, in the way in which the tiny child acts, plays, walks—all this is to-day merely studied from a “psychological” point of view, but it also has its bodily aspect. Faulty education of the child may come to expression in later life in the form of some familiar physical disease. In certain cases of mental trouble we must often study the bodily constitution and look for the cause there, and again in certain cases of physical diseases, we must study the Spiritual before we can find the cause. The whole essence of Spiritual Science is that it does not speak in abstractions of a nebulous Spirit, like people of a mystical or theosophical turn of mind, but traces the Spirit right down into its material workings. Spiritual Science never conceives of the material in the sense of modern science but always presses on to the Spirit, and so it realises that an abnormal soul-life must inevitably express itself in an abnormal bodily life, although the abnormality may, to begin with, be hidden from external observation. On all sides to-day people form entirely false ideas of true Anthroposophical Spiritual Science and there may be a certain justification for this when they listen to speeches of those who do not seriously penetrate to the heart of the teaching but give utterance to abstract theories—man consists of such and such, there are repeated earthly lives, and so forth. All these things are of course full of significance and beauty, but the point is that we must penetrate to the heart of the particular subjects and the various spheres of life of which we speak.

In the very widest sense, the Spiritual-Scientific mode of thinking leads to a social, communal consciousness among men. For when people are able to perceive, on the one hand, how a soul that is sick sends its impulses into the organism, when they really understand the connection between the organism and the soul that is sick, and when they know how the general ordering of life affects the health of human beings—then the position of each individual in the community will be quite different. A true understanding of his fellow-creatures will arise in man and he will treat them quite differently. He will make allowances for the particular characters of those around him, knowing that the one possesses certain qualities and the other quite different qualities. He will learn how to respond to all the variations, how to make the best use of the different temperaments in human society and above all how to unfold and develop them in the true sense.

One domain of life in particular will be healthily influenced by such a knowledge of human nature—I refer to the domain of education. Without a comprehensive knowledge of the human being we simply cannot, for instance, measure the consequences of allowing our children to sit in school with bent backs so that they never breathe properly, or never teaching them to utter the vowel and consonant sounds clearly and definitely. As a matter of fact, the whole of later life depends on whether the child at school breathes in the right way and whether it is taught to articulate clearly and consciously. This is merely said by way of example, for the same thing applies in other domains. It is, however, an illustration of the application of general hygienic principles in the sphere of education. The whole social significance of hygiene is revealed in this example.

It is also apparent that instead of further specialisation, life is calling out for the specialised branches of knowledge to be brought together to form a comprehensive conception of life. We need something more than educational rules according to which the teacher is supposed to instruct the child. We need something that makes the teacher realise what it means if he helps the child to speak articulately and clearly, or the consequences that will ensue if he allows the child to catch its breath after only half a sentence or line has been spoken, and does not see to it that all the air is used up while the sentence is being uttered.

There are of course many such principles. A right appreciation and practice of them will only develop when we are able to measure their full significance for human life and social health—for only then will they give rise to a social impulse.

We need teachers who are able to educate children on the basis of a conception of the world that understands the true being of man. This was the thought underlying the Course I gave to the teachers when the Waldorf School at Stuttgart was founded. All the principles of the art of education as expounded in that Course strive in the direction of making men and women out of the children who are being educated—men and women in whom lungs, liver, heart, stomach, will be healthy in later life because, in childhood, they were helped to develop their life-functions in the right way, because, in effect, the soul worked in the right way. This conception of the world will never give a materialistic interpretation of the old saying, Mens sana in corpore sano. Interpreted in the materialistic sense this means: If the body is healthy, if it has been made healthy by all kinds of physical methods, then it will of itself be the bearer of a healthy soul. Now this is pure nonsense. The only real meaning of the phrase is this: a healthy body bears witness to the fact that the force of healthy soul has built it up, moulded it, made it healthy. A healthy body proves that a healthy soul has worked within it. That is the right interpretation of the phrase—and only in this sense can it be a principle of true hygiene.

In other words: it is not enough to have, as well as the school teachers who are working merely from an abstract science of education, a school doctor who turns up perhaps once a fortnight, goes through the school and has no idea how really to help. No, what we need is a living connection between medical science and the art of education. We need an art of education that teaches and instructs the children in a way conducive to real health. This is the element that makes hygiene a social question. For the social question is essentially an educational question, and this in turn a medical question—but only in the sense of a medicine, of a hygiene permeated with Spiritual Science.

These things lead us on to something else of extraordinary significance in our theme. For when we really enter Spiritual Science, when it becomes concrete in us, we know that we receive from it something more than the intellectualism of natural science, history or jurisprudence. (All sciences to-day are intellectualistic; even if they claim to be based on practical experience this simply means that they interpret intellectually the results of the experiences of the senses.) Now the content of Spiritual Science differs essentially from these intellectualistic results of natural science and other branches of modern culture. We should be in a sorry plight if all that lives in our intellectualistic culture were not merely a picture but an actual power working deeply into human beings. Intellectualism remains merely on the surface of man's being—and I use this phrase in its comprehensive sense. There are people who only study Spiritual Science intellectually, who make mental notes—there is a physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego, reincarnation, karma and the like. They put it all into pigeon holes as is the custom in modern natural or social science but they are not sincerely devoting themselves to Spiritual Science when they think like this. They are simply carrying over their ordinary mode of thought to what they find in Spiritual Science. The essential thing about Spiritual Science is that it must be conceived, felt and experienced not in an intellectualistic way, but quite differently. It is for this reason that by its very nature Spiritual Science has a living, vital relation to the human being in health and disease, but a relation altogether different from what is often imagined.

People must by now have realised to their cost the powerlessness of purely intellectual culture to deal with those who are suffering from so-called mental disease. The sufferer will tell you, for instance, that he hears voices speaking to him. No matter what intellectual reasoning you use with him—it is all useless, for he will know how to make all manner of objections. You may be sure of that! Even this might be an indication that in such a case one has to do, not with a disease of the conscious or unconscious life of soul but with a disease of the organism. Spiritual Science teaches, moreover, that one cannot get to grips with these so-called mental and psychical diseases by the kinds of methods that have recourse, for instance, to hypnotism, suggestion and the like, but that one must approach mental disease by “physical” means—by healing the organs of man, and this is exactly where a spiritual knowledge of the human being is all-essential, Spiritual knowledge recognises that so-called mental diseases cannot be affected by methods that are of a “spiritual” or “psychical” nature, because, in effect, this kind of illness arises from the fact that the spiritual member of man's being has been pressed outwards (as is otherwise the case only in sleep). As a consequence, the spiritual member is weak and we must proceed to cure the bodily organ in order that the soul and Spirit may be received into it again in a healthy way.

Now Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition which proceed, not from the intellect alone but from the whole being of man as the outcome of Spiritual Science—penetrate into the whole organism. In short, true Spiritual Science penetrates with health-bringing force into the physical organisation of man.

The fact that certain dreamy people feel ill or showsigns of the reverse of health in their spiritual-scientificactivities is no proof that this statement is false. There are so many who are not really spiritual scientists at all but who simply amass with their intellects collectionsof notes upon the results of Spiritual Science. The promulgation of the real substance of Spiritual Science is in itself a social hygiene, for it works upon the whole being of man and regularises his organic functions when they show signs of deviating from the normal either to the side of morbid dreaming or the reverse. Here we have the essential difference between the content of Spiritual Science and that of merely intellectualistic science. The concepts arising in the domain of intellectualism are muchtoo “bloodless”—because they are merely analogies to get to grips with the being of man and work healthily upon him. The concepts of Spiritual Science, on the other hand, have themselves arisen from a knowledge of the whole being of man. Lungs, heart, liver the whole being and not the brain alone—have collaborated in the building up of spiritual-scientific concepts. Inherentwithin them, penetrating them with a plastic formativeforce, are elements which proceed from the whole beingof man. And this is the sense in which Spiritual Sciencecan enter and give direction to hygiene as a social concern.

In many other ways too—for I can only indicate certain examples—Spiritual Science will be able, when it gains a firm footing in the world, to lay down guiding lines for the life of humanity in the sphere of health.

Let me here give just one brief indication. The great difference between the human organisation in waking and sleeping life is one of the subjects to which Spiritual Science has again and again to return. Howthe Spirit and soul act in waking life, how and when they permeate each other in the body, soul and Spirit of man—how they act when they are temporarily separated fromeach other in sleep—all these things are conscientiously studied by Spiritual Science. Here I can do no more than refer to a certain principle, but it is nevertheless a well-founded deduction of Spiritual Science.

Certain epidemics appear in life—illnesses that affect whole masses of the population and are therefore essentially a social concern. Ordinary materialistic science studies these illnesses by examining the physical organism of man. It knows nothing of the tremendous effect which the abnormal attitude of human beings to waking and sleeping life has upon epidemics and the susceptibility to epidemic diseases. Certain things take place in the organism during sleep and if they run to excess, they strongly predispose the human being to so-called epidemic diseases. Men and women who set organic processes in action as the result of too much sleep—I mean processes that ought not to take place, because waking life must not be broken up by such lengthy periods of sleep—these people have a much stronger predisposition to epidemic diseases and are less able to resist them.

Now you can well realise what it would mean to explain the right proportions of sleeping and waking life. These things cannot be dictated. You can of course tell people that they must not send children with scarlatina to school, but you cannot tell them in the same way that they ought to get, say, seven hours of sleep. And yet it is much more important than any prescription, that people who need it should have seven hours of sleep and others for whom this is not necessary, should sleep much less—and so forth.

These matters, which are so intimately connected with the personal life of human beings, have a very great bearing and effect upon social life. How the social effects come about, whether a larger or smaller number of people are obliged owing to illness to be absent from their work, whether or not a whole region is affected—all these things depend upon the most intimate details of man's life. Hygiene here plays an immeasurably important part in social life. No matter what people may think about infection or non-infection—this element is none the less a factor in epidemics. And here external regulations are of no avail; the only thing that will avail is to educate, within human society, men and women who are able to meet the doctors who are trying to explain prophylactic measures, with understanding. This can give rise to an active co-operation for the preservation of health between the doctors who understand the technique of their profession, and the laity who understand the nature of the human being. ... It is, of course, not the laity nor the amateurs who will do the healing, but reasonable human beings will bring understanding to meet the professional medical men who tell them this or that. If he understands the human being—and this understanding can be developed in social life in collaboration with the doctor—the layman can form an intelligent idea of technical science and then, in democratic Parliaments he can say “Aye” with a certain understanding and not because of the pressure of authority. The sphere of hygiene can become a social concern in the true sense if it is made fruitful by a science of medicine enriched by Spiritual Science. In short, hygiene can become in the real sense, and to a high degree, an affair of the people, of the democracy.

• 1. Dr. Steiner is referring to a number of lectures given by various scientists during the Medical Course at the Goetheanum.

We have often spoken of that period of human evolution that has passed since the Atlantean catastrophe. We have dealt with the various epochs of this evolution—the original Indian, original Persian, Egypto-Chaldean and Greco-Latin—and then with our own, the fifth epoch of post-Atlantean civilisation. We have also shown that two further epochs will pass, before the coming of another great catastrophe, so that we have to reckon in all seven such epochs of earthly humanity.

It is comprehensible that these epochs should be described differently. For as men of the present day we desire to find how we stand as regards our own mission, we can only gain some idea of what lies before us in the future when we know how far we have participated in these different epochs in the past.

I have often explained how we can distinguish between the separate human being, the little world, or microcosm, and the great world, or macrocosm; I have shown how man, the little cosmos, is a copy of the great world or macrocosm. Though this is a truth, yet it is a very abstract truth, and as generally stated does not mean very much. You will therefore find it helpful if we go into particulars regarding this, and show how certain things met with in mankind have really to be accepted as a little world, and can be compared with another, a greater world.

The man of the present day really belongs to all seven ages of the post-Atlantean epoch. We have passed through all the earlier ages in former incarnations, and will pass through all the later ages in later ones. In each incarnation we receive what the age in question has to give. Because we receive this we bear within us, in a certain sense, the fruits of former evolutions, and the most intimate things within us are really those we have acquired during the ages mentioned. What each of us has acquired in the course of these ages is more or less within human consciousness to-day; while what we acquired generally in our Atlantean incarnations, when the state of consciousness was very different, has sunk more or less into our sub-consciousness, and no longer reverberates within us as that does which we have acquired in post-Atlantean times. In Atlantean times man was more shielded from having his evolution injured in one way or another, because his consciousness was not then so awake as it was in post-Atlantean times. For this reason all we bear within us as the fruits of our Atlantean evolution is more in accordance with the ordering of the world than is that which had its origin in an age when we were already capable of bringing certain things in us into disorder. Ahrimanic and Luciferic Beings certainly influenced man in Atlantean times, but they then worked quite differently, for man was not then capable of shielding himself from them.

That men grew ever more and more conscious is the most important fact of post-Atlantean culture. In this respect human evolution from the Atlantean catastrophe until the next great catastrophe is macrocosmic. Humanity evolves like one great man throughout the seven post-Atlantean periods; and the most important things that were to arise in human consciousness during these seven periods resemble what a single individual experiences in the seven periods of his individual life.

The different ages in the life of a man have been described as follows:—The first seven years, from birth to the change of teeth, is described as the first age. In it man's physical body receives its form, is endowed with it as a gift. With the coming of the second teeth this form, in all its essentials, is fixed. The man then continues to grow within this form, which has received its essential direction. What is accomplished during the first seven years is the construction of the form. This period has to be understood from all sides. We must, for instance, distinguish the first teeth which the child develops early and which fall out, from the second teeth which replace them. These two kinds of teeth, with respect to the laws of the body, are quite different—the first are inherited, they appear as the fruits of the organisms of the man's ancestors, but the second teeth appear as the outcome of the laws of the man's own physical Being! This has to be realised. It is only when we go into such particulars that we observe this difference. We receive our first teeth, because our ancestors pass them on to us with our organism, we acquire our second teeth because our own physical organism is so constituted that we acquire them through it. In the first period the teeth are directly bequeathed, in the second the physical organism is bequeathed, and it produces the second teeth.

After this we distinguish a second period of life, that from the change of teeth until puberty, to about the 14th or 15th year. What is significant in it is the development of the etheric body. The third period, to about the 21st year, represents the development of the astral body. Then follows the development of the ego, and this progresses from the development of the sentient soul to that of the rational soul and on to the consciousness soul. It is thus we distinguish the different ages in the life of a man. In this life, as you know well, only that period is really ordered and regulated, which falls within the first seven years. This is, and must be so, as regards the man of the present day. Such regular differentiations as we find in the first three periods of a man's life do not occur later; neither is the time they last so clearly defined. If we enquire into the causes of this we have to understand that in the evolution of the world a middle period always comes after the first three of any seven periods.

We are living at present in the post-Atlantean age, we have already within us the fruits of the first three periods, and of the fourth, for we are now in the fifth post-Atlantean age, and are living on towards the sixth.

We are entirely justified in finding a resemblance between the evolution of the various post-Atlantean periods and that of the ages in the life of separate individuals, so that here also it is possible to distinguish between what is macrocosmic and what is microcosmic.

Let us take that which is most characteristic of the first post-Atlantean period, the one we call the Old-Indian; for in this the character of the post-Atlantean evolution was most strongly expressed. In this first period an exalted and most clearly differentiated wisdom existed, a primeval wisdom. What was taught in India by the Seven Holy Rischis was in principle the same as was actually beheld in the spiritual world by natural seers, and also by a large part of the people at that time. This ancient wisdom was present in the first Indian period as an inheritance. It was experienced clairvoyantly in Atlantean times, but now it had become more of an inherited primeval wisdom, preserved and given out again by those who, like the Rischis, had risen to spiritual worlds by initiation. What had entered thus into human consciousness was essentially and absolutely an inheritance. It was therefore entirely different in character from present day wisdom. People make a great mistake when they try to express the important matters given out by the Holy Rischis in the first post-Atlantean period in forms similar to those employed by the science of to-day. This is hardly possible. The scientific forms in use to-day appeared first in the course of post-Atlantean culture. The knowledge of the Ancient Rischis was of a very different kind. Those who communicated it, felt how it worked in them, how it rose within them on the instant. If we are to understand what knowledge was at that time, we must realise that its most marked characteristic was that it did not spring in any way from memory. Memory played no part as yet in knowledge. I pray you to keep this in mind. To-day memory plays a main part in the passing on of knowledge. When a university professor mounts the platform, or a public speaker addresses an audience, he must be careful to consider beforehand what he is to speak about, and retain it in his memory. Certainly, there are people who say they do not require to do this, they follow their genius; but this does not take them very far. At the present day the passing on of knowledge depends really very largely on memory.

We gain a correct perception of how knowledge was communicated in the ancient Indian epoch if we grant that knowledge first rose in the head of him who communicated it at the moment he passed it on to others. In former times knowledge was not prepared before-hand as it is to-day. The Rischis did not prepare what they had to say, so that their memory might retain it. They prepared themselves by attuning themselves to what they were about to communicate. They said:—“This knowledge (Wissen) is not built on memory in any way. Memory has no part in it, my soul must first enter into a holy atmosphere, it must be attuned to piety!” They prepared this atmosphere, this feeling, but not what they were to say. At the moment of communication it resembled rather a reading aloud from an invisible script. Listeners who took down in writing what was said would have been unthinkable at that time. This would have been an impossibility, anything preserved by such means would have been regarded at that time as worthless. Only those things were considered of value which a man preserved within his soul, and which his soul then moved him to reproduce and impart to others in the same way as he had received them. It would have been regarded as desecration to write down these communications. Why? Because in the opinion of that day it was thought that what was written on paper could not be the same as what was communicated by word of mouth.

This tradition endured for a long time, for such things are retained far longer in the feelings than in the understanding of men, and when in the middle ages the art of printing was added to that of writing many people regarded it for long as a black art. The old feeling survived, that what passed in a living way from one soul to another should not be preserved in such a grotesquely profane way as was the case when black printer's ink traced spoken words on a white page, thus changing them into something lifeless, in order that later they might be revived in a way perhaps that was far from edifying. We must therefore regard the direct outpouring (Strömung) from soul to soul as a characteristic feature of the time we are considering. This was an outstanding tendency of the first post-Atlantean epoch, and must be realised if we are to understand, for instance, the old Grecian and Germanic rhapsodists, who moved from place to place reciting their very long poems. If they had employed memory they could never have recited these poems again and again in the same way. It was a soul-force, a soul-attribute far more living than memory, that lay behind these long recitations. To-day if anyone recites a poem he must have learnt it beforehand, but these people experienced what they recited, it was as if newly created at the moment. This was strengthened by the fact that in quite other ways than is the case to-day, the soul-element was then more in evidence. In our day, with some justification, everything of a soul nature is more suppressed. When recitations or lectures are given to-day what matters is the meaning; care is taken as to the meaning of the words. This was not the case when in the middle ages a minstrel recited the Nibelungenlied for example. He had still a certain feeling for the inner rhythm, he even stamped with his foot as he marked its rise and fall. These things were but the echoes of what existed in more ancient times. But you would form no true picture of the Rischis of India and their pupils if you thought they did not communicate the ancient knowledge of Atlantis faithfully. The high school pupil of to-day, even if he wrote out the whole lecture, would not have reproduced what had been said as faithfully as the Indian Rischis reproduced the ancient knowledge in their day.

The characteristic feature of the ages that followed is that Atlantean knowledge had ceased to affect them. Up to the decline of the first period, that of ancient Indian culture, the legacy of knowledge man had received continued. Knowledge continued to increase. This came to an end, however, with the first post-Atlantean period, and afterwards hardly anything new came forth from human nature. Increase in knowledge was therefore only possible in the first period, the early Indian, after that it ceased. In the Persian period among those who were influenced by the teaching of Zarathustra, what we can compare with the second age of development in the life of a man began, and it is best understood when so compared. The first period of Indian culture can well he likened to the first part of the life of a man—that from birth to the seventh year—when everything of the nature of form receives its shape, later there is only growth within the established form. Thus it was with the spirit in the first post-Atlantean epoch. What follows later, how man develops the teaching that comes to him in the second part of his life, can be likened to the first period of ancient Persian development and with the instruction then received, only we must be clear as to who the scholars were and who the teachers. I would like to point out something here. Does it not strike you as strange how very differently Zarathustra, the leader of the second post-Atlantean epoch, comes before us to the way, for instance, the Indian Rischis do? While the Rischis appear like holy initiated persons of a far distant age, into whom all the knowledge of ancient Atlantis had poured, Zarathustra comes before us as the first initiate of post-Atlantean times. Something new enters with him. Zarathustra is actually the first historical personality of post-Atlantean times to be initiated into that form of Mystery-knowledge (truly post-Atlantean) in which knowledge was presented in such a way that it was actually comprehensible to the rational understanding of man. What pupils received in those early days in the schools of Zarathustra was pre-eminently a super-sensible knowledge, but it dawned in them so that for the first time it took the form of human conceptions. While it is not possible to reproduce the knowledge of the ancient Rischis in the forms of modern science, this is possible with the knowledge of Zarathustra. Certainly this is a purely super-sensible knowledge, dealing as it does with the super-sensible worlds, but it is clothed in conceptions similar to the conceptions and ideas of post-Atlantean times. Among the followers of Zarathustra a teaching arose of which we can say:—“It was constructed systematically in accordance with the rational conceptions of man.” This means it sprang from the ancient holy treasures of wisdom which evolved up to the end of the Indian period, and continued from generation to generation; no new thing was later added to this, but the old was elaborated further. The mission of the mysteries of the second post-Atlantean period can be realised through a comparison; we can compare it with the publishing of some occult hook. Any book that is the result of investigations into higher world can be clothed in a logical arrangement, thus bringing it down to the physical plane. It is possible to do this. But if my “Outline of Occult Science” had been treated in this way a hook of fifty volumes would have resulted, each as large as the hook itself. If this had been done, each section would have been presented in strictly logical form, this is in the book, and it might have been treated in this way. But it is also possible to proceed otherwise. One can, for instance, leave something to the reader; leave him to think matters out for himself. People must try to do this to-day otherwise the work of occultism could not progress.

Now, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, with his acquired powers of forming conceptions, it is possible for man to approach occult knowledge and to increase it, but at the time of Zarathustra, thoughts had first to be discovered capable of dealing with these facts. At that time knowledge such as we have to-day did not exist. Something there was that had remained over like an echo from the time of the Rischis, and to this was added what was capable of being clothed in human thoughts. But human conceptions had first to be found, and into them super-sensible facts had to be poured. Different degrees in power to grasp what was super-sensible then first made its appearance. We may say:—The Rischis still spoke absolutely in the way men had always spoken, in a pictorial language, an imaginative language. They passed on the knowledge they possessed from soul to soul when speaking in this vital picture-language which came whenever they had any kind of super-sensible knowledge to transmit. With “cause and effect” and the other ideas we have to-day with logic in any form—men did not concern themselves in the least. All that arose later. Then in the second post-Atlantean period they began to be interested in super-sensible knowledge. They then felt for the first time the opposition, as it were, of the physical plane; they felt the necessity of giving expression to what was super-sensible so that it might assume forms that thought could grasp on the physical plane. This was the essential mission of the first period of Persian civilisation.

Then followed the third period, the period of Egyptian culture. People now had super-sensible ideas. This is difficult for the men of to-day. Try and picture conditions as they were at that time; there was as yet no physical science, but people had ideas that had been gained concerning super-sensible worlds, and they could speak of them in the thought-forms of the physical plane.

In the third epoch people began to direct what they had learnt from super-sensible worlds to the physical world. This can again be compared with the third life-period of a man. While in the second life-period he learns; he then goes on to employ what he has learnt. In the third period of their lives most people feel constrained to direct their learning to the physical plane.

The pupils of the heavenly knowledge were those who, in the second epoch, had been pupils of Zarathustra, but they now began to direct what they had learnt to the physical plane. Put into modern language we can say—men now learnt that all they beheld through super-sensible vision could only be understood if expressed by a triangle; if they used the triangle as an image to express the super-sensible, they learnt that the super-sensible part of human nature which permeates the physical part can be grasped as a triad. Other conceptions had come to man so that he now applied physical things to what was non-physical. Geometry, for example, was first learnt so that it was accepted as symbolic of ideas. Men had this and made use of it—the Egyptians in the art of surveying and agriculture, the Chaldeans in the study of the stars and the founding of astrology and astronomy. What formerly was held to be only super-sensible was now applied to things seen physically. People began to use what had been born in them as super-sensible wisdom on the physical plane. This was first done in the third cultural period.

In the fourth period, the Greco-Latin, this became a fact of outstanding importance. Up to that time men possessed super-sensible knowledge, but did not use it as described. It was not necessary for the Holy Rischis to use it in this way, for knowledge flowed into them directly from the spiritual world. In the time of Zarathustra people had only to ponder over spiritual knowledge, and they knew exactly the form this knowledge would take.

In the Egypto-Chaldean age they clothed conceptions from spiritual worlds in what they had gained in physical existence, and in the fourth period they said:—Is it right that what is acquired from the spiritual world should be applied to physical things? Are the things gained in this way really suited to physical conditions?

These questions were only put by man to himself in the fourth period after he had used this knowledge innocently, and applied it to his physical requirements for a long time. He then became more self-conscious and asked:—“What right have I to apply spiritual knowledge to physical uses?”

Now it always happens that, in an age when any important task has to be carried out, some person appears who can fulfil this task. It was such a person to whom it first occurred to ask the question:—“Have I the right to apply my super-sensible ideas to physical facts?” You can see how what I am trying to indicate developed. You can see, for example, how vital Plato's link still was with the ancient world, how he still used ideas in the ancient form, applying them to physical conditions. It was his pupil, Aristotle, who asked the question—“Ought one to do this?” For this reason he is regarded as the founder of logic.

Those who do not concern themselves in any way with spiritual science might ask:—Why did logic arise first in the fourth epoch? Was there not some reason, seeing that evolution had gone on indefinitely, for man to ask himself this question at a specified time?

When conditions are really studied, important turning points in evolution are seen to occur at certain times. One such important turning point in evolution occurred between the time of Plato and Aristotle. In this age there was still, in a certain sense, something of the old connection with the spiritual world, as this existed in Atlantean times. Living knowledge certainly died in the Indian epoch; but it was replaced by something new that came from above. Man now became critical and asked:—How can I apply what is super-sensible to physical things? This means: he was then first aware that he could himself accomplish something; observing the world around him he realised that he could bring something down into this world. This was a most important age.

We divine (spüren) that conceptions and ideas are super-sensible things when from their nature we begin to perceive in them a guarantee for the super-sensible world. But very few people do perceive this. For most people the fabric of conceptions and ideas is worn very thin and threadbare. Although they may divine that something lives in these which can give them proof of human immortality, conviction is not reached, because the conceptions and ideas concerning the solid reality for which man craves are of such a thin-spun consistency. For most people the fabric they have spun from conceptions and ideas is very thin and worn; though something lives in it which can give them consciousness of immortality, they are incapable of full conviction. But at a time when humanity had sunk to the final—hardly any longer believed in—shreds of that fabric of ideas which it had spun from higher worlds, a mighty new impulse came from the spiritual world and entered into it—this was the Christ-Impulse. The greatest spiritual Reality entered humanity in our post-Atlantean age at a time when man was least spiritually gifted, when all that remained to him was the spiritual gift of ideas.

For anyone who studies human development in a wide sense, it is a most interesting consideration, apart from the fact that it affects the soul so overwhelmingly, it is most interesting (even scientifically), to compare the infinite spirituality of that essence which entered human evolution with the Christ Principle, with that which, like a last thin-spun thread from spiritual realms, caused man to ask shortly before: in what way this thread connected him with spirituality. In other words: when we place Aristotelean logic, this weaving of abstract conceptions to which mankind had at last attained, along-side that great Spiritual Outpouring. We can think of no greater disparity than between the spirituality that came down to the physical plane in the Being of Christ, and that which man had preserved for himself. You can therefore understand that in the early Christian centuries it was quite impossible for men to grasp the spiritual nature of Christ with the thin thread of ideas spun from Aristotelean philosophy. Gradually the endeavour arose to grasp the facts of human and world-events in a way conformable to Aristotelean logic. This was the task that faced the philosophy of the middle ages.

It is important for us now to compare the fourth post-Atlantean epoch with the fourth period in the life of a man—that period in which the ego develops—to see how the “I am” of all humanity entered human evolution at a time when humanity as a whole was really furthest withdrawn from the spiritual world. This is why man was at first quite incapable of comprehending Christ except through faith; why Christianity had at first to be a matter of faith; only later, and by degrees, was it to become a matter of knowledge. It will become a matter of knowledge; but we have only now begun to enter with understanding into the study of the Gospels. For hundreds and hundreds of years Christianity was only a matter of faith, and had to be so, because than had descended furthest from the spiritual world.

As this was man's position in the fourth post-Atlantean period, it was necessary after so deep a descent that he should begin to rise once more. The fourth period brought him furthest on the downward path, but also gave him the first great impulse upwards. Naturally this spiritual impulse could not be understood at first, only in the periods that follow will it be possible for him to understand it. But now we can at least recognise the task before us:—We have to refill our ideas with spirit from within.

The evolution of the world is not simple. When, for instance, a ball starts rolling in one direction its momentum tends to make it continue rolling in the same direction. If this is to be changed another impulse must come to give the thrust necessary to a change of direction.

Pre-Christian culture had the tendency to continue the downward plunge into the physical world, and has continued to do so to our day. The upward tendency is only beginning, hence the need of a constant incentive to this upward direction. We can see this downward tendency more especially in men's thoughts. The greater part of what is called philosophy to-day is nothing more than the continued downward roll of the ball. Aristotle divined something of this; he grasped the fact that there was a spiritual reality in the fabric of human thoughts. But a couple of centuries after his day, men were no longer capable of realising that the content of the human head was connected with reality. The driest, most desiccated ideas of the old philosophy are those of Kant and everything associated with Kantism. Kant's philosophy puts the main question in such a way that he cuts every link between what man evolves as ideas, between perceptions as an inner life, and that which ideas really are. All this is old and dead, and is therefore not fitted to give any vital uplift for the future. You will now no longer wonder that the conclusion of my lectures on psychology had a theosophical background. I explained that in all we strive for, more especially as regards knowledge of the soul, our task must be to allow ourselves to be so stimulated by this knowledge, given to us formerly by the Gods and brought down by us to earth, that we can offer it up again on the altars of the Gods.: We have only to make the ideas that come to us froth the spiritual world, once more our own.

It is not from any want of modesty that I say:—Teaching regarding the soul must of necessity be a scientific teaching, that it must rise again from the frozen state into which it has fallen. There have been many psychologists in the past and there are many still to-day, but the ideas they use are void of spiritual life. It is a significant sign that a man like Franz Brentano be allowed the first volume of his book on Psychology to appear in 1874. Though much it contains is distorted, it is on the whole correct. The second volume was ready, and was to have been published that year, but he was unable to complete it, he stuck in it. He still could give an outline of his teaching, but the spiritual impulse necessary if the work was to be brought to a conclusion was wanting.

Such psychologists as we have to-day, Von Wundt and Lipps for example, are not really psychologists for they work only with preconceived ideas; from the first they were incapable of producing anything. Brentano's psychology was fitted to do this, but it remained incomplete. This is the fate of all knowledge that is dying. Death does not enter the domain of natural science so quickly. Here people can work with ideas, for the facts they have accumulated speak for themselves. In the Science of Spirit this does not happen so easily. The whole substratum is immediately lost if people employ ordinary ideas. The muscles of the heart do not immediately cease to beat even if analysed like a mineral product without any recognition of their true nature; but the soul cannot be analysed in this way.

Thus science dies from above downwards, and men will gradually reach a point where they will certainly be able to appreciate natural laws, but in a way entirely independent of science. The construction of machines, instruments, telephones and the like, is something very different from understanding science in the right way or carrying it a step further. Anyone can make use of an electric apparatus without necessarily understanding it. True science is gradually dying. We have now reached a point where external science must receive new life from spiritual science. Our fifth period of culture is that in which the ball of science rolls slowly downhill.

When it can roll no further its activity will cease, as in the case of Brentano. At the same time the upward progress of humanity must receive ever more life. And it will receive it. This can only happen when efforts are made by which knowledge, even if this has been gained outwardly, becomes fruitful through what occult investigation has to give. Our age, the fifth period, will increasingly assume a character which will show that the ancient Egypto-Chaldean epoch is repeated in it; as yet we have not gone very far with this repetition, it is only beginning. That this is the case can be gathered from what occurred at our annual general meeting. On that occasion Herr Seiler spoke about “Astrology” showing, that as spiritual scientists you were in a position to connect certain conceptions with astrological ideas, whereas this was not possible with the ideas of modern astronomy. Modern astronomy would consider these ideas to be nonsense. This is not because of what astronomical science is in itself, for this science has a better opportunity than any other of being led back to what is spiritual; but because men's thoughts are far removed from any return to spirituality. There is a means, through what astronomy has to offer, by which such a return might easily be made to the fundamental truths of Astrology so undervalued to-day. But some time must elapse before a bridge can he formed between these two. During this time all kinds of theories will be devised, theories by which the movements of the planets, for instance, will be explained in a purely materialistic way. Things will be still more difficult in the domain of chemistry, and in everything connected with life. Here it will he still more difficult to build the bridge. It will he done most easily in the domain of soul-knowledge. To do so it is necessary that people should understand what was stated at the conclusion of my lecture on “Psychology.” There I showed that the stream of soul-life does not only flow from the past towards the future, but also from the future into the past; that we have two time-streams—the etheric part of the life of the soul goes towards the future, the astral part of us on the other hand flows back towards the past. (There is probably no one on the earth to-day who is conscious of this unless he has an impulse towards what is spiritual.) We are first able to form a conception of the life of the soul, when we realise that something comes continually to meet us out of the future. Otherwise this is quite impossible. We must be able to form such a conception, and for this, when speaking of cause and effect, we must break with those ordinary methods of thought which deal mainly with the past. We must not only reckon with the past in such connections, but must speak of the future as something real; something that comes towards us in just as real a way as the past slips from us. But it will be a long time yet before such ideas become prevalent, and till they do there will be no psychology.

The nineteenth century produced a smart idea—“Psychology without souls.” People were very proud of this idea, and with it they declared:—“We simply study the revelations of the human soul, but do not concern ourselves with the soul that is the cause of these!”

A Soul-teaching without Souls! This can be carried further; but what results (to use a common comparison), is nothing else than a meal time without food. Such is psychology! Now people are of course not satisfied when dinner time comes and the plates are empty; but the science of the nineteenth century was strangely satisfied with the psychology put before it, which was in no way concerned with the soul. This began comparatively early, but into every part of it spiritual life must flow.

Therefore we have to record the beginning among us of an entirely new life. The old in a certain sense is finished and a new life must begin. We must feel this. We must feel that a primeval wisdom came to us from ancient Atlantean times, that this gradually declined, and we are now faced with the task of beginning in our present incarnation to gather more and more new wisdom which will be the wisdom of the men of a later day. The coming of the Christ-Impulse made this possible. It will continually develop a living activity, and from it men will perhaps be able best to evolve towards the real, historic Christ, when all tradition concerning Him and all that is outwardly connected with these traditions has died away.

From what has been said you can see how the post-Atlantean evolution can actually be compared with the life of a single man; how it is indeed a kind of macrocosm facing man—the microcosm. But the individual man is in a very strange position. What is left to him for the second half of his life of all he acquired in the first half, which when used up is followed by death?

The spirit alone can conquer death and carry on to a new incarnation that which gradually begins to decay when we have passed the first half of our life. Our evolution advances until our thirty-fifth year, then it begins to decline. But the spirit then first begins truly to rise! What it is unable to develop further in the second half of life within the body, it brings to completion in a succeeding incarnation. Thus we see the body gradually decline, but the spirit blossom more and more.

The macrocosm reveals a picture similar to that of man:—Up to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch we have a youthful upward striving cultural development; from then onwards a real decline; death everywhere as regards the development of human consciousness; but at the same time the dawn of a new spiritual life. The spiritual life of man will be born again in the age following our present one. But he will have to work with full consciousness on what is to be reincarnated. When this happens the other must die, truly die. We gaze prophetically into the future; many sciences have arisen and will arise for the benefit of post-Atlantean civilisation, they, however, belong to what is dying. The life that streamed directly into human life along with the Impulse of Christ will in future rise (ausleben) in man in the same way as Atlantean knowledge rose within the holy Rischis.

What ordinary science knows of Copernicus to-day is but the external part of his knowledge, the part belonging to decline. That which will live on, that will be fruitful, not only the part through which he has already worked for four centuries, this part man must win for himself. The teaching of Copernicus as given to-day is not so very true, its truth will first be revealed by spiritual science.

So it is as regards much that is held to be most true in astronomy, and so it will be with everything else which men value as knowledge to-day. Certainly, what science discovers to-day is profitable. Therein lies its usefulness. In so far as the science of to-day is technical it is justified; but in so far as it has something to con-tribute to human knowledge, it is a dead product. It is useful for trade, but for that no spiritual content is required. In so far as it seeks to discover anything concerning the mysteries of the universe, it belongs to declining civilisation. In order to enrich our knowledge of the secrets of the universe, external science must super-impose on all it has to offer, the wisdom derived from spiritual science.

What I have said to-day can form an introduction to our studies on the Gospel of Mark, which are about to begin. But first I had to speak of the necessity for the entrance into humanity of the greatest Spiritual Impulse of all time at a moment when only the last faint shreds of spirituality remained to it.

Our talk today must bring to a temporary conclusion the studies which, during the last few weeks we have connected in a somewhat loose and irregular way with the Gospel according to Mark.

In the lectures you have heard during this winter we have tried to make you realise that we stand to-day at a period of transition. Even by those who consider spiritual life in a somewhat external way, it can be noticed that a new order of ideas and thoughts is gradually emerging, though the people living within the new order may themselves be unaware of it. It will therefore be well if such a stimulus can be given to your thoughts this evening as will enable you to carry somewhat further the spiritual scientific matter already imparted to you.

In speaking of periods of transition, it is helpful to recall the great “period of transition” through which human evolution passed, often mentioned by me as the great incisive moment of the Event of Palestine. What this moment meant we know from many things that have been spoken of here.

When we try to form a conception of how this most important “idea”—for so we may call it—the Christ-idea, developed out of the thoughts and feelings of the age immediately preceding it, it is well to remember that the Jahve or Jehova-idea meant as much to the ancient Hebrews as the Christ-idea does to the believers in Christ. From other lectures you know that for those who enter deeply into the essence of Christianity Jahve did not really differ very greatly from the Christ Himself. We must realise far more clearly the inward connection between the Christ-idea and the Jahve-idea. It is very difficult to give, in a few words, the whole connection between these two ideas which has been developed by me in many lectures and cycles in recent years, but it is possible to show in a parable how this connection has to be thought of. We have but to recall the symbol of the sunlight to which your attention has often been directed; how this comes to us either directly from the sun or reflected back from the moon at night, especially when the moon is at the full. Sunlight comes to us from the full moon, but reflected sunlight, which is somewhat different from direct sunlight. Were we to compare the Christ with direct sunlight, then Jahve might be likened to sun-light reflected from the moon; this represents exactly what is met with here in the evolution of mankind. Those who understand such things can feel the passing over of the reflection of Christ into Jehova, or of Jehova into Christ, as men feel the difference between moonlight and sunlight—Jahve being an indirect and Christ a direct revelation of the same Being. But in thinking of “evolution,” we must think of things side by side in space, and following each other in time. Those who have to speak of such things from the occult point of view say:—If we call the religion of Christ a “sun-religion” (and we can use this expression when we remember what has been said concerning Zarathustra) then the religion of Jahve can be called a moon-religion.

So in the period preceding Christianity, we have a sun-religion prepared for by a moon-religion. What has just been said will only be rightly appreciated by those who know that symbols are not chosen arbitrarily, but are deeply rooted in the things they represent. When any religion or world-faith is represented by a symbol, this represents, for those who know how to interpret it, the essential thing in that religion. Perhaps men have lost understanding to-day to a certain extent of a symbolism which sees the moon as representing the religion of Jahve, and also of the connection between the Christian religion and the symbol of the sun; but where thoughts are completely filled with the meaning of such symbols they have to be considered.

Call to mind how I have described the whole course of human evolution. First we have a descending evolution which began when man was first driven out of the spiritual world and entered ever more deeply into matter. This is a descending path. When we picture the general course of human evolution we think of the deepest point as having been reached at the time the Impulse of Christ entered, and that through this Impulse the descending direction was gradually changed to an ascending one.

In human evolution we have at first a descending path, then after the deepest point is reached the Christ-Impulse begins to affect it and will continue to do so till earth reaches the end of its mission.

Now evolution occurs in a very complicated way; certain conditions of its progress are the result of Impulses which had been given at an earlier time. It was an evolutionary event such as this that took place through the Christ-Impulse. The Christ-Impulse was poured forth at the beginning of our era and advanced in a direct line, and growing ever more and more powerful it will permeate all human life until earthly evolution has reached its goal. This is an impulse that was imparted once, and we have to picture it as advancing in a straight line; any evolution that arose later, is seen through it to be at a higher and more perfect stage. There are many such impulses, and also others, affecting the evolution of the world which work differently, and cannot he said to advance on straight lines. We distinguished in post-Atlantean evolution the ancient Indian civilisation, following it the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, then the Greco-Latin; and in the middle of this period the Christ-Event took place. In the fifth post-Atlantean age, in which we are now living, certain things are repeated which occurred in the third age—the Egypto-Chaldean—but a somewhat different way, and so that between them and maintaining a certain relationship between the third and the fifth ages we have the Christ-Impulse. This relation-ship is maintained in the same way between the sixth age and the second, and between the seventh and the first. We are here concerned with powerful factors of evolution which are revealed in such a way that in referring to them we can make use of the Biblical expression:—“The first shall be last.” The primeval Indian age will reappear in the seventh age in another form—yet so that it will be recognisable.

There is another way in which an earlier is seen to affect a later, and this is shown through the fact that we can distinguish smaller epochs. Thus, what took place in pre-Christian times during the ancient Hebrew civilisation appears again in a certain way in post-Christian times—overpassing the Christ-Impulse as it were-ideas which had been prepared within the religion of Jehova appeared again, and, in spite of other factors being present, had an effect on these later times.

Were I to explain symbolically what I cannot deal with adequately to-day owing to the short time at my disposal I might say:—If we feel that the religion of Jehova is represented by the symbol of the moon in contradistinction to the sun, we might expect that a similar belief, overpassing Christianity, would re-emerge at a later day. This did occur, and if such things are not accepted in an external sense or smiled at for they are deeply connected with the symbolism of religions—we may say that the old moon religion of Jehova appeared again in the religion of the half-moon, the Crescent, that its influence, which had preceded the Christ-Event, was carried over into post-Christian times. The repetition of an earlier age in a later is seen with overwhelming results in the last third of the Greco-Latin period, which is reckoned by us in an occult sense as continuing to about the 12th-13th century. This means that after having been separated from it by a period of six hundred years, we have a kind of repetition of the moon religion of Jehova in the religion brought by the Arabs from Africa into Spain. It is not possible to specify here all the characteristics it brought with it. But it is important that we should impress on our souls the fact that in the religion of Mahomet the Christ-Impulse was at first disregarded, that in it we have really a kind of revival of the religion of Moses—the religion of the one indivisible God. Only into the idea of this indivisible God-head something was introduced that had come over from the other side—from the Egypto-Chaldean view-point—which preserved very exact traditions concerning the relationship of the starry heavens to worldly events. Hence many of the thoughts and ideas found among the Chaldeans, Babylonians and Assyrians are found again in the religion of Mahomed, but permeated in an extra-ordinary way with what we might call the teaching concerning the indivisible divinity of Jehova. Speaking scientifically what meets us in Arabism is a synthesis of all that was taught by the priests of Egypt and Chaldea, and in the Jahve religion of the ancient Hebrews.

In a union of this kind there is not only a compression, but there is also always something excluded and left behind. Everything which led to clairvoyant perception was excluded from it. What remained was merely a matter of intellectual research, of a combining of thought, so that all the ideas connected with the Egyptian art of healing and Chaldean astronomy, which both among the Egyptians and the Chaldeans was the outcome of ancient clairvoyance, is found in an intellectual and individualistic form in the Arabism of Mahomet.

Something filtered into Europe along with the Arabs by which all the old ideas that had prevailed among the Egyptians and Chaldeans were stripped of their clairvoyant imaginative content and given abstract forms. From this sprang the marvellous science which the Arabs brought from Africa to Europe by way of Spain. If Christianity brought an impulse mainly for the souls of men, then the great Impulse for the human head, for the intellect, came through the Arabs. Those who are not fully acquainted with the course of human evolution have no idea what the mental outlook, which appeared anew under the symbol of the moon, gave to humanity as a whole. Keppler and Copernicus would not have been possible without this Impulse which the Arabs brought to Europe. The whole method of thought, the manner in which different religious views were connected with the laying aside of the old clairvoyance, is seen again in our modern astronomy and modern science when the third period of culture celebrated its revival in our fifth age. Thus we have to see the evolution of man progressing on the one hand, so that the Impulse of Christ reaches the people of Europe directly by way of Greece and Italy; and, on the other hand, we see it taking a more southernly route which, leaving Greece and Italy on one side, unites with what came to us through the Arabs.

By the union of the religion of Christ with that of Mahomet there arose, during this most important period with which we are dealing, what really forms the content of our culture. From causes which cannot be gone into to-day, we must reckon a period of from six to six-and-ahalf centuries for such an impulse to develop; so that the renewed moon-culture actually arose, spread, and entered Europe six hundred years after the Event of Christ, and until the thirteenth century it enriched that Christian civilisation which had received its direct irnpulses by other paths. Even those who only observe the external course of events know that, however much they are opposed to Arabism, Arabian thought and science entered even into the cloisters of Western Europe, and up to the middle of the thirteenth century (which again indicates something important) we have a blending of these two impulses—the Arabian and the direct Christ-Impulse.

We may say that the sun-symbol and the moon-symbol were merged into one from the fifth and sixth centuries until between the twelfth and thirteenth, this being again a period that lasted for about six hundred years. After this direct union had reached its goal some-thing new arose which had been in gradual preparation since the twelfth and thirteenth century. It is interesting to note that even external sciences recognise that some-thing inexplicable passed through the souls of the people of Europe at that time. External science calls it “inexplicable,” but occultism says that, following the direct Impulse of Christ, there was poured by spiritual means into the souls of men what the fourth period of post-Atlantean culture had to give. The age of Greece threw up a following wave of culture called the culture of the Renaissance, it enriched everything that already existed through the centuries that followed. This was because the age of Greece, which occurred in the middle of the seven periods of post-Atlantean civilisation, underwent a certain renewal in the culture of the Renaissance.

This points again to a period of six hundred years—that is up to our own time—in which this wave of Greek culture has to a certain extent been exhausted. We are living within this period. We are living to-day in an atmosphere (as we are again at the beginning of a sixhundred-year-long wave of culture) into which some-thing new is pressing; an age which must again be enriched with something new from the Christ-Impulse. After the Moon-cult had its revival in the religion of the Crescent during the Renaissance, the time is now come when the Christ-Impulse, which continued as the direct stream, has to receive into it a neighbouring stream. Our age is powerfully attracted towards this neighbouring stream; only we must clearly understand what the addition of it to our civilisation means. All these things are absolutely in accordance with the correct progress of an occult system.

If we think of Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, according to the old-not the new sequence—we may expect, after the renewal of the Moon-wave during the Renaissance, the influx of another stream to which we can quite correctly assign the symbol of Mercury. We might therefore say theoretically when this symfiol appeared that we were confronted with the influx into our culture of a wave of a kind of Mercury-influence, just as the wave of Arabism was called a Moon-influence.

If we understand the evolution of our own time aright we may describe Goethe as the last great mind who united in himself the fullness of science, of Christianity, and of the culture of the Renaissance; and we might expect that his soul would reveal a beautiful union of these—intellectualism enriched as it had been by Arabism and Christianity. If we study Goethe as we have been accustomed to do for some years past, it is easily seen that these elements did indeed meet within his soul. But in accordance with what has just been announced concerning the repeated cycle of six, and again six centuries, we might expect that nothing of the Mercury element could have appeared as yet in Goethe's soul, that could only appear as something new after his time. Now it is interesting to note that Goethe's pupil, Schopenhauer, reveals this Mercury influence. You can learn from some of my publications that Eastern wisdom entered into Schopenhauer's philosophy, especially in the form of Buddhism. Mercury was regarded as the symbol of Buddhism, and following on the age of Goethe we have a revival of the Buddha-Impulse (in which Buddha stands for Mercury and Mercury for Buddha) in the same way as the moon is symbolic of Arabism. We can now give a name to this neighbouring stream that entered the direct Christ-Impulse as a new tributary at the beginning of a new six-hundred-yearly epoch. We have to see in this neighbouring stream a revival of Buddhism only with the restrictions I explained in my public lectures on Buddha.¹

We now ask—which is the direct stream of the culture of the future? The Christ-stream! It advances in a direct line. And what neighbouring streams are there? We have first the Arabian stream, which flowed into the direct stream, paused for a time, and then received purification through the culture of the Renaissance. At present we are experiencing a renewed influx of the Buddha stream. When these facts are seen in their right light, we realise that we have to absorb certain elements out of the Buddha-stream which until now could not be received into our Western civilisation. We have to see how these elements of the Buddha-stream must pass into the spiritual development of the west. Such things, for instance, as the idea of reincarnation and Karma. These must be accepted. But one fact must be firmly impressed on our souls:—All these neighbouring streams will never be able to throw light on the central facts of our spiritual science. To question Buddhism or any other pre-Christian oriental religion that may have appeared as a revival in our time concerning the Christ, would be as sensible as for a European Christian to have questioned the Arabs of Spain concerning the nature of Christ!

The people of Europe were well aware that no conception of the Christ could come from the Arabs. If they had anything to say their ideas would not accord with the real Christ-idea. The various prophets who arose as false Messiahs up to Schabbathoi Zewi were really the outcome of Arabism, and had no knowledge of the Christ-Impulse. We must understand that the neighbouring stream of Arabism had to he made fruitful by quite other elements, not by solving in any way the central mystery of Christ. This must also be our attitude towards the stream which approaches us to-day, as the renewal of an ancient one, bringing us understanding of reincarnation and karma, but being incapable of imparting understanding of the Christ-Impulse. For this would be as absurd as to think the Arabs could impart a right conception of Christ to the people of Europe. They imparted many ideas concerning false Messiahs to Europe up to the time of Schabbathoi Zewi, and such things will occur again, for human evolution only progresses when strengthened by seeing through such deceptions. We must penetrate ever more deeply and consciously into these connections. Facts will show that the spiritual science founded by European Rosicrucians, with Christ as its central idea, will be established in the souls of men against all opposition and all misleadings.

How the central-idea of the Christ must enter men's souls, how the Christ must be interwoven, not only with the general evolution of man, but with the whole world, can he gathered from my book on Outline of Occult Science.

From it you can find which is the direct, the forward path. Everyone has the possibility of hearing of this path who understands the words from the Gospel of Matthew quoted at the end of the last lecture:—“False Christs and false prophets will appear when people will say unto you: Lo, here is the Christ or lo, there! believe it not.”

Alongside the Buddhistic stream of thought is another far removed from it, which thinks it is better in-formed regarding the Christ than the western spiritual science of the Rosicrucians. It brings all kinds of ideas and teachings into the world which have developed quite naturally out of the neighbouring oriental Buddhist stream. It would show the worst kind of weakness in western souls if they were unable to grasp the fact that the Buddha, or Mercury-stream, has as little light to throw on the direct course of the Christ-idea as Arabism has. This is not put forward from any spirit of dogmatism or fantasy, but from knowledge of the objective course of the evolution of the world. It can be proved by figures or by the trend of civilisations if you wish to follow them up, that things must be as is taught by occult science.

Added to this there is also the necessity to distinguish between an ancient orthodox Buddhism which seeks to transplant a non-progressive Buddhism into Europe, and out of it to develop a “Christ-idea;” and a truly progressive Buddhism. This means, there are people who speak of Buddha as follows:—“Look to Buddha, who lived some five to six hundred years before our era! Look to what he taught!” What such people say is comparable with what spiritual science says in a Rosicrucian sense:—“It is your fault, not Buddha's, that you speak as if Buddha had remained at the same stage at which he stood five to six centuries before our era I Can you not think or imagine that Buddha has progressed?” When speaking thus, these people refer to a teaching suited to a time long past; of a teaching given by Buddha five to six centuries before our era. But we look to a Buddha who has advanced, and who from spiritual realms exercises his enduring influence on human culture. We look to the Buddha we presented to you in our studies on the Gospel of Luke, whose influence came from the Jesus of the Nathan line of the house of David; we look to the Buddha as he has evolved further in spiritual realms, and who imparts truths to us to-day concerning the things of which we are speaking.

Something very curious has happened to dogmatic Christianity in the West; through a strange concatenation of circumstances it has come to pass that a Buddha-like form has appeared by chance among Christian Saints.

You will recall how once I spoke of a legend told all over Europe in the Middle Ages, the legend of Balaam and Josaphat. It was somewhat as follows:—There was once an Indian king on earth. He had a son. This son was brought up at first far removed from all human misery; from all external life. He lived in the king's palace, where he saw only what conduced to human happiness. He was called Josaphat; the name has been much changed and has assumed various forms—Josaphat, Judasaph, Budasaph. Josaphat lived up to a certain age in the palace without learning anything of the world. Then one day it happened that he left his father's palace and learnt something of life. He first saw a leper, then a blind man, then an aged man. We are then told that he met a Christian hermit called Balaam. By him he was converted to Christianity.

You will not fail to notice that this legend has a strong resemblance to the legend of Buddha. But you will also notice that something is added to this legend of the Middle Ages with which Buddha cannot be charged; namely, that he allowed himself to be converted to Christianity. This legend gave rise to a certain consciousness among Christians—among some of them at least—who had made calendars of the saints.

People knew that the name Josaphat or Budasaph is connected with the name “Bodhisattva.” Budasaph passes directly over into Bodhisattva. So that there is here an extraordinary and deep connection between a Christian legend and the figure of Buddha. The oriental legend, as we know, represents Buddha as entering Nirvana and passing on the Bodhisattva crown to his successor the Maytreya-Buddha, who is now a Bodhisattva, and will later become the future Buddha of the world. Buddha appears again in the legend as Josaphat. The connection between Buddhism and Christianity is described marvellously by someone who said:—Josaphat is a saint, and Buddha was himself so holy that according to the legend he was converted to Christianity from being the son of an Indian king; so he can be ranked among the saints although from one side he was regarded as a heathen.

You can see from this that it was known where the later form of Buddhism, or rather of Buddha, has to be sought. Buddhism and Christianity have meanwhile flowed one into the other in the hidden worlds. And Salaam is that strange figure who made the Bodhisattva acquainted with Christianity, so that when now we trace the course of Buddhism as an enduring world-movement in the sense of this legend, we can only see it in the changed form in which it exists at the present time. We are obliged to speak of Buddha as he exists for us to-day, when clairvoyantly we understand what he reveals to us.

Just as Arabism was not Judaism, and the Moon of Jehova did not reappear in Arabism in its old form, so neither does Buddhism reappear in its old form when it returns to enrich the culture of the West, but changed. For a later never appears as an exact replica of an earlier.

These short detached remarks are intended to act as a stimulus to thoughts on human evolution, which you can develop further for yourselves. And I assure you if you accept all the historical knowledge that it is possible to discover, and are really able to follow the spiritually scientific development of Europe, you will see that we are standing at present at the point where Christianity and Buddhism flow one into the other.

Just as at the time of which I have been speaking a union of the Jahve-religion with Christianity occurred, so to-day a union of Buddhism with Christianity is taking place. Test this by accepting all that the historians of Europe are able to give you! Test it, but not as they are wont to do, take all the factors into consideration; you will then find confirmation of what I have said. Only we should have to speak for weeks if we were to give out all that reaches us from the direction of European Rosicrucianism.

But it is not only in history that proof can be found, if you go to work in the right way you can find it also in natural science and in allied realms. You have only to look in the right way to find that new ideas appear everywhere sporadically at the present day, and that old ideas become useless and disappear. Our thinkers and investigators seem to work with ideas that have become ineffectual, because in the widest sense they are incapable as yet of accepting and making use of other lines of thought, such as those of reincarnation and karma, and all that theosophy has to give. You can search the modern literature of the various departments of science, there you will find what is so painful for those who know how fact after fact appears in scientific life and nowhere are ideas capable of grasping them. There is one such idea that plays an important part in science to-day—the idea of heredity. (These things can only be hinted at here.) The idea of heredity as it is put forward in various departments of science and even in popular literatures to-day is simply untenable.

People must learn facts, for the understanding of which other kinds of ideas are required -such, for instance, as those entirely useless ideas concerning “heredity” that are common to-day. Certain facts, well known to-day concerning heredity in man and in other creatures, will only be understood when quite different ideas prevail. When heredity is spoken of to-day, people seem to think that any faculties that appear in the human being can be traced to his immediate forefathers. The idea of rein-carnation and karma will first make it possible for clear ideas to emerge instead of the present confusion. It will be realised that a great part of what is found in human nature has nothing to do with what is called the mutual co-operation of the sexes—for a confused science still teaches that all man is to-day comes from the union of the male and female elements at conception. It is not at all true that all the things appearing in a man have to do with physical inheritance. These matters must be gone into more thoroughly. I only put them before you to-day as a stimulus to further thought.

When you consider the physical body of man you know that it has a long history behind it—it has passed through the Saturn epoch, the Sun epoch and the Moon epoch—now it is passing through the Earth epoch. It was only during the Moon epoch that the influence of the astral body appeared. This did not exist previously, and the physical body has naturally been very much changed by it. Hence we do not see the physical body as it was under the forces of the Saturn and Sun epochs, but only as it has become under the influence of these forces added to those of the astral body and the ego.

Only the physical body can be inherited through co-operation of the sexes, for this depends on the influence of the astral on the physical body; everything appertaining to laws going back to the Saturn and Sun epochs has nothing whatever to do with this. One part of human nature is received directly from the cosmos, not from the opposite sex. This means that what we have in us does not spring altogether from the union of the sexes, for this is dependent on what comes from our astral bodies, but a large part of our human nature—that which comes from the mother for example—is received directly from the macrocosm.

We have therefore to distinguish one part of our human nature as being the result of the intercourse of the sexes, and another part as received directly by the mother from the macrocosm. Clarity will only be reached in respect of this when we succeed in distinguishing the separate parts of human nature, concerning which there is the greatest confusion at the present day. The physical body is not something shut off within itself, but is formed from the combined activity of the ether body, astral body and ego; again we distinguish the forces that have to be ascribed to the direct influence of the macrocosm, and others that have to be ascribed to the co-operation of the sexes.

But something is also received from the paternal nature that has nothing to do with physical inheritance. Just as certain organs and laws having nothing to do with physical inheritance are received directly from the macrocosm, and are implanted in the organism by means of the mother; other laws are received from the macrocosm through the instrumentality of the father's organism and follow a spiritual path. It can be said of that which is received by way of the mother—her organism provides the moment of contact (Angriffsmoment). But this that is active in the organism of the mother has not its source in any co-operation of the sexes, but it co-operates with what comes from the father, and this also does not spring from any union of the sexes, but from the paternal element. It is therefore a world event—a macrocosmic event that takes place, and finds expression in a physical way. People are entirely mistaken when they describe the development of the human embryo as being only the outcome of heredity. It is the result of what is received directly from the macrocosm.

I have spoken here of facts that far transcend the ideas of science; they are ideas originating from very ancient epochs. Does anything show us this? Popular literature tells us very little about it, but it is clearly evident on the plane of occult endeavour. I should like here to tell you something. I can indeed only hint at it, but would like to point out what a remarkable difference there is between two natural scientists and thinkers of the present day who had, however, been brought up in different circles and with widely different ideas. The characters of the two men are clearely revealed in what follows.

We have in the first place Haeckel, who because he elaborated his marvellous facts with most primitive ideas, led everything back to heredity and presented the whole embryonic evolution as dependent on heredity; opposed to him is the investigator His, who held more to facts, concerning whom it was objected, with a certain amount of truth, that he thought too little. His was a Zoologist and Naturalist. Because of the special way he traced out facts, he was constrained to oppose the heredity theory of Haeckel, and pointed out that certain organs and organic formations in man can only be explained when we turn away from the idea that we have to thank the co-operation of the sexes for our origin, Haeckel makes fun of this and writes:—“Therefore Herr His ascribes the origin of the human body to a certain ‘virginal’ influence that does not depend on the co-operation of the sexes!”

This is absolutely correct. For scientific facts force us to acknowledge to-day that what is brought about through co-operation of the sexes has to be kept apart from that which comes directly from the macrocosm, which, naturally, for wide circles is an absurd idea.

From this it can be seen that even on scientific grounds we are driven towards new ideas. We are placed in the midst of an evolution that says:—If the facts that have been imparted to you are to be rightly understood you must acquire a whole host of new ideas, for the ideas that have come down from olden times do not reach far enough.

From what I have said you will see that a neighbouring stream must enter our culture—this is the “Mercury stream”; its presence is revealed through the fact that those who go through an occult development, such as has frequently been described by me, evolve towards the spiritual world, and by doing so experience many new facts. These facts stream towards them, they stream into their souls. We might compare the entrance of man into another world with the passing of a fish from the water into the air; the fish has first to be prepared for this by changing its air bladders into lungs. This resembles the transition from sense perception to spiritual perception, whereby a man's soul is made capable of employing certain forces in a different element. Many things are then revealed to him.

The air is full of thoughts to-day which make it necessary for us to grasp the new facts of science now appearing on the physical plane. As investigator of the super-sensible one participates in things pressing in from all sides. This could not have been before the entrance of the new stream of which I have spoken. When these facts are rightly understood, it will be realised we are living in an extraordinarily important age, one in which it is quite impossible for us to continue to live unless some such change takes place in human thought and feeling as I have declared to be necessary.

Man must learn to live in a new element just as the fish that is accustomed to live in water has to learn to live in a new element when compelled to live in air. We must learn to live with our thoughts within those facts which the physical plane produces. Anyone who rejects these thoughts is like a fish taken out of the water. Man must not remain in the water. If he did, his later life would be “airless” as regards spiritual ideas—he would gasp for air. Those people who desire to live within the monism of to-day resemble fish who have exchanged their watery abode for an airy one, but would like to retain their gills. Only human souls who have changed their faculties, whose thoughts have evolved to a new wait of accepting facts, will grasp what the future has to bring.

So with full understanding we feel we are standing at the confluence of two world-wide streams of thought—the one should bring us a deeper comprehension of the Christ-problem and of the Mystery of Golgotha; the other new conceptions and ideas concerning reality. They must of necessity flow one into the other in our day; and not cease to do so even though they encounter the worst of obstacles. For the periods in which such streams of thought meet are fraught with many checks and hindrances. In some respects it is the people who rely on spiritual science who find themselves in a position to understand such things.

Many of our members might perhaps say with reference to the teaching given here:—What you tell us is difficult of comprehension, we have to work at it for a long time. Why can you not give us a more comfort-able diet, that we might absorb more easily what is able to convince us of the spiritual nature of the world? Why do you lay such stress on understanding the world?” Many might say this and add:—“How much more beautiful it would be if we might believe in a Buddhism that has come down to us from the past; if we did not have to think of the Christ-Event as the single point on which the balance rests, that no other is to be compared with it, but might think that a Being like the Christ would incarnate again and again as other men do. Why do you not say—here or there such a one will appear in the flesh! Instead you say men must make themselves capable of experiencing a renewal of the event of Damascus. If only you would say:—‘One will come in the flesh,’ then we could say:—‘Behold, He is here!’ We could then see Him with our physical eyes! This would be much easier to understand!”

That such things have been said is the concern of others. The task of western spiritual science is to make the truth known; to declare the truth with full responsibility and understanding of what lies within the evolution that has brought us thus far.

Those who desire to be comfortable in the spiritual world must seek spirituality along some other path. But -those who desire the truth, such truth as is required in our day—which has need of all the intelligence won in the time of old clairvoyance and preserved until the dawn of the new clairvoyance—will, I am very sure, follow the path indicated in the words spoken to-day and on many other occasions.

What is most important is not that we should say in what form we desire truth, but that we should know from the whole course of human evolution that the truth must necessarily be spoken at a certain point of time. O! there are many other things that must be said! But for these things you shall not go unprepared.

Therefore again and again within our Rosicrucian spiritual movement things will be said which stand at the very summit of the spiritual knowledge of our day. You need never accept what is said here or elsewhere with blind belief, blind belief is never appealed to here. In your intelligence, in the employment of your own understanding you have the means for testing what is said. You may frequently hear it said: Take the whole of life, all science, everything you are able to experience, and test them by what is given out within the stream of Rosicrucian spiritual life. Do not fail to ex-amine everything—you will find it stands the test! You who live within our movement know this, but you must not fail to apply the test. For it is precisely where opposition stirs, when on the ground of true spirituality perhaps, the direct opposite appears, that belief alone does not suffice. Everything that rests on blind belief is sterile and stillborn. It may be easy to build on blind faith, but those who belong to the spiritual life of the West renounce it. They build on that which the human intellect can scrutinize.r Those who are in touch with the sources from which our Rosicrucian spiritual teaching comes say of it:—After scientific examination, this is how things are found to be! The edifice of spiritual science is raised on a foundation of truth I This is a foundation of no easy belief! Our edifice is raised on the foundation of a carefully tested if perhaps difficult truth, and the prophets of a blind and comfortable faith are in no way able to shake the foundations on which the edifice of Spiritual Science is raised!

• 1. "Buddha," is a public lecture given in Berlin on the 7th of may, 1911, see "Paths of Experience"

It may seem strange that an anthroposophist should feel called upon to speak about practical training in thought, for there is a widespread opinion that Anthroposophy is highly impractical and has no connection with life. This view can only arise among those who see things superficially, for in reality what we are concerned with here can guide us in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life. It is something that can be transformed at any moment into sensation and feeling, enabling us to meet life with assurance and to acquire a firm position in it.

Many people who call themselves practical imagine that their actions are guided by the most practical principles. But if we inquire more closely, it is found that their so-called “practical thought” is often not thought at all but only the continuing pursuit of traditional opinions and habits. An entirely objective observation of the “practical” man's thought and an examination of what is usually termed “practical thinking” will reveal the fact that it generally contains little that can be called practical. What to them is known as practical thought or thinking consists in following the example of some authority whose ideas are accepted as a standard in the construction of some object. Anyone who thinks differently is considered impractical because this thought does not coincide with traditional ideas.

Whenever anything really practical has been invented, it has been done by a person without practical knowledge of that particular subject. Take, for instance, the modern postage stamp. It would be most natural to assume that it was invented by some practical post office official. It was not. At the beginning of the last century it was a complicated affair to mail a letter. In order to dispatch a letter one had to go to the nearest receiving office where various books had to be referred to and many other formalities complied with. The uniform rate of postage known today is hardly sixty years old, and our present postage stamp that makes this possible was not invented by a practical postal employee at all but by someone completely outside the post office. This was the Englishman, Rowland Hill.

After the uniform system of postage stamps had been devised, the English minister who then had charge of the mails declared in Parliament that one could not assume any simplification of the system would increase the volume of mail as the impractical Hill anticipated. Even if it did, the London post office would be entirely inadequate to handle the increased volume. It never occurred to this highly “practical” individual that the post office must be fitted to the amount of business, not the business to the size of the post office. Indeed, in the shortest possible time this idea, which an “impractical” man had to defend against a “practical” authority, became a fact. Today, stamps are used everywhere as a matter of course for sending letters.

It was similar with the railroads. When in 1837 the first railroad in Germany was to be built, the members of the Bavarian College of Medicine were consulted on the advisability of the project and they voiced the opinion that it would be unwise to build railroads. They added that if this project were to be carried out, then at least a high board fence would have to be erected on both sides of the line to protect the public from possible brain and nervous shock.

When the railroad from Potsdam to Berlin was planned, Postmaster General Stengler said, “I am now dispatching two stage coaches daily to Potsdam and these are never full. If people are determined to throw their money out the window, they can do it much more simply without building a railroad!”

But the real facts of life often sweep aside the “practical,” that is to say, those who believe in their own ability to be practical. We must clearly distinguish between genuine thinking and so-called “practical thinking” that is merely reasoning in traditional ruts of thought.

As a starting point to our consideration I will tell you of an experience I had during my student days. A young colleague once came to me glowing with the joy of one who has just hit upon a really clever idea, and announced that he must go at once to see Professor X (who at the time taught machine construction at the University) for he had just made a great discovery. “I have discovered,” he said, “how, with a small amount of steam power and by simply rearranging the machinery, an enormous amount of work can be done by one machine.” He was in such a rush to see the Professor that that was all he could tell me. He failed to find him, however, so he returned and explained the whole matter to me. It all smacked of perpetual motion, but after all, why shouldn't even that be possible? After I had listened to his explanation I had to tell him that although his plan undoubtedly appeared to be cleverly thought out, it was a case that might be compared in practice with that of a person who, on boarding a railway car, pushes with all his might and then believes when it moves that he has actually started it. “That,” I said to him, “is the thought principle underlying your discovery.” Finally, he saw it himself and did not return to the Professor.

It is thus quite possible to shut ourselves up within a shell fashioned by our own thoughts. In rare cases this can be observed distinctly, but there are many similar examples in life that do not always reach such a striking extreme as the one just cited. He who is able to study human nature more intimately, however, knows that a large number of thought processes are of this kind. He often sees, we might say, people standing in the car pushing it from within and believing that they are making it move. Many of the events of life would take a different course if people did not so often try to solve their problems by thus deluding themselves.

True practice in thinking presupposes a right attitude and proper feeling for thinking. How can a right attitude toward thinking be attained? Anyone who believes that thought is merely an activity that takes place within his head or in his soul cannot have the right feeling for thought. Whoever harbors this idea will be constantly diverted by a false feeling from seeking right habits of thought and from making the necessary demands on his thinking. He who would acquire the right feeling for thought must say to himself, “If I can formulate thoughts about things, and learn to understand them through thinking, then these things themselves must first have contained these thoughts. The things must have been built up according to these thoughts, and only because this is so can I in turn extract these thoughts from the things.”

It can be imagined that this world outside and around us may be regarded in the same way as a watch. The comparison between the human organism and a watch is often used, but those who make it frequently forget the most important point. They forget the watchmaker. The fact must be kept clearly in mind that the wheels have not united and fitted themselves together of their own accord and thus made the watch “go,” but that first there was the watchmaker who put the different parts of the watch together. The watchmaker must never be forgotten. Through thoughts the watch has come into existence. Th thoughts have flowed, as it were, into the watch, into the thing.

The works and phenomena of nature must be viewed in a similar way. In the works of man it is easy to picture this to ourselves, but with the works of nature it is not so easily done. Yet these, too, are the result of spiritual activities and behind them are spiritual beings. Thus, when a man thinks about things he only re-thinks what is already in them. The belief that the world has been created by thought and is still ceaselessly being created in this manner is the belief that can alone fructify the actual inner practice of thought.

It is always the denial of the spiritual in the world that produces the worst kind of malpractice in thought, even in the field of science. Consider, for example, the theory that our planetary system arose from a primordial nebula that began to rotate and then densified into a central body from which rings and globes detached themselves, thus mechanically bringing into existence the entire solar system. He who propounds this theory is committing a grave error of thought.

A simple experiment used to be made in the schools to demonstrate this theory. A drop of oil was made to float in a glass of water. The drop was then pierced with a pin and made to rotate. As a result, tiny globules of oil were thrown off from the central drop creating a miniature planetary system, thus proving to the pupil—so the teacher thought—that this planetary system could come into existence through a purely mechanical process.

Only impractical thought can draw such conclusions from this little experiment, for he who would apply this theory to the cosmos has forgotten one thing that it ordinarily might be well to forget occasionally, and that is himself. He forgets that it is he who has brought this whole thing into rotation. If he had not been there and conducted the whole experiment, the separation of the little globules from the large drop would never have occurred. Had this fact been observed and applied logically to the cosmic system, he then would have been using complete healthy thinking. Similar errors of thought play a great part especially in science. Such things are far more important than one generally believes.

Considering the real practice of thought, it must be realized that thoughts can only be drawn from a world in which they already exist. Just as water can only be taken from a glass that actually contains water, so thoughts can only be extracted from things within which these thoughts are concealed. The world is built by thought, and only for this reason can thought be extracted from it. Were it otherwise, practical thought could not arise. When a person feels the full truth of these words, it will be easy for him to dispense with abstract thought. If he can confidently believe that thoughts are concealed behind the things around him, and that the actual facts of life take their course in obedience to thought if he feels this, he will easily be converted to a practical habit of thinking based on truth and reality.

Let us now look at that practice of thinking that is of special importance to those who stand upon an anthroposophical foundation. The one who is convinced that the world of facts is born of thought will grasp the importance of the development of right thinking.

Let us suppose that someone resolves to fructify his thinking to such a degree that it will always take the right course in life. If he would do this, he must be guided by the following rules and he must understand that these are actual, practical and fundamental principles. If he will try again and again to shape his thinking according to these rules, certain effects will result. His thinking will become practical even though at first it may not seem so. Other additional mental experiences of quite a different kind also will come to the one who applies these fundamental principles.

Let us suppose that somebody tries the following experiment. He begins today by observing, as accurately as possible, something in the outer world that is accessible to him—for instance, the weather. He watches the configuration of the clouds in the evening, the conditions at sunset, etc., and retains in his mind an exact picture of what he has thus observed. He tries to keep the picture before him in all its details for some time and endeavors to preserve as much of it as possible until the next day. At some time the next day he again makes a study of the weather conditions and again endeavors to gain an exact picture of them.

If in this manner he has pictured to himself exactly the sequential order of the weather conditions, he will become distinctly aware that his thinking gradually becomes richer and more intense. For what makes thought impractical is the tendency to ignore details when observing a sequence of events in the world and to retain but a vague, general impression of them. What is of value, what is essential and fructifies thinking, is just this ability to form exact pictures, especially of successive events, so that one can say, “Yesterday it was like that; today it is like this.” Thus, one calls up as graphically as possible an inner image of the two juxtaposed scenes that lie apart in the outer world.

This is, so to speak, nothing else but a certain expression of confidence in the thoughts that underlie reality. The person experimenting ought not to draw any conclusions immediately or to deduce from today's observation what kind of weather he shall have tomorrow. That would corrupt his thinking. Instead, he must confidently feel that the things of outer reality are definitely related to one another and that tomorrow's events are somehow connected with those of today. But he must not speculate on these things. He must first inwardly re-think the sequence of the outer events as exactly as possible in mental pictures, and then place these images side by side, allowing them to melt into one another. This is a definite rule of thought that must be followed by those who wish to develop factual thinking. It is particularly advisable that this principle be practiced on those very things that are not yet understood and the inner connection of which has not yet been penetrated.

Therefore, the experimenter must have the confidence that such events of which he has as yet no understanding—the weather, for instance—and which in the outer world are connected with one another, will bring about connections within him. This must be done in pictures only while abstaining from thinking. He must say to himself, “I do not yet know what the relation is, but I shall let these things grow within me and if I refrain from speculation they will bring something about in me.” It may be easily believed that if he forms exact inner images of succeeding events and at the same time abstains from all thinking something may take place in the invisible members of his nature.

The vehicle of man's thought life is his astral body.¹ As long as the human being is engaged in speculative thinking, this astral body is the slave of the ego. This conscious activity, however, does not occupy the astral body exclusively because the latter is also related in a certain manner to the whole cosmos.

Now, to the extent we abstain from arbitrary thinking and simply form mental pictures of successive events, to that extent do the inner thoughts of the world act within us and imprint themselves, without our being aware of it, on our astral body. To the extent we insert ourselves into the course of the world through observation of the events in the world and receive these images into our thoughts with the greatest possible clarity, allowing them to work within us, to that extent do those members of our organism that are withdrawn from our consciousness become ever more intelligent. If, in the case of inwardly connected events, we have once acquired the faculty of letting the new picture melt into the preceding one in the same way that the transition occurred in nature, it shall be found after a time that our thinking has gained considerable flexibility.

This is the procedure to be followed in matters not yet understood. Things, however, that are understood—events of everyday life, for example—should be treated in a somewhat different manner.

Let us presume that someone, perhaps our neighbor, had done this or that. We think about it and ask ourselves why he did it. We decide he has perhaps done it in preparation for something he intends to do the next day. We do not go any further but clearly picture his act and try to form an image of what he may do, imagining that the next day he will perform such and such an act. Then we wait to see what he really does since he may or may not do what we expected of him. We take note of what does happen and correct our thoughts accordingly. Thus, events of the present are chosen that are followed in thought into the future. Then we wait to see what actually happens.

This can be done either with actions involving people or something else. Whenever something is understood, we try to form a thought picture of what in our opinion will take place. If our opinion proves correct, our thinking is justified and all is well. If, however, something different from our expectation occurs, we review our thoughts and try to discover our mistake. In this way we try to correct our erroneous thinking by calm observation and examination of our errors. An attempt is made to find the reason for things occurring as they did. If we are right, however, we must be especially careful not to boast of our prediction and say, “Oh well, I knew yesterday that this would happen!”

This is again a rule based upon confidence that there is an inner necessity in things and events, that in the facts themselves there slumbers something that moves things. What is thus working within these things from one day to another are thought forces, and we gradually become conscious of them when meditating on things. By such exercises these thought forces are called up into our consciousness and if what has been thus foreseen is fulfilled, we are in tune with them. We have then established an inner relation with the real thought activity of the matter itself. So we train ourselves to think, not arbitrarily, but according to the inner necessity and the inner nature of the things themselves.

But our thinking can also be trained in other directions. An occurrence of today is also linked to what happened yesterday. We might consider a naughty child, for example, and ask ourselves what may have caused this behavior. The events are traced back to the previous day and the unknown cause hypothesized by saying to ourselves, “Since this occurred today, I must believe that it was prepared by this or that event that occurred yesterday or perhaps the day before.”

We then find out what had actually occurred and so discover whether or not our thought was correct. If the true cause has been found, very well. But if our conclusion was wrong, then we should try to correct the mistake, find out how our thought process developed, and how it ran its course in reality.

To practice these principles is the important point. Time must be taken to observe things as though we were inside the things themselves with our thinking. We should submerge ourselves in the things and enter into their inner thought activity. If this is done, we gradually become aware of the fact that we are growing together with things. We no longer feel that they are outside us and we are here inside our shell thinking about them. Instead we come to feel as if our own thinking occurred within the things themselves. When a man has succeeded to a high degree in doing this, many things will become clear to him.

Goethe was such a man. He was a thinker who always lived with his thought within the things themselves. The psychologist Heinroth's book in 1826, Anthropology, characterized Goethe's thought as “objective.” Goethe himself appreciated this characterization. What was meant is that such thinking does not separate itself from things, but remains within them. It moves within the necessity of things. Goethe's thinking was at the same time perception, and his perception was thinking. He had developed this way of thinking to a remarkable degree. More than once it occurred that, when he had planned to do something, he would go to the window and remark to the person who happened to be with him, “In three hours we shall have rain!” And so it would happen. From the little patch of sky he could see from the window he was able to foretell the weather conditions for the next few hours. His true thinking, remaining within the objects, thus enabled him to sense the coming event preparing itself in the preceding one.

Much more can actually be accomplished through practical thinking than is commonly supposed. When a man has made these principles of thinking his own, he will notice that his thinking really becomes practical, that his horizon widens, and that he can grasp the things of the world in quite a different way. Gradually his attitude towards things and people will change completely. An actual process will take place within him that will alter his whole conduct. It is of immense importance that he tries to grow into the things in this way with his thinking, for it is in the most eminent sense a practical undertaking to train one's thinking by such exercises.

There is another exercise that is to be practiced especially by those to whom the right idea usually does not occur at the right time.

Such people should try above all things to stop their thinking from being forever influenced and controlled by the ordinary course of worldly events and whatever else may come with them. As a rule, when a person lies down for half an hour's rest, his thoughts are allowed to play freely in a thousand different directions, or on the other hand he may become absorbed with some trouble in his life. Before he realizes it such things will have crept into his consciousness and claimed his entire attention. If this habit persists, such a person will never experience the occasion when the right idea occurs to him at the right moment.

If he really wants this to happen, he must say to himself whenever he can spare a half hour for rest, “Whenever I can spare the time, I will think about something I myself have chosen and I will bring it into my consciousness arbitrarily of my own free will. For example, I will think of something that occurred two years ago during a walk. I will deliberately recall what occurred then and I will think about it if only for five minutes. During these five minutes I will banish everything else from my mind and will myself choose the subject about which I wish to think.”

He need not even choose so difficult a subject as this one. The point is not at all to change one's mental process through difficult exercises, but to get away from the ordinary routine of life in one's thinking. He must think of something quite apart from what enmeshes him during the ordinary course of the day. If nothing occurs to him to think about, he might open a book at random and occupy his thoughts with whatever first catches his eye. Or he may choose to think of something he saw at a particular time that morning on his way to work and to which he would otherwise have paid no attention. The main point is that it should be something totally different from the ordinary run of daily events, something that otherwise would not have occupied his thoughts.

If such exercises are practiced systematically again and again, it will soon be noticed that ideas come at the right moments, and the right thoughts occur when needed. Through these exercises thinking will become activated and mobile—something of immense importance in practical life.

Let us consider another exercise that is especially helpful in improving one's memory.

One tries at first in the crude way people usually recall past events to remember something that occurred, let us say, yesterday. Such recollections are, as a rule, indistinct and colorless, and most people are satisfied if they can just remember a person's name. But if it is desired to develop one's memory, one can no longer be content with this. This must be clear. The following exercise must be systematically practiced, saying to oneself, “I shall recall exactly the person I saw yesterday, also the street corner where I met him, and what happened to be in his vicinity. I shall draw the whole picture as exactly as possible and shall even imagine the color and cut of his coat and vest.” Most people will find themselves utterly incapable of doing this and will quickly see how much is lacking in their recollections to produce a really lifelike, graphic picture of what they met and experienced only yesterday.

Since this is true in the majority of cases, we must begin with that condition in which many people are unable to recollect their most recent experiences. It is only too true that most people's observations of things and events are usually inaccurate and vague. The results of a test given by a professor in one of the universities demonstrated that out of thirty students who took the test, only two had observed an occurrence correctly; the remaining twenty-eight reported it inaccurately. But a good memory is the child of accurate observation. A reliable memory is attained, let me repeat, by accurate observation and it can also be said that in a certain roundabout way of the soul it is born as the child of exact observation.

But if somebody cannot at first accurately remember his experiences of yesterday, what should he do? First, he should try to remember as accurately as he can what actually occurred. Where recollections fail he should fill in the picture with something incorrect that was not really present. The essential point here is that the picture be complete. Suppose it was forgotten whether or not someone was wearing a brown or a black coat. Then he might be pictured in a brown coat and brown trousers with such and such buttons on his vest and a yellow necktie. One might further imagine a general situation in which there was a yellow wall, a tall man passing on the left, a short one on the right, etc.

All that can be remembered he puts into this picture, and what cannot be remembered is added imaginatively in order to have a completed mental picture. Of course, it is at first incorrect but through the effort to create a complete picture he is induced to observe more accurately. Such exercises must be continued, and although they might be tried and failed fifty times, perhaps the fifty-first time he shall be able to remember accurately what the person he has met looked like, what he wore, and even little details like the buttons on his vest. Then nothing will be overlooked and every detail will imprint itself on his memory. Thus he will have first sharpened his powers of observation by these exercises and in addition, as the fruit of this accurate observation, he will have improved his memory.

He should take special care to retain not only names and main features of what he wishes to remember, but also to retain vivid images covering all the details. If he cannot remember some detail, he must try for the time being to fill in the picture and thus make it a whole. He will then notice that his memory, as though in a roundabout way, slowly becomes reliable. Thus it can be seen how definite direction can be given for making thinking increasingly more practical.

There is still something else that is of particular importance. In thinking about some matters we feel it necessary to come to a conclusion. We consider how this or that should be done and then make up our minds in a certain way. This inclination, although natural, does not lead to practical thinking. All overly hasty thinking does not advance us but sets us back. Patience in these things is absolutely essential.

Suppose, for instance, we desire to carry out some particular plan. There are usually several ways that this might be done. Now we should have the patience first to imagine how things would work[s] out if we were to execute our plan in one way and then we should consider what the results would be of doing it in another. Surely there will always be reasons for preferring one method over another but we should refrain from forming an immediate decision. Instead, an attempt should be made to imagine the two possibilities and then we must say to ourselves, “That will do for the present; I shall now stop thinking about this matter.” No doubt there are people who will become fidgety at this point, and although it is difficult to overcome such a condition, it is extremely useful to do so. It then becomes possible to imagine how the matter might be handled in two ways, and to decide to stop thinking about it for awhile.

Whenever it is possible, action should be deferred until the next day, and the two possibilities considered again at that time. You will find that in the interim[,] conditions have changed and that the next day you will be able to form a different, or at least a more thorough decision than could have been reached the day before. An inner necessity is hidden in things and if we do not act with arbitrary impatience but allow this inner necessity to work in us—and it will—we shall find the next day that it has enriched our thinking, thus making possible a wiser decision. This is exceedingly valuable.

We might, for example, be asked to give our advice on a problem and to make a decision. But let us not thrust forward our decision immediately. We should have the patience to place the various possibilities before ourselves without forming any definite conclusions, and we then should quietly let these possibilities work themselves out within us. Even the popular proverb says that one should sleep over a matter before making a decision.

To sleep over it is not enough, however. It is necessary to consider two or, better still, several possibilities that will continue to work within us when our ego is not consciously occupied with them. Later on, when we return again to the matter in question, it will be found that certain thought forces have been stirred up within us in this manner, and that as a result our thinking has become more factual and practical.

It is certain that what a man seeks can always be found in the world, whether he stands at the carpenter's bench, or follows the plough, or belongs to one of the professions. If he will practice these exercises, he will become a practical thinker in the most ordinary matters of everyday life. If he thus trains himself, he will approach and look at the things of the world in a quite different manner from previously. Although at first these exercises may seem related only to his own innermost life, they are entirely applicable and of the greatest importance precisely for the outer world. They have powerful consequences.

An example will demonstrate how necessary it is to think about things in a really practical manner. Let us imagine that for some reason or other a man climbs a tree. He falls from the tree, strikes the ground, and is picked up dead. Now, the thought most likely to occur to us is that the fall killed him. We would be inclined to say that the fall was the cause and death the effect. In this instance cause and effect seem logically connected. But this assumption may completely confuse the true sequence of facts, for the man may have fallen as a consequence of heart failure. To the observer the external event is exactly the same in both cases. Only when the true causes are known can a correct judgment be formed. In this case it might have been that the man was already dead before he fell and the fall had nothing to do with his death. It is thus possible to invert completely cause and effect. In this instance the error is evident, but often they are not so easily discernible. The frequency with which such errors in thinking occur is amazing. Indeed, it must be said that in the field of science conclusions in which this confusion of cause and effect is permitted are being drawn every day. Most people do not grasp this fact, however, because they are not acquainted with the possibilities of thinking.

Still another example will show you clearly how such errors in thinking arise and how a person who has been practicing exercises like these can no longer make such mistakes. Suppose someone concludes that man as he is today is a descendent of the ape. This means that what he has come to know in the ape—the forces active in this animal have—attained higher perfection and man is the result. Now, to show the meaning of this theory in terms of thought, let us imagine that this person is the only man on earth, and that besides himself there are only those apes present that, according to his theory, can evolve into human beings. He now studies these apes with the utmost accuracy down to the most minute detail and then forms a concept of what lives in them. Excluding himself and without ever having seen another human being let him now try to develop the concept of a man solely from his concept of the ape. He will find this to be quite impossible. His concept “ape” will never transform itself into the concept “man.”

If he had cultivated correct habits of thinking, this man would have said to himself, “My concept of the ape does not change into the concept of man. What I perceive in the ape, therefore, can never become a human being, otherwise my concept would have to change likewise. There must be something else present that I am unable to perceive.” So he would have to imagine an invisible, super-sensible entity behind the physical ape that he would be unable to perceive but that alone would make the ape's transformation into man a possible conception.

We shall not enter into a discussion of the impossibility of this case, but simply point out the erroneous thinking underlying this theory. If this man had thought correctly he would have seen that he could not possibly conceive of such a theory without assuming the existence of something super-sensible. Upon further investigation you will discover that an overwhelmingly large number of people has committed this error of thinking. Errors like these, however, will no longer occur to the one who has trained his thinking as suggested here.

For anyone capable of thinking correctly a large part of modern literature (especially that of the sciences) becomes a source of unpleasant experience. The distorted and misguided thinking expressed in it can cause even physical pain in a man who has to work his way through it. It should be understood, however, that this is not said with any intent to slight the wealth of observation and discovery that has been accumulated by modern natural science and its objective methods of research.

Now let us consider “short-sighted” thinking. Most people are unconscious of the fact that their thinking is not factual, but that it is for the most part only the result of thought habits. The decisions and conclusions therefore of a man whose thought penetrates the world and life will differ greatly from those of one whose ability to think is limited or nil. Consider the case of a materialistic thinker. To convince such a man through reasoning, however logical, sound and good, is not an easy task. It is usually a useless effort to try to convince a person with little knowledge of life through reason. Such a person does not see the reasons that make this or that statement valid and possible if he has formed the habit of seeing nothing but matter in everything and simply adheres to this habit of thinking.

Today it can generally be said that people are not prompted by reasons when making statements but rather by the thinking habits behind these reasons. They have acquired habits of thought that influence all their feelings and sensations, and when reasons are put forth, they are simply the mask of the habitual thinking that screens these feelings and sensations. Not only is the wish often the father of the thought, but it can also be said that all our feelings and mental habits are the parents of our thoughts. He who knows life knows how difficult it is to convince another person by means of logical reasoning. What really decides and convinces lies much deeper in the human soul.

There are good reasons for the existence of the Anthroposophical Movement and for the activities in its various branches. Everyone who has participated in the work of the Movement for any length of time comes to notice that he has acquired a new way of thinking and feeling. For the work in the various branches is not merely confined to finding logical reasons for things. A new and more comprehensive quality of feeling and sensation is also developed.

How some people scoffed a few years ago when they heard their first lectures in spiritual science. Yet today how many things have become self-evident to these same people who previously looked upon these things as impossible absurdities. In working in the Anthroposophical Movement one not only learns to modify one's thinking, one also learns to unfold a wider perspective of soul life.

We must understand that our thoughts derive their coloring from far greater depths than are generally imagined. It is our feelings that frequently impel us to hold certain opinions. The logical reasons that are put forward are often a mere screen or mask for our deeper feelings and habits of thinking.

To bring ourselves to a point at which logical reasons themselves possess a real significance for us, we must have learned to love logic itself. Only when we have learned to love factuality and objectivity will logical reason be decisive for us. We should gradually learn to think objectively, not allowing ourselves to be swayed by our preference for this or that thought. Only then will our vision broaden in the sense that we do not merely follow the mental ruts of others but in such a way that the reality of the things themselves will teach us to think correctly.

True practicality is born of objective thinking, that is, thinking that flows into us from the things themselves. It is only by practicing such exercises as have just been described that we learn to take our thoughts from things. To do these exercises properly we should choose to work with sound and wholesome subjects that are least affected by our culture. These are the objects of nature.

To train our thinking using the things of nature as objects to think about will make really practical thinkers of us. Once we have trained ourselves in the practical use of this fundamental principle, our thinking, we shall be able to handle the most everyday occupations in a practical way. By training the human soul in this way a practical viewpoint is developed in our thinking.

The fruit of the Anthroposophical Movement must be to place really practical thinkers in life. What we have come to believe is not of as much importance as the fact that we should become capable of surveying with understanding the things around us. That spiritual science should penetrate our souls, thereby stimulating us to inner soul activity and expanding our vision, is of far more importance than merely theorizing about what extends beyond the things of the senses into the spiritual. In this, Anthroposophy is truly practical.

• 1. See Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man for a clarification of this, and other, anthroposophical terminology.

In beginning this our last lecture I can assure you that much still remains to be discussed and that in this course of lectures we have touched only the fringe of this subject which covers a wide field. I can only hope that it will not be the last time that we shall speak together here on kindred subjects, and it must suffice if I have introduced this subject with only the briefest indications, since detailed discussion at this present moment would otherwise create further complications.

Like a golden thread running through the last few lectures was the idea that Teutonic mythology contains something which, in imaginative form, is connected in a remarkable way with the knowledge derived from the spiritual research of our time. Now this is also one of the reasons why we may hope that the Folk Spirit, the Archangel, who directs and guides this country (Norway) will imbue modern philosophy and modern spiritual research with the capacities he has developed over the centuries and that henceforth modern spiritual research will be fertilized by uniting with the life-forces of the entire people.

The further we penetrate into the details of Teutonic mythology, the more we shall realize—and this applies to no other mythology—how wonderfully the deepest occult truths are expressed in the symbols of this mythology. Perhaps some of you who have read my Occult Science—an Outline or have heard other lectures which I was able to give here will recall that once upon a time in the course of Earth-evolution an event occurred which we may describe as the descent of those human souls who, in primeval times before the old Lemurian epoch, for very special reasons rose to other planets, to Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, and that these souls in the late Lemurian epoch and throughout the Atlantean epoch, after the hardening forces of the Moon had left the Earth endeavoured to incarnate in human bodies whose capacities had gradually been developed and perfected under Earth conditions. These Saturn-, Jupiter-, Mars-, Venus-, and Mercury-souls then descended upon Earth and this descent can still be verified today in the Akashic Records. During the Atlantean epoch the air of Atlantis was permeated with watery mists and through these mists those on Earth beheld with the old Atlantean clairvoyance the descent of these souls out of the Cosmos. Whenever new beings descended from spiritual heights into the still soft, plastic and pliant bodies of that time, this was understood to be the external manifestation of souls descending out of the Cosmos, out of the atmosphere, out of planetary spheres, in order to incarnate in earthly bodies.

These earthly bodies were fructified by that which poured down from spiritual heights. The memory of this event has survived in the imaginative conceptions of Teutonic mythology and has persisted so long that it was still extant amongst the Southern Germanic peoples at the time when Tacitus wrote his “Germania”. No one will understand the account Tacitus gives of the Goddess Nerthus unless he realizes that this event actually took place.¹ He relates that the chariot of the Goddess Nerthus was driven over the waters. Later on this survived as a solemn ritual; formerly it had been a matter of actual vision. This Goddess offered the human bodies that were suitable to the human souls descending from the planetary spheres. That is the mystery underlying the Nerthus myth and it has survived in all that has come down to us in the older sagas and legends which give intimations of the birth of physical man. Njordr who is intimately related to the Goddess Nerthus is her masculine counterpart. He is said to represent the primeval memory of the descent of the psycho-spiritual beings who in olden time had risen to planetary heights and who, during the Atlantean epoch, had come back and incarnated in human bodies.

In my pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood, you can read how miscegenation and contact between different peoples have played a significant role at certain periods. Now not only the mixture of peoples and their interrelationships which led to the introduction of foreign blood, but also the psychic and spiritual development of the Folk Spirits have played a decisive part. The vision of that descent has been preserved in the greatest purity in those sagas which arose in former times in these Northern regions. Hence in the Sagas of the Vanir you can still find one of the oldest recollections of this descent. Especially here in the North, the Finnish tradition still preserves a living memory of this union of the soul-and-spirit which descended from planetary spheres with that which springs out of the body of the Earth and which Northern tradition knows as Riesenheim (Home of the Giants). That which developed out of the body of the Earth belongs to Riesenheim. We realize, therefore, that Nordic man was always aware of spiritual impulses, that he felt within his gradually evolving soul the workings of this old vision of the Gods which was still natural to man here when, in those ancient times, the watery mists of Atlantis still covered the region. Nordic man felt within him some spark of a God who was directly descended from those divine-spiritual Beings, those Archangels who directed the union of soul-and-spirit with the terrestrial and physical. People believed and felt that the God Freyr and his sister Freyja who were once upon a time specially favoured Gods of the North, had originally been those angelic Beings who had poured into the human soul all that this soul required in order to develop further upon the physical plane those old forces which they (the people) had received through their clairvoyant capacities. Within the physical world, the world limited to the external senses, Freyr was the continuer of all that had hitherto been received in a clairvoyant form. He was the living continuation of forces clairvoyantly received. He had therefore to unite with the physical-corporeal instruments existing in the human body itself for the use of these soul-forces, which then transmit to the physical plane what had been perceived in primeval clairvoyance. This is reflected in the marriage of Freyr with Gerda, the Giant's daughter. She is born out of the physical forces of earthly evolution itself. The descent of the divinespiritual into the physical is still mirrored in these mythological symbols. The figure of Freyr portrays in a remarkable way how Freyr makes use of that which enables man to manifest on the physical plane that for which he has been prepared through his earlier clairvoyance. The name of his horse is Bluthuf, indicating that the blood is an essential factor in the development of the ‘I’. A remarkable magic ship is placed at his disposal. It could span the sky or be folded up to fit into a tiny box. What is this magic ship? If Freyr is the power which transmits clairvoyant forces to the physical plane, then this magic ship is something peculiarly his own: it symbolizes the alternation of the soul in day and night. just as the human soul during sleep and until the moment of waking spreads out over the Macrocosm, so too the magic ship spreads its sails and is then folded up again into the cerebral folds to be stowed away in that tiny box—the human skull. You will find all this portrayed in a wonderful way in the mythological figures of Teutonic mythology.

Those of you who probe more deeply into these matters will be gradually convinced that what has been implanted, ‘injected’ into the mind and soul of this Northern people by means of these symbols or pictures is no flight of fancy, but actually stems from the Mystery Schools. Thus in the guiding Archangel or Folk Spirit of the North, much of the old education through clairvoyant perception has survived, much of that which may unfold in a soul which, in the course of its development on the physical plane, is associated with clairvoyant development.

Although not apparent from the external point of view today, the Archangel of the Germanic North had within him this tendency, and thanks to this tendency he is particularly fitted to understand modern Spiritual Science and to transform it in the appropriate manner to satisfy the inherent potentialities of the people. You will therefore appreciate why I have said that the soul of the Germanic peoples in particular is best fitted to understand what I could only indicate briefly in the public lecture which I gave here on the Second Coming of Christ.

Spiritual research today shows us that after Kali Yuga has run its course (which lasted for 5,000 years, approximately from 3,100 BC to AD 1,899) new capacities will appear in the isolated few who are specially fitted to receive them. A time will come when individuals will be able, through the natural development of the new clairvoyance, to perceive something of what is announced only by Spiritual Science or spiritual research. We are told that in the course of the next centuries, increasing numbers of people will be found in whom the organs of the etheric body are so far developed that they will attain to clairvoyance, which today can only be acquired through training. How are we to account for this? What will be the nature of the, etheric body in those few who develop clairvoyance? There will be some who will receive clairvoyant impressions, and I should like to describe to you a typical example. A man performs some act and at the same time feels himself impelled to observe something. A sort of dream vision arises in him which at first he does not understand. But if he has heard of Karma, of how world-events conform to law, he will then realize, little by little, that what he has seen is the karmic counterpart of his present deeds made visible in the etheric world. Thus the first elements of future capacities are gradually developed.

Those who are open to the stimulus of Spiritual Science will, from the middle of the twentieth century on, gradually experience a renewal of that which St. Paul saw in etheric clairvoyance as a mystery to come, the ‘Mystery of the Living Christ’. There will be a new manifestation of Christ, a manifestation which must come when human capacities develop naturally to the point when the Christ can be seen in the world in which He has always been present since the Mystery of Golgotha and in which He can also be experienced by the Initiate. Mankind is gradually growing into that world in order to be able to perceive from the physical plane that which formerly could be perceived only in the Mystery Schools from the perspective of the higher planes.

Nevertheless, occult training is still a necessity. It always presents things in a different light to those who have not undergone occult training. But occult training will, by the transformation of the physical body, show the Mystery of the Living Christ in a new way—as it will be able to be seen etherically from the perspective of the physical plane by a few isolated individuals at first, and later by increasing numbers of people in the course of the next three thousand years. The Living Christ perceived by St. Paul, the Christ who is to be found in the etheric world since the Mystery of Golgotha, will be seen by an ever-increasing number of people.

The manifestations of the Christ will be experienced by man at ever-higher levels. That is the mystery of the evolution of Christ. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha it was intended that man should comprehend everything from the perspective of the physical plane. It was therefore necessary that he should be able to see Christ on the physical plane, to receive tidings of Him and to bear witness to His dominion on that plane. But mankind is designed to progress and to develop higher powers. He who believes that the manifestation of Christ will be repeated in the form which was valid nineteen hundred years ago can have little understanding of the development of mankind. The manifestation of Christ took place on the physical plane because, at that time, the forces of man were adapted to the physical plane. But those forces will evolve, and in the course of the next three thousand years Christ will be increasingly understood by the more highly developed souls on Earth.

What I have just said is a truth which has long been communicated to a select few from within the esoteric schools and it is a truth that today must pervade the teachings of Spiritual Science in particular, because Spiritual Science is intended to be a preparation for that which is to come. Mankind is now ready for freedom and self-knowledge and it is highly probable that those who proclaim themselves to be the pioneers of the Christ-vision will be denounced as fools on account of their message to mankind. It is possible for mankind to sink still deeper into materialism and to spurn that which could become a most valuable revelation for mankind. Everything that may happen in the future is to a certain extent subject to man's volition; consequently he may miss what is intended for his salvation. It is extremely important to realize that Spiritual Science is a preparation for the new Christ-revelation.

Materialism holds a twofold danger. The one which probably stems from the traditions of the West, is that everything that the first pioneers of the new Christ-revelation will announce in the twentieth century from out of their own vision will be dismissed as a figment of the imagination, as the height of folly. Today materialism has invaded all spheres. It is not only ingrained in the West, but has also invaded the East. There, however, it assumes another form. One consequence of oriental materialism might well be that mankind will fail to recognize the higher aspects of the Christ-revelation. And then will follow what I have often spoken of here, and which I must repeat again and again, namely, that materialistic thinking will have a purely materialistic conception of the manifestation of Christ. It might well be that, under the influence of spiritual-scientific truths, people might venture to speak of a future manifestation of Christ and yet believe that He will appear in a physical body. The result would simply be another form of materialism, a continuation of what has already existed for centuries.

People have always exploited this false materialism. Indeed certain individuals declared themselves to be the new Messiah. The last well-known case occurred in the seventeenth century, when a man called Sabbatai Zevi of Smyrna announced that he was the new Messiah. He made a great stir. Not only those who lived in his immediate environment made pilgrimages to visit him, but also people from Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, Italy and North Africa. Everywhere Sabbatai Zevi was regarded as the physical incarnation of a Messiah. I do not propose to relate the human tragedy that befell the personality of Sabbatai. In the seventeenth century no great harm was done. At that time man was not really a free agent, although he could recognize intuitively—which was a kind of spiritual feeling—what was the truth. But in the twentieth century it would be a great misfortune if, under the pressure of materialism, the manifestation of Christ were to be taken in a materialistic sense, implying that one must look for His return in a physical body. This would only prove that mankind had not acquired any perception of, or insight into the real progress of human evolution towards a higher spirituality.

False Messiahs will inevitably appear and, thanks to the materialism of our time, they will find popular favour like Sabbatai in the seventeenth century. It will be a severe test for those who have been prepared by Spiritual Science to recognize where the truth lies, to know whether the spiritual theories are really permeated by a living, spiritual feeling or whether they are only a disguised form of materialism. It will be a test of the further development of Spiritual Science whether Spiritual Science will develop a sufficient number of people who are able to understand that they must perceive the spirit in the spirit, that they must seek the new manifestation of Christ in the etheric world, or whether they will refuse to look beyond the physical plane and expect to see a manifestation of Christ in the physical body. Spiritual Science has yet to undergo this test. There is no doubt that nowhere has the ground been better prepared to recognize the truth on this very subject than in Scandinavia where the Northern mythology flourished.

The twilight of the Gods embraces a significant vision of the future, and I now come to a theme which I have already touched upon. I have already told you that in a folk community which has so recently left its clairvoyant past behind it, a clairvoyant sense is also developed in its guiding Folk Spirit in order that the newfound clairvoyance can again be understood. Now if a people experiences the new epoch with new human capacities in the region where Teutonic mythology flourished, then this people must realize that the old clairvoyance must assume a different form after man has undergone development on the physical plane. The old clairvoyance was temporarily silenced; man lost for a while the vision of the world of Odin and Thor, of Baldur and Hodur, of Freyr and Freyja. But this world will return again in an epoch when other forces meanwhile have been at work upon the human soul. When man gazes out into the new world with the new etheric clairvoyance he will realize that the forces of the old Gods no longer avail. If the old forces were to persist, then the counter-forces would range themselves against that force whose function in olden times was to develop man's capacities to a certain level. Odin and Thor will be visible again, but now in a new form. All the forces opposed to Odin and Thor, everything which has developed as a counter-force will once again be visible in a mighty tableau. But the human soul would not progress; it would not be able to resist injurious influences if it were subject solely to the forces known to the old clairvoyance. Once upon a time Thor endowed man with an ego. This ego has been developed on the physical plane, has evolved out of the Midgard Snake which Loki, the Luciferic power, has left behind in the astral body. That which Thor was once able to give and which the human soul transcends, is in conflict with that which proceeds from the Midgard Snake. This is depicted in Nordic mythology as the conflict between Thor and the Midgard Snake. They are evenly matched, neither can prevail. In the same way Odin wrestles with the Fenris Wolf and does not prevail.² Freyr, who, for a time, moulded the human soul-forces, had to succumb to that which had been given from out of the Earth forces themselves to the ‘I’, which meanwhile had been developed on the physical plane. Freyr was overcome by the flaming sword of Earth-born Surtur.

All these details which are set down in the Twilight of the Gods will find their counterpart in a new etheric vision which’ in reality points to the future. But the Fenris Wolf, symbol of the relics of the old clairvoyance, will live on in the future. There is a very deep truth concealed in the fact that the struggle between the Fenris Wolf and Odin still persists. There will be no greater danger than the tendency to cling to the old clairvoyance which has not been permeated with the new forces, a danger which might tempt man to remain content with the manifestations of the old astral clairvoyance of primeval times, such as the soul pictures of the Fenris Wolf. It would again be a severe trial for the future prospects of Spiritual Science, if, perhaps in the domain of Spiritual Science itself, there should arise a tendency to all sorts of confused, chaotic clairvoyance, an inclination to value clairvoyance illuminated by reason and spiritual knowledge less highly than the old, chaotic clairvoyance which is denied this prerogative. These dark and confusing relics of the old clairvoyance would wreck a terrible vengeance. Such clairvoyance cannot be challenged by that which itself stemmed from the old clairvoyant gift, but only by that which, during the period of Kali Yuga, has matured in a healthy way in order to give birth to a new clairvoyance. The power given by the old Archangel Odin, the old clairvoyant powers, cannot save man; something very different must supplant them. These future powers however, are known to Teutonic mythology; it is fully aware of their existence. It knows that the etheric form exists in which shall be embodied what we are now to see again—Christ in etheric form. He alone will succeed in banishing the dark and impure clairvoyant powers which would confuse mankind if Odin should not succeed in overcoming the Fenris Wolf which symbolizes the atavistic clairvoyance. Vidar who has been silent until now will overcome the Fenris Wolf. We learn of this too in the Twilight of the Gods.

Whoever recognizes the significance of Vidar and feels him in his soul, will find that in the twentieth century the power to see the Christ can be given to man again. Vidar who is part of the heritage of Northern and Central Europe will again be visible to man. He was held secret in the Mysteries and occult schools—the God who should await his future mission. Only vague intimations of his image have been given. This may be seen from the fact that a picture has been found in the vicinity of Cologne and no one knows whom it represents. But it is clearly a likeness of Vidar.

Throughout the period of Kali Yuga were acquired the powers which shall enable the new men to see the new manifestations of Christ. Those who are called upon to interpret from the signs of the times what is to come are aware that the new spiritual investigation will re-establish the power of Vidar who will banish from the hearts and minds of men all the dark and confusing relics of the old clairvoyance and will awaken in the human soul the new clairvoyance that is gradually unfolding.

When the wondrous figure of Vidar shines forth to us out of the Twilight of the Gods we realize that Teutonic mythology gives promise of future hope. We feel ourselves to be inwardly related to the figure of Vidar, the deeper aspects of whose being we are now striving to understand. We hope that those forces which the Archangel of the Teutonic world can contribute to the evolution of modern times will be able to provide the core and living essence of Spiritual Science. One part only of the development of mankind and the spirit—one part of a greater whole—has been realized for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; another part has yet to be accomplished. Those members of the Nordic peoples who feel within them the elemental and vital energies of a young people will best be able to contribute to this development. This will to some extent be implanted in the souls of men; but they themselves must be prepared to make a conscious effort. In the twentieth century one may fall by the wayside because man must to a certain extent have free choice in determining his goal which must not be pre-determined. It is therefore a question of having a proper understanding of the goal ahead. If, then, Spiritual Science reflects the knowledge of the Christ Being, and if we start from a true understanding of this Being whom we look for in the very core of the European peoples themselves, if we set our future hopes on this understanding, then we shall not be motivated by any kind of personal predilection or temperamental predisposition.

It has sometimes been said that the name we give to the greatest Being in the evolution of mankind is of no consequence. He who recognizes the Christ Being will not insist on retaining the name of Christ. If we understand the Christ Impulse in the right way we would never say: a Being plays a part in the evolution of mankind, in the life of the peoples of the West and the East and this Being must conform to man's predilections for a particular truth. Such an attitude is not compatible with the teachings of occultism. What is compatible with occult teachings is that the moment one recognizes that this Being should be given the name of Buddha, we should unhesitatingly abide by our decision irrespective of whether we agree with it or not. Fundamentally it is not a question of sympathy or antipathy, but of the factual truth.

The moment the facts are open to other interpretations we should be prepared to act differently. Facts and facts alone must decide. We have no wish to introduce Orientalism and Occidentalism into what we look upon as the life-blood of Spiritual Science; if we should discover in the realm of the Nordic and Germanic Archangels a source of potential nourishment for true Spiritual Science, then this will not be the prerogative of a particular people or tribe in the Germanic countries, but of the whole of humanity. What is given to all mankind must be given; it may, it is true, originate in a particular region, but it must be given to the whole of humanity. We do not differentiate between East and West. We accept with deep gratitude the surpassing grandeur of the primeval culture of the holy Rishis in its true form. We accept with gratitude the Persian culture, the Egypto-Chaldean and Graeco-Latin cultures, and with the same objectivity we also accept the cultural heritage of Europe. We are compelled by the needs of the situation to present the facts as they really are.

If we incorporate the total contributions which each religion has made to the civilizing process of mankind into what we recognize to be the common property of mankind, then the more we do this, the more we are acting in accordance with the Christ principle. Since this principle is capable of further development we must abandon the dogmatic interpretation of the early centuries and millennia when the initial stages of the Christ principle were only imperfectly understood. We do not look to the past for future guidance. We do not seek to perpetuate the Christ of the past; we are chiefly concerned with what can be investigated by means of spiritual perception. To us the essential element in the Christ-principle does not belong to the past—however much tradition may insist upon this—but to the future. We endeavour to ascertain what is to come. We do not rely so much on historical tradition which was fundamental to the Christ Impulse at the beginning of the Christian era; we do not attach much importance to the external and historical approach. After Christianity has passed through its growing pains, it will develop further. It has gone forth into foreign lands and sought to convert the people to the particular Christian dogmas of the age. But we profess a Christianity which proclaims that Christ was active in all ages and that we shall find Him where so ever we go, that the Christ-principle is the highest expression of Anthroposophy. And if Buddhism acknowledges as Buddhists only those who swear by Buddha, then Christianity will be the faith that swears by no prophet because it is not subject to a religious Founder attached to a particular people, but recognizes the God of all mankind.

Every Christian knows that the focal point of Christianity is a Mystery which became manifest on the physical plane at Golgotha. It is the perception of this Mystery which leads to the new vision I have described. We may also be aware that the spiritual life at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was such that the Mystery could only be experienced in the form it was experienced at that time. We refuse to submit to dogmas, even those of a Christian past. If a dogma should be imposed upon us, irrespective of its source, we would reject it in the name of the true Christ-principle. However many may try to force the historical Christ into the Procrustean bed of a confessional creed, however many may declare that our vision of the future Christ is mistaken, we shall not allow ourselves to be led astray when they declare that He must be after this or that fashion, even when it comes from the lips of those who ought to know who Christ is. Equally, the idea of the Christ Being should not be limited or circumscribed by Eastern traditions, nor be coloured by the dogmas of Oriental dogmatism. What is taught out of the true sources of occultism concerning the evolution of the future must be free and independent of all tradition and authority.

It is a source of wonder to me how much agreement there is amongst the people assembled here. Those, not of Norse extraction, who have come here, have repeatedly said to me in the last few days how free they feel in their relations with the people of the Scandinavian North. It is proof, if proof were needed, that we are able, though some may not be conscious of it, to understand each other at the deepest levels of spiritual knowledge and that we shall understand each other, especially in those matters I emphasized at the last Theosophical Congress in Budapest and which I repeated during our own General Meeting in Berlin when we had the great pleasure of seeing friends from Norway amongst us. It would be disastrous for Spiritual Science if he who cannot yet see into the spiritual world were obliged to accept in blind faith what he is told. I beg of you now, as I begged of you in Berlin, never to accept on authority or on faith anything I have said or shall say. Even before one has reached the stage of clairvoyance it is possible to test the results of clairvoyant vision. I beg of you not to accept as an article of faith whatever I have said about Zarathustra and Jesus of Nazareth, about Hermes and Moses, Odin and Thor, and about Christ Jesus Himself, nor to accept my statements as authoritative. I beseech you to abjure the principle of authority, for that principle would be deleterious to our Movement.

I am sure, however, that when you begin to reflect objectively, when you say, “We have been told so and so; let us investigate the records accessible to us, the religious and mythological documents, let us check the statements of the natural scientists”, you will realize how right I am. Avail yourselves of every means at your disposal, the more the better. I have no qualms. All that is given out of Rosicrucian sources can be tested in every way. Armed with the most materialistic criticism of the Gospels, verify what I have said about Christ Jesus; verify it as thoroughly as possible by all the means at your command on the physical plane. I am convinced that the more thoroughly you test it, the more you will find that what has been given out of the sources Of the Rosicrucian Mystery will correspond to the truth.

I take it for granted that the communications given out from Rosicrucian sources will be tested rather than believed, tested not superficially by the superficial methods of modern science, but ever more conscientiously. Take the latest achievements of natural science with its Most recent techniques, take the results of historical and religious research, it is all one to me. The more you test them, the more you will find them confirmed from this source. You must accept nothing on authority. The best students of Spiritual Science are those who take what is said as a stimulus in the first place and test it by the facts of life itself. For in life too, at every stage of life, you can test what is given out from the sources of Rosicrucianism. It is far from my intention in these lectures to lay down dogmas and claim that the facts are such and such and must be believed. Verify them by an exchange of views with people of able and active mind and you will find confirmation of what has been said as a prophetic indication of the future manifestation of Christ. You need only open your eyes and verify it objectively; we make no appeal to belief in authority. This need to test everything received from Spiritual Science should become a kind of basic attitude permeating our whole approach.

I should like to impress upon you, therefore, that it is not anthroposophical to accept a statement as dogma on the authority of this or that person; but it is truly anthroposophical to allow oneself to be stimulated by Spiritual Science and to verify what is communicated by life itself. Then, whatever Might colour in any way a truly anthroposophical view will cease to exist. Neither Eastern nor Western predilections must be allowed to colour our view. He who speaks from the point of view of Rosicrucianism accepts neither Orientalism nor Occidentalism; both appeal to him equally. The inner nature of the facts alone determine their truth. He must bear this in mind, especially at such an important moment as this when we have indicated the Folk Spirit who rules over the Northern lands. Here dwells the Teutonic mythological Spirit; even though his presence is not felt, his influence is more widely diffused in Europe than one imagines. If a conflict were to arise between the peoples of the North it could not arise because one people disputed the contributions to the common weal. Each people must practice self-knowledge and ask itself: how can I best contribute to the common weal? Then, that which leads to the collective progress of all, to the common welfare of mankind, will be harvested. The sources of what we are able to contribute lie in our individual characteristics. The Teutonic Archangel will bring to the whole field of culture in the future what he is most fitted for in accordance with the capacities he has acquired which we have already outlined. By virtue of this inherent power he is able to ensure that what could not yet be presented in the first half of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch may play its part in the second half, namely, that spiritual element which we were able to recognize in a germinal, prophetic form in the Slav philosophy and in the national sentiment of the Slavonic peoples. This preparatory stage lasted for the first half of the fifth post-Atlantean age. At first, all that could be achieved by way of philosophy was a highly sublimated spiritual perception. This must then be grasped and permeated by the vital energies of the people so that it may become the common property of all mankind and may be realized in all aspects of our earthly life. Let us try to come to an understanding on this subject, for then this somewhat dangerous theme will have caused no great harm if all who are assembled here from the North, South, East, West and Centre of Europe feel that this theme is really important for the whole of humanity, that the larger nations no less than the smaller isolated groups have each their appointed mission and have to contribute their share to the whole. Often the smallest national fragments have most important contributions to make because it is given to them to preserve and nurture old and new motifs in the soul-life. Thus, even though we have made this dangerous topic the subject of our lectures, it will serve to foster the basic sentiment of a community of soul amongst all those who are united under the banner of Anthroposophical thought and feeling and of Anthroposophical ideals.

Only if we should still react out of sympathy and antipathy, if we have no clear understanding of the essence of our Anthroposophical Movement, could misunderstandings arise from what has been said. But if we have grasped the underlying spirit of these lectures, then the ideas presented may also help us to make the firm resolution to harbour the high ideal—each from his own standpoint and from his own background—to contribute to the common goal that which is inherent in our mission. We can best achieve this through our individual initiative and our natural predisposition. We can best serve mankind if we develop our particular talents so as to offer them to the whole of humanity as a sacrifice which we bring to the progressive development of culture. We must learn to understand this. We must learn to understand that it would not redound to the credit of Spiritual Science, if it did not contribute to the evolution of man, Angel and Archangel, but were to support the convictions of one people at the expense of another. It is no part of Spiritual Science to assist in imposing the confessional beliefs of one continent upon another continent. If the religious teachings of the East were to prevail in the West, or vice versa, that would be a complete denial of Anthroposophical teaching. What alone accords with Anthroposophical teaching is that we should unselfishly dedicate the best that is in us, our sympathy and compassion, to the well being of all mankind. And if we are self-contained, and live, not for ourselves but for all men, then that is true Anthroposophical tolerance. I had to add these words by way of explanation for this somewhat delicate subject might otherwise offend national susceptibilities.

Spiritual Science, as we shall realize more and more clearly, will bring an end to the divisions of mankind. Therefore now is the right moment to learn to know the Folk Souls, because the province of Spiritual Science is not to promote antagonism between them, but to call upon them to work in harmonious cooperation. The better we understand this, the better students of Spiritual Science we shall be. On this note we shall end for the time being the course of lectures given here. For the knowledge we gather must ultimately find an echo in our feelings and our thinking and in the Anthroposophical goal we set before us. The more we practice this in our lives, the better Anthroposophists we are.

I have found that many of those who have accompanied us to Oslo have received a most favourable impression which they hasten to express in the words, “how much at home we feel here in the North!” And if higher spiritual forces are to be awakened in mankind, which we shall certainly see realized in the future, then to use the words of Vidar, the Aesir who has been silent until now, he will become the active friend of cooperative work, of cooperative endeavour, for which purpose we have all assembled here. With this object in view let us take leave of one another after having been together for a few days, and let us always remain together in spirit with this intention. Irrespective of where we students of Spiritual Science come from, whether from near or far, may we always meet together in harmony, even when we discuss amongst ourselves the particular characteristics of the peoples inhabiting the various countries of the Earth. We know that these are only the several tongues of flame which will mount together into the mighty flame upon the altar—the united progress of mankind—through the Anthroposophical view of life which lies so close to our hearts and is so deeply rooted in our souls.

• 1. Chapter 40 of Germania. See also the lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Basle, 12.xii.1916, entitled Christmas at a Time of Grievous Destiny. The Festivals and their Meaning. Vol. 1. Christmas. (Rudolf Steiner Press).
• 2. On the day of Ragnarok (the Twilight of the Gods) Odin is swallowed up by the Fenris Wolf. For the relation between Odin and the Fenris Wolf, see >Appendix.

Genuine knowledge of the impulses holding sway in humanity, knowledge that must be acquired if we wish to take a Position in life in any direction, is possible only if we attempt to go deeply into the differences of soul conditions existing between the members of the human race. In respect to the right progress for all mankind, it is certainly necessary that human beings understand one another, that an element common to all men is present. This common element, however, can only develop when we focus on the varieties of soul dispositions and developments that exist among the different members of humanity. In an age of abstract thinking and mere intellectualism such as the one in which we find ourselves, people are only too prone to look only for the abstract common denominators. Because of this they fail to arrive at the actual concrete unity, for it is precisely by grasping the differences that one comprehends the former. From any number of viewpoints, I have referred in particular to the mutual relationships resulting out of these differences between the world's population of the West and East. Today, I should like to point to such differentiations from yet another standpoint.

When we look at the obvious features of present general culture, what do we actually find? The form taken by the thoughts of most people in the civilized world really shows an essentially Western coloring, something originating in the characteristic tendencies of the West. Look at newspapers today that are published in America or England, in France, Germany, Austria or Russia. Although you will definitely sense certain differences in the mode of thinking, and so on, you will also notice one thing they have in common. If this is the Western region here (see sketch), this the middle one and that the Eastern, this common element, which comes to light everywhere, say, in newspapers as well as in ordinary popular literary and scientific publications, does not derive its impulse from the depths of the national characteristics. In a St. Petersburg paper, for instance, you do not find what arises from the heritage of the Russian people. You do not discover the heritage of Central European peoples by reading a Viennese paper or one from Berlin. The element determining the basic configuration and character (of all publications) has basically arisen in the West, and then poured itself into the individual regions. The fundamental coloring of what has come to the fore from among the peoples of the West has, therefore, essentially spread out over the civilized world.

When things are viewed superficially, one might doubt this; but if you go more deeply into the matters under discussion here, you can no longer doubt them. Consider the attitude, the basic sentiment, the conceptual form, expressed in a newspaper from Vienna or Berlin, or a literary or scientific work from either city. Compare this with a publication from London—quite aside from the language—and you will discover that there is a greater similarity between the publication from London and the book from Vienna, Paris, or even New York or Chicago than there is between the present thoughts and ideas in literary and scientific works from Vienna and Berlin, and the special nuance which Fichte⁵³ for example, poured into his thoughts as an enlivening element. I shall demonstrate this to you by citing just one example.

There is a saying by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great philosopher who was born at the turn of the nineteenth century, that is so characteristic of him that no one today understands it. It goes, “The external world is the substance of duty become visible.” The sentence means nothing less than this. When we look out into the world of mountains, clouds, woods and rivers, of animals, plants and minerals, all this is in itself something devoid of meaning, without reality, it is merely a phenomenon. It is only there to enable the human being in his evolution to fulfill his duty. For I could not carry out my obligations in a world in which I would not be surrounded by things that I could touch. There must be wood, there must be a hammer. In itself, it has no significance and no materiality. It is only the substance of my duty which has become sense-perceptible. Everything outside exists primarily for the purpose of bringing duty to light.

This saying was coined by a man a century ago out of the innermost sentiments of his soul and character as well as his folk spirit. It did not become generally known. When people talk about Johann Gottlieb Fichte today, when they write books about him and mention him in newspaper articles, they only perceive the external form of his words. No one really understands anything about Fichte. You may take everything you find on him today, either literary or scientific, but it has nothing whatever to do with Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It does, however, have a great deal to do with what arose out of the Western folk spirit, and has spread over the rest of the civilized world.

These more delicate relationships are not discerned. That is the reason why nobody even thinks of characterizing in a deep and exhaustive manner the essential feature of what arises from the spirit of the various nationalities. For it is all inundated today by what arises from the West. In Central Europe, in the East, people imagine that they are thinking along their own ethnic lines. This is not the case, they think in accordance with what they have adopted from the West.

In what I am now saying lies the key to much of what is really the riddle of the present age. This riddle can be solved only when we become aware of the specific qualities arising from the various regions of the world. There is, first of all, the East that today certainly offers us no true picture of itself. If untruthfulness were not the underlying characteristic of all public life in our time, the world would not be so ignorant of the fact that what we call Bolshevism is spreading rapidly throughout the East and into Asia; that it has gone far already. People have a great desire to sleep through the actual events, and are glad to be kept in ignorance. It is therefore easy to withhold from them what is really taking place. Thus, people will live to see the East and the whole of Asia inundated by the most extreme, radical product of Western thought, namely Bolshevism, an element utterly foreign to these people.

If we wish to look into what it is that the world of the East brings forth out of the depths of its folk character, it becomes obvious that it is possible to discover the fundamental nuance of feeling in the East only by going back into earlier times and learning through them. For, in regard to its original character, the East has become completely decadent. Forgetting its very nature, the East has allowed itself to be inundated by what I have described as the most extreme, radical offshoots of Western thought. Certainly, it is true that what was once there is still living within Eastern humanity, but today it is all covered up. What once lived in the East, what once vibrated through Eastern souls, survives in its final results where it is no longer understood, where it has turned into a superstitious ritual, where it has become the hypocritical murmurings of the popes of the Orthodox Russian ritual, incomprehensible even to those who believe they understand it. A direct line runs from ancient India to these formulas of the Russian church ritual, which are now only rattled off to the multitudes in the form of lip service. For this whole inclination which thus expressed itself, which bestowed on the Eastern soul its imprint and also does so today in a suppressed form, is the potential for developing a spiritual state of mind that guides the human being towards the prenatal, to what exists in our life before birth, before conception. In the very beginning, the nature of what permeated the East as a world conception and religious attitude was connected with the fact that this East possessed a concept which has been completely lost to the West. As I have said here before, the West has the concept of immortality, not that of “not having been born,” of “unbornness.” We have the word immortality, we do not have the term “unbornness.” This implies that in our thinking we continue life after death, but not into the time before birth. On the other hand, the East possessed that special soul inclination it had that still included Imagination and Inspiration in its thoughts and concepts. By means of this particular manner of expressing the conceptual content of its soul world, the East was far less predisposed to pay heed to the life after death than to that before birth. In regard to the human being it viewed life here in the sense world as something that comes to man after he has received his tasks prior to birth, as something that he has to absolve here in the sense of the task given him. He was disposed to regard this life as a duty set human beings by the gods before they descended into this earthly body of flesh. It goes without saying that such a world conception encompasses both repeated earth lives and the lives between death and birth; for one can quite well speak of a single life after death, but not of only one before birth. That would be an impossible teaching. After all, one who refers at all to pre-existence would then not speak of one earth life only, which is something that should be obvious to you upon reflection. It was the way they had of looking up into the supersensory world, which was brought about by the whole predisposition of these Eastern souls, but it was one that focused their attention on the life we lead between death and a new birth prior to being drawn down to earthly life. Everything else, everything in the way of political, social, historical and economical ideas was only the consequence of what dwelt in the soul due to the orientation towards the life between birth and conception.

This life, this mood of soul, is particularly fitted to turn the human soul's gaze to the spiritual, to fill man with the super-sensible world. For even here on earth, man considers himself entirely a creation of the spiritual world, indeed, as a being who, in the world of the senses, is merely pursuing his super-sensible life. Everything that became decadent in later ages, the establishment of kingdoms, the social structure of the ancient Orient and its very constitution, developed from this special underlying mood of soul. This soul condition might be said today to be overpowered, because it became weak and crippled, because it was only promulgated as if out of what I would like to call “rachitic” soul members, as for example, in the works of Rabindranath Tagore,⁵⁴ which are like something that is poured into vague, nebulous formulas. In actual practice, we are today inundated by what expresses itself in Bolshevism as the most extreme, radical wing of Western thinking. The West will have to experience that something it did not wish to have for itself is moving over into the East, that in a not very distant future, what the West pushed off on the East will surge back upon it from there. This will result in a strange kind of self-knowledge.

What has this remarkable development in the East led to? It has led the people of the East to employ the holy inner zeal they once utilized to foster the impulse for the supersensory world and to apprehend the spiritual in all its purity, to accept the most materialistic view of outer life with religious fervor. Even though Bolshevism is the most extreme consequence of the most materialistic view of the world and social life, it will, as it moves further into Asia, increasingly transform itself into something that is received there with the same religious zeal as was the spiritual world in former times. In the East, people will speak of the economic life in the same terminology once used to speak of the sacred Brahma. The fundamental disposition of the soul does not change; it endures, for it is not the content (of the soul) that matters here. The most materialistic views can be approached with the same fervor formerly used to grasp the most spiritual.

Let us now turn and look at the West. The West has given rise to the human soul's most recent development. It must be of special interest to us because it has brought forth the view which, rising like a mist, has since spread over the whole civilized world. It is the manner of conception that already found, its most significant expression in Francis Bacon and Hobbes; in minds of more recent times, in the economist Adam Smith, for example; among philosophers, in John Stuart Mill, and among historians, in Buckle, and so on.⁵⁵ It is a form of thinking that no longer contains any Imagination and Inspiration in its conceptions and ideas, where the human being is dependent on directing his conceptual life entirely outwards to the sense world, absorbing the impressions of the latter according to the associations of thoughts resulting from that same world. This came to its most brilliant philosophical expression in David Hume, also in other such as Locke.⁵⁶

There is something very strange here that must, however, be mentioned. When we focus on the West, we must pay heed to how minds like John Stuart Mill, for example, speak of human thought associations. The term “association of ideas” is in fact a completely Western thought form, but in Central Europe, for instance, it has been in such common use for more than half a century that people speak of it as if it had originated there. When psychology is taught in John Stuart Mill's sense, one says, for instance, that in the human soul, thoughts first connect themselves by means of one thought embracing another, or by one thought attaching itself to another, or by one permeating another. This implies that people look upon the thought world and view the individual thoughts as they would little spheres that relate themselves to each other (see drawing). To be consistent one would have to eliminate everything to do with the ego and astral body, inwardly referring only to a mere thought mechanism, something that a great number of people do, in fact, speak of. The soul of man is disemboweled, as it were. When you read a book by John Stuart Mill with its deductive and inductive logic, you feel as if you were mentally placed in a dissecting room where a number of animals hang that are having their innards taken out. Likewise, in the way Mill proceeds, one feels as if man's soul-spiritual being were disemboweled. He first empties the human being of everything within, leaving only the outer sheath. Then, thoughts do, indeed, appear only like so many associated atomistic formations that coalesce when we form an opinion. The tree is green. Here “green” is the one thought, “tree” is the other, and the two flow together. The inner being is no longer alive; it has been disemboweled and only the thought mechanism remains.

This manner of conceiving of things is not derived from the sense world; it is imposed upon it. In my book, The Riddles of Philosophy,⁵⁷ I have drawn attention to how a mind such as John Stuart Mill's is in no way related to the inner world; it is simply given to behaving like a mere onlooker in whom the external world is reflected. Our concern here is that this method of thinking brings about what I have often described as the tragedy of materialism, which is that it no longer comprehends matter. For how can materialism fathom the nature of matter—and we have seen that, by going deeply into the human being, one penetrates into the true material element of the earth—if it first eliminates in thought what actually represents matter? In this regard, an extreme consequence already has been reached.

This extreme consequence could easily be traced today if it were not for the fact that people never look at the whole context of things, only at the details. Imagine where it must lead if all the actual inner flexible aspects of the ego are eliminated, if the human being is emptied of the very element that can enlighten him in the sense world concerning the spirit. Just think, where must this finally lead? It must result in the human being feeling that he no longer has anything of the actual content of the world. He looks outside at the sense world without realizing the truth of what we said yesterday, namely, that behind the external world of the senses there are spiritual beings. When he gives himself up to illusions, he assumes that atoms and molecules exist outside. He dreams of atoms and molecules. If man has no illusion concerning the external world, he can say nothing but that the whole outer world contains no truth, that it really is nothing. Inwardly, on the other hand, he has found nothing; he is empty. He must talk himself into believing that there is something inside him. He has no grasp of the spirit; therefore, he suggests spirit to himself, developing the suggestion of spirit. He is not capable of maintaining this suggestion without rigorously denying the reality of matter. This implies that he accommodates himself to a world view which does not perceive the spirit but only suggests it, merely persuading itself into the belief of spirit, while denying matter. You find the most extreme Western exponent of this in Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science⁵⁸ as the counterpart of what I described just now for the East. This was bound to arise as the final outcome of such conceptions as those of Locke, David Hume or John Stuart Mill. Christian Science as a concept is, however, also the final consequence of what has been brought about in recent times by the unfortunate division of man's soul life into knowledge and faith.

Once people start restricting themselves to knowledge on one side and faith on the other, a faith that no longer even tries to be knowledge, this leads in the end to their not having the spirit at all. Faith finally ceases to have a content. Then, people must suggest a content to themselves. They make no attempt to reach the genuine spirit through a spiritual science. In their search for the spirit, they arrive at Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science, this spirit which has come to expression there as the final consequence. The politics of the West have for some time been breathing this spirit. It does not sustain itself on realities; it lives on self-made suggestions. Naturally, when it is not a matter of an in-depth cure, one can even effect cures with Christian Science, as has been reported, and accounts are given of its marvelous cures. Likewise, all kinds of edifying results can be achieved with the West's politics of suggestion.

Yet, this Western concept possesses certain qualities, qualities of significance. We can best understand them when we contrast them with those of the East. On looking back to the ages when the Eastern qualities came especially to the fore, we find that they were those which, first of all, were capable of focusing the soul's eye on the prenatal life. They were therefore preeminently fitted to constitute what can represent the spiritual part, the spiritual world, in a social organism. Fundamentally speaking, all that we have created in Central Europe and the West is in a certain sense the legacy of the East. I have already mentioned this on another occasion. The East was particularly predisposed to cultivate the spiritual life. The West, on the other hand, is especially talented at developing thought forms. I have just described them in a somewhat unfavorable light. They can, however, be depicted in a favorable light as well, namely, if we consider all that has originated with Bacon of Verulam, Buckle, Mill, Thomas Reid, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Spencer, and others of like mind, for example, Bentham.⁵⁹ On the one hand, we admit that these thought forms are certainly not suited to penetrate into a spiritual world by means of Imagination and Inspiration, to comprehend the life before birth. Yet, on the other hand, we are obliged to say, particularly when one studies how this manner of thinking has pervaded and lives in our Western science, that all this is especially appropriate for economic thinking; and one day, when the economic life of the social organism will have to be developed, we shall have to become students of Western thought, of Thomas Reid, John Stuart Mill, Buckle, Adam Smith, and the rest. They have only made the mistake of applying their form of thinking to science, to epistemology, and the spiritual life. This thinking is in order when we train ourselves by means of it and reflect on how to form associations, how best to manage the economy. Mill should not have written a book on logic; the spiritual capacity he applied to doing this should have been used for describing in detail the configuration of a given industrial association. We must realize that when anyone today wishes to produce a book such as my Towards Social Renewal, it is necessary for him to have learned to understand in what manner one attains to the spiritual sphere in the Oriental sense, and in what manner—although following a much more erratic path—one arrives at economic thinking in the West. For both directions belong together and are necessary to one another.

As far as a view of life is concerned, this Western thinking then does lead to pseudo-sciences like the one by Mrs. Eddy, her Christian Science. We must not, however, look at matters according to what they cannot be, but consider what they can be. For unity must come about through the cooperation of all human beings on earth, not by some abstract, theoretical structure of ideas that is simply laid down, and then viewed as a unity.

At this point, one may ask from where in the human organization this particular thinking of Mill, Buckle, and Adam Smith originates. We find that Oriental thinking has basically arisen from a contact with the world, especially when looking back to the more ancient forms of Oriental philosophy. It is a thinking, a feeling, which gives the impression that, out of the earth itself, the roots of a tree grow and produce leaves. In just this way, the ancient Indian, for example, seems to us to be united with the whole earth; his thoughts appear to us to have grown out of earthly existence in a spiritual manner, just as a tree's leaves and blossoms appear to have grown out of it by means of all the forces of the earth.

It is precisely this attachment to the external world in the Oriental person, the absorption of the spirituality, that I have referred to as lying beyond the sense world. In the West, everything is brought out of the instincts, the depth of the personality—I might say, from man's metabolic system, not the external world. For the Oriental, the world works upon both his senses and Spirit, kindling within him what he calls his holy Brahma. In the West, we have what arises from the body's metabolism and leads to associations of ideas; it is something that is particularly suited to characterize the economic life, something that does not apply until the next earth incarnation. For, with the exception of the head, what we bear as our physical organism is something that does not find its true expression, as we have outlined, until the following life on earth. We have been given our head from our previous earth life; our limbs and our metabolic system are Borne by us into the next earthly incarnation. This is a metamorphosis from one life on earth to the next. Hence, in the West, people think with something that only becomes mature in the following earth life. For this reason, Western thinking is particularly predisposed to focus on the life after death, to speak of immortality, not of eternity, not to know the term, “unbornness,” but only the word, “immortality.” It is the West which represents life after death as something that the human being should above all else be concerned about. Yet, even now, something I might call radical, but in a radical sense something noble, is preparing itself in the West out of the totally materialistic culture. One with the faculty to look a little more deeply into what is thus trying to evolve makes a strange discovery. Although people strive in the most intimate way for life after death, for some kind of immortality, hence, for an egotistic life after death, they strive in such a manner that, out of this effort, something special will develop. While a large part of humanity still harbors an illusion in this regard, something quite remarkable is, oddly enough, developing in the West. Since individual elements of the ideas concerning life after death being developed by the West are reflected to a certain extent in a great majority of Europeans, they, too, have especially perfected this preoccupation with the postmortem life. The European, however, would prefer to say, “Well, my religion promises me a life after death, but in this transitory, unsatisfactory, merely material earth life I need make no effort to secure the immortality of my soul. Christ died to make me immortal; I need not strive for immortality. It is mine once and for all; Christ makes me immortal.”—or something to that effect.

In the West, particularly in America, something different is preparing itself. Out of the most diverse, occasionally the most bizarre and trivial religious world conceptions, we see something trying to arise which, although it has quite materialistic forms, is nevertheless connected with. something that will be a part of life in the future, particularly in regard to this world-view of immortality. Among certain sects in America, the belief is prevalent that one cannot survive at all after death if one has made no effort in this earthly life, if one has not accomplished something whereby one acquires this life after death. A judgment concerning good and evil is envisioned after death that does not merely follow the pattern of earthly truth. He who makes no effort here on earth to bear through the portals of death what he has developed in his soul will be diffused and scattered in the cosmic all. What a person wishes to carry with him through death must be developed here. A man dies the second death of the soul—to use the saying of Paul—who does not provide here for his soul to become immortal. This is something that is definitely developing in the West as a world concept in place of the leisurely, passive, awaiting what will happen after death. It is something that is emerging in certain American sects. Perhaps today it is still little noticed, but there is a great deal of feeling in favor of viewing life here in a moral sense, and to arrange the conduct of life in such a manner that by means of what one does here, something is carried through the gate of death.

As I said, in the East, the particular attention to the life before birth developed long ago. This made it possible for life on earth to be viewed as a continuation of this prenatal, supersensory life in the spirit. Earthly life thus received its content, not out of itself, but out of the spiritual life. In the West, an attitude is developing today for the future that will have nothing to do with a passive, indifferent life of waiting here for death because the life beyond is guaranteed; instead, the knowledge is growing that man carries nothing through the portal of death unless care is taken on earth to make something out of what one already has here.

Thus, Western thinking is adapted, on the one hand, to organizing economic matters within the social organism; on the other hand, it is suited to develop further the one-sided doctrine of life after death. This is why spiritualism has had a special opportunity for developing in the West, and from there, could invade the rest of the world. After all, spiritualism was only devised to give a sort of guarantee of immortality to those who could no longer attain to any conviction concerning immortality by means of any kind of inner development. For, in most instances, a person actually becomes a spiritualist in order to receive by some means or the other the certain guarantee that he is immortal ,after death.

Between these two worlds lies something that is implied in Fichte's words, “The external world is the substance of my duty become visible.” As I said before, people really have no understanding for this mode of thinking, and what is written today about Fichte could well be compared to what a blind man might say about color. Particularly in the last few years, a tremendous amount of talking and lecturing has been done about this saying by Fichte, but it was all accomplished in such a way that one is disposed to say that Fichte, that out-and-out Central European mind, has really been americanized by the German newspapers and writers of literature. One is confronted with americanized versions of Fichte. There, we find the nuance of human soul life which, in a special way, is supposed to develop the middle member of the social organism, the one that arises from the relationship of man to man. It would be of benefit if some of you would for once make an in-depth study—it isn't easy—of one of Fichte's writings where he speaks as though nature did not exist at all. Duty, for example, and everything else is deduced by first proving that external human beings actually exist in whom the materialized substance of duty can become reality. Here, all the raw material is contained, so to speak, from which the rights and state organism of the threefold social order have to be put together.

What, then, is the actual cause of the catastrophic events in the past few years? The basic reason is that there was no living perception, no feeling, for such matters. Berlin's policies are American. This is fine for America, but it is not suitable for Berlin. This is why Berlin's politics amount to nothing. For, just imagine, since American policies were constantly carried out in Berlin or Vienna, we could just as well have called Berlin, New York, apart from the difference in language, and Vienna, Chicago for all the difference there would have been otherwise. When, in Central Europe, something is done that is completely foreign to it, something originating in the West where it has its rightful place, then the primal essence of the folk spirit is aroused and gives it the lie without the people being aware of it. This was basically the case in recent decades. This was the underlying phenomenon of what happened, the phenomenon that consists, for instance, in the fact that people have trampled Goethe's thinking underfoot, and as another example, have read Ralph Waldo Trine⁶⁰ out of a sort of instinct. Actually, all our aristocratic dandies in politics have shown an interest in Trine, and received their special inner stimulus or whatever from that direction. When affairs came to the boiling point, they even turned to Woodrow Wilson;⁶¹ and he⁶² who would now again like to be President of the German Republic still has that frame of mind that allows his brain automatically to roll out Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. Thus, in recent times, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, we experienced how a formerly truly representative German personality spouted forth americanisms. This is the best and most immediate example of how matters really stand at present. Indeed, we must be able to see through these archetypal phenomena if we wish to understand what is actually happening today. If we merely pick up a newspaper and read Prince Max von Baden's speeches, simply studying them out of context, then this is something absolutely worthless today. It is a mere kaleidoscope of words. Only when we are able to place such things into the whole context of the world can we hope to understand anything about the world. No progress can be made until people realize how necessary it is today that world understanding be acquired if one wishes to have a say. The most characteristic sign of the time is the belief that when a group of individuals have set up some trashy proposition as a general program—such as the unity of all men regardless of race, nation or color, and so forth—something has been accomplished. Nothing has been accomplished except to throw sand into people's eyes. Something real is attained only when we note the differences and realize what world conditions are. Formerly, human beings could live in accordance with their instincts. This is no longer possible; they must learn to live consciously. This can be done only by looking deeply into what is actually happening.

The East was supreme in regard to life before birth and repeated earthly lives that are connected with it. The greatness of the West consisted in its disposition in regard to life after death. Here, in the middle (see drawing an next page), the actual science of history has originated, although today it is as yet misunderstood. Take Hegel⁶³ as an example. In Hegel's works, we have neither preexistence nor postexistence; there is neither life before birth nor after death, but there is a spirited grasp of history. Hegel begins with logic, goes from there to a philosophy of nature, develops his doctrine of the soul, then that of the state, and ends with the triad of art, religion and science. They are his world content. There is no mention of preexistence or an immortal soul, only of the spirit that lives here in this world.

Preexistence, postexistence—this is really life in the present state of mankind, the permeation of history. Read what has been drawn up particularly by Hegel as a philosophy of history. In libraries, one generally finds the pages of his books still uncut! Not many editions have appeared of Hegel's works. In the eighties of the last century, Eduard von Hartmann⁶⁴ wrote that in all of Germany, where twenty universities exist that have faculties of philosophy, no more than two of the instructors had read Hegel! What he said could not be refuted; it was true. Nonetheless, it hardly needs to be said that all the students were ready to swear to what they had been told about Hegel by professors who had never read him. Do familiarize yourselves with his work and you will find that here, in fact, historical conception has come about, the experience of what goes on between human beings. There you also find the material from which the state, the rights sphere of the threefold social organism, has to be created. We can learn about the constitution of the spiritual organism from the Orient; the constitution of the economic sphere is to be learned from the West.

In this way, we have to look into the differentiations of humanity all over the whole earth, and can gain an understanding of the matter from one side or the other. If the goal is approached directly, namely, if the social life is studied, one arrives at the threefold order as developed in my book, Towards Social Renewal. By thus studying the life of mankind throughout the earth, we come to the realization that there is one part with a special disposition for the economy; there is another with a special aptitude for organizing the state; and yet another with a specific inclination towards the spiritual life. A threefold structure can then be created by taking the actual economy from the West, the state from the Middle, and from the East—naturally in a renewed form, as I have often said—the spiritual life. Here you have the state, here the economic life and here the spiritual life (see above sketch); the two others have to be taken across from here. In this way, all humanity has to work together, for the origins of these three members of the social organism are found in different regions of the earth, and therefore must be kept properly apart everywhere. If, in the old manner, human beings wish to mix up in a unified state what is striving to be threefold, nothing will result from it except that in the West the state will be a unity where the economic life overwhelms the whole, and everything else is only submerged into it. If the theorists then take hold of and study the matter, meaning, if Karl Marx moves from Germany to London, he then concludes that everything depends on the economic life. If Marx's insanity triumphs, the three spheres are reduced to one, the one being of a purely economic character. If one limits oneself to what wishes to be merely the state or rights configuration, one apes the economic life of the West, which for decades has been fashioning an illusory structure, which then naturally collapses when a catastrophe occurs—something that has indeed happened!

The Orient, which possesses the spiritual life in a weakened state in the first place, simply has adopted the economic life from the West and has inoculated itself with something that is completely alien to it. When these matters are studied, we shall see particularly that blessings can only fall upon the earth when, everywhere, one gathers together into the threefold social organism through human activity what by its very nature develops in the various regions.

• 53. Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Appellation an das Publikum ueber die ihm beigemessenen atheistischen Aeusserungen, 1799.
• 54. Rabindranath Tagore: 1861–1941, Indian poet and religious philosopher.
• 55. Francis Bacon: 1561–1626, English philosopher and statesman, founder of empiricism; Thomas Hobbes: 1588–1679, English philosopher; Adam Smith: 1723–1790, English philosopher and sociologist; John Stuart Mill: 1806–1873, English philosopher and political economist, one of the founders of positivism; Henry Thomas Buckle: 1821–1862, English writer on social history.
• 56. David Hume: 1711–1776, English philosopher and statesman; John Locke: 1632–1704, English philosopher.
• 57. Rudolf Steiner: The Riddles of Philosophy, GA 18 (New York, Anthroposophic Press, 1973).
• 58. Mary Baker Eddy: 1821–1910, founder of Christian Science.
• 59. Herbert Spencer: 1820–1903, English philosopher; Jeremy Bentham: 1748–1832, English Jurist, founder of philosophy of utilitarianism.
• 60. Ralph Waldo Trine: 1866–1958, American author.
• 61. Woodrow Wilson: 1856–1924, president of the USA from 1913 until 1921. In an address to Congress on January 8, 1918, he outlined a “Program of World Peace,” condensed in fourteen points.
• 62. Prinz Max von Baden: 1866–1929, became German chancellor in the fall of 1918; on October 5, 1918, he directed a peace offer to President Wilson based on the latter's “Fourteen Points.”
• 63. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: 1770–1831; complete edition of Hegel's works, Berlin, 1832–1844.
• 64. Eduard von Hartmann, 1842–1906.

There are a few things I want to add to the points we have been considering. They may help to make some of the ideas on which we must base our actions more real. I am looking for ideas that are less abstract than the vast majority of ideas by which people allow themselves to be governed today. We really need such concrete ideas, for they are the only ones that enter into the realm of feeling for human beings, and therefore into real life. They are the only ideas to fire the human will and human actions.

Looking at the world today we should really consider the most striking characteristic of social life in the civilized world to be that the smaller communities of past times have given way to quite large human communities. We need not go far back in human evolution to find that social communities extended only over limited territories. The civic communities of towns formed a relative whole, and fundamentally speaking it is only now, in quite recent times, that large empires have arisen, that the empire of English-speaking peoples has come about—I have characterized this a number of times. None of us should have any illusions concerning the consequences, particularly in Central Europe. It needs the point of view of spiritual science, however, to get the right ideas about these things, ideas that fully relate to reality. The spiritual-scientific point of view makes us go back to earlier stages of human development to see that then, too, people formed certain kinds of communities, though these should not be called ‘states’—as I have said on a number of occasions—for that would cause tremendous confusion. Instead, let us find some other, more neutral term. Let us say that ‘realms’ arose. Such realms were ruled by individuals, or by particular groups. Subsequently states developed out of this, and today states are taken so much for granted that no one would think of going against them—at least in certain areas no one would go against them.

What is worse, they are so much taken for granted that people are not even inclined to think about them.

Behind this, however, lies something that unites human beings in their inner soul life with the spiritual, the divine principle, as it came to be called during different stages of earth evolution.

If we go back to prehistoric times, times that only partly extend into historical times, we find that in those prehistoric times the idea of a ruler of the realm, as we may call it—whatever words we use do not really fit those earlier ideas—was quite different from what we take it to mean today. The idea of the ruler of an earthly realm came very close to what people knew to be their idea of a god. These things inevitably must seem highly paradoxical to modern minds, though that is only because modern minds are little inclined to take serious consideration of things that existed during the past in human evolution and do not fit in with the way of thinking that has become customary in Western Europe and in its appendage, America, over the last three or four hundred years.

Of course the way a ruler of the realm was introduced to his office, at least in many empires, was very different in those early partly prehistoric times. We need only go back as far as ancient Egypt, meaning the earlier, partly prehistoric times of ancient Egypt, or as far as Chaldea, and we shall find that it was considered a matter of course that regents were prepared for their office by the forerunners of our present-day priests. People had quite concrete ideas as to how a ruler should be prepared for office by the priesthood and its institutions. They felt that with this kind of preparation the person called to be regent truly became what the Chinese, still having a faint notion of this, called the Son of Heaven. There was an awareness that someone called to rule over some region had to be made a kind of Son of Heaven. What was in people's minds was however something quite different from the one and only idea we have today when we speak of training a person or preparing them for something. You can go to great lengths to explain that one should not train people for some office or other in this world by merely implanting intellectual knowledge into their souls, but that the whole person needs to be developed; practically all our ideas today on development, education and so on tend to be abstract to an extreme degree. People have the idea that only some aspect or other of the human being should be changed or transformed to advance him in his training, his preparation for some office. No one thinks that development should be such that the individual undergoes a complete change. Above all no one thinks that something objective should enter into the soul of that individual, something that was not there before. No one has that idea. I could characterize this more or less as follows: I am talking to someone who is the product of the natural and social life of the present day. He tells me this and that, I tell him this or that. The person who speaks to me bears a name: he is the product of the usual natural and social background that people have today. The same applies to me. That is really almost the only way in which we behave towards each other nowadays, the way in which we look at each other.

In the times of which I have been speaking that would have been a very alien notion. It was above all alien to people called to hold important offices, to be leaders within the human community. The external natural background—family origins, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother and so on—was of no real concern if the people concerned had been properly prepared for their office. The things we look for and find in present-day individuals who have been raised to the highest spheres were then of no account. People felt that if they spoke to someone who had been properly trained in this respect it was not the ordinary ego that spoke to them: i.e. an ego born in some place or another, bearing the imprint of some social background or other. Instead they felt that something was speaking to them that had been made to come down from spiritual heights to take up its abode in a human individual thanks to the preparation and training given in the mystery cult. This must of course sound incredibly strange to present-day people. It is however necessary to stop harbouring confused notions about these things and to form ideas that have their basis in truth.

The idea was that education—not all training but the training of people called to high office—should enable spirits from the higher hierarchies to speak through these individuals, using them as their instruments. Those instruments were prepared by training, so that spirits of the higher hierarchies would be able to speak through them. There was general awareness of this, particularly when the population at large came to form an opinion about the identity of their ruler. Remnants of this still survive, for instance in the title Son of Heaven for the ruler of China. That was the level of human awareness in earliest Egyptian and Chaldean times. Spiritual science has established this. To the people at large their ruler was God. Basically they had no other concept of divinity. The preparation of the ruler had been such that the outer physical form was nothing, it merely made it possible for a god to move among human beings. The earliest inhabitants of what was later to become the kingdom of Egypt quite naturally accepted the fact that they were ruled by gods who walked on earth in human form. In this respect the earliest social awareness of human beings was entirely realistic. There was no recognition of a separate world beyond, of a separate spiritual world. The spiritual world existed in the same place as the world within which people moved on earth. In this world, where human beings walked the earth, not only ordinary human individuals were walking about in physical form but also gods. The divine world was right among them, made absolute and visible under the conditions regularly created through the mystery cult. When such a ruler wanted something, decreed something, it was a god who wanted it. To the minds of earliest humankind during that partly prehistoric period it would have been pointless to question whether something decreed by their ruler should or should not happen; it was after all a ‘god’ who wanted it.

Earliest humanity thus connected the spiritual hierarchies with everything that happened on earth. Those hierarchies were there in their midst; they were not something to which one first has to ascend by some kind of spiritual, inner means. No, they were present in the mysteries as the training given to physical bodies found suitable for preparation as dwelling places for spirits of the higher hierarchies, so that these might walk among human beings and be their rulers.

This may seem strange to modern minds, but modern minds will finally have to leave behind the narrow-minded views they hold today, ideas only three or four hundred years old as we know them today, and take a wider view. We cannot develop and think ahead to the future unless we broaden the tunnel vision which has evolved in almost every sphere of life. We must expand the time horizons we survey and consider larger evolutionary time spans than present-day history normally covers.

The things of the past, things that existed in historical and prehistoric evolution, do of course give way to other things as time progresses, but in certain areas they are retained. They are often retained by becoming external, continuing in an outer form and losing their inner meaning. The awareness of the godlike nature of the ruler that was a feature of earliest imperialism still comes up here or there in the present age, except that it no longer has any meaning, since mankind progresses and does not stand still.

Not long ago a Roman Catholic bishop addressed a pastoral to his diocese¹³ in which he stated nothing more and nothing less than that a Roman Catholic priest conducting an act of worship was more powerful than Christ Jesus himself. Acting as the celebrant, the priest coerced Christ Jesus, the god of Christianity, to enter into the physical world as the priest performed the act of transubstantiation. The god might be willing or not, the act of transubstantiation forced him to take the route prescribed by the priest. It is really true that very recently a pastoral referred to the sublime power of the earth-born ‘priest god’ over the ‘inferior god’ who descended from cosmic heights and walked on the earth in the flesh of Jesus. Things like this have their origin in older times and have lost their meaning in the present age. Some people representing certain confessions know very well, of course, why they keep throwing such things into human minds. They have become just as meaningless as the words modern rulers write in albums: The king's wishes are the supreme law.¹⁴ These things have happened in our times. Humanity, fast asleep, has said nothing at all about it and still says nothing now to things going on that bode ill for humankind, things one gets used to, things one does not want to see. Today we are altogether little prepared to take note of major events in human evolution.

That was a first stage in the evolution of human empires: when the ruler was the god. This way of looking at it was still very much alive in Roman times. Whichever way you may look at Nero, as a fool or a bloodhound, for the large majority of the Roman people Nero's dreadful tyranny merely made them marvel that a god could walk on earth in such a guise. Many of the citizens of imperial Rome never doubted that the figure of Nero was that of a god.

A second stage in the evolution of empires came with the transition from a ruler who was a god to one who ruled by the grace of God. During the earliest times of human evolution on the civilized earth the ruler was God. At the second stage the ruler stood for God; he was not indwelt by the god himself but inspired by God, given special grace. Everything he did would succeed because divine power—now no longer within him but in a realm close to the earthly realm—flowed into him, inspired him, filled him, and guided him in all he did.

To describe the essential nature of such a second stage ruler we have to say that the ruler was a symbol. At the first stage the ruler was a divine spirit walking on earth. At the second stage he represented what that spirit signified; he was the sign, the symbol in which the spirit came to expression. The ruler became the image of God.

The principles governing those external social relationships also came to expression in the institutions which became established. In earliest times empires were so constituted that a number of people were governed by a divine spirit. This god would be similar to them in external appearance but utterly different inside. At the second stage we find empires where the leader or leaders represent the god or gods and are symbols for them.

At the early stage of human empires discussion as the whether the ruler, the god, was acting rightly or wrongly was beside the point. At the second stage it began to be possible to think whether something he had done was right or wrong. At the early stage everything the ruler did, thought or said was right, for he was the god. Then, at the second stage, some other spiritual sphere was felt to exist side be side with the earthly realm, one that has the god, the ruler given the grace of God, within it. The power streaming into the earthly realm, giving direction and orientation, was felt to come from that other realm. The institutions and human individuals in the earthly realm were the reflection of something streaming in from the realm of the higher hierarchies.

It is interesting to find out, for example, that Dionysius the Areopagite,¹⁵ also called the pseudo-Dionysius, who was much more genuine than orthodox science imagines, presented the right theory concerning the way human empires were ruled by divine empires so that the conditions and institutions created among humans were a symbol of what existed in the divine realm. Dionysius the Areopagite wrote that there were heavenly hierarchies behind the human hierarchies on this earth. He stated very clearly that the social structure of the priestly hierarchy here on earth, from deacons and archdeacons all the way up to bishops, ought to show that the relationship of deacon to archdeacon is the same as that of angel to archangel, and so on. The earthly hierarchy should truly reflect the heavenly hierarchy. This refers to the second stage of empires. Something was able to evolve that was to govern human ideas until quite recent times. After all there existed in Central Europe until 1806 an institution that in its title gave expression to the way the heavenly and the earthly principle were seen to be one: the Holy Roman Empire, an empire seen to be based on the power of heaven. The words ‘of German nationality’ were added [to the German title] to show that the empire was also of earthly origin. The way the title evolved it is evident that a whole empire was formed in such a way that it should be seen to be the image of a heavenly institution.

Such were also the ideas behind St Augustine's City of God and Dante's work On the Monarchy.¹⁶ If only people were not so limited in their ideas they could take a wider view when reading something like Dante's work and realize that Dante, who after all must be considered a great thinker, still had ideas in the 13th and 14th centuries that are radically different from our modern ideas. If we were to take such things in historical evolution seriously we would give up those narrow ideas that do not even go back as far as Dante but are just a few hundred years old. The ideas used by people nowadays to fill their heads with illusions, wanting to understand history by merely going back as far as ancient Greece, are limited ideas. Yet it is only possible to understand the whole structure of ancient Egypt, for instance, if we know that the ancient gods still walked on earth. In the times that followed gods no longer walked on the earth, but the institutions created on earth had to be an image, a symbol, of the divine world order.

Then something arose for example like the possibility to reflect on the lawfulness of things, to reflect on such things as the fact that the human intellect can arrive at a judgement as to what is lawful and what is not—all this only became possible during the second stage of imperial development. During the earliest stage it was pointless to reflect on what was lawful and what was not. People had to look to what the ruler said, for the god lived in him, he was the god. In the second stage, human judgement could be used to determine that there is something in a spiritual realm next to our own realm that we cannot reach as physical human beings but only as human beings of soul and spirit. Then people no longer believed, as they had believed in earlier times, that the divine could unite with the whole physical human being, that a human being could indeed become a god. At most—using mystical language to define the living truth about public institutions—people believed that the human soul element could unite with the god.

Basically it is true to say that no one nowadays is able to understand the way things were said in works written and published as late as the 13th and 14th centuries unless one knows that the people of that time had quite a different awareness, a feeling that some degree of divine inspiration was alive in those who were called and trained to hold special office. Oddly enough things referring to something rather serious will often become derisory expressions at a later point in time when the evolution of humankind has progressed. Someone saying ‘God shapes the back for the burthen’ nowadays would say this more or less as a joke. Yet though it may be said today partly as a joke, in the times when empires were at their second stage of development it certainly held true and was to the forefront of people's minds. It applied not only to people but within certain limits also to what was being done. Rituals were made to be such that the actions performed in them reflected what went on in the spiritual realms. The rituals performed were spiritual events reaching across into what went on in the physical world. People very much believed the spiritual realm to be adjoining the physical realm, but they also thought that it extended across into the earthly realm and that the symbol or sign of the spiritual realm was to be found in the earthly realm.

Very gradually people ceased to believe in the validity of this. An age was to follow where this awareness of the connection between earthly and spiritual things was to fade. In the days of Wycliffe, of Huss,¹⁷ people began to dispute things which it would have been unthinkable to dispute before. They were in disagreement on the significance of transubstantiation: whether this ritual act had anything to do with what went on in spiritual worlds. When people begin to disagree about such things, old ideas are coming to an end. People no longer know what to think; yet for centuries, indeed millennia, they had known exactly what to think. It always happens that certain things normal to a particular age continue to play a role in later ages. They are then out of place, anachronistic, luciferic. That is what has happened to the great, far-reaching symbols relating to a particular age when they showed how ritual acts and the like performed on earth Were connected with divine and spiritual happenings in the world. Those symbols persisted during later ages and certain secret societies preserved them in a luciferic way. Western secret societies in particular have been preserving such ancient symbols. They are traditional in those societies, though they have lost their real content. On the one hand, then, we see certain secret societies—Freemasons, Jesuit organizations and denominational groups have arisen from these—preserving, in a way, those symbols which only had meaning in an earlier age. On the other hand we see how words preserve ideas that belonged to an earlier age in a basically luciferic way. Words used In everyday life have also lost their original substance, lost the context of a way of thinking when those words were symbols of spiritual things. For the spiritual content is gradually lost and words become empty symbols, signs without meaning.

During a third period, at a third level of empire development, there was no longer any awareness of individuals being given the grace of God, of divine elements entering into earthly events, earthly speech. The spiritual realm was now entirely in the beyond. The opposite of what had existed at the first stage of empire development now held true. During the first stage the god lived on earth, went about in human form. During the third stage one can only think of the god being present in an invisible world that is not perceptible to the senses. Everything people were able to use to express their relationship with the realm of divine spirits lost its meaning. The word ‘god’ continues to be used. When the word ‘god’ was spoken in the distant past people were looking for something that appeared in human form, walking among human beings. It is not that human beings in those very early times were materialists. Materialists only became possible once the spiritual realm had been banished beyond the sense-perceptible world. During the earliest period of human evolution the spiritual world was right there among human beings. There would have been no need for someone living in ancient Egypt during its earliest times to say: The kingdom of the divine is at hand. He would take that to be self-evident. At the time when Christ Jesus appeared among men people first had to be told: ‘The Kingdom of the gods cometh not with observation… for, behold, it is within you.¹⁸

We are now living in an age when it would be a nonsense to look to a person for anything but a straightforward development of what he was as a child, a development based on cause and effect. We live in an age when it would be sheer madness for someone to consider himself more than the straightforward further development of what was also there in his childhood. Eight thousand years ago, let us say, something was taken as a matter of course, was the general way of thinking; yet if anyone were to say the same thing today this would merely indicate that they are mad. The realities of those distant times have been reinterpreted in the modern way of thinking into that fictitious tale we call ‘history’. This spreads a veil over the radical metamorphosis we are able to discover when we consider human evolution in the light of truth. The things we often say today, things we reveal in our external life, exist because they once had relevance and were considered to be the truth. We still say things like ‘by the grace of God’—people have more or less tried to get out of the habit in recent years, but they have not succeeded very well with this—but we do not know, or pay no attention to the fact, that there was a time when this was a reality to human minds, when it was taken as a matter of course.

Here I am drawing your attention to things that give our public life its meaningless, conventional character. Things we put forward in the words we use, in our customs and indeed the way we judge issues in public life, relate to times when those words, even if they only became part of the vocabulary at a later date—they were modelled on the original language—were formed and used on quite a different basis. The words we use in public life today have been squeezed dry. With some it is immediately apparent, with others it was not apparent for a long time. In the distant past a token was hung upon a human body in magical body in magical rites, transforming it into an important magical aspect of the god walking on earth. This has become something trivial in the decorations given to people today. That is the kind of history humankind is unlikely to pursue. Not only words can become empty phrases and lose all meaning, as is the case with the most important words used in public life today; the objects hung around people's necks or pinned to their chests can show similar character in their relation to reality, like a word that is meaningless today but once had sacred meaning and substance to it.

We must realize that initially our evolution was such that an older awareness lost its substance and became empty and conventional. There can be no real new growth in our devastated public life of today unless we do so. We must look for new well-springs that will give real substance again to public life. We have no awareness of gods walking the earth in human form. We must therefore acquire the ability to recognise the spirit not in human form but in the form it has when we rise to spiritual vision. For us the gods no longer descend to sit on physical thrones. We must acquire the spiritual faculties that enable us to ascend in our vision to the thrones where gods are to be found who can only be alive to us in the spirit. We must learn to fill the abstract formulas we use with spiritual contents of our own experience. We must become able to face truths that are deeply disturbing to those who grasp them rightly. We must become able to see things as they are. Sometimes we fail to do so for periods extending over decades.

As Central Europeans we believe ourselves to be part of European civilization. What we should ask ourselves is what it is that has made our inner life, the life of our soul, so full of discord over the last fifty years or even longer. Let me say just one thing. When you look to the West you see in the first instance—we'll leave aside the rest—a nation falling into decadence, the French nation. One thing is important, however, among the French. When a member of this nation said: I am a Frenchman—this is what they have said to themselves for centuries—he said something that was in accord with the external facts; a permissible, truthful declaration made with reference to external life. Any of us who have ever talked to people who were young and German in the first half of the 19th century will be able to confirm the following. Herman Grimm¹⁹ for instance has repeatedly described what it meant, to people who were young when he was young in Germany, for someone to profess himself to be German in public life, not as an empty phrase but in reality. It would have been treason. People were Bavarians, Wurttembergians, Prussians, but to say ‘I am German’ would make them criminals. In the West there was a point to saying ‘I am a Frenchman’, people were permitted to be that in external life. It would have meant going to prison or being put beyond the pale in some other way if one had taken it into one's mind to say one was German, i.e. belonged to a united nation. People have forgotten about this now, but those are facts. And it is important to face up to these things. We shall not develop the right enthusiasm for such things, however, unless we fertilize our inner life by considering the great events of world history, seeing them in the right light—not that fabricated tale written in our handbooks and taught in our schools today, but the true history of the world that can be found by looking at things in the light of the spirit.

It is quite unthinkable for a present-day protestant Christian to consider that people once felt it to be true to say ‘the god walked on the earth and the ruler was the god’ and ‘there is no kingdom on this earth where gods are still to be found, for the ways in which one is made a god are in the realm where the supersensible dwells, within the Mystery’. In the early times of Egyptian history, which in part was still prehistoric, the Mystery was indeed something supersensible. It was only when the mysteries were made into churches that the church became the symbol for the supersensible.

Present-day humanity has no wish to look to the points of origin of its historical development. It lives like someone who has reached the age of forty-five and has forgotten what life was like as a boy or a girl, at most remembering back as far as his or her twenty-fifth year. Try and visualize what it would mean for the inner soul life of someone of forty-five to remember nothing that happened before the age of twenty-five. Yet that is the state of mind humankind is in now, it is the state of mind in which the people arise who are to be the leaders of humanity. Out of this state of mind something is attempted that is to give the orientation for a social system. The most important thing is that human beings come to see humanity as a living organism with a memory that should not be trodden to death, a memory reaching back to things that still have their effect in the present day, and because of the way they do take effect, literally ask for something new to be poured into them.

We merely need to strike this note a few times and we shall see that there is need for something in the present time that makes all the empty words that are flashing up all around come to nothing. It would be good if a sufficiently large number of of people were to realize how serious the present situation is, and out of this realization were to arrive at something that is really new. The sad thing is that People today have been given great tasks and yet would most of all like to sleep through those tasks. The particular task given to the anthroposophical movement for decades now has basically been to shake humanity out of its sleep, to point out that humanity needs to be given something today that truly changes the present state of soul to the same extent as the dreamer's state of soul changes to being fully awake and alive for the day, when he wakes in the morning.

This I intend to be the conclusion to the two aspects of history seen in the light of spiritual science I discussed during my present stay in this city. If only something could emerge from our anthroposophical movement that would truly fire our social ideas, filling them with warmth and energy. Social impulses are needed in the present age, that is so obvious when we look at events that we really should not fail to see it. These social impulses can only come to fruition if a new spirit is poured into human evolution. This should be realized particularly by the people who from one side or another come to join the anthroposophical movement. On the soil of this anthroposophical movement truthfulness and alertness are necessary, real alertness. Modern civilized society has got into the habit of being asleep in public life. Today people are so much asleep one might fall into severe doubt on seeing the external course followed by people in the pursuit of their affairs—were it not for the fact that one stands within spiritual life and perceives the course taken by spiritual affairs behind the Physical world. The external course people pursue in their events clearly spells it out that people fight shy of having any part in the search for truth in the phenomenal world. They are so glad they do not have to look at the events that are happening. You can see that when people are told of something happening somewhere today, they stand there on their two feet and give no indication of having heard something that is of profound significance for the way events will go. People hear of deeply significant things that must inevitably lead to ruin, to decline and fall, and they do not even feel indignation. Things are going on in the world, intentions are alive in German lands that should horrify people—yet they do not. Anyone incapable of being horrified at these things also lacks the power to develop a sense of truth.

It has to be pointed out that healthy indignation over things that are not healthy should be the source and origin of enthusiasm, of the new truths that are needed. It is actually less important to convey truths to people than it is to bring fiery energy into their lethargic nervous systems. Fiery energy is needed today, not mystical sleep. Longing for mystical peace and quiet is not of the essence today but rather dedication to the spirit. Union with the divine has to be actively sought today and not in mystical indolence and comfort.

This has to be pointed out. We must find a way of making it possible again for our minds to connect a divine principle with our outer reality. We shall only be able to do this if we consider without bias how people found their gods walking the earth in the earliest empires. We must find a way in which our human souls can walk in the spirit in spiritual worlds, that we may find gods again.

• 13. Prince-Archbishop Johann Baptist Katschthaler, Salzburg, Austria. Pastoral of 2 February 1905 entitled 'Die dem katholischen Priester gebiihrende Ehre' (The honour due to Catholic priests), reprinted in Carl Mirbt Quellen zur Geschichte des Pabst-rums and des rdmischen Katholizismus (Sources relating to the history of the papacy and of Roman Catholicism) 5. Aufl. Tubingen 1934, S. 497 ff. The passage relating to the powers of consecration is given below.
  
  ‘Honour your priests, for they have the power of consecration. Catholic priests have this wonderful power of consecration, Protestant pastors do not. This power of consecration, to make the Body of the Lord be present, with the precious Blood, with the whole of His sacred humanity and His divine nature in the Bread and the Wine—that is a great and sublime power, a truly extraordinary power! Where in heaven is a power like that of the Catholic priest to be found? Among the angels? Or does the Mother of God have it? Mary conceived Christ, the Son of God, in her womb and gave birth to Him in the stable in Bethlehem. Yes. But consider what happens during Holy Mass! Does not the same thing happen, as it were, when the priest raises his hands in blessing during the consecration? Christ is really and truly made to be present, to be reborn, as it were, in the Bread and the Wine. Mary bore her child in Bethlehem, wrapping it in swaddling clothes; a priest does the same, as it were, placing the wafer on the corporal cloth. Mary brought her child into the world just once. But see, a priest does this not once, but many hundreds and thousands of times, each time he celebrates the Mass. There, in the stable, the child which Mary gave to the world was small, capable of suffering and mortal. Here, on the altar, in the hands of the priest, we have Christ in His glory, not capable of suffering and also immortal, sitting in heaven to the right of the Father, glorious and triumphant, perfect in every regard. Do priests merely make the Body and Blood be present? No. They sacrifice, offering sacrifice to the Heavenly Father. This is the same sacrifice that Christ brought by shedding His blood on Calvary and bloodlessly at the Last Supper. There the eternal High Priest Jesus Christ sacrificed His Flesh, His Blood and His very Life to the Heavenly Father; here, at the Mass, He does the same through his representative, the Catholic priest. He ordained priests to take His place so that they might continue the same sacrifice that He had brought. He has transferred to them the authority over His sacred humanity, giving them power over His body, as it were. A Catholic priest is able not only to make Him be present on the altar, lock Him up in the tabernacle, take Him out again and give Him to the faithful to eat, he is actually able to offer Him, the Son of God become Man, as a bloodless sacrifice for the living and the dead. Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father by whom heaven and earth were created and who sustains the whole world, submits to the Catholic priests in this respect.'=’ (Italics as in the original text given by Mirbt.)
• 14. ‘Suprema lex regis voluntas’. William II (see note 10) wrote this in the Golden Book of the City of Munich. See also J. von Kiirenberg War alles falsch? Das Leben Kaiser Wi/helms II. (Was it all wrong? A life of the emperor William II. Translated into English and published in 1954, but exact English title not known), Basle-Olten 1940; German edition S. 190.
• 15. Dionysius the Areopagite (an Athenian converted by St Paul): ‘ the Heavenly and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies' and The hierarchy of the church,’ in Die angeblichen Schriften des Areopagiten Dionysius, übersetzt and mit Abhandlungen begleitet von J.G. V. Engelhardt (Writings ascribed to Dionyius the Areopagite, translated and provided with commentaries by J.G.V. Engelhardt), part 2, Sulzbach 1823.
• 16. Aurelius Augustinus, De Civitate Dei. libri XII.
  
  Dante Alighieri, De Monarchia.
• 17. Wycliffe, John, English reformer.
  
  Hus, or Huss, John, Bohemian reformer, burned when the Council of Constance condemned his and Wycliffe's writings.
• 18. TN. Luke 17:20-21. Rudolf Steiner was quoting from the Luther Bible, but saying 'gods' instead of 'God'.
• 19. Grim, Herman, Fragtmente (vol. 1), Berlin & Stuttgart, S. 212: ‘For the people of today [1891], it is no longer the Wars of Liberation fought against Napoleon I that are the last important historical event in their lifetime, but the Wars of Liberation fought against Austria and France in the 1860s and 1870s. We have been a nation where children had to be taught that they would never be permitted to act freely in influencing the destinies of their country. Today, however, Germans are compelled to act in this way. Fifty years ago it would have been unthinkable to make it part of education to tell children that they would one day be citizens of a great united German Empire and that their duties towards God, the Emperor and their country would one day also consist in having to elect someone to represent them in a German Parliament, basing their choice on their personal judgement of the country's needs. Just to utter such things would have sounded like high treason and might have ruined the life of the person who uttered them.’

You will easily believe what very deep satisfaction it gives me to take up work again among you all on this building of ours. It is a fact that anyone coming into intimate contact with the whole aura of this building today would be able to receive the impression, as a result not only of deep reflection but also of quite superficial thought; that something connected with the most significant, the most weighty tasks of man's future is bound up with this building. And it goes without saying that after long, forced absence one is profoundly satisfied on finding oneself once more at this place where this building stands as a symbol of our cause.

To this I would add that particularly for me, my dear friends, it is a matter of infinite gratification every time I now return after long absence to be able to see how beautifully and significantly the work on the building has progressed through the active devotion of the workers. In these months of my recent absence in particular, when work has been carried out under such difficult conditions, part of the artistic work has gone forward in an unprecedented way; it has made progress in the spirit that should permeate the whole.

With deep pleasure too, I see, as a consequence of the spirit in our work, as consequence of all that is originating here, the real feeling of solidarity among many of our friends—the genuine feeling towards all that this building incorporates. What reveals itself to the soul when one lets this whole matter renew its effect upon one is that here we have a place with which is united such a true sentiment in a number of the friends of our spiritual movement, so sincere a sentiment that it promises a continuance of the best impulses in this movement for the future of mankind for which they are so necessary. In the work devoted to this building there is already something that could serve as a model for all that, in common with what we call today the Anthroposophical Society, is actually intended.

On the other hand, I have a strong feeling that what is favourable, what is so significantly good found here in our building, in the harmony of human work, and human feeling consists in this building being able through its objective nature to free what our movement wills from the subjective interests of individual men.

Concerning what we have just touched upon, my dear friends, there have been indeed, and still are, in all similar societies as well as in the Anthroposophical Society, certain remarkable views, that to be more exact, are remarkable illusions. A great deal is preached about selflessness and universal love between men; this is often, however, a mere mask for certain artful egoistic interests of individual human beings. It true that these individuals do not know that this is a question of mere egoistic interest; in face of their own consciousness they are innocent nevertheless, the fact remains.

The building itself, however, claims from a relatively large number of our friends a selfless devotion to something objective, to something standing out as a symbol of our cause, and free from all that is personal. And what is connected with our building can to that extent very well be, the model for what is sought in our Movement.

My dear friends! When, as today, we greet each other again, we need especially to dwell upon what if fruitful and all-embracing in the spiritual movement of ours. Meeting thus again, we need to reflect upon how earnestly we can believe that however it may happen—and the manner in which it does so depends upon how conditions take their course—man will never find his way out of the appalling blind alley into which he has come today until he decides in some way to seek a starting point for fruitful work, fruitful action, within a spiritual movement such as ours. We shall certainly not insist egoistically that the truth is to be found only in our small confined circle where it is recognised, through the very nature of the matter, that man has landed himself in the present terrible situation by neglecting his own spiritual substance. We should be able to recognise ourselves as men who are united in those ideas that alone can lead mankind out of this blind alley.

In the soul of modern men there is indeed very much that is not clear. When it has been possible to renew our knowledge here or there about the needs prevailing in our spiritual movement the following may be said on one hand: Yes indeed, the number of souls of those who are thirsting for spiritual life in our sense has very greatly increased. The longing for such spiritual life can well be said to have become infinitely greater; the attention given to our impulses has recently become undeniably greater, at least in those spheres that have been outwardly accessible to me in these last years and especially in recent months. It is not without meaning that I remark upon this distinct increase and strengthening of man's longing for the spiritual life. It is true that over against this strengthening and sharpening of the desire for spirit life there stands the terrible confusion from which the greater part of mankind is suffering. This terrible confusion among men comes about through the outworn ideas, or it would be better to say the outworn lack of ideas, the easy-going comfort where all keen vigorous thought concerned, the comfort that comes from the laxity, the indolence, with which during many decades, the thought-life on earth has been carried. This laxity, this laziness, leads souls astray in the present yearning after spiritual life. On the one hand, men are immersed in a genuine longing for spirituality, for strong supersensible impulses. On the other hand, these souls are fettered by the old powers that do not wish to withdraw from the scene of human activity, but should be able to see from this very activity how far they are removed from having any further place there. It might be said that one finds everywhere this dark impression, this impression of a cleft.

In many places in connection with repeated lectures with lantern slides, I have talked a great deal with our members about the Group that will take the chief place in our building. It could be seen on the one hand what powerful impulses have actually entered those souls who, by reason of the conditions during past years, have not even had a glimpse of what is going on here. A new human understanding is already arising from the very way in which what is ahrimanic and what is luciferic has been thought out in connection with what belongs to the Christ and has been represented and revealed in our Group. It makes a deep impression on souls when they are approached by all that is thus given. On the other hand, however, my dear friends, we find everywhere the obstructive influences of what is widespread among men in the remnants of what is old, rotten, in their so called cultural life.

This could be seen particularly in what might be called in a real sense the humorous frame of mind with which the lectures were received that were given at the art centre of our friend Herr von Bernus in Munich, when I tried to show a large audience the inner impulses active here in our conception of art. That did indeed arouse interest in people to an extraordinary degree, for I held lectures of this kind in Munich in February and in May and had to give each of them twice. Herr von Bernus assured me there were so many enquiries that I should have been able to give four times over each of the public lectures dealing with the principles of my conception of art, as they have found expression in the building here. Interest was certainly there, but it goes without saying one could find less reason to be pleased in the agreement shown with what was said by the critic of a Munich newspaper, which might be called a showing of teeth though politely and humorously. It was particularly facetious since inner resentment made itself felt against what could not be understood. It was all—not spoken,—but spat out, if you forgive the inelegant expression. And it was shown up by the very interest aroused by the matter where honesty and sincerity spoke in opposition to what was otherwise noticeable in this artistic centre (that is Munich, it goes without saying; it is a well-known fact). Thus was shown how in this centre of artistic activity the most intelligible as well as the unintelligible stuff was talked... It is just in this sort of discrepancy that we get an example of how today the two streams of which I have been speaking are present, and how we need to stand consciously within what is essential and important, towards which we must struggle for the sake of the world and its future.

I am certainly not saying all this because when our matters have publicity anywhere I would strive for what is called a “good press” for the moment we had a “ good press” I should think there must be something wrong, something of ours must have been untrue.

All these things are suitable for calling up in us a consciousness that it is very necessary for us to take a decided stand on the grounds of our cause. For nothing could promote greater confusion among us than our wishing to make any kind of compromise with—well with what the external world would consider it right for us to do. In what we do it is only towards the principles for which we stand that must look for guidance.

Another example of what we have been discussing, less directly connected with our cause, nevertheless connected inwardly, is the recent increasing interest shown in the most varied places for Eurythmy. And when we who were present remember how Eurythmy was received particularly in one place, where it had scarcely been seen before, it was partly something entirely new to the audience, namely in Hamburg, we have really to remember this reception with the deepest satisfaction. The significance of the impulses going out from even an affair of that kind was especially evident in Hamburg. People were there who to all intents and purposes were witnessing a proper performance of Eurythmy for the first time. And the possibility will yet arise perhaps for Eurythmy to be performed publicly. It is just at this juncture, however, that we must stand on the very firmest ground with our cause and do nothing that is not entirely consistent with it.Otherwise, my dear friends, it would soon be seen that, from a certain point of view, it must not be thought that I shall yield when some particular matter is in question that depends upon me. Most of you already know that where no principle is concerned, when some purely human affair comes to the fore, it goes without saying that I am always in it all with best of you. When it is a question, however, of approaching the boundary where any principle whatever has to be forsworn—even in the smallest degree—I shall show myself inflexible. Therefore, at the present time, when so much dancing can be seen—for there is dancing everywhere, it is quite dreadful, if you live in a town any night you join in a dance evening—when there is show-dancing everywhere, if it should be thought (I do not say all this without good reason; although I do not specify any particular instance, I have good reason to speak) if it should be thought that by giving public performances of Eurythmy, we meant to identify ourselves with any kind of journalistic stunt to put forward some kind of claim for attention, then I should take precautions against this in the most determined manner. A feeling for what is in good taste must be forthcoming solely out of our cause.

You see my dear friends, we have sometimes also to remember, especially on meeting again, to conduct according to the standard of spiritual impulses the necessary direct activity resulting from the will. These spiritual impulses will have to fight against a great deal of what today we can no longer call prejudice, for things work too powerfully be described by such a weak term. I do not say in a conceited, egoistical way “We” have to fight, but these impulses will have to fight against many different things. Now over and over again we have to refer to the terrible malady of our age, that consists in lack of control where the life of thinking is concerned. For, rightly conceived, the life of thought is already a spiritual life. It is because men give so little heed to their life of thinking that they seldom find their way into the spiritual worlds.

There is one thing upon which I must repeatedly touch from the most varied sides, namely, what an appalling value is put today upon the mere content of thoughts. The content of thoughts, however, is what is of least importance! The content of thoughts—Look! a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat, this cannot be gainsaid. Even though a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat, however, when you put it into suitable, good, fruitful ground you get a juicy ear, and when you, put it into ground that is barren and stony, you get either nothing at all or a rotten ear. But each time you are dealing with a grain of wheat.

Let us speak of something other than a grain of wheat. Let us say instead of ‘grain of wheat ’, ‘idea of free man’ which is so much discussed today. Some will say ‘idea of free man’ is the ‘idea of free man.’ It is just the same as a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat. But there is a difference in whether ‘idea of free man’ flourishes in a heart, in soul where this heart and soul is fruitful ground, or whether the ‘idea of free man’, exactly the same idea with the same foundation, flourishes in Woodrow Wilson's head! It matters not in the least if a grain of wheat is sown in stony ground or right into the rock, and it is just true that all the so called beautiful ideas that we are given in the programmes of Woodrow Wilson signify nothing if they come out of his head. But this is something that modern man comes to understand with such infinite difficulty, for he holds the view that it is the content of a programme, the content of the idea, has as little significance as the germinating power of a grain of wheat before it is planted in fertile ground.

To think with reality! Man has the greatest need of this. And something else is connected with the present unreality in thinking namely, men are taken unawares by almost all that happens. Indeed one might ask when has that not occurred in these last years?. Men are surprised by everything, and they will go on being more and more surprised. But they will not have anything to do with what is really working in the world, and this today makes it impossible for them to bring any foresight to bear on their affairs.

Working merely with ideas, one can from any side base anything upon anything. If one works with the content of ideas alone it is actually possible to base everything on anything. This is also something it is necessary to see into increasingly and ever more deeply; it is necessary but there is little will for it.

Generally, when such things are spoken of, and examples of them given, one meets with no real response because the examples seem too grotesque. But our whole life of soul and spirit today fairly hums with these things that give so grotesque an impression on being brought to light—my dear friends, they buzz around us! I know that many of you may feel resentment if I give you a really outstanding idea as an example—I will, however, quote this instance.

Now it is a case here of a University professor, an old respected professor at a university, who lit on the fact that Goethe during his long life was attracted by various women. Yes, our professor came up against this idea and took upon himself the task of making a real study of both the life of Goethe and that of the spirits connected with him. And we see how he obviously makes it his business, in spite of not being professor at a European university, to go to work as thoroughly as a mid-European professor usually does, and he made to pass before his soul the whole procession of Goethe's ladies in their relation to Goethe. What did he discover? I can quote this for you almost in his very words.

He discovered that each woman Goethe loved momentarily during his life can be said to have been for him a kind of Belgium, the neutrality of which he violated and then bemoaned that his heart bled for having been obliged to assail shining innocence. Neither did he forget to assert, each time, like the German Chancellor, that this sphere of violated neutrality had deserved a better fate but that he, Goethe, could not do otherwise since his destiny and the rights of his spiritual life obliged him to sacrifice the loved one—yes, even to offer up the pain of his very heart on the altar of the duty he owed to his own immortal ego.

Now I could give you here many other ideas that come in this book. You might ask for, what purpose? But, my dear friends, there is very good reason. For you find this kind of idea all over the world. The ideas of modern men are like that! And it is not without reason that such ideas should show themselves in literature where the essence of human thinking appears. This conception is upheld by Santayana, a professor at Harvard University in America, a much esteemed Spaniard who is, however, completely Americanised. His book was written during this present catastrophe, or at least Boutroux has translated it into French during the war. Shortly before this Boutroux gave a lecture in Heidelberg in which he eulogised German Philosophy in the most flattering terms! The book is called The Errors of German Philosophy and is entirely characteristic of present-day thinking. The appearance of this book was certainly not just a casual event but is very characteristic of modern thought and compares man with what is very far removed from him, with the same facility we find in Professor Santayana when he compares Belgian neutrality with Goethe's treatment of various women. For, if you have eyes to see it, this kind of thinking meets you in every sphere of so-called modern science. It is a fact; you come across it everywhere.

Now it is just the task of the spiritual impulse to which our Anthroposophy is devoted, to make a stand against three fundamental evils in the present so-called culture of mankind. There is nothing for it but to fight against these fundamental evils. One fundamental evil shows itself in the sphere of thinking, another in the sphere of feeling and the third fundamental evil is seen in the sphere of the will.

In the sphere of thinking we have gradually reached the point where men can only think in the way the thinking takes its course when it is strictly bound up with the brain. But this thinking, so closely connected with the brain, this thinking that refuses to make a flight to the spiritual, is condemned in all circumstances to be narrow and confined. And the most significant symptom of present scientific thinking in particular is narrowness and limitation. In the field of his narrowness and limitation great things can certainly be done. It is done for example, in modern science. But the thought applied to science today has no need of genius, my dear friends! Thus, narrowness, limitation, is what must be striven against, especially in the intellectual sphere. Today I will simply give these things in outline, but later we shall be describing them more in detail.

In the sphere of feeling it is a question of men having gradually arrived at a certain philistinism—we can only call it so—philistinism, lack of generosity, and being bound to a certain confined circle. It is the chief characteristic mark of the philistine that he is incapable of being interested in the big affairs of the world. Village pump politicians are always philistines. Naturally, in the sphere of Spiritual Science this does not suffice, for here one cannot confine oneself to a narrow circle, we have to be interested in what is outside the earth, therefore in a very wide circle indeed. And people get quite annoyed at the mere suggestion that there should be a desire to know something about a circle wide enough to embrace Moon, Sun, Saturn. In all spheres, however, philistinism must soften into non-philistinism if Spiritual Science is to penetrate. Sometimes that is not convenient or comfortable, for it means facing up unreservedly to the matter. It demands a more unprejudiced facing up to the matter.

Recently an awkward thing happened in our midst—but I stopped it because otherwise perhaps—well, nothing actually happened but something could have happened. Now you will remember the Zurich lectures of last fear; among various examples I gave then of how Darwinism can be overcome through the growth of natural science itself, I pointed to the excellent book by Oskar Hertwig called Des Werden der Organismen (How Organisms come into Being). Here, and every time the opportunity occurred, I referred to this excellent book. Very soon after this work a shorter book appeared by this same Oskar Hertwig, in which the same Oskar Hertwig spoke about the social, the ethical and the political life. And I then thought to myself: it may happen that some of our members having heard me call Oskar Hertwig's book about organisms an outstanding book will assume that this second volume is excellent also, when it is actually a worthless book, a book written by a man who in this particular sphere—in the sphere of the social life, the ethical life and the political life—cannot put into shape a single orderly thought. I feared lest certain of our members might already have judged that since it came from Hertwig this book too would have some kind of merit. So I had to step in and again whenever I could seize the opportunity I availed myself of it to point out that I considered this second book of the author, who had previously written so well about natural science, to be the worthless and foolish effort of a man who had no ability to speak of the things of which he spoke here.

Our Spiritual Science does not admit of one thing conveniently following from another, without each new fact being confronted and judged impartially. Spiritual Science demands from men actual proof of the concrete nature of every single case. Philistinism is something that will vanish when the impulse of Spiritual Science spreads. So much for the sphere of feeling.

And in the sphere of the will there is something that recently has particularly and in the widest sense taken hold of mankind, something I can only term lack of skill. As a rule, a man today is very able within the narrow circle of what he learns, but he is considerably inept about everything outside this circle. One comes across people who can't even sew on a button—that is only one example. There are men who are unable to sew on a button! Lack of skill in anything beyond a narrow circle is what is specially prevalent in the sphere of the will. Whoever takes what we call Spiritual Science with his whole soul, and not just with abstract thinking, will see that it makes a man more dexterous and fits him actually to spread his interest over a wider area, to extend his will over a wider world. Naturally it is just where this lack of skill is concerned that spiritual science is still too weak; but the more intensively we take it the more will it contend with unskillfulness.

This is what confronts the present-day acceptance of Spiritual Science with what might be called a trinity: narrowness in the intellectual sphere; philistinism, which means a lack of generosity, in the sphere of feeling; unskillfulness in the sphere of will.

And the three are loved nowadays even if loved unconsciously. Nothing in the world today is more loved than unskillfulness, philistinism and narrow-mindedness. Because they are loved it will not be easy for men to progress to the wide views to which they must come—to the way in which we must look at all that is connected with the names Ahriman and Lucifer. And it is just here that something important must understood today. For today among many other things there is an important transition from the luciferic to the ahrimanic. And as this transition is shown not simply elsewhere but also here in Switzerland one may well speak of it here. In this region the first has perhaps less significance owing to the very habits of the Swiss. The second, however, shows every prospect of attaining more importance precisely in this country. Where certain things are concerned mankind is indeed in a state of transition from faults that are luciferic to those that are ahrimanic, from luciferic impulses that run counter to human development to ahrimanic counter-impulses.

Now certain impulses of earlier days holding good in educational matters were of a thoroughly luciferic nature. Ambition and vanity were counted on in educational matters. (All of us when young, with the exception of the youngest among us, have known this quite well.) Perhaps this applies less to Switzerland but elsewhere it is pretty prevalent—this reckoning on ambition and vanity—orders, titles, and so on and so forth! Some people's whole career was based on the luciferic impulses of vanity and ambition, on the being worth more than other men. Just try to think back to how educational affairs were indeed built up on such luciferic impulses.

At the present time there is an endeavour to put ahrimanic impulses in the place of those that are luciferic. Today they hide themselves behind the elegant term “ability tests”. In the ahrimanic sphere this corresponds to what in the luciferic sphere was boasting about vanity and ambition even among children. Today there is an endeavour to seek out those the most gifted, or those who apart from that are most successful in class; out of these again individuals are taken. Among these gifted ones tests are made, intelligence tests, memory tests, perception tests and so on. This is something very suited to the Swiss disposition. And should the luciferic play a very small part here, the ahrimanic shows itself nicely in bud in the understanding for these ability tests. For these ability tests proceed from the intelligence, from science, from the present-day psychology of the learned. Then these gifted ones who are to be tested are made to sit down and are given the written words: murdered, looking-glass, the murderer's victim. And they sit there, poor lambs, in front of the three words murderer, looking-glass, the murderer's victim, and are supposed to look for a connecting link between them. One child finds that the murderer steals upon his victim, but the victim has a looking-glass in which the murderer is reflected so that the victim is able to save himself. So much for the first child. His gift of perception takes him as far as connecting the three words in this way.

Now comes another:—A murderer is creeping on his victim and sees himself in a looking-glass. His face appears to him in it as the face of somebody with a bad conscience, so he leaves his victim on account of seeing the reflection of his own face. That is the second child.

The third child makes yet another combination. A murderer comes creeping, he finds a mirror and falls against it so that the mirror falls down with a terrible noise, it makes a regular disturbance. The victim hears the noise and is in time to defend himself against the murderer.

The last child is the most talented! The first only found the nearest combination of ideas; the second an obvious matter of morals; the third child found a very complicated connection of ideas, and this one is the most talented!—That is more or less how it is. When describing things briefly one naturally gives them a little colouring of one's own. But this is how the ability of children is henceforward going to be tested to find out who is the most talented.

One thing is certain, my dear friends—if the men who invent these methods would just think of the great people they revere, Helmholtz for instance, and so on, Newton and so on, these great ones would one and all, if given these tests, have been looked upon as the most untalented little rascals. Nothing would have come of it. For Helmholtz who is certainly considered by those who give these tests today as a very great physicist—as I think you will agree—was a hydrocephalic and not at all gifted in his youth, and so on and so forth.

What is it that people want to test? Simply the outer organism, entirely what may be counted as the physical instrument of man, what is purely ahrimanic in human nature. If ever the fruits of these ability tests are to come to anything, more ghastly thought-pictures will arise than those that have led to the present human catastrophe. When, however, one speaks today about anything that may lead to catastrophic events in perhaps a hundred years, this does not interest man. For we live now in this transition from a luciferic educational system to an educational system that is ahrimanic; and we must belong to those who understand how to see clearly into such matters:

Men must change what is active force for the future into forces of the present. For this is what is demanded from us today—to confront concrete reality in a true, genuine, unprejudiced way.

Here one may have very strange experiences. I do not remember if I have already mentioned here a very interesting experience of mine. There are writings of Woodrow Wilson's—one about “Freedom”, another just called “Literature”. These writings have been very much admired—are still very much admired. In the publication called “Literature” an interesting lecture appears again which Woodrow Wilson once gave about the historical evolution of America. And elsewhere, too, interesting lectures by Woodrow Wilson have been repeated having wide historic standpoints. And reading these writings I had an interesting experience. In them one finds isolated sentences which appeared to me extraordinarily familiar yet certainly not copied from anywhere—certainly not copied they nevertheless seemed to me wonderfully familiar. And the idea soon struck me that these sentences of Woodrow Wilson's might just well have been written by Herman Grimm, that quite a number of these sentences indeed are found word for word in Grimm. Herman Grimm I love; Woodrow Wilson—Well, you know by now that I do not exactly love him! Nevertheless I cannot on that account conceal the objective fact that where the content of the subject is concerned one could simply take over whole sentences from Herman Grimm's lectures and articles and transpose them into those of Wilson—and, vice versa, transpose sentences of Wilson's into the works of Herman Grimm. Here are two people who as far as the actual text is concerned are saying just the same thing. We have, however, to learn today that when two people say the same thing it is not the same! For the interesting fact meets us that Herman Grimm's sentences are personally striven for, bit by bit they are wrenched from the soul. The sentences of Woodrow Wilson that sound so similar come from a kind of characteristic frenzy. The man is possessed by a subconscious ego forcing these sentences into the conscious life.

Whoever can judge of such things realises that this is the point here! A grain of wheat is a grain of wheat: The difference, however, lies in where it is sown, in what kind of soil. There is a difference in whether an idea becomes so much part of a personality because he has striven for it bit by bit in his own particular way, or whether one gets the idea by being possessed by the subconscious, everything sounding out of a possessed subconscious, out of a consciousness that is possessed by the subconscious.

Thus it is a question today of understanding that the content of thoughts, the content of programmes, are not of importance—the important thing is the livingness of the life lived by mankind.

My dear friends! We can teach materialistic philosophy, we can teach the philosophy of mere ideas; we can teach a science that is merely materialistic, and in this merely materialistic science become a most excellent European teacher, a credit to the university and a good citizen of the State. The type is not so rare, I fancy you can find them anywhere, these ornaments and lights of science, who at the same time are quite exemplary good citizens; one can well be this, my dear friends! But take some ideas, I should say an idea of a definite kind, let us take as a trivial idea the struggle for existence, for instance, or those ideas that are advocated by more peaceable people such as Oskar Hertwig, and so on, or ideas upheld by Spencer, Mill, Boutroux or Bergson who certainly are not wishing to press forward to the spiritual life, but are confined to the philosophy of mere ideas. But still more, take the materialistic ideas of science, take these ideas! It is true they might be able to spring up in the brain of the good subjects of the State. Very well. But, my dear friends, a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat; nevertheless it makes a difference whether it grows in soil that is fertile for it or in rocky soil, and it makes a difference whether these scientific ideas which can be striven for in Europe as a credit to science, and hold good in the universities, thrive in the brains of the university students, or whether they spring up in the brain of a man whose brother already as a young man at the end of the eighties was counted a shining light in science at the Petersburg laboratory... Such facts certainly like a flash of lightning illumine things that are working at the present time! Take this young man who was there in the Petersburg laboratory about the year already a shining light in science, full of productive ideas in chemistry with a medal—a very rare thing—distinguished by this special medal from all those working with him, and highly esteemed even as a young man—and suddenly he disappears! Even marked out by the university authorities—he is suddenly no longer there! In all manner of roundabout ways his colleagues have to find out that meanwhile he has been hanged for taking part in a conspiracy against the reactionary Alexander III. It makes a difference whether the same idea enters the brain of a worthy university professor of Western Europe, or the brain of the brother of the man who was hanged under such conditions. When it enters the brain of this brother it changes this brother into a Lenin—for the hanged mans brother is Lenin—then this idea becomes the driving force behind all that you now see in Eastern Europe.

Idea is idea, as grain of wheat is grain of wheat; one has, however, to realise whether something is the same idea that arises either in the brain of a university professor or in the brain of the brother of this man they hanged. We must have the will to see into the background of existence where lie the actual impulses behind events. And we must have the courage to reject all the empty nonsense about programmes, ideas, sciences, of those who believe in them. Something depends on what they uphold. This or that may be upheld according to its content, nevertheless it is of consequence in what sphere of actual life what is thus upheld lies, just as it is of consequence where the grain of wheat falls, whether in fertile or unfertile ground. In every sphere man must find the way out of the abstraction that in the present grave conditions is everywhere leading to illusion or to chaos; he must find the way to the reality that can be found in spirituality alone! And however long it be, this is the only road by which man can find his way out of the present confusion to what can bless and heal him.

This is what should be written on our hearts, my dear friends, something in which we can all be united. this is something with which we should greet each other in earnest, associating ourselves in this knowledge with what must be the cure for man's failings. For it is possible to cure them. But, my dear friends, this may not be done with quack remedies, they must be healed by something the lack of which has brought mankind into this chaos.

Leninism would never have taken hold of the East had not materialistic science—not always recognised as such—been taught in the West. For what has been produced in the East is the direct child of materialistic science. It is just a child of materialistic science. Through Karl Marx a changeling has arisen; the real child of materialistic science already exists in the East. But we must have the will really to see into these things.

This, my dear friends, is as it were the background against which our building is being erected. And individual men who work here at this building think about it quite apart from the ideas today affecting men in so many lands. We can well imagine that outside, in other countries, there may be people who consider that men are living here who keep aloof from what concerns the world and, as these people believe, should concern it. It is easy to imagine people looking reproachfully at this place. Those who have their whole heart and soul in this building need not worry themselves about being thus reproached. For even if this building does not perhaps fulfil its task, if it never reaches its goal, what works on the building, my dear friends, and what proceeds from those working with devotion on the building, is today the most important thing of all; it is what must rescue men from everything into which they have fallen. And when people outside believe that here men are working with no thought for the task of present-day mankind, the answer must be that here we are working on what is of supreme importance today, on what is preeminently essential, only others know nothing of it, it is something of which as yet they are ignorant. But the important point is that mankind will want to know something of what is happening here.

Once again let it be emphasised. It is not important whether this building attains its goal—although it would be good were it to do so. What is important is that this building should be worked upon out of certain ideas that men have discovered for this work. It is not the content of these ideas but the way in which they live that gives them their impulses for the future, whereas the ideas so many believe in today are simply and solely ideas that incline towards the grave, ideas of a former age which are passing into dissolution and are ripe for dissolution.

I have already indicated a few of the symptomatic forces that play a part in the development of contemporary history. I have only time to discuss a few of these impulses. To discuss them all—or even the most significant—would take us too far. I have been asked to give special attention to specific impulses of a symptomatic nature. This can be deferred until next week when I will willingly speak of those symptoms which have special reference to Switzerland and at the same time I will attempt to give a sketch of Swiss history.

Today, however, I propose to continue the studies we have already undertaken. I concluded my lecture yesterday with a picture, albeit a very inadequate picture, of the development in recent times of one of the most significant Symptoms of contemporary history—socialism. Now for many who are earnestly seeking to discover the real motive forces of evolution, this social, or rather socialist movement occupies the focus of attention; apart from socialism they have never really considered the Claims of anything else. Consequently people have failed in recent times to give adequate attention to the very important influence of something which tends to escape their notice. Even where they searched for new motives they paid no attention to those of a spiritual nature. If we ask how far people were aware of the impulses characteristic of modern evolution we can virtually discount from the outset those personalities who in the nineteenth century, and more especially in the twentieth century, were largely oblivious of contemporary evolution, who belonged to those circles which were indifferent to contemporary trends. The historians of the old upper classes were content to plough the old furrows, to record the genealogy of dynasties, the history of wars and perhaps other related material. It is true that studies in the history of civilization have been written, but these studies, from Buckle to Ratzel, take little account of the real driving forces of history. At the same time the proletariat was thirsting for knowledge and felt an ever-increasing desire for education. And this raised the three questions I mentioned yesterday. But the proletariat lacked the will to explore the more subtle interrelations of historical development. Consequently, up to the present, a historical symptom that has not been sufficiently emphasized is the historical significance of the natural scientific mode of thinking.

One can of course speak of the scientific mode of thinking in terms of its content or in relation to the transformation of modern thinking. But it is important to consider in what respect this scientific thinking has become a historical symptom like the others I have mentioned—the national impulse, the accumulation of insoluble political problems, etcetera. In fact, since the beginning of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, the scientific mode of thinking has steadily increased amongst wide sections of the population. It is a mistake to imagine that only those think scientifically who have some acquaintance with natural science. That is quite false; in fact the reverse is true. Natural scientists think scientifically because that is the tendency of the vast majority of people today. People think in this way in the affairs of daily life—the peasant in the fields, the factory worker at his bench, the financier when he undertakes financial transactions. Everywhere we meet with scientific thinking and that is why scientists themselves have gradually adopted this mode of thought. It is necessary to rectify a popular misconception on this subject. It is not the mode of thinking of scientists or even of monistic visionaries that must engage our attention, but the mode of thinking of the general public. For natural science cannot provide a sufficiently powerful counterpoise to the universalist impulse of the church of Rome. What provides this counterpoise is a universal thinking that is in conformity with the laws of nature. And we must study this impulse as symptom in relation to the future evolution of modern man.

Text-books of history, rather thoughtlessly, usually date the birth of modern times from the discovery of America and the invention of gunpowder and printing, etcetera. If we take the trouble to study the course of recent history we realize that these symptomatic events—the discovery of America, the invention of gunpowder, and the art of printing, etcetera—did in fact inspire seamen and adventurers to pioneer voyages of exploration, that they popularized and diffused traditional knowledge, but that fundamentally they did not change the substance of European civilization in the ensuing centuries. We realize that the old political impulses which were revived in the different countries nonetheless remained the same as before because they were unable to derive any notable benefit from these voyages of discovery. In the newly discovered countries they simply resorted to conquest as they had formerly done in other territories: they mined and transported gold and so enriched themselves. In the sphere of printing they were able increasingly to control the apparatus of censorship. But the political forces of the past were unable to derive anything in the nature of a decisive impulse from these discoveries which were said to mark the birth of modern times. It was through the fusion of the scientific mode of thinking—after it had achieved certain results—with these earlier inventions and discoveries in which science had played no part that the really significant impulse of modern times arose. The colonizing activities of the various countries in modern times would be unthinkable without the contributions of modern science. The modern urge for colonization was the consequence of the achievements of natural science in the technical field. It was only possible to conquer foreign territories, as colonization was destined to do with the aid of scientific inventions, with the application of scientific techniques. These colonizing activities therefore first arose in the eighteenth century when natural science began to be transformed into technics.

Applied science marks the beginning of the machine age, and with it a new era of colonization which gradually spreads over the whole world. With technics an extremely important impulse of modern evolution is born in the Consciousness Soul. Those who understand the determinative factors here are aware that the impulses behind worldwide colonial expansion, that these colonizing activities and aspirations are directly related to the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. This epoch, as you know, will end in the third millenium, to be followed by the epoch of the Spirit Self, and will as the result of colonization bring about a different configuration of mankind throughout the world. Now the epoch of the Consciousness Soul recognizes that there are so-called civilized and highly civilized men, and others who are extremely primitive—so primitive that Rousseau was captivated by their primitive condition and elaborated his theory of the ‘noble savage.’ In the course of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul this differentiation will cease—how it will cease we cannot now discuss in detail. But it is the function of the Consciousness Soul to end this differentiation which is a heritage from the past.

Armed with this knowledge we see the connection between wars such as the American Civil War and modern colonizing activities in their true light. When we bear in mind the importance of these colonizing activities for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul then we gain insight into the full significance of isolated symptoms in this field. And these colonizing activities are inconceivable without the support of scientific thinking.

We must really give heed to this scientific thinking, if, from the point of view of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, we wish to penetrate to the true reality of human evolution. It is a characteristic of this modern scientific thinking that it can only apprehend the ‘corpse’ of reality, the phantom. We must be quite clear about this, for it is important. The scientific method starts from observation and proceeds to experimentation, and this applies in all spheres. Now there is a vast difference between the observation of nature and the knowledge which is confirmed by experimental proof. Observation of nature—with different nuances—was common to all epochs. But when man observes nature he becomes one with nature and shares in the life of nature. But, strangely enough, this communion with nature blunts the consciousness to some extent. One cannot live the life of nature and at the same time know or cognize in the sense in which the modern Consciousness Soul understands this term. One cannot do both at the same time any more than one can be asleep and awake at the same time. If one wishes to live in communion with nature one must be prepared in a certain sense to surrender one's consciousness to nature. And that is why the observation of nature cannot fathom its secrets, because when man observes nature his consciousness is somewhat dimmed and the secrets of nature escape him. In order to apprehend the secrets of nature he must be alive to the super-sensible.

One cannot develop the Consciousness Soul in a semiconscious state, a state of diminished consciousness, and therefore modern natural science quite instinctively attempts to dispense with observation and to depend upon experimentation for its findings. Experiments have been undertaken even in the fields of biology and anthropology. Now in experimentation the first consideration is to select and assemble the material, to determine the order of procedure. In experimental embryology for example, the order of procedure is determined not by nature but by intellection or human intelligence; it is determined by an intellectual faculty which is detached from nature and is centred in man. ‘We murder to dissect’—our knowledge of nature is derived from experimental investigation. Only what is acquired experimentally can be exploited technically. Knowledge of nature only becomes ripe for technical exploitation when it has passed through the indirect process of experimentation. The knowledge of nature which hitherto had been introduced into social life had not yet reached the stage of technics. It would be monstrous to speak of technics unless it is concerned purely with the application of experimentation to the social order or to what serves the social order.

Thus modern man introduces into the social order the results of experimental knowledge in the form of technics; that is to say, he brings in the forces of death. Let us not forget that we bring forces of death into our colonizing activities; that when we construct machines for industry, or submit the worker to the discipline of the machine we are introducing forces of death. And death permeates our modern historical structure when we extend our monetary economy to larger or smaller territories and when we seek to build a social order on the pattern of modern science as we have instinctively done today. And whenever we introduce natural science into our community life we introduce at all times the forces of death that are self destructive.

This is one of the most important symptoms of our time. We can make honest and sincere pronouncements—I do not mean merely rhetorical pronouncements—about the great scientific achievements of modern times and the benefits they have brought to technics and to our social life. But these are only half truths, for fundamentally all these achievements introduce into contemporary life an unmistakably moribund element which is incapable of developing of itself. The greatest acquisitions of civilization since the fifteenth century are doomed to perish if left to themselves. And this is inescapable. The question then arises: if modern technics is simply a source of death, as it must inevitably be, why did it arise? Certainly not in order to provide mankind with the spectacle of machines and industry, but for a totally different reason. It arose precisely because of the seeds of death it bore within it; for if man is surrounded by a moribund, mechanical civilization it is only by reacting against it that he can develop the Consciousness Soul. So long as man lived in communion with nature, i.e. before the advent of the machine age, he was open to suggestion because he was not fully conscious. He was unable to be fully self-sufficient because he had not yet experienced the forces of death. Ego-consciousness and the forces of death are closely related. I have already tried to show this in a variety of ways: In ideation and cognition, for example, man is no longer in contact with the life-giving, vitalizing forces within him; he is given over to the forces of organic degeneration. I have tried to show that we owe the possibility of conscious thought to the process of organic degeneration, to the processes of destruction and death. If we could not develop in ourselves ‘cerebral hunger’, that is to say, processes of catabolism, of degeneration and disintegration, we could not behave as intelligent beings, we should be vacillating, indecisive creatures living in a semiconscious, dream-like state. We owe our intellection to the degenerative processes of the brain. And the epoch of the Consciousness Soul must provide man with the opportunity to experience disintegration in his environment. We do not owe the development of modern, conscious thinking to a superabundant vitality. This conscious thinking, this very core of man's being grew and developed because it was imbued with the forces of death inherent in modern technology, in modern industry and finance. And that is what the life of the Consciousness Soul demanded.

And this phenomenon is seen in other spheres. Let us recur to the impulses to which I drew attention earlier. Let us consider the case of England where we saw how a specific form of parliamentary government develops as a certain tendency through the centuries, how the self-dependent personality seeks to realize itself. The personality wishes to emancipate itself and to become self-sufficient. It wishes to play a part in the life of the community and at the same time to affirm its independence. The parliamentary system of government is only one means of affirming the personality. But when the individual who participates in parliamentary government asserts himself, the moment he sacrifices his will to the vote he surrenders his personality. And, rightly understood, the rise of parliamentary government in England in the centuries following upon the civil wars of the fifteenth century provides ample evidence of this. In the early years of the democratic system society was based upon a class structure, the various classes or ‘estates’ not only wishing to affirm their class status, but to express their views through the ballot-box. They were free to speak; but people are not satisfied with speeches and mutual agreement, they want to vote. When one votes, when speeches are followed by voting, one kills what lives in the soul even whilst one speaks. Thus every form of parliamentary government ends in levelling down, in egalitarianism. It is born of the affirmation of the personality and ends with the suppression of the personality. This situation is inescapable; affirmation of the personality leads to suppression of the personality. It is a cyclic process like life itself which begins with birth and ends in death. In the life of man birth and death are two distinct moments in time; in the life of history, the one is directly related to the other, birth and death are commixed and commingled. We must never lose sight of this.

I do not wish you to take these remarks as a criticism of parliamentary government. That would be tantamount to insinuating that I said: since man is born only to die he ought never to have been born—which is absurd. One should not impute to the world such foolishness—that it permits man to be born only to die. Please do not accuse me of saying that parliamentary government is absurd because the personality which gives birth to this system proceeds to destroy the system which it has itself created. I simply wish to relate it directly to life, to that which is common to all life—birth and death, thus showing that it is something that is closely associated with reality. At the same time I want to show you the characteristic feature of all external phenomena of a like nature in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, for they are all subject to birth and death.

Now in the inner circles of the occult lodges of the English speaking world it has often been said: let us not reveal to the world the mystery of birth and death, for in so doing we shall betray to the uninitiated the nature of the modern epoch! We shall transmit to them a knowledge that we wish to reserve for ourselves. Therefore it was established as the first rule of the masonic lodges never to speak openly of the mystery of birth and death, to conceal the fact that this mystery is omnipresent, above all in historical phenomena. For to speak of this is to open the eyes of the public to the tragedy of modern life which will gradually be compelled—a compulsion to which it will not easily submit—to divert man's attention from the results of work to the work itself. One must find joy in work, saying to oneself: the external rewards of work in the present epoch serve the purposes of death and not of creative life. If one is unwilling to further the forces of death, one cannot work with modern techniques, for today man is the servant of the machine. He who rejects the machine simply wishes to return to the past.

Study the history of France and the attempts made to thrust inwards the emancipation of the personality, ending in that disastrous suppression of the personality which we observe in the final phase of the French Revolution and in the rise of Napoleonism. Or take the case of Italy. From what hidden springs did modern Italy derive that dynamic energy which inflamed the nationalism to the point of sacro egoismo? One must probe beneath the surface in order to discover the factors underlying world events. Recall for a moment that important moment before the birth of the Consciousness Soul. This dynamic energy peculiar to modern Italy is derived in all its aspects from that which the Papacy had implanted in the Italian soul. The significance of the Papacy for Italy lies in the fact that it has gradually imbued the Italian soul with its own spirit. And, as so often happens to the magician's apprentice, the result was not what was intended—a violent reaction against the Papacy itself in modern Italy. Here we see how that for which one strives provokes its own destruction. Not the thoughts, but the forces of sensibility and enthusiasm, even those which inspired Garibaldi, are relics of the one-time Catholic fervour—but when these forces changed direction they turned against Catholicism.

People will understand the present epoch only if they grasp the right relationship between these things. Europe witnessed those various symptomatic events which I have described to you. And in the East, as if in the Background, we see the configuration of Russia, welded out of the remnants of the Byzantine ecclesiastical framework, out of the Nordic-Slavonic racial impulse and out of Asianism which is diffused in a wide variety of forms over Eastern Europe. But this triad is uncreative; it does not emanate from the Russian soul itself, nor is it characteristic of that which lives in the Russian soul. What is it that offers the greatest imaginable contrast to the emancipation of the personality?—The Byzantine element. A great personality of modern times who is much underrated is Pobjedonoszeff. He was an eminent figure who was steeped in the Byzantine tradition. He could only desire the reverse of what the epoch of the Consciousness Soul seeks to achieve and of what it develops naturally in man. Even if the Byzantine element had made deeper inroads into Russian orthodoxy, even if this element which stifles everything personal and individual had gained an even stronger hold ... the sole consequence nonetheless would have been a powerful age for the emancipation of the personality. If, in the study of modern Russian history, you do not read of those events which it has always been forbidden to record, then you will not have a true picture of Russian history, you will be unaware of the really living element. If however you read the official version, the only version permitted hitherto by the authorities, you will find everything which pervades Russian life as an instrument of death. It appears here in its most characteristic form because Russian life is richest in future promise. And because Russian life bears within it the seeds of the development of the Spirit Self, all the external achievements of the era of the Consciousness Soul hitherto bring only death and destruction. And this had to be, since what seeks to develop as Spirit Self needs the substratum of death.

We must recognize that this is a necessity for the evolution of the Consciousness Soul, otherwise we shall never grasp the real needs of our time. We shall be unable to form a clear picture of the destructive forces which have overtaken mankind if we are unaware that the events of these last four years are simply an epitome of the forces of death that have pervaded the life of mankind since the birth of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul.

Characteristically the dead hand of scientific thinking has exercised a strange influence upon one of the most prophetic personalities of recent time. In contemporary history the following incident is symptomatic and will always remain memorable. In the year 1830 in Weimar, Soret¹ visited Goethe who received him with some excitement—I mean he betrayed excitement in his demeanour—but not with deep emotion. Goethe said to Soret: ‘At last the controversy has come to a head, everything is in flames’. He made a few additional remarks which led Soret to believe that Goethe was referring to the revolution which had broken out in Paris in 1830 and he answered him accordingly. But Goethe replied: ‘I am not referring to the revolution; that is not particularly important. What is important is the controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire in the Academy of Sciences of Paris’—Cuvier was a representative of the old school which simply compares and classifies organisms—a way of looking at nature that is concerned above all with technique—whilst Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire has a living conception of the whole course of evolution. Goethe saw Saint-Hilaire as the leader of a new school of scientific thinking, different from that of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Cuvier belongs to the old school of thought; Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire is the representative of a scientific outlook which sees nature as a living organism. Therefore Goethe saw the dawn of a new epoch when Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire prepared the ground for a new scientific thinking which, when fully developed, must lead to a super-sensible interpretation of nature and ultimately to super-sensible, clairvoyant knowledge. For Goethe this was the revolution of 1830, not the political events in Paris. Thus Goethe showed himself to be one of the most prescient spirits of his time. He showed that he sensed and felt what was the cardinal issue of our time.

Today we must have the courage to look facts squarely in the face, a courage of which earlier epochs had no need. We must have the courage to follow closely the course of events, for it is important that the Consciousness Soul can fulfil its development. In earlier epochs the development of the Consciousness Soul was not important. Because the Consciousness Soul is of paramount importance in the present epoch, everything that man creates in the social sphere must be consciously planned. Consequently his social life can no longer be determined by the old instinctive life; nor can he introduce solely the achievements of natural science into social life for these are forces of death and are unable to quicken life; they are simply dead-sea fruit and sow destruction such as we have seen in the last four years. In the present epoch the following is important.

Sleep, of course, is a necessity for man. In waking life he is in control of his normal free will ... he can make use of this free will for the various things he encounters through Lucifer and Ahriman, in order to develop guide-lines for the future. When he falls asleep this so called free will ceases to function; he continues to think without knowing it, but his thinking is no less efficacious. Thinking does not cease on falling asleep, it continues until the moment of waking. One simply forgets this in the moment of waking up. We are therefore unaware of the power of those thoughts that pour into the human soul from the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up. But let us remember that for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul the gods have abandoned the human soul during sleep. In earlier epochs the gods instilled into the human soul between sleeping and waking what they chose to impart. If they had continued to act in this way man would not have become a free being. Consequently he is now open to all kinds of other influences between sleeping and waking. At a pinch we can live our waking life with natural science and its achievements, but they are of no avail in sleep and death. We can only think scientifically during our waking hours. The moment we fall asleep, scientific thinking is meaningless—as meaningless as speaking French in a country where no one understands a word of French. In sleep only that language has significance which one acquires through super-sensible knowledge, the language which has its source in the super-sensible. Supersensible knowledge must take the place of what the gods in former times had implanted in the instinctive life. The purpose of the present epoch of the Consciousness Soul is this: man must open himself to super-sensible impulses and penetrate to a knowledge of reality. To believe that everything that our present age has produced and still produces without the support of super-sensible impulses is something living and creative and not impregnated with the forces of death is to harbour an illusion, just as it is an illusion to believe that a woman can bear a child without fecundation. Without impregnation a woman today remains sterile and dies without issue. Modern civilization in the form it has developed since the beginning of the fifteenth century and especially in respect of its outstanding achievements, is destined to remain sterile unless fertilized henceforth by impulses from the super-sensible world. Everything that is not fertilized by spiritual impulses is doomed to perish. In this epoch of the Consciousness Soul, though you may introduce democracy, parliamentary government, modern finance economy, modern industrialism, though you may introduce the principle of nationality the world over, though you may advocate all those principles on which men Base what they call the new order—a subject on which they descant like drunken men who have no idea what they are talking about—all these things will serve only the forces of death unless they are fructified by spiritual impulses. All that we must inevitably create today, forces that bring death in all domains, will only be of value if we learn how to transform these forces by our insights into the super-sensible.

Let us realize the seriousness of this situation and let us remember—as we have learnt from our study of the symptoms of recent history—that what man considers to be his greatest achievements, natural science, sociology, modern industrial techniques and modern finance economy, all date from the fifteenth century. These are destructive agents unless fructified by spiritual impulses. Only then can they advance the evolution of mankind. Then they have positive value; in themselves they are detrimental. Of all that mankind today extols, not without a certain pride and presumption, as his greatest achievements, nothing is good in itself; it is only of value when permeated with spirit.

This is not an arbitrary expression of opinion, but a lesson we learn from a study of the symptoms of modern history. The time has now come when we must develop individual consciousness. And we must also be aware of what we may demand of this consciousness. The moment we begin to dogmatize, even unwittingly, we impede the development of the consciousness. I must therefore remind you once again of the following incident. I happened to be giving a course of lectures in Hamburg on The Bible and Wisdom.^T1 Amongst the audience were two Catholic priests. Since I had said nothing of a polemical nature which could offend a Catholic priest and since they were not the type of Jesuit who is a watchdog of the Church and whose function is to stick his fingers in every pie, but ordinary parish priests, they approached me after the lecture and said: we too preach purgatory; you also speak of a time of expiation after death. We preach paradise; you speak of the conscious experience of the Spirit; fundamentally there are no objections to the content of your teaching. But they would certainly have found ample grounds for objection if they had gone more deeply into the matter—a single lecture of course did not suffice for this. And they continued: You see the difference between us is this: You address yourself to a certain section of the population which is already familiar with the premises of anthroposophy, people who are educated and are conversant with certain concepts and ideas. We, on the other hand speak to all men, we speak a language which everyone can understand. And that is the right approach—to speak for all men. Whereupon I replied: Reverend fathers (I always believe in respecting titles) what you are saying is beside the point. I do not doubt that you believe you speak for all men, that you can choose your words in such a way as to give the impression that you are speaking for all men. But that is a subjective judgement, is it not? that is what one usually says in self-justification. What is important is not whether we believe we speak for all men, but the facts, the objective reality. And now I should like to ask you, in an abstract, theoretical way: what evidence is there that I do not speak for all men? You claim to speak for all men and no doubt there are arguments that would support your claim. But I ask you for the facts. Do all those for whom you think you are able to speak still attend your church today? That is the real question. Of course my two interlocutors could not claim that everyone attended their church regularly. You see, I continued, that I am concerned with the facts. I speak for those who are outside the church, who also have the right to be led to the Christ. I realize that amongst them there are those who want to hear of the Christ impulse one way or another. That is a reality. And what matters is the reality, not personal opinions.

It is most desirable to base one's opinions on facts and not on subjective impressions; for, in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul nothing is more dangerous than to surrender to, or show a predilection for personal opinions or prejudices. In order to develop the Consciousness Soul we must not allow ourselves to become dogmatists unwittingly; the driving forces of our thoughts and actions must be determined by facts. That is important. Beneath the surface of historical evolution there is a fundamental conflict between the acceptance of what we consider to be right and the compulsion of facts. And this is of particular importance when studying history, for we shall never have a true picture of history unless we see history as a truly great teacher. We must not force the facts to fit history, but allow history to speak for itself. In this respect the whole world has forgotten much in the last four years. Facts are scarcely allowed to speak for themselves; we only hear what we deem to be facts. And this situation will persist for a long time. And it will be equally long before we develop the capacity to apprehend reality objectively. In the epoch of the Consciousness Soul what matters in all spheres of life is an objective apprehension of reality; we must strive to acquire an impartial attitude to reality.

What our epoch demands—if we wish gradually to look beyond the Symptoms of history (I will speak more of this in my next lectures)—is that we turn our attention to those spiritual forces which can restore man's creativity. For, as we have seen, the most characteristic feature of all phenomena today is a decline in creativity. Man must open himself to the influences of the super-sensible world so that what his Spirit Self prepares may enter into his ego; otherwise the paths to the Spirit Self would be closed to him. Man therefore must familiarize himself with that which is pure spirit, with that which can penetrate to the centre of his psychic life. The moment he is prepared to turn his attention to this centre of his soul life through a sensible study of the symptoms in history, he will also be prepared to examine more objectively the events at the periphery.

In man there exists a polarity—the psychic centre and the periphery. As he penetrates ever more deeply into his psychic and spiritual life he reaches this centre. In this centre he must open himself to those historical impulses which I have already described to you. Here he will feel an ever increasing urge for the spirit if he wishes to become acquainted with historical reality. In return however, he will also feel a desire to strive towards the opposite pole at the periphery. He will develop an understanding for what is pressing towards the periphery—his somatic nature. If in order to understand history we must look inward, as I have indicated, to the underlying symptoms, then in order to understand medicine, for example, hygiene and medical health services we must look outwards, to cosmic rhythms for the source of pathological symptoms.

Just as modern history fails to penetrate to spiritual realities, so modern medicine, modern hygiene and medical health services fail to penetrate to the symptoms which are of cosmic provenance. I have often emphasized the fact that the individual cannot help his neighbour, however deep his insight into current problems, because today they are in the hands of those who are looking for the wrong solution. They must become the responsibility of those who are moving in the right direction. Clearly, just as the external facts are true that the outward aspect of James I was such and such, as I pointed out earlier, so, from the external point of view it is also true that a certain kind of bacillus is connected with the present influenza epidemic. But if it is true, for example, that rats are carriers of the bubonic plague, one cannot say that rats are responsible for the plague. People have always imagined that the bubonic plague was spread by rats. But bacilli, as such, are of course in no way connected with disease. In phenomena of this kind we must realize that just as behind the symptoms of history we are dealing with psychic and spiritual experiences, so too behind somatic symptoms we are dealing with experiences of a cosmological order. In other cases the situation of course will be different! What is especially important here is the rhythmic course of cosmic events, and it is this that we must study. We must ask ourselves: In what constellation were we living when, in the nineties, the present influenza epidemic appeared in its benign form? In what cosmic constellation are we living at the present time? By virtue of what cosmic rhythm does the influenza epidemic of the nineties appear in a more acute form today? Just as we must look for a rhythm behind a series of historical symptoms, so we must look for a rhythm behind the appearance of certain epidemics.

In the solfatara regions of Italy one need only hold a naked flame over the fango hole and immediately gases and steam escape from the dormant volcano. This Shows that if one performs a certain action above the surface of the earth nature reacts by producing these effects. Do you regard it as impossible that something takes place in the sun—since its rays are directed daily towards the earth—which has significance for the earth emanations and is related to the life of man, and that this reaction varies according to the different geographical localities? Do you think that we shall have any understanding of these matters unless we are prepared to accept a true cosmology founded upon a knowledge of the soul and spirit? The statement that man's inclination to resort to war is connected with the periodic appearance of sun spots is, of course, regarded as absurd. But there comes a point when statements of this kind cease to be absurd, when certain pathological manifestations in the emotional life are seen to be connected with cosmological phenomena such as the periodic appearance of sun spots. And when tiny creatures, these petty tyrants—bacilli or rats—really transmit from one human being to another something that is related to the cosmos, then this transmission is only a secondary phenomenon. This can be easily demonstrated and consequently finds wide public support—but it is not the main issue. And we shall not come to terms with the main issue unless we have the will to study the peripheral symptoms as well.

I do not believe that men will acquire a more reasonable and catholic view of history unless they study historical symptomatology in the light of super-sensible knowledge which is so necessary for mankind today. Men will only achieve results in the sphere of health, hygiene and medicine if they study not historical, but cosmological symptoms. For the diseases we suffer on earth are visitations from heaven. In order to understand this we must abandon the preconceived ideas which are prevalent today. We have an easy explanation: a God is omnipresent ... but whilst recognizing the presence of God in history mankind today is unable to explain the manifold retardative or harmful phenomena in history. And when we are faced with a situation like the last four years (1914–1918), then this business of the single God in history becomes extremely dubious, for this God of history has the curious habit of multiplying, and each nation defends its national God and provokes other nations by claiming the superiority of its own God. And when we are expected to look to cosmology and at the same time remain comfortably attached to this single God, then this same God inflicts disease upon us. But when we can rise to the idea of the trinity, God, Lucifer and Ahriman, when we are aware of this trinity in the super-sensible world behind the historical symptoms, when we know that this trinity is present in the cosmic universe, then there is no need to appeal to the ‘good God’. We then know that heaven visits disease upon us by virtue of its association with the earth, just as I can evoke sulphur fumes by holding a naked flame over a solfatara. We can only advance the cause of progress in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, when men recognize the validity of spiritual realities. Therefore everything depends upon this one aim: the search, the quest for truth.

• 1. Frédéric Jean Soret (1795–1865). Scientist and author. A frequent visitor in Goethe's house. Notes from his journal were used by Eckermann for his ‘Conversations with Goethe’.
• T1. 5th December, 1908. See Bibl. Nr. 68.