The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10.

[ 1 ] All striving of mankind, as of every living thing, exists for the satisfying, in the very best way, of impulses and instincts implanted by nature. When human beings strive toward morality, justice, knowledge and art, this is done because morality, justice, and so forth, are means by which these human instincts can develop themselves according to their nature. The instincts would atrophy without these means. Now it is a peculiarity of the human being that he forgets this connection between his life needs and his natural impulses, and regards these means for a natural, powerful life as something with unconditional intrinsic value. Man then says that morality, justice, knowledge, and so on, must be attained for their own sakes. They do not have an intrinsic value in that they serve life, but rather that life first receives value when it strives toward these ideal possessions. Man does not exist to live according to his instincts, like an animal, but that he may ennoble his instincts by placing them at the service of higher purposes. In this way man comes to the point where he worships as ideals what he had first created for the satisfaction of his impulses, ideals which first give his life true inspiration. He demands subjugation to ideals which he values more highly than himself. He frees himself from the mother ground of reality and wishes to give his existence a higher meaning and purpose. He invents an unnatural origin for his ideals. He calls them “God's will,” the “eternal, moral laws.” He wishes to strive after “truth for truth's sake,” “virtue for virtue's sake.” He considers himself a good human being only when he has supposedly succeeded in controlling his egotism, that is, his natural instincts, and in following one ideal goal selflessly. For such an idealist, that man is considered ignoble and “evil” who has not attained such self control.

[ 2 ] Now all ideals originally stem from natural instincts. Also what Christ considers as virtue, which God has revealed to Him, man has originally discovered as satisfying some instinct or other. The natural origin is forgotten, and the divine imagined and superimposed. A similar situation exists in relation to those virtues which the philosophers and preachers of morality set up.

[ 3 ] If mankind had only sound instincts and would determine their ideals according to them, then this theoretical error about the origin of these ideals would not be harmful. The idealists, of course, would have false opinions about the origin of their goals, but in themselves these goals would be sound, and life would have to flourish. But there are unsound instincts which are not directed toward strengthening and fostering life, but rather toward weakening and stunting it. These take control of the so-called theoretical confusion and make it into the practical life purpose. They mislead man into saying, A perfect man is not the one who wants to serve himself and his life, but the one who devotes himself to the realization of an ideal. Under the influence of these instincts, the human being does not merely remain at the point where he erroneously ascribes an unnatural or supernatural origin to his ideals, but he actually makes such ideals part of himself, or takes over from others those which do not serve the necessities of life. He no longer strives to bring to light the forces lying within his own personality, but he lives according to a pattern which has been forced upon him. Whether he takes this goal from a religion or whether he himself determines it on the basis of certain assumptions not lying within his own nature, is of no importance. The philosopher who has in mind a universal purpose for mankind, and from this purpose directs his moral ideals, lays just as many fetters upon human nature as the originator of a religion who says to mankind, This is the goal which God has set for you, and this you must follow. It is also of no importance whether man intends to become an image of God or whether he invents an ideal of the “perfect human being,” and resembles this as much as possible. Only the single human being, and only the impulses and instincts of this single human being are real. Only when he directs his attention to the needs of his own person, can man experience what is good for his life. The single human being does not become “perfect” when he denies himself and resembles a model, but when he brings to reality that within him which strives toward realization. Human activity does not first acquire meaning because it serves an impersonal, external purpose; it has its meaning in itself.

[ 4 ] The anti-idealist of course will also see in unsound human activity an instinctive expression of man's primeval instincts. He knows that only out of instinct can the human being accomplish even what is contrary to instinct. But he will of course attack that which is against instinct, just as the doctor attacks a sickness, although the doctor knows that the sickness has arisen out of certain natural causes. Therefore, we may not accuse the anti-idealist by saying, you assert that everything toward which man strives, therefore all ideals as well, have originated naturally; and yet you attack idealism. Indeed, ideals arise just as naturally as sickness, but the healthy human being fights idealism just as he fights sickness. The idealist, however, regards ideals as something which must be cherished and protected.

[ 5 ] According to Nietzsche's opinion, the belief that man will become perfect only when he serves “higher” goals is something that must be overcome. Man must recollect and know that he has created ideals only to serve himself. To live according to nature is healthier than to chase after ideals which supposedly do not originate out of reality. The human being who does not serve impersonal goals, but who looks for the purpose and meaning of his existence in himself, who makes his own such virtues as serve the unfoldment of his own power, and the perfection of his own might—Nietzsche values this human being more highly than the selfless idealist.

[ 6 ] This it is what he propounds through his Zarathustra. The sovereign individuum which knows that it can live only out of its own nature and which sees its personal goal in a life configuration which fits its own being: for Nietzsche this is the superman, in contrast to the human being who believes that life has been given to him as a gift to serve a purpose lying outside of himself.

[ 7 ] Zarathustra teaches the superman, that is, the human being who understands how to live according to nature. He teaches those human beings who regard their virtues as their own creations; he tells them to despise those who value their virtues higher than themselves.

[ 8 ] Zarathustra has gone into the loneliness to free himself from humility according to which men bow down before their virtues. He reappears among mankind only when he has learned to despise those virtues which fetter life and do not wish to serve life. He moves lightly like a dancer, for he follows only himself and his will, and disregards the lines which are indicated by the virtues. No longer does the belief rest heavily upon him that it is wrong to follow only himself. Now Zarathustra no longer sleeps in order to dream about ideals; he is a watcher who faces reality in freedom. For him the human being who has lost himself and lies in the dust before his own creations, is like a polluted stream. For him the superman is an ocean which takes this stream into itself without becoming impure. For the superman has found himself; he recognizes himself as the master and creator of his virtues. Zarathustra has experienced grandeur in that all those virtues which are placed above the human being have become repugnant to him.

[ 9 ] “What is the greatest which you can experience? It is the hour of great contempt, the hour in which your happiness becomes repugnance, and likewise your intellect and your virtue.”

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[ 10 ] The wisdom of Zarathustra is not in accord with the thinking of the “modern cultured person.” The latter would like to make all human beings equal. If all strive after only one goal, they say, then there is contentment and happiness upon earth. They require that man should restrain his special, personal wishes, and serve only the whole, the universal happiness. Peace and tranquility will then reign upon earth. If everyone has the same needs, then no one disturbs the orbits of others. The individual should not regard himself and his individual goals, but everyone should live according to their once-determined pattern. All individual living should vanish, and all become part of a universal world order.

[ 11 ] “No shepherd and one flock! Everyone desires the same, everyone is equal; he who feels otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse.

[ 12 ] “‘Formerly all the world was insane,’ say the best of them, and blink.

[ 13 ] “People are clever and know all that has happened, so there is no end to their mocking. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled; otherwise it disturbs the digestion.”

[ 14 ] Zarathustra had been a lone-dweller too long to pay homage to such wisdom. He had heard the peculiar tones which sound from within the personality when man stands apart from the noise of the market place where one person merely repeats the words of another. And he would like to shout into the ears of human beings: Listen to the voices which sound forth in each individual among you. For only those voices are in accord with nature which tell; each one of what he alone is capable. An enemy of life, of the rich full life, is the one who allows these voices to resound unheard, and who listens to the common cry of mankind. Zarathustra will not speak to the friends of the equality of all mankind. They can only misunderstand him. For they would believe that his superman is that ideal model which all of them should resemble. But Zarathustra wishes to make no prescriptions of what men should be; he will refer each one only to himself, and will say to him, Depend upon yourself, follow only yourself, put yourself above virtue, wisdom, and knowledge. Zarathustra speaks to those who wish to find themselves, not to a multitude who search for a common goal; his words are intended for those companions who, like him, go their own way. They alone understand him because they know that he does not wish to say, Look, there is the superman, become like him, but, Behold, I have searched for myself; I am as I teach you to be; go likewise and search for your own self; then you have the superman.

[ 15 ] “To the one who dwells alone will I sing my song and to the twain-dweller; and unto him who still has ears for the unheard, his heart will I burden with my happiness.”

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[ 16 ] Two animals, the serpent, the wisest, and the eagle, the proudest, accompany Zarathustra. They are the symbols of his instincts. Zarathustra values wisdom because it teaches the human being to find the hidden paths to reality; it teaches him to know what he needs for life. And Zarathustra also loves pride because pride arouses self-estimation in the human being, through which he comes to regard himself as the meaning and purpose of his existence. Pride does not place his wisdom, his virtue, above his own self, in favor of “higher, more sacred” goals. Still, rather than lose pride Zarathustra would lose wisdom.

For wisdom which is not accompanied by pride does not regard itself as the work of man. The one who lacks pride and self-esteem, believes his wisdom has come to him as a gift from heaven. Such a one says, Man is a fool, and he has only as much wisdom as the heavens wish to grant him.

[ 17 ] “And should my wisdom abandon me—Oh, it loves to fly away—may my pride then still fly with my foolishness”

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[ 18 ] The human spirit must pass through three metamorphoses until he finds himself. This is Zarathustra's teaching. At first the spirit is reverent. He calls that virtue which weighs him down. He lowers himself in order to raise his virtue. He says, All wisdom comes from God, and I must follow God's paths. God imposes the most difficult upon me to test my power, whether it proves itself to be strong and patient in its endurance. Only the one who is patient is strong. I will obey, says the spirit at this level, and will carry out the commandments of the world-spirit, without asking the meaning of these commandments. The spirit feels the pressure which a higher power exerts upon it. The spirit does not take its own paths, but the paths of him he serves.

The time arrives when the spirit becomes aware that no God speaks to him. Then he wishes to be free, and to become master of his own world. He searches after a thread of direction for his destiny. He no longer asks the world spirit how he should arrange his own life. Rather, he strives after a firm command, after a sacred “you shall.” He looks for a yardstick by which he can measure the worth of things. He searches for a sign of differentiation between good and evil. There must be a rule for my life which is not dependent on me, on my own will: so speaks the spirit at this level. To this rule will I submit myself. I am free, the spirit means to say, but only free to obey such a rule.

[ 9 ] At this level, the spirit conquers. It becomes like the child at play, who does not ask, How shall I do this or that, but who merely carries out his own will, who follows only his own self. “The spirit now demands his own will; he who is lost in the world has now won his own world.”

[ 20 ] “I named for you three metamorphoses of the spirit: How the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last, a child. Thus spake Zarathustra.”

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[ 21 ] What do the wise desire who place virtue above man? asks Zarathustra. They say, Only he who has done his duty, he who has followed the sacred “thou shalt,” can have peace of soul. Man shall be virtuous so that he may dream of fulfilled duty, about fulfilled ideals, and feel no pangs of conscience. The virtuous say that a man with pangs of conscience resembles one who is asleep and whose rest is disturbed by bad dreams.

[ 22 ] “Few know it, but one must have all virtues to sleep well. Do I bear false witness, do I commit adultery?

[ 23 ] “Do I lust after my neighbor's wife? All this is incompatible with good sleep.

[ 24 ] “Peace with God and with thy neighbor: this is what good sleep needs. And peace also with thy neighbor's devil! Otherwise it will haunt you at night.”

[ 25 ] The virtuous person does not do what his impulse tells him, but what produces his peace of soul. He lives so that he may peacefully dream about life. It is even more pleasant for him when his sleep, which he calls peace of soul is disturbed by no dreams. This means that it is most pleasant for the virtuous person when from some source or other he receives rules for his actions, and for the rest, he can enjoy his peace. “His wisdom is called, Wake, in order to sleep well. And indeed, if life had no meaning, and I should have to choose nonsense, to me this would be the most worthy nonsense to choose,” says Zarathustra.

[ 26 ] For Zarathustra also there was a time when he believed that a spirit dwelling outside of the world, a God, had created the world. Zarathustra imagined him to be an unsatisfied, suffering God. To create satisfaction for himself, to free himself from his suffering, God created the world; Zarathustra thought this, once upon a time. But he learned to understand that this is an illusion which he himself had created. “O you brothers, this God whom I created, was the work of a man and illusion of man, like all gods!” Zarathustra has learned to use his senses and to observe the world. And he becomes satisfied with the world; no longer do his thoughts sweep into the world beyond. Formerly he was blind, and could not see the world. For this reason he looked for salvation outside of the world. But Zarathustra has learned to see and to recognize that the world has meaning in itself.

[ 27 ] “My ego taught me a new pride, which I teach mankind: not to hide the head in the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which carries meaning for the earth.”

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[ 8 ] The idealists have split man into body and soul, have divided all existence into idea and reality. And they have made the soul, the spirit, the idea, into something especially valuable in order that they may despise the reality, the body all the more. But Zarathustra says, There is but one reality, but one body, and the soul is only something in the body, the ideal is only something in reality. Body and soul of man are a unity; body and spirit spring from one root. The spirit is there only because a body is there, which has strength to develop the spirit in itself. As the plant unfolds the blossom from itself, so the body unfolds the spirit from itself.

[ 29 ] “Behind your thinking and your feeling, my brother stands a mighty master, an unknown wise one: he is called self. He lives within your body, he is your body.”

[ 30 ] The one with a sense for reality searches for the spirit, for the soul, in and about the real. He looks for intellect in the real; only he who considers reality as lacking in spirituality, as merely “natural,” as “coarse”—he gives the spirit, the soul a special existence. He makes reality merely the dwelling place of the spirit. But such a one also lacks the sense for the perception of the spirit itself. Only because he does not see the spirit in the reality does he search for it elsewhere.

[ 31 ] “There is more intelligence in your body than in your best wisdom.”

[ 32 ] “The body is one great intelligence, a plurality with one meaning, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd.

[ 33 ] “An instrument of your body is also your small intelligence, my brother, which you call spirit, a small instrument and a toy of your great intelligence.”

[ 34 ] He is a fool who would tear the blossom from the plant and believe the broken blossom will still develop into fruit. He is also a fool who would separate the spirit from nature and believe such a separated spirit can still create.

[ 35 ] Human beings with sick instincts have undertaken the separation of spirit and body. A sick instinct can only say, My kingdom is not of this world. The kingdom of a sound instinct is only this world.

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[ 36 ] But what ideals have they not created, these despisers of reality! If we look them in the eye, these ideals of the ascetics, who say, Turn your gaze away from this world, and look toward the other world, what then is the meaning of these ascetic ideals? With this question, and the suppositions with which he answers them, Nietzsche has let us look into the very depths of his heart, left unsatisfied by the more modern Western culture. (Genealogie der Moral, Section 3)

[ 37 ] When an artist like Richard Wagner, for example, becomes a follower of the ascetic ideal during his last period of creativity, this does not have too much significance. The artist places his entire life above his creations. He looks down from above upon his realities. He creates realities which are not his reality. “A Homer would not have created an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an Achilles, or if Goethe had been a Faust.” (Genealogy, 3rd Section, ¶ 4). Now when such an artist once begins to take his own existence seriously, wishes to change himself and his personal opinion into reality, it is no wonder when something very unreal arises. Richard Wagner completely reversed his knowledge about his art when he became familiar with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Previously, he considered music as a means of expression which required something to which it gives expression—the drama. In his Opera and Drama, written in 1851, he says that the greatest error into which one can fall with regard to the opera is,

“That a means of expression (the music) is made the purpose, but the purpose of expression (the drama) is made the means.”

[ 38 ] He professed another opinion after he had come to know Schopenhauer's teaching about music. Schopenhauer is of the opinion that through music, the essence of the thing itself speaks to us. The eternal Will, which lives in all things, becomes embodied in all other arts only through images, through the ideas; music is no mere picture of the will: the will reveals itself in it directly. What appears to us in all our reflections only as image, the eternal ground of all existence, the will, Schopenhauer believed he heard directly in the sound of music. A message from the other world is brought to Schopenhauer by music. This point of view affected Richard Wagner. Thus he lets music no longer be a means of expression of real human passions as they are embodied in drama, but as a “sort of mouthpiece for the intrinsic essence of things, a telephone from the other world.” Richard Wagner now no longer believed in expressing reality in tones; “henceforth he talked not only music, this ventriloquist of God, but he talked metaphysics: no wonder that one day he talked ascetic ideals.” (Genealogy, 3rd Section, ¶ 5).

[ 39 ] If Richard Wagner had merely changed his opinion about the significance of music, then Nietzsche would have had no reason to approach him. At most Nietzsche could then say, Besides his art works Wagner has also created all sorts of wrong theories about art. But that during the last period of his creativity Wagner embodied in his an works the Schopenhauer belief in the world beyond, that he utilized his music to glorify the flight from reality, this was distasteful to Nietzsche.

[ 40 ] The Case of Wagner means nothing when it is a question of the significance of the glorification of the world beyond at the expense of this world, when it is a question of the significance of ascetic ideals. Artists do not stand on their own feet. As Richard Wagner is dependent upon Schopenhauer, so “at all times were the artists valets to a morality, a philosophy or a religion.”

[ 41 ] It is quite different when the philosophers represent a contempt of reality, of ascetic ideals. They do this out of a deep instinct.

[ 42 ] Schopenhauer betrayed this instinct through the description which he gives of the creating and enjoying of a work of art. “That the work of art makes the understanding of ideas, in which the aesthetic enjoyment consists, so much easier, depends not merely upon the fact that through emphasis of the material and discarding of the immaterial, art represents the things more clearly and more characteristically, but it depends much more upon the fact that the complete silence of the will, necessary for the objective understanding of the nature of things, is achieved with most certainty through the fact that the object looked upon does not lie at all within the realm of things which are capable of a relationship to will.” (Additions to the third book of Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Reflection, Chapter 30) “When an outer circumstance or an inner soul mood lifts us suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, then knowledge takes away the slavish service of the will when attention is no longer directed to the motive of willing, but comprehends the things free from their relationship to will, that is, without interest, without subjectivity, considers them purely objectively, completely surrendered to them insofar as they are mere representations, not insofar as they are motives; then is begun the painless state which Epicurus praised as the highest good and as the state of the gods. Then, during that moment, we are freed from the contemptible pressure of the will; we celebrate the sabbath of the will's hard labor, the wheel of Ixion stands still.” Ibid. ¶ 38)

[ 43 ] This is a description of a type of aesthetic enjoyment which appears only with philosophers. Nietzsche contrasts this with another description “which a real spectator and artist has made—Stendhal,” who calls the beautiful une promesse de bonheur. Schopenhauer would like to exclude all will interest, all real life, when it is a question of the observation of a work of art, and would enjoy it only with the spirit; Stendhal sees in the work of art a promise of happiness, therefore, an indication for life, and sees the value of art in this connection of art with life.

[ 44 ] Kant demanded that a beautiful work of art should please without interest: that is, that the work of art lift us out of the reality of life and give us purely spiritual enjoyment.

[ 45 ] What does the philosopher look for in artistic enjoyment? Escape from reality. The philosopher wants to be transferred into an atmosphere foreign to reality, through works of art. Thereby he betrays his basic instinct. The philosopher feels most satisfied during those moments when he can be freed from reality. His attitude toward aesthetic enjoyment proves that he does not love this reality.

[ 46 ] In their theories the philosophers do not tell us what the spectator whose interests are turned toward life, demands of a work of art, but only what is of interest to themselves. And for the philosopher the turning away from life is very useful. He does not wish to have his hidden thought paths crossed by reality. Thinking flourishes better when the philosopher turns away from life. Then it is no wonder when this philosophical basic instinct becomes a mood almost hostile to life. We find that such a soul mood is cultivated by the majority of philosophers. And a very close connection exists between the fact that the philosopher develops and elaborates his own antipathy toward life into a teaching, and the fact that all men acknowledge such a teaching. Schopenhauer did this. He found that the noise of the world disturbed his thought work. He felt that one could meditate about reality better when one escaped from this reality. At the same time, he forgot that all thinking about reality has value only when it springs from this reality. He did not observe that the withdrawing of the philosopher from reality can occur only when the philosophical thoughts which have arisen out of this separation from life can be of higher service to life. When the philosopher wishes to force the basic instinct, which is only of value to him as a philosopher, upon the whole of mankind, then he becomes an enemy to life.

[ 47 ] The philosopher who does not regard the flight from the world as a means of creating thoughts friendly to the world, but as a purpose, as a goal in itself, can only create worthless things. The true philosopher flees from reality on the one hand, only that he may penetrate deeper into it on the other. But it is conceivable that this basic instinct can easily mislead the philosopher into considering the flight from the world as such to be valuable. Then the philosopher becomes a representative of world negation. He teaches a turning away from life, the ascetic ideal. He finds that “A certain asceticism, a hard and joyous renunciation of the best will, belongs to the favorable conditions of highest spirituality, as well as to their most natural consequences. So from the beginning it is not surprising if the ascetic ideal is never treated, particularly by the philosophers, without some objections.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 9)

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[ 48 ] The ascetic ideals of the priests have another origin. What develops in the philosopher as the luxuriant grow of an impulse he considers justified, forms the basic ideal of the working and creating of the priest. The priest sees error in the surrender of the human being to real life; he demands that one respect this life less in face of another life, which is directed by higher than merely natural forces. The priest denies that real life has meaning in itself, and he challenges the idea that this meaning is given to it through an inoculation of a higher will. He sees life in the temporal as imperfect, and he places opposite to it an eternal, perfect life. The priest teaches a turning away from the temporal and entering into the eternal, the unchangeable. As especially significant of the way of thinking of the priest, I would like to quote a few sentences from the famous book, Die Deutsche Theologie, German Theology, which stems from the fourteenth century, and about which Luther says that from no other book, with the exception of the Bible, and the writings of St. Augustine, has he learned more about what God, Christ, and man are, than from this. Schopenhauer also finds that the spirit of Christianity is expressed more perfectly and more powerfully in this book than elsewhere. After the writer, who is unknown to us, has explained that all things of the world are imperfect and incomplete, in contrast to the perfect, “which in itself and in its essence comprehended all things and decided all things, and without which, and outside of which no true being exists, and in which all things have their being,” he continues that man can penetrate into this being only if he has lost all “creaturedom, creationdom, egodom, selfdom, and everything similar,” nullifying them in himself. What has flowed out of the perfect, and what the human being recognizes as his real world, is described in the following way: “That is no true being, and has no being other than in the perfect, but it is an accident or a radiance, and an illusion which is no being, or has no being other than in the fire from which the radiance streams, or in the sun, or in the light. The book says, as do belief, and truth, sin is nothing but that the creature turns away from the unchangeable good and turns toward the changeable, that is, that it turns away from the perfect to the incomplete and imperfect, and most of all to itself. Now note, If this creature takes on something good as existence, life, knowledge, understanding, possession, in short, all those things which one calls good, and thinks that they are good, or that it itself is good or that good belongs to it, or stems from it, just as often as this happens, so often does it turn itself away. In what way did the devil do anything different—or what was his fall and turning away—than that he thought he was something, and that that something was his, and also that something belonged to him? This acceptance, and his ‘I’ and his ‘me,’ his ‘to me,’ and his ‘mine’—all this was his turning away and his fall. Thus it is still ... For all that one considers good or would call good, belongs to no one, except to the eternal, true Good, who is God alone, and he who takes possession of it does wrong, and is against God.” (Chapters 1, 2, 4, of German Theology, 3rd edition)

[ 49 ] These sentences express the attitude of every priest. They express the particular character of the priesthood. And this character is exactly the opposite of that which Nietzsche describes as the more valuable, more worthy of life. The more highly valued type of man wants to be everything that he is, through himself alone; he wants all that he considers good and calls good to belong to no one but himself.

[ 50 ] But this mediocre attitude is no exception. It is one of “the most widespread, oldest facts that exist. Read from a distant star, perhaps, the writing of our earth existence would lead to the conclusion that the earth is the really ascetic star, a corner of dissatisfied, proud, disagreeable creatures who cannot free themselves from a deep dissatisfaction with themselves, with the earth, and with all life.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 11) For this reason, the ascetic priest is a necessity, since the majority of human beings suffer from an “obstruction and fatigue” of life-forces because they suffer from reality. The ascetic priest is the comforter and physician of those who suffer from life. He comforts them by saying to them, This life from which you are suffering is not the real life; for those who suffer from this life, the true life is much more easily attainable than for the healthy, who depend upon this life and surrender themselves to it. Through such expressions the priest breeds contempt for, and betrayal of the real life. He finally brings forth the state of mind which says that to obtain the true life, the real life must be denied. In the spreading of this mood, the ascetic priest seeks his strength. Through the training of this soul mood, he eliminates a great danger which threatens the healthy, the strong, the ego-conscious, from the unhappy, the suppressed, the broken-down. The latter hate the healthy and the happy in body and soul, who take their strength from nature. This hatred, which must express itself, is that the weak wage a continuous war of annihilation against the strong. This the priest tries to suppress. Therefore, he represents the strong as those who lead a life which is worthless and unworthy of human beings, and, on the other hand, asserts that true life is obtainable only by those who were hurt by the earth life. “The ascetic priest must be accepted by us as the predestined saviour, shepherd, and champion of the sick herd; in this way we understand his tremendous historic mission for the first time. The domination over the sufferers is his kingdom. His instinct directs him toward it. In this he finds his own special art, his mastery, his form of happiness.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 15)

It is no wonder that such a way of thinking finally leads to the fact that its followers not only despise life, but work directly toward its destruction. If it is said to man that only the sufferer, the weak, can really attain a higher life, then in the end the suffering, the weakness will be sought. To bring pain to oneself, to kill the will within oneself completely, will become the goal of life. The victims of this soul-mood are the saints. “Complete chastity and denial of all pleasure are for him who strives toward real holiness; throwing away of all possessions, desertion of every dwelling, of all dependents, deep, complete loneliness, spent in profound, silent reflection, with voluntary penitence and frightful, slow self-torture, to the complete mortification of the will, which finally dies voluntarily by hunger, or by walking toward crocodiles, by throwing oneself from sacred mountain heights in the Himalayas, by being buried alive, or by throwing oneself under the wheels of the Juggernaut driven among the statues of the idols, accompanied by the song, jubilation and dance of the Bajadere,” these are the ultimate fruits of the ascetic state of mind. (Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, World as Will and Representation, ¶ 68).

[ 51 ] This way of thinking has arisen out of the suffering of life, and it directs its weapons against life. When the healthy person, filled with joy of life, is infected by it, then it destroys the sound, strong instincts within him. Nietzsche's work towers above this in that in face of this teaching he brings out the value of another point of view for the healthy, for those of well-being. May the malformed, the ruined, find their salvation in the teaching of the ascetic priests; Nietzsche will gather the healthy about him, and will give them advice which will please them more than all ideals which are inimical to life.

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[ 52 ] The ascetic ideal is implanted in the guardians of modern science also. Of course, this science boasts that it has thrown all old beliefs overboard, and that it holds fast only to reality. It will consider nothing valid which cannot be counted, calculated, weighed, seen or grasped. That through this “one degrades existence to a slavish exercise in arithmetic and a game for mathematicians,” is of indifference to the modern scholar. (Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Science, ¶ 373). Such a scholar does not ascribe to himself the right to interpret the happenings of the world, which pass before his senses and his intellect, so that he can control them with his thinking. He says, Truth must be independent of my art of interpretation, and it is not up to me to create truth; instead, I must allow the world to dictate truth to me through world phenomena.

[ 53 ] The point to which this modern science finally comes when it contains within itself all arranging of world phenomena, has been expressed by Richard Wahle, a follower of this science, in a book which has just appeared: Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende, The Totality of Philosophy and its End. “What can the spirit who peers into this world-house and turns over the questions about the nature and goal of happenings, find as an answer at last? It has happened that as he stood so apparently in opposition to the world surrounding him, he became disentangled, and in a flight from all events, merged with all events. He no longer ‘knew’ the world. He said, I am not sure that those who know exist; perhaps there are simply events. They occur, of course, in such a way that the concept of a knowing could develop prematurely and without justification, and ‘concepts’ have sprouted up to bring light into these events, but they are will-o-the-wisps, souls of the desires for knowing, pitiful postulates of an empty form of knowledge, saying nothing in their evidence. Unknown factors must hold sway in the transitions. Darkness was spread over their nature. Events are the veil of the nature of truth.”

[ 54 ] That the human personality, out of its own capacities can instill meaning into the happenings of reality, and can supplement the unknown factors which rule in the transitions of events: modern scholars do not think at all about this. They do not want to interpret the flight from appearances by ideals which stem from their own personality. They want merely to observe and describe the appearances, but not interpret them. They want to remain with the factual, and will not allow the creative fantasy to make a dismembered picture of reality.

[ 55 ] When an imaginative natural scientist, for example, Ernst Haeckel, out of the results of individual observations, formulates a total picture of the evolution of organic life on earth, then these fanatics of factuality throw themselves upon him, and accuse him of transgression against truth. The pictures which he sketched about life in nature, they cannot see with their eyes or touch with their hands. They prefer the impersonal judgment to that which is colored by the spirit of the personality. They would prefer to exclude the personality completely from their observations.

[ 56] It is the ascetic ideal which controls the fanatics of factuality. They would like a truth beyond the personal individual judgment. What the human being can “imagine into” things, does not concern these fanatics. “Truth” to them is something absolutely perfect—a God; man should discover it, should surrender to it, but should not create it. At present, the natural scientists and the historians are enthused by the same spirit of ascetic ideals. Everywhere they enumerate in order to describe facts, and nothing more. All arranging of facts is forbidden. All personal judgment is to be suppressed.

[ 57 ] Atheists are also found among these modern scholars. But these atheists are freer spirits than their contemporaries who believe in God. The existence of God cannot be proven by means of modern science. Indeed, one of the brilliant minds of modern science, DuBois-Reymond, expressed himself thus about the acceptance of a “world-soul:” before the natural scientist decides upon such an acceptance he demands “That somewhere in the world, there be shown to him, bedded in nerve ganglia and nourished with warm, arterial blood under the correct pressure, a bundle of cell ganglia and nerve fibers, depending in size on the spiritual capacity of the soul.” (Grenzen des Naturerkennens, Limits of Natural Science, page 44). Modern science rejects the belief in God because this belief cannot exist beside their belief in “objective truth.” This “objective truth,” however, is nothing but a new God who has been victorious over the old one. “Unqualified, honest atheism (and we breathe only its air; we, the most intellectual human being of this age) does not stand in opposition to that (ascetic) ideal to the extent that it appears to; rather, it is one of its final phases of evolution, one of its ultimate forms, one of its logical consequences. It is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of a two thousand year training in truth, which finally forbids itself the lie of the belief in God.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 27). Christ seeks truth in God because He considers God the source of all truth. The modern atheist rejects the belief in God because his god, his ideal of truth, forbids him this belief. In God the modern spirit sees a human creation; in “truth” he sees something which has come into being by itself without any human interference. The really “free spirit” goes still further. He asks, “What is the meaning of all will for truth?” Why truth? For all truth arises in that man ponders over the appearance of the world, and formulates thoughts about things. Man himself is the creator of truth. The “free spirit” arrives at the awareness of his own creation of truth. He no longer regards truth as something to which he subordinates himself; he looks upon it as his own creation.

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[ 58 ] People endowed with weak, malformed instincts of perception do not dare to attach meaning to world appearances out of the concept-forming power of their personality. They wish the “laws of nature” to stand before their senses as actual facts. A subjective world-picture, formed by the instrumentality of the human mind, appears worthless to them. But the mere observation of world events presents us with only a disconnected, not a detailed world picture. To the mere observer of things, no object, no event, appears more important, more significant than another. When we have considered it, the rudimentary organ of an organism which perhaps appears to have no significance for the evolution of life, stands there with exactly the same demand upon our attention as does the most noble part of the organism, so long as we look merely at the actual facts. Cause and effect are appearances following upon each other, which merge into each other without being separated by anything, so long as we merely observe them. Only when with our thinking, we begin to separate the appearances which have merged into each other, and relate them to each other intellectually, does a regular connection become visible. Thinking alone explains one appearance as cause and another as effect. We see a raindrop fall upon the earth and produce a groove. A being which is unable to think will not see cause and effect here, but only a sequence of appearances. A thinking being isolates the appearances, relates the isolated facts, and labels the one factor as cause, the other as effect. Through observation the intellect is stimulated to produce thoughts and to fuse these thoughts with the observed facts into a meaningful world-picture. Man does this because he wishes to control the sum of his observations with his thoughts. A thought-vacuum before him presses upon him like an unknown power. He opposes this power and conquers it by making it conceivable. All counting, weighing and calculating of appearances also comes about for the same reason. It is the will to power which lives itself out in this impulse for knowledge. (I have represented a process of knowledge in detail in my two writings, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Truth and Science, and Die Philosophie der Freiheit, The Philosophy of Freedom.)

[ 59 ] The dull, weak intellect does not want to admit to himself that it is he himself who interprets the appearances as expression of his striving toward power. He considers his interpretation also as an actual fact. And he asks, How does a man come to find such an actual fact in reality? He asks, for example, How is it that the intellect can recognize cause and effect in two appearances, one following upon the other? All theorists of knowledge, from Locke, Hume, Kant, down to the present time, have occupied themselves with this question. The subtleties which they have applied to this examination, have remained unfruitful. The explanation is given in the striving of the human intellect toward power. The question is not at all, Are judgments, thoughts about appearances, possible? but, Does the human intellect need such judgments? He needs them, hence he uses them, not because they are possible. It depends upon this: “To understand that for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves such judgments must be believed to be true, though naturally they still may be false judgments!” (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 11) “And fundamentally we are inclined to assert that the most erroneous judgments are the most indispensable for us; that man could not live without belief in logical fiction, without measuring reality by the purely invented world of the unconditional, likening one's self to one's self, without a constant falsification of the world through number; that renunciation of false judgments would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life.” (Ibid, ¶ 4). Whoever regards this saying as a paradox, should remind himself how fruitful is the use of geometry in relation to reality, although nowhere in the world are really geometric, regular lines, planes, etc., to be found.

[ 60 ] When the dull, weak intellect understands that all judgments about things stem from within him, are all produced by him, and are fused with the observations, then he does not have the courage to use these judgments unreservedly. He says, judgments of this kind cannot transmit knowledge of the “true essence” of things to us. Therefore, this “true essence” remains excluded from our knowledge.

[ 61 ] The weak intellect tries in still another way to prove that no security can be attained through human knowledge. He says, The human being sees, hears, touches things and events. Thereby he perceives impressions of his sense organs. When he perceives a color, a sound, then he can only say, My eye, my ear are determined in a certain way to perceive color and tone. Man perceives nothing outside of himself except a determination, a modification of his own organs. In perceiving, his eyes, his ears, etc., become stimulated to feel in a certain way; they are placed in a certain condition. The human being perceives this condition of his own organs as colors, tones, odors, etc. In all perceiving, the human being perceives only his own conditions. What he calls the outer world is composed only of his own conditions; therefore, in a real sense it is his work. He does not know the things which cause him to spin the outer world out of himself; he only knows the effects upon his organs. In this light, the world appears like a dream which is dreamed by the human being, and is occasioned by something unknown.

[ 62 ] When this thought is brought to its consequential conclusion, it brings with it the following afterthought. Man knows only his own organs, insofar as he perceives them; they are parts of his world of perception. And man becomes conscious of his own self only to the extent that he spins pictures of the world out of himself. He perceives dream pictures, and in the midst of these dream pictures, an “I,” by which these dream pictures pass; every dream picture appears to be an accompaniment of this “I.” One can also say that each dream picture appears in the midst of the dream world, always in relation to this “I.” This “I” clings to these dream pictures as determination, as characteristic: Consequently, as a determination of dream pictures, it is a dream-like being itself. J. G. Fichte sums up this point of view in these words: “What develops through this knowing, and out of this knowing, is but a knowing. But all knowing is merely reflection, and something is always demanded of it which conforms to the picture. This demand cannot be satisfied by knowledge; and a system of knowledge is necessarily a system of mere pictures, without any reality, without significance, and without purpose.” For Fichte, “all reality” is a wonderful “dream without a life, which is being dreamed about, without a spirit who dreams.” It is a dream “which is connected with itself in a dream.” (Bestimmung des Menschen, Mission of Man, 2nd Book)

[ 63 ] What meaning has this whole chain of thoughts? A weak intellect, which does not dare to give meaning to the world out of himself, looks for this meaning in the world of observations. Of course, he cannot find it there because mere observation is void of thoughts.

[ 64 ] A strong, productive intellect uses his world of concepts to interpret the observations. The weak, unproductive intellect declares himself to be too powerless to do this, and says, I can find no sense in the appearances of the world; they are mere pictures which pass by me. The meaning of existence, therefore, must be looked for outside, beyond the world of appearances. Because of this, the world of appearances, that is, the human reality, is explained as a dream, an illusion, a Nothing, and “the true being” of appearances is searched for in a “thing in itself,” for which no observation, no knowledge is sufficient, that is, about which the knower can form no idea. Therefore, for the knower, this “true being” is a completely empty thought, the thought about a Nothing. For those philosophers who speak about the “thing in itself,” a dream is a world of appearances. But this Nothing they regard as the “true being” of the world of appearances. The whole philosophical movement which speaks about the “thing in itself,” and which, in more modern times, leans mainly upon Kant, is the belief in this Nothing; it is philosophical nihilism.

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[ 65 ] When the strong spirit looks for the cause of a human action and achievement, he will always find it in the will power of the individual personality. But the human being with a weak, timid intellect will not admit this. He doesn't feel himself sufficiently strong to make himself master and guide of his own actions. He interprets the impulses which guide him as the commandments of another power. He does not say, I act as I want to act, but he says, I act according to a law which I must obey. He does not wish to command himself; he wishes to obey. At one level of their development, human beings see their impulses to action as commandments of God; at another level, they believe that they are aware of a voice inside them, which commands them. In the latter case they do not dare to say, It is I myself who command; they assert, In me a higher will expresses itself. One person is of the opinion that it is his conscience which speaks to him in each individual case, and tells him how he should act, while another asserts that a categorical imperative commands him. Let us hear what J. G. Fichte says: “Something simply will happen because something just must happen; conscience now demands of me that it happen, and simply for this reason I am here; I am to realize it, and for that I have intellect. I am to achieve it, and for that I have strength.” (Ibid, Third Book) I mention J. G. Fichte's sayings with great pleasure because he maintained with iron consequence his opinion of the “weak and malformed.” He maintained it to the very end. One can only realize where this opinion finally leads when one looks for it where it was thought through to the end; one cannot depend upon those who are incomplete thinkers, who think each thought only to the middle.

[ 66 ] The fount of knowledge is not sought in individual personalities by those who think in the above mentioned way, but beyond personality in a “will in itself.” Just this “will in itself” shall speak to the individual as “God's voice,” as the “voice of conscience,” as categorical imperative, and so on. This is to be the universal leader of human actions, and the fount of all morality, and is also to determine the purpose of moral actions. “I say that it is the commandment to action itself which gives me a purpose through itself. It is the same in me which urges me to think that I should act in such a way, urges me to believe that out of these actions something will result; it opens the view to another world.” “As I live in obedience, at the same time I live in the reflection of its purposes; I live in the better world which it promises me.” (Ibid, Third Book) He who thinks thus, will not set a goal for himself; he will allow himself to be led to a goal by the higher will which he obeys. He will free himself from his own will, and will make himself into an instrument for “higher” purposes in words which express the highest; achievements of obedience and humility known to him. Fichte described the abandonment to this “eternal Will in itself.” “Lofty, living Will, which no name names and no concept encompasses, may I raise my soul to you, for you and I are not separated. Your voice sounds within me; mine resounds in you; and all my thoughts, when they are true and good, are thought within you. In you, the incomprehensible, I become comprehensible to myself, and the world becomes perfectly comprehensible to me. All problems of my existence are solved, and the most complete harmony arises within my spirit” ... “I veil my countenance before you. I lay my hand upon my mouth. As you yourself are, and as you appear to yourself, I can never understand, as certainly as I never could become you. After I have lived a thousand thousand spirit lives, I shall comprehend you as little as I do now in this hut upon earth.” (Ibid, Third Book)

[ 67 ] Where this will is finally to lead man, the individual cannot know. Therefore the one who believes in this will confesses that he knows nothing about the final purposes of his actions. For such a believer in a higher will, the goals which the individual sets for himself, are not “true goals.” Therefore, in place of the positive individual goals created by the individuum, he places a final purpose for the whole of mankind, the thought content of which, however, is a Nothing. Such a believer is a moral nihilist. He is caught in the worst kind of ignorance imaginable. Nietzsche wanted to deal with this type of ignorance in a special section of his incompleted work, Der Wille zur Macht, The Will to Power.

[ 68 ] We find the praise of moral nihilism again in Fichte's Bestimmung des Menschen, Destiny of Man (Third Book): “I shall not attempt what is denied me by the very Being of Limitations, and I shall not attempt what would avail me nothing. What you yourself are, I do not care to know. But your relationships and your connections with me, the Specific, and toward everything Specific, lie open before my eyes; may I become what I must become, and all this surrounds me in more brilliant clarity than the consciousness of my own existence. You create within me the knowledge of my duty, of my destiny, in the order of intelligent beings; how, I know not, nor do I need to know. You know, and you recognize what I think and what I will; how you can know it, through what act you achieve this consciousness, I understand nothing. Yes, I know very well that the concept of an act and of a special act of consciousness is valid only for me, but not for you, Infinite Being. You govern because you will that my free obedience has consequences to all eternity; the act of your willing I do not understand, and only know that it is not similar to mine. Your act and your will itself is a deed. But the way you work is exactly opposite to that way which I alone am able to understand. You live and you are because you know, will, and effectuate, ever present in the limited intellect, but you are not as I conceive a being to be through eternities.”

[ 69 ] Nietzsche places opposite to moral nihilism those goals which the creating individual will places before itself. Zarathustra calls to the teachers of the gospel of submission:

[ 70 ] “These teachers of the gospel of submission. Everywhere where there is smallness and sickness and dirt, there they creep like lice, and only my disgust prevents me from crushing them under foot.

“Attend! This is my gospel for their ears: I am Zarathustra, the godless, who asks, Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teaching?

“I am Zarathustra, the godless; where do I find my equal? All those are my equals who determine their will out of themselves, and who push all submission away from themselves.”

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[ 71 ] The strong personality which creates goals is disdainful of the execution of them. The weak personality, on the other hand, carries out only what the Divine Will, the “voice of conscience” or the “categorical imperative” says Yes to. That which is in accordance with this Yes, the weak person describes as good, that which is contrary to this Yes, it describes as evil. The strong personality cannot acknowledge this “good and evil,” for he does not acknowledge that power from which the weak person allows his “good and evil” to be determined. What the strong person wills is for him good; he carries it through in spite of all opposing powers. What disturbs him in this execution, he tries to overcome. He does not believe that an “Eternal Will” guides the decisions of all individual wills toward a great harmony, but he believes that all human development comes out of the will-impasses of the individual personalities, and that an eternal war is waged between the expressions of individual wills, in which the stronger will always conquers the weaker.

[ 72 ] The strong personality who lays down his own laws and sets his own goals, is described by the weaker and less courageous as evil, as sinful. He arouses fear, for he breaks through traditional ways; he calls that worthless which the weak person is accustomed to call valuable, and he invents the new, the previously unknown, which he describes as valuable. “Each individual action, each individual way of thinking causes shuddering; it is almost impossible to estimate exactly what those more uncommon, more select, more criminal spirits must have suffered in the course of history so that they were always regarded as bad, as dangerous, yes, even so that they themselves considered themselves in this light. Under the domination of custom, all originality of every kind has evoked a bad conscience. Up to this very time the heaven of the most admirable has become more darkened than it would have had to be.” (Morgenröte, Dawn, p. 9)

The truly free spirit makes original decisions immediately; the unfree spirit decides in accordance with his background. “Morality is nothing more (specifically, nothing more!) than obedience to customs of whatever nature these may be; but customs are the traditional way of acting and evaluating.” (Ibid, p. 9). It is this tradition which is interpreted by the moralists as “eternal will,” as “categorical imperative.” But every tradition is the result of natural impulses, of lives of individuals, of entire tribes, nations, and so on. It is also the product of natural causes, for example, the condition of the weather in specific localities. The free spirit explains that he does not feel himself bound by such tradition. He has his individual drives and impulses, and feels that these are not less justified than those of others. He transforms these impulses into action as a cloud sends rain to the earth's surface when causes for this exist. The free spirit takes his stand opposite to what tradition considers to be good and evil. He creates his own good and evil for himself.

[ 73 ] “When I came to men, I found them sitting there on an old presumption: they all assumed that they had long known what was good and evil for man.

“All debating about virtue seemed to them an old, worn-out affair, and he who wanted to sleep well, still spoke about good and evil before going to sleep.

“This sleepiness I disturbed by my teaching; what is good and what is evil, nobody knows; then let it be the creator.

“But that is he who creates man's goal and who gives meaning to the earth and to the future. It is he who first brings it about that there is something good and evil.” (Zarathustra, 3rd Part, From the Old and New Tablets)

[ 74 ] Besides this, when the free spirit acts according to tradition, he does this because he adopts the traditional motives, and because he does not consider it necessary in certain cases to put something new in place of the traditional.

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[ 75 ] The strong person seeks his life's task in working out his creative self. This self-seeking differentiates him from the weak person who, in the selfless surrender to that which he calls “good,” sees morality. The weak preach selflessness as the highest virtue, but their selflessness is only the consequence of their lack of creative power. If they had any creative self they would then have wished to manifest it. The strong person loves war because he needs war to manifest his creation in opposition to those powers hogstile to him.

[ 76 ] “Your enemy you shall seek, your war you shall wage, and as for your thoughts, if they succumb, then shall your very uprightness nevertheless attain triumph over their collapse!

[ 77 ] “You shall love peace as a means to a new war, and a short peace more than a long one.

[ 78 ] “I do not challenge you to work, but to fight. I do not challenge you to peace, but to victory. Your work be your struggle! Your peace be a victory!

[ 79 ] “You say that the good circumstance may even sanctify war, but I say to you, it is the ‘good’ war which sanctifies every circumstance.

[ 80 ] “War and courage have accomplished more great things than love for one's neighbor. Until now, not your sympathy but your courage has saved the unfortunate.” (Zarathustra, 1st Part, About War and People of War)

[ 81 ] The creative person acts without mercy and without regard for those who oppose. He has no cognizance of the virtue of those who suffer, namely, of sympathy. Out of his own power come his impulses to creativity, not out of his feelings for another's suffering. That power may conquer, for this he fights, not that suffering and weakness may be cared for. Schopenhauer has described the whole world as a hospital, and asked that the actions springing out of sympathy for suffering be considered as the highest virtue. Thereby he has expressed the morality of Christendom in another form than the latter itself has done. He who creates, though, does not feel himself destined to render these nursing services. The efficient ones, the healthy, cannot exist for the sake of the weak, the sick. Sympathy weakens power, courage, and bravery.

[ 82 ] Sympathy seeks to maintain just what the strong wishes to overcome, that is, the weakness, the suffering. The victory of the strong over the weak is the meaning of all human as well as of all natural development. “Life in its essence is a usurping, a wounding, an overcoming of the strange, of all that is misfit and weak. Life is the suppressing, the hardening and forcing through of one's own forms, the embodying, and, in the least and mildest, the erupting in boils.” (Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 259).

[ 83 ] “And do you not wish to be a dealer of destiny and unmerciful? How else can you be mine or conquer with me?”

“And if your hardness will not strike as lightning and cleave and cut, how then can you ever create with me?

“For the creators are hard, and it must seem to you a blessing to press your hand upon the millennia as if upon wax.

“A blessing to inscribe upon the will of millennia as if upon bronze, harder than bronze, more precious than bronze. Entirely hard is the most precious alone.

“This new tablet, O my brothers, I raise above you, thou shalt become hard.” (Zarathustra, 3rd Part, From the Old and New Tablets)

[ 84 ] The free spirit makes no demands upon sympathy. He would have to ask the one who would pity him, Do you consider me as weak, that I cannot bear my suffering by myself? For him, each expression of sympathy is humiliating. Nietzsche shows this aversion of the strong person toward sympathy in the fourth part of Zarathustra. In his wanderings Zarathustra arrives in a valley which is called “Snake Death.” No living beings are found here. Only a kind of ugly green snake comes here in order to die. The “most ugly human being” has found this valley. He does not wish to be seen by anyone because of his ugliness. In this valley he sees no one besides God, but even His countenance he cannot bear. The consciousness that God's gaze has penetrated into all these regions becomes a burden for him. For this reason he has killed God, that is, he has killed the belief in God within himself. He has become an atheist because of his ugliness. When Zarathustra sees this human being, he is overcome by what he believed he had destroyed within himself forever: that is, sympathy for the most frightful ugliness. This becomes a temptation for Zarathustra, but very soon he rejects the feeling of sympathy and again becomes hard. The most ugly man says to him, “Your hardness honors my ugliness. I am too rich in ugliness to be able to bear the sympathy of any human being. Sympathy humiliates.”

[ 85 ] He who requires sympathy cannot stand alone, and the free spirit wishes to stand completely on his own.

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[ 86 ] The weak are not content with pointing to the natural will to power as the cause of human actions. They do not merely seek for natural connections in human development, but they seek for the relationship of human action to what they call the “will in itself,” the eternal, moral world order. They accuse the one who acts contrary to this world order. And they also are not satisfied to evaluate an action according to its natural consequences, but they claim that a guilty action also draws with it moral consequences, i.e., punishment. They consider themselves guilty if their actions are not in accord with the moral world order; they turn away in horror from the fount of evil in themselves, and they call this feeling bad conscience. The strong personality, on the other hand, does not consider all these concepts valid. He is concerned only with the natural consequences of actions. He asks, Of what value for life is my way of acting? Is it in accord with what I have willed? The strong cannot grieve when an action goes wrong, when the result does not accord with his intentions. But he does not blame himself. For he does not measure his way of acting by supernatural yardsticks. He knows that he has acted thus in accord with his natural impulses, and at most he can regret that these are not better. It is the same with his judgment regarding the actions of others. A moral evaluation of actions he does not grant. He is an amoralist.

[ 87 ] What tradition considers to be evil the amoralist looks upon as the outstreaming of human instincts, in fact, as good. He does not consider punishment as morally necessary but merely as a means of eradicating instincts of certain human beings which are harmful to others. According to the opinion of the amoralist, society does not punish for this reason but because it has “moral right” to expiate the guilt, and because it proves itself stronger than the individual who has instincts which are antagonistic to the whole. The power of society stands against the power of the individual. This is the natural connection between an “evil” action of the individual and the justification of society, leading to the punishment of the individual. It is the will to power, namely, the acting of these instincts present in the majority of human beings, which expresses itself in the administration of justice in society. Thus, each punishment is the victory of a majority over an individual. Should the individual be victorious over society, then his action must be considered good, and that of others, evil. The arbitrary right expresses only what society recognizes as the best basis of their will to power.

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[ 88 ] Because Nietzsche sees in human action only an outstreaming of instincts, and these latter differ according to different people, it seems necessary to him that their actions also be different. For this reason, Nietzsche is a decided opponent of the democratic premise, equal rights and equal duties for all. Human beings are dissimilar; for this reason their rights and duties also must be dissimilar. The natural course of world history will always point out strong and weak, creative and uncreative human beings. And the strong will always be destined to determine the goals of the weak. Yes, still more: the strong will make use of the weak as the means toward a certain goal, that is, to serve as slaves. Nietzsche naturally does not speak about the “moral” right of the strong to keep slaves. “Moral” rights he does not acknowledge. He is simply of the opinion that the overcoming of the weak by the strong, which he considers as the principle of all life, must necessarily lead toward slavery.

[ 89 ] It is also natural that those overcome will rebel against the overcomer. When this rebellion cannot express itself through a deed it will at least express itself in feeling, and the expression of this feeling is revenge, which dwells steadily in the hearts of those who in some way or other have been overcome by those more fortunately endowed. Nietzsche regards the modern social democratic movement as a streaming forth of this revenge. For him, the victory of this movement would be a raising of the deformed, poorly endowed to the disadvantage of those better equipped. Nietzsche strove for exactly the opposite: the cultivation of the strong, self-dominant personality. And he hates the urge to equalize everything and to allow the sovereign individuality to disappear in the ocean of universal mediocrity.

[ 90 ] Not that each shall have the same and enjoy the same, says Nietzsche, but each should have and enjoy what he can attain by his own personal effort.

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[ 91 ] What the human being is worth depends only upon the value of his instincts. By nothing else can the value of the human being be determined. One speaks about the worth of work, or the value of work, or that work shall ennoble the human being. But in itself work has absolutely no value. Only through the fact that it serves man does it gain a value. Only insofar as work presents itself as a natural consequence of human inclinations, is it worthy of the human being. He who makes himself the servant of work, lowers himself. Only the human being who is unable to determine his own worth for himself, tries to measure this worth by the greatness of his work, of his achievement. It is characteristic of the democratic bourgeoisie of modern times that in the evaluation of the human being they let themselves be guided by his work. Even Goethe is not free from this attitude. He lets his Faust find the full satisfaction in the consciousness of work well done.

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[ 92 ] Art also has value, according to Nietzsche's opinion, only when it serves the life of the individual human being. And in this Nietzsche is a representative of the opinion of the strong personality, and rejects everything that the weak instincts express about art. All German aesthetes represent the point of view of the weak instincts. Art should represent the “infinite” in the “finite,” the “eternal” in the “temporal,” and the “idea” in the “reality.” For Schelling, as an example, all sensual beauty is but a reflection of that infinite beauty which we can never perceive with our senses. The work of art is never there for the sake of itself, nor is beautiful through what it is, but only because it reflects the idea of the beautiful. The sense picture is only a means of expression, only the form for a supersensible content, and Hegel calls the beautiful, “the sense filled appearance of the Idea.” Similar thoughts also can be found among other German aesthetes. For Nietzsche, art is a life-fostering element, and only when this is the case, has it justification. The one who cannot bear life as he directly perceives it, transforms it according to his requirements, and thereby creates a work of art. And what does the one who enjoys it demand from the work of art? He demands heightening of his joy of life, the strengthening of his life forces, satisfaction of his requirements, which reality does not do for him. But in the work of art, when his senses are directed toward the real, he will not see any reflection of the divine or of the superearthy. Let us hear how Nietzsche describes the impression Bizet's Carmen made upon him: “I become a better man when Bizet speaks to me. Also a better musician, a better listener. Is it at all possible to listen still better? I continue to bury my ears beneath this music; I hear its wellsprings. It seems to me that I experience its development, its evolving. I tremble in face of dangers which accompany any daring adventure. I am delighted with happy fortunes for which Bizet is not responsible. And, strange, fundamentally I do not think about it, nor do I even know how much I ponder about it. For, meanwhile, entirely different thoughts run through my head. Has one noticed that music frees the spirit, gives wings to the thoughts, that one becomes more of a philosopher, the more one becomes a musician, that the grey heavens of abstraction are lighted by flashes of lightning, that the light is strong enough for all the tracery of things, the large problems near enough for grasping, and the world is seen as from a mountain? I have just defined philosophical pathos. And, inadvertently, answers fall into my lap, a small hail of ice and wisdom, of solved problems. Where am I? Bizet makes me fruitful. All good makes me fruitful. I have no other gratitude, I also have no other measure for that which is good.” (Case of Wagner, ¶ 1.) Since Richard Wagner's music did not make such an impression upon him, Nietzsche rejected it: “My objections to Wagner's music are physiological objections. ... As a fact, my petit fait vrai is that I no longer breathe easily when this music first begins to work upon me; that soon my foot becomes angry with it and revolts: it desires to beat, dance, march. It demands first of all from the music the pleasures which lie in good walking, striding dancing. But doesn't my stomach also protest? My heart? My circulation? Do not my intestines also grieve? Do I not become unknowingly hoarse? And so I ask myself, ‘What does my entire body really want from this music?’ I believe that it seeks levitation. It is as if all animal functions become accelerated through these light, bold, abandoned, self-sure rhythms; as if the brazen, leaden life would lose its weight through the golden tender flow of oily melodies. My melancholy heaviness could rest in the hide and seek and in the abysses of perfection; but for that I need music.” (Nietzsche contra Wagner)

[ 93 ] At the beginning of his literary career Nietzsche deceived himself about what his instincts demanded from art, and thus at that time he was a disciple of Wagner. He had allowed himself to be lead astray into idealism through the study of Schopenhauer's philosophy. He believed in idealism for a certain time, and conjured up before himself artistic needs, ideal needs. Only in the further course of his life did he notice that all idealism was exactly contrary to his impulses. Now he became more honest with himself. He expressed only what he himself felt. And this could only lead to the complete rejection of Wagner's music, which as a mark of Wagner's last working aim, assumed an ever more ascetic character, as mentioned above.

[ 94 ] The aesthetes who demand that art make the ideal tangible, that it materialize the divine, in this field present an opinion similar to the philosophical nihilist in the field of knowledge and morality. In the objects of art they search for a beyond which, before the sense of reality, dissolves itself into a nothingness. There is also an aesthetic nihilism.

[ 95 ] This stands in contrast to the aestheticism of the strong personality, which sees in art a reflection of reality, a higher reality, which man would rather enjoy than the commonplace.

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[ 96 ] Nietzsche places two types of human beings opposite each other: the weak and the strong. The first type looks for knowledge as an objective fact, which should stream from the outer world into his spirit. He allows himself to have his good and evil dictated by an “eternal world will” or a “categorical imperative.” He identifies each action as sin which is not determined by this world will, but only by the creative self-will, a sin which must entail a moral punishment. The weak would like to prescribe equal rights for all human beings, and to determine the worth of the human being according to an outer yardstick. He would finally see in art a reflection of the divine, a message from the beyond. The strong, on the contrary, sees in all knowledge an expression of the will to power. Through knowledge he attempts to make all things conceivable, and, as a consequence, to make them subject to himself. He knows that he himself is the creator of truth, and that no one but himself can create his good and his evil. He regards the actions of human beings as the consequences of natural impulses, and lets them count as natural events which are never regarded as sins and do not warrant a moral judgment. He looks for the value of a man in the efficiency of the latter's instincts. A human being with instincts of health, spirit, beauty, perseverance, nobility he values higher than one with instincts of weakness, ugliness or slavery. He values a work of art according to the degree to which it enhances his forces.

[ 97 ] Nietzsche understands this latter type of man to be his superman. Until now, such supermen could come about only through the coalescing of accidental conditions. To make their development into the conscious goal of mankind is the intention of Zarathustra. Until now, one saw the goal of human development in various ideas. Here Nietzsche considers a change of perception to be necessary. “The more valuable type has been described often enough, but as a happy fortune, as an exception, never as consciously willed. Moreover, he specifically is most feared; until now he was almost the most terrible one; and out of the terror the reverse type was willed, bred, achieved: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal man—the Christ.” (Antichrist, ¶ 3.)

[ 98 ] Zarathustra's wisdom is to teach about the superman, toward which that other type was only a transition.

[ 99 ] Nietzsche calls this wisdom, Dionysian. It is wisdom which is not given to man from without; it is a self-created wisdom. The Dionysian wise one does not search; he creates. He does not stand as a spectator outside of the world he wishes to know; he becomes one with his knowledge. He does not search after a God; what he can still imagine to himself as divine is only himself as the creator of his own world. When this condition extends to all forces of the human organism, the result is the Dionysian human being, who cannot misunderstand a suggestion; he overlooks no sign of emotions; he has the highest level of understanding and divining instinct, just he possesses the art of communication in the highest degree. He enters into everything, into every emotion; he transforms himself continually. In contrast to the Dionysian wise one, stands the mere observer, who believes himself to be always outside his objects of knowledge, as an objective suffering spectator. The Apollonian stands opposite to the Dionysian human being. The Apollonian is he who, “above all, keeps the eye very active so that it receives the power of vision.” Visions, pictures of things which stand beyond the reality of mankind: the Apollonian spirit strives for these, and not for that wisdom created by himself.

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[ 100 ] The Apollonian wisdom has the character of earnestness. It feels the domination of the Beyond, which it only pictures, as a heavy weight, as an opposing power. The, Apollonian wisdom is serious for it believes itself to be in possession of a message from the Beyond, even if this is only transmitted through pictures and visions. The Apollonian spirit wanders about, heavily laden with his knowledge, for he carries a burden which stems from another world. And he takes on the expression of dignity because, confronted with the annunciation of the infinite, all laughter must be stilled.

[ 101 ] But this laughing is characteristic of the Dionysian spirit. The latter knows that all he calls wisdom is only his own wisdom, invented by him to make his life; easier. This one thing alone shall be his wisdom: namely, a means which permits him to say Yes to life. To the Dionysian human being, the spirit of heaviness is repellent, because it does not lighten life, but oppresses it. The self-created wisdom is a merry wisdom, for he who creates his own burden, creates one which he can also carry easily. With this self-created wisdom, the Dionysian spirit moves lightly through the world like a dancer.

[ 102 ] “But that I am good to wisdom, and often too good, is because she reminds me so very much of life itself. [ 103 ] She has the eye of life, her laughter and even her golden fishing rod; how can I help it that the two are so alike? [ 104 ] Into your eye I gazed recently, O Life: gold I saw flickering in your eyes of night! My heart stood still before such joy.[ 105 ] A golden boat I saw flickering on the waters of night, a sinking, drinking, ever-winking, golden, rocking boat!

[ 106 ] “Upon my foot, so wild to dance, you cast a glance, a laughing questioning, a melting, rocking glance. [ 107 ] Twice only you shook your castanet with tiny hands. Thereupon, my foot rocked with urge to dance.

[ 108 ] “My heels arched themselves, my toes listened to understand you. Indeed, the dancer carries his ear—in his toes!” (Zarathustra – 2nd and 3rd Parts. “The Dance Song.”)

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[ 109 ] Since the Dionysian spirit draws out of himself all impulses for his actions and obeys no external power, he is a free spirit. A free spirit follows only his own nature. Now of course in Nietzsche's works one speaks about instincts as the impulses of the free spirit. I believe that here under one name Nietzsche has collected a whole range of impulses requiring a consideration which goes more into individual differentiations. Nietzsche calls instincts those impulses for nourishment and self preservation present in animals, as well as the highest impulses of human nature, for example, the urge toward knowledge, the impulse to act according to moral standards, the drive to refresh oneself through works of art, and so on. Now, of course, all these impulses are forms of expression of one and the same fundamental force, but they do represent different levels in the development of this power. The moral instincts, for example, are a special level of instinct. Even if it is only admitted that they are but higher forms of sensory instinct, nevertheless they do appear in a special form within man's existence. This shows itself in that it is possible for man to carry out actions which cannot be led back to sensory instincts directly, but only to those impulses which can be defined as higher forms of instinct. The human being himself creates impulses for his own actions, which are not to be derived from his own sensory impulses, but only from conscious thinking. He puts individual purposes before himself, but he puts these before himself consciously, and there is a great difference whether he follows an instinct which arose unconsciously and only afterward was taken into consciousness, or whether he follows a thought which he produced from the very beginning with full consciousness. When I eat because my impulse for nourishment drives me to it, this is something essentially different from my solving a mathematical problem. But the conceptual grasp of world phenomena presents a special form of general perceptability. It differentiates itself from mere sensory perception. For the human being, the higher forms of development of the life of instinct are just as natural as the lower. If both of them are not in harmony, then he is condemned to unfreedom. The case may be that a weak personality, with entirely healthy sense instincts, has but weak spiritual instincts. Then of course he will develop his own individuality in regard to the life of senses, but he will draw the thought impulses of his actions from tradition. Disharmony can develop between both worlds of impulses. The sense impulses press toward a living out of one's own personality; the spiritual impulses are fettered to outer authority. The spiritual life of such a personality will be tyrannized by the sensuous, the sensuous life by the spiritual instincts. This is because both powers do not belong together, and have not grown out of a single state of being. Therefore, to the really free personality belongs not only a soundly developed individualized life of sense impulses, but also the capacity to create for himself the thought impulses for life. Only that man is entirely free who can produce thoughts out of himself which can lead to action, and in my book, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, The Philosophy of Freedom, I have called the capacity to produce pure thought motives for action, “moral fantasy.” Only the one who has this moral fantasy is really free, because the human being must act in accordance with conscious motives. And when he cannot produce the latter out of himself, then he must let himself be given them by outer authority or by tradition, which speaks to him in the form of the voice of conscience. A man who abandons himself merely to sensual instincts, acts like an animal; a human being who places his sensuous instincts under another's thoughts, acts unfreely; only the human being who creates for himself his own moral goals, acts in freedom. Moral fantasy is lacking in Nietzsche's teaching. The one who carries Nietzsche's thoughts to their conclusion must necessarily come to this insight. But in any case, it is an absolute necessity that this insight be added to Nietzsche's world conception. Otherwise one could always object to his conception thus: Indeed the Dionysian man is no slave to tradition or to the “will beyond,” but he is a slave of his own instincts.

[ 110 ] Nietzsche looked toward the original, essential personality of the human being. He tried to separate this essential personality from the cloak of the impersonal in which it had been veiled by a world conception hostile to reality. But he did not come to the point where he differentiated the levels of life within the personality itself. Therefore he underestimated the significance of consciousness for the human personality. “Consciousness is the last and most recent development of the organic, and consequently the least prepared and the weakest. Out of consciousness come innumerable errors, which bring it about that an animal, a human being, disintegrates earlier than otherwise would be necessary—collapses ‘over his destiny,’ as Homer says. If the preserved union of instincts were not so overwhelmingly powerful, if, on the whole it did not serve as a regulator, mankind would go to pieces because of their confused judgment, spinning fantasies with open eyes through their superficiality and gullibility. In short, just because of their consciousness, mankind must be destroyed,” says Nietzsche (Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Science, ¶ 11.)

[ 111 ] Indeed, this is entirely admitted, but it does not affect the truth that the human being is free only insofar as he can create within his consciousness thought motives for his actions.

[ 112 ] But the contemplation of thought motives leads still further. It is a fact based upon experience, that these thought motives which the human being produces out of himself, nevertheless manifest an overall consistency to a certain degree in single individuals. Also, when the individual human being creates thoughts in complete freedom out of himself, these correspond in a certain way with the thoughts of other human beings. For this reason, the free person is justified in assuming that harmony in human society enters of its own accord when society consists of sovereign individualities. With this opinion he can confront the defender of unfreedom, who believes that the actions of a majority of human beings only accord with each other when they are guided by an external power toward a common goal. For this reason the free spirit is most certainly not a disciple of that opinion which would allow the animal instincts to reign in complete freedom, and hence would do away with all law and order. Moreover, he demands complete freedom for those who do not merely wish to follow their animal instincts, but who are able to create their own moral impulses, their own good and evil.

[ 113 ] Only he who has not penetrated Nietzsche so far as to be able to form the ultimate conclusions of his world conception, granted that Nietzsche himself has not formed them, can see in him a human being who, “with a certain stylized pleasure, has found the courage to unveil what perhaps lurked hidden in some of the most secret depths of the souls of flagrant criminal types.” (Ludwig Stein, Friedrich Nietzsches Weltanschauung und ihre Gefahren, Friedrich Nietzsche's World Conception and its Dangers, p. 5.) Still today the average education of a German professor has not reached the point of being able to differentiate between the greatness of a personality and his small errors. Otherwise, one could not observe that such a professor's criticism is directed toward just these small errors. I believe that true education accepts the greatness of a personality and corrects small errors, or brings incomplete thoughts to conclusion.

Dear attendees! When the Goetheanum in Dornach, before its actual completion, organized autumn courses on the various sciences and on various branches of human life last fall, the aim was not to focus exclusively on spiritual science as such in these courses, but to let the individual sciences express themselves in such a way that what they themselves could experience as a fertilization through spiritual science would have to come to light. For this reason, it was considered important that experts from the individual scientific fields were able to express themselves at this event, that they were heard, and that personalities from practical life, from commerce, industry and so on, were also heard, in other words, from thoroughly practical life. The idea was that those people who are either directly involved in science or those who have experienced the hardships and challenges of life and at the same time have truly penetrated into that which is to emerge as spiritual science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, should be able to discuss the experiences they have with the introduction of spiritual science into their particular field. But it has also been used to highlight what is supposed to be the actual origin of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science represented by the Goetheanum. What is to be represented here is not something that even remotely has the intention, say, of founding some new religion. Nor is it about wanting to set up some kind of sectarian movement, but the starting point of spiritual science is taken entirely from the scientific life of modern times and especially of the present.

I would like to express myself through a comparison, as what is to be represented as Anthroposophy from Dornach is particularly related to the scientific life of modern times and the present. If I make such a comparison, it is only to explain something. Please do not think – I hardly need to mention this – that with this comparison, spiritual science itself is to be compared with the world-historical event that I am citing. That could be left to some cheap quip or the like. But I would like to point out to you – just to explain something – the views with which the discoverers of America set out, these discoverers of America who found the courage to sail across the ocean that had not yet been crossed. They believed they were arriving in India, reaching India from the other side, so to speak, hence the term West India and so on. So what did they predict? They predicted that by venturing out across the ocean, they would reach something familiar.

This is also how I would like to try to go further and further within modern science, as it has developed over the last three to four centuries. You are well aware that serious, conscientious researchers strive for this ever-advancing progress of science, and that extraordinarily conscientious researchers, it should be recognized, then speak of the fact that one must come to the insurmountable limits of human knowledge. But on the other hand, when one comes to these limits, all kinds of assumptions are made about the atomic and molecular world, and so on and so forth. One assumes, when working methodically in the laboratory, when doing research in the clinic, when trying to fathom the secrets of the world at the astronomical observatory, that somehow, through the sea of the scientific method, one must arrive at something that is either an insurmountable limit or something similar to what is already known. Just as Columbus more or less predicted that he would have to find something already known, so it is also assumed in science that one must find something already known. After all, molecules and atoms are nothing more than, I would say, penetrating into the smallest, into that which one also sees with ordinary eyes, making sense.

But this experience of the scientist seems perfectly understandable to someone who is immersed in scientific life, understandable because when you work further and further with modern methods, you don't actually arrive at a solution to important life and human riddles, as you might expect. If you believe that, you are indulging in an illusion. On the contrary, anyone who approaches science with an open mind, or rather, I should say, who conducts methodical research, especially if they not only pursue the natural sciences, but also want to transfer the scientific method to history, to the so-called humanities, will find that no solutions arise, but that the number of puzzles instead increases. You only really learn to recognize how mysterious the world around us is when you get to know it through the methods of modern science. But there is one thing we have to acknowledge when we reflect on ourselves in our research: What is it that we apply, regardless of whether we are conducting research in the laboratory or in the astronomical observatory or in the clinic? Well, my dear audience, however much some people, I would say through a radical materialism, may be mistaken about this, it is nevertheless not even a very high truth, but rather a trivial one, that if one wants to do scientific research, one must apply spirit, that in some way the spirit must be active in man.

And now it is a matter of combining these words, the spirit must be active in man when he researches externally, in the sensual-scientific, with these words, some real, scientific meaning. You cannot do this any differently than by researching what this spirit is. You cannot find it in the external world. You have to apply it to the knowledge of the external world, you have to get the spirit out of yourself. If we want to express ourselves at all about what science is, we speak of the spirit all the time. But we also have to be able to come to it through some particular way of knowing: What is this spirit actually? And by now trying to make the journey, I would like to say through the sea of modern science, one finally discovers that one does not arrive at something known, but that one arrives precisely at that which is previously in consciousness when one utters the word “spirit” or by saying, “The spirit searches,” one does not arrive at something known, but one arrives at that unknown and actually experiences something similar to what Columbus experienced when he discovered America between Europe and India.

On the journey to the world's mysteries, one actually experiences what the spirit is. Only, in a sense, science has lost it. And this is shown, I would say quite bitterly, in life that this science has lost it. This newer natural science recognizes the spirit only in thoughts, in ideas, in abstractions. And this view has been adopted by millions and millions of people, who call everything that arises through the spirit in life - morality, religion, science, law, and so on - an ideology, that is, something that would only arise as smoke from what is either sensual truth, or what some material production processes are, or the like. But this is what one discovers, not through any kind of belief, but through a real scientific observation within anthroposophical spiritual science, what the spirit is as a real being, what the spirit is as a living being, like what one observes through the outer senses in all its liveliness.

Now, my dear audience, to arrive at this view, one needs a certain starting point. And I would like to call this starting point: “intellectual modesty”. First of all, a moral quality is necessary, albeit an intimate moral quality, if one wants to find the right starting point for the spiritual science meant here.

To characterize this starting point in intellectual modesty, I would like to choose the following comparison. Imagine a five-year-old child is given a volume of Goethean poetry. What will he do with the volume of Goethean poetry? He would perhaps tear it up or play with it in some way, but in any case he would not do what the volume of Goethean poetry is actually there for, which one can do when one is in a different state than the one in which the child will be when he is ten or fifteen years older. He will do something different with the volume of Goethean poetry than he would at five years of age. What is the reason for this? The reason for this is none other than that the child's soul has developed in the meantime, developed from within. The child is now capable, because it has developed those qualities that it did not have at five years of age, of discovering something that was already there in the volume of poetry when the child was five years old. He was just the same externally in the eyes of the child as he might be when the child is twenty years old. But because something has taken place within the child, because something has been brought out of the child's inner being, purely because of this, the child treats everything it now does with the volume of Goethean lyric poetry quite differently.

Nowadays, especially in science, but also in life in general, we take the view that we develop those qualities in people that are, let us say, inherited, that can be acquired through ordinary education, and then we are usually ready for today's life and for scientific life. This is the point of departure, especially in scientific life. One regards oneself as more or less complete in a certain way, in terms of one's ordinary inherited qualities and one's education, and one looks at the world, so to speak, from this completed point of view. One combines what the mind and the senses provide and, without going deeper, one might say that one only considers what is missing in the area one wants to explore. One expands, one also expands by perhaps arming the eye with a telescope or microscope or [spectroscope] or X-ray machine. But in this way one attains nothing more than, I would like to say, even if indirectly, by means of the spectroscope or the X-ray apparatus or the telescope, one sees the same thing that one otherwise has before the senses and the other senses. But what one needs to have for spiritual science is intellectual modesty. That means that at some point in life one must simply say to oneself: Man can develop abilities from the age of five to the age of twenty. In a sense, he draws out of his inner being what is latent in him. And only because he has drawn something out of his inner being does the world now look different to him. If one merely describes the external senses: It is no longer there, but it is now more present for him because he has brought abilities and qualities out of the depths of his soul. So one says to oneself: There could be other abilities in this soul, abilities that do not come through the ordinary inherited qualities in their natural development and through ordinary education, but that perhaps only come through taking the soul life intimately inwardly — albeit with the appropriate modesty, because it is only a sensualization —, deeply inwardly, and that one brings it beyond the point of view that can otherwise be obtained in life and in ordinary science.

This is what must naturally take as its starting point the intellectual modesty just characterized, the view that there may still lie in the soul something as yet undeveloped, but which can still be developed. From this point of view, what is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science? From this point of view, it really seeks to shape out of the soul that which is latent in the soul. The methods it uses for this cannot really be compared with any external measures. They are methods that are intimately applied to the inner life of the soul itself. But one should not think that what comes about through the development of intimate inner soul abilities is somehow easier than research in the laboratory or clinic or astronomical observatory. Rather, what I am now briefly indicating to you in principle requires years and years of inner, serious and dedicated soul work. This dedicated soul work is not appreciated by some people who know little about the subject. And so they believe that what is said in the field of spiritual science is something fantastic, plucked out of the blue. But that is not the case at all.

What I am now going to mention very briefly, you will find more fully described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Of course I cannot give all the details here, but I would like to suggest in principle that the matter at hand when researching the spiritual worlds, as meant in anthroposophy, is not at all something that has been miraculously brought forth or the like, but that it is only a continuation, a further development of the ordinary human soul abilities. Please excuse me, therefore, if I explain in a somewhat elementary way how one can move from the ordinary soul abilities to those through which, in science, one can look deeper into the reasons for existence than is the case with the ordinary external senses and with the combining mind.

You are all familiar with two human abilities. If I speak to you about a development in the first ability, perhaps not so many people will take offense at it, because they will at least admit that what comes about through such an ability can still be called science. But when I speak to you about the development of the second ability, then, of course, the objections will increase, which is quite understandable. The objections, ladies and gentlemen, are well known. Then, in particular, the scientific people will initially rebel against something like this, but only as long as the full transformation of the corresponding abilities is not envisaged.

The two abilities – there are, of course, many others, but these are the two main abilities that I want to characterize – these two abilities of the human soul, which, so to speak, have to be taken up at the point where they are in ordinary life and from there have to be further developed, just as the mental abilities of a five-year-old child have to be further developed. These two abilities are, on the one hand, the human ability to remember and, on the other hand, what we call love in our ordinary and social lives. The ability to remember and the ability to love – we apply them in science at least as aids. Memory and love play an enormous role in our ordinary and social lives. However, both abilities can be developed further than they are in the ordinary life of the human soul.

As you know, the ability to remember is what brings coherence into our lives. Initially, we have this ability to remember in such a way that we can conjure up an event that we may have experienced many years ago at a certain later point in our lives. At that time, we were fully immersed in this event with our whole being. At that time we touched, so to speak, that which was the cause of a certain experience in the external world. At that time our senses were exposed to this experience. In later periods of life, perhaps through an external cause, perhaps through an inner cause or something similar, we evoke in the soul itself in the form of an image that which was once an experience. And if we have healthy soul powers, we know quite precisely, simply inwardly through what is formed in the life contexts for our soul existence, whether we are imagining some kind of fantasy, whether we are merely thinking up something or whether what arises in our soul is only the image, so to speak, the imagination of what we have experienced in the outer sense world.

Those who have studied the significance of the ability to remember for the human soul in more depth know that our self is never truly healthy if something is wrong with this memory – going back to the point in time to which we can usually remember going back in the first years of life. If there is a period of life that cannot be reached in memory, where the thread of life is interrupted, something will show up that disturbs the self so much that the self, the center of the human soul, cannot feel healthy. And you also know how morbid conditions can intervene in the ego and how, through the rupture of memory, quite terrible mental illnesses can arise. There are people – you will have heard of them, my dear audience – who got on a train somewhere and rode it to some point. Then they got off. They only found their way again later. They have completely severed the thread of life. And afterwards? They cannot remember what they have been through. This thread of memory is what holds our ego together.

What is actually the basis for remembering any event? Yes, by going through the experiences, they are, so to speak, in front of us in the moment. We can relive what we experience in them inwardly over and over again. And what we have done over and over again can be inwardly revived in our soul as an image. I do not need to dwell today on what actually takes place in the human being's inner life; you can find that in my works on spiritual science literature. The fact of the matter is that we can bring forth images of experiences we have had, and that in this way the experience becomes a lasting one in our soul. You see, we have to hold on to this quality of permanence and, I would say, learn to experiment with it, just as one experiments with external things in a chemical laboratory. We must actually learn to think about these inner things in the same way that we have acquired skills in science, in modern science, whose merits should not be overshadowed by spiritual science. Just as we set out to do certain things in modern science, so we come to a different conclusion about what we can only observe in nature. Just as one goes from observing nature to conducting experiments and thereby arriving at certain things that could not be inferred from observation itself, but are only inferred from this artificially arranged observation of the experiment, so too can certain human soul abilities not be developed if one does not, so to speak, resort to inner work on the soul abilities themselves.

What is characteristic of memory images is duration, and that is what one absorbs. One forms easily comprehensible images, images that cannot be mixtures, that cannot emerge from some subconscious, that would be the complicated images. No, one forms easily comprehensible images, the individual components of which one can see quite well. You put them into your consciousness, just as you would otherwise put a memory into it. You now dwell on such images for a long time. But don't think that it is enough to do this twice. Such exercises must be continued for years, just as one must research serious science for years. Because one must gradually bring up the abilities that lie in the depths of the soul and can thus animate such ideas and sustain them in this way.

And in addition to this, a certain training must also be undertaken, I would like to say, of inner life experiences. Because, my dear attendees, you will have heard that there are all kinds of mystics and the like who are now also striving for inner vision. What is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science is by no means such nebulous mysticism. Quite the opposite! The one who works in this way on the inner life of his soul sets himself a very conscious ideal in this work. He also sets himself the ideal in this work that one can also acquire in a science, but only if one really devotes oneself to this science with full clarity and independence, with inner freedom.

This is the methodology that Goethe had in his research: although he was not actually a mathematician, he wanted to conduct research in the field of nature in such a way that he could give an account of his method to any strict mathematician. This is also how the humanities scholar does it. In mathematics, one works with transparent concepts. One does not describe the Pythagorean theorem in nebulous mysticism; one has everything one needs to see in order to arrive at this Pythagorean theorem. Those concepts that one constantly works with must be presented to the soul with such inner clarity and light. I call this resting on such ideas “meditation”, and I ask you not to imagine anything else by this meditation but firstly: this resting on easily comprehensible ideas that cannot have anything nebulous about them. They will have less nebulousness the more you acquire the ability, through a certain inner soul experience, to recognize such nebulousness and subconsciousness as soon as it arises.

Modern science has also dealt a great deal with this subconscious, which rises up from the depths of the soul and then lives in us. We do not really know its cause, but it belongs to the life of the soul. It is precisely about these things that anyone who wants to become a true spiritual scientist must first know.

Let me give you an example that you can also find in ordinary literature. A professor of zoology is walking down the street. He passes a bookstore, looks into the shop window and sees a book about lower animals. The title of the book is something about the lower animals. And you see, it happens to the good professor – just imagine: a professor of zoology! It happens to him, just by looking at this book title – it's a very serious book title about earthworms or something like that – that he has to start laughing. So, a professor of zoology who has to laugh at a perhaps very serious book title! He can't believe it himself. So he decides to tell himself: I'll maybe close my eyes to try to figure out why it has to happen to me that I laugh at this serious book title. He closes his eyes. And lo and behold, by not seeing, he hears better. And he hears a melody in the distance, played by a barrel organ grinder. And now he remembers: decades ago, he had danced his first dance to this same melody, which the barrel organ grinder is now playing. What he had experienced back then had not crossed his mind since, but had been lying dormant in his subconscious. But now, as he looks at a book title, he hears and does not hear – as if in an intermediate state between hearing and not hearing – and the melody brings it back to his memory. And he has to smile, as he laughed when he had his dancer in front of him and he danced his first dance to the same melody.

You see, by becoming acquainted with something like this — and there is an enormous amount of such things in human life —, one experiences how many so-called reminiscences can be found in the soul, and how easily illusions and fantasies can arise when one gives oneself over to some kind of imagination. That is why some mystics are like that. They believe that by constantly emphasizing, they look into the soul and find all kinds of things in it, which they then often characterize with lofty words that they think they find in the soul. But what one has once absorbed in this way in the soul does not always have to come up in the same way. It can also change. And when someone talks about all kinds of great opportunities and experiences that he claims to have had himself, it may just be the transformed tones of the melody of the barrel organ that he heard decades ago. Please excuse this comparison, but I hope I am being understood.

So what is actually present in the soul, what the possibilities of limitation are, must first be thoroughly and clearly understood by anyone who wants to be a spiritual researcher. He must have these experiences. Only then will he be able to feel correctly. I would now like to characterize it from my use of words, if these words are not misunderstood.

This inner experimentation, this resting on clear ideas, which cannot be reminiscences, of which one knows that only what is present in consciousness is effective, ultimately brings up certain powers from the depths of the soul, which develop through such practice in the same way as muscular strength develops when one works physically. The soul powers develop and one attains a faculty that goes far beyond mere remembering. Mere remembering brings experiences to mind in the form of images that we have gone through in this physical life. But what one now develops as a soul ability through a further development of the ability to remember, that teaches one so well that the human being, as he stands there in the world, is indeed born out of the whole of nature and the universe. It teaches us that everything that is spread out in the world and everything that has ever been spread out in this time, in this world that surrounds us and in which we ourselves are, that all this is in some developmental context with the human being.

It is certainly never my intention to resurrect any old ideas, but one can use expressions – even if one is easily misunderstood by those who want to misunderstand – but one can use old expressions to describe something that one has directly observed.

For example, it is an old idea that the human being is a small world, that is, a microcosm. This means that everything that exists in the world in some way is also present in the human being in its own way. It is interesting that the most recent researchers have repeatedly pointed out that when we look at our machines in terms of their principle, we are actually looking at nothing other than transformed human sensory organs or other human organs. You can prove in almost every machine how it is formed in principle, how something is in the human being. That which is observed externally can, when truly observed internally, come to full consciousness.

When this developed capacity for memory occurs, one brings forth, so to speak, something different from the human soul in terms of effects than one can bring forth from this soul through the ordinary capacity for memory, which conjures up images of what we have experienced before the soul. Through the faculty of memory of which I have just spoken, through the developed faculty of memory, what comes to the soul is in fact what is unknown to the soul itself, what precisely represents the connection of the human being with the whole environment, with the great world, with the macrocosm. And what also comes to the soul is what actually forms this physical body inwardly, because it is nothing other than the instrument of the soul. We need only look.

And when we have a sense of what is at work in the human being, I would say of inner plastic power, even after birth – one need only look with the necessary devotion and with the necessary seriousness and impartiality at the developing child, how it develops from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, how its movements become more and more articulated, how the marvelous happens, it is something marvelous for the one who looks at it impartially – that speech develops. When one sees an unknown person's work at first – but as if from a plastic-engraving principle – in the child at first, one continues to research. And that which works in man from within, which has already worked before he was born or conceived, which shapes his physical existence out of the spiritual world, that is what now shoots into our soul just as in later years a memory of experiences that we have gone through.

The spiritual researcher, ladies and gentlemen, cannot, like a spiritualist, present to your external sensory perception what he has researched. He can only hint at how, through the development of the soul from a point of intellectual modesty, through the ever-increasing unfolding of such powers as memory, one comes to see what initially passes through life as a great unknown.

One simply looks at things with this inner consciousness, with which one otherwise only looks into one's physical life through the ability to remember. Just as images of a mathematical nature arise before the soul, but these have no existence, so when the soul works from its inner being and does not work out something empty or fantastic, but something in which it recognizes reality when the image is there, and the soul works this out of itself and recognizes reality as in ordinary memory, where she also knows, you are not imagining anything, there is something in this image that is connected to reality – then you know that through this further developed ability to remember, you also have images in your soul that are connected to realities, that are built up in your soul in exactly the same way as the images, let's say, of geometry, but which, as I said, lack existence, while one now plunges into an inner, soul-like experience, which, however, through its own essence, indicates how it is connected with existence, and with spiritual existence, from which man is born just as he is born from physical existence, how it is connected with spiritual existence. It is truly not a fantasy, but rather, through the same efforts, whereby one gradually comes to understand the mathematical structures in their secret relationships, through efforts - but which go much further - to develop such inner abilities that, to a certain extent, give a world tableau, an internally constructed world tableau that provides world knowledge.

This is simply a fact that one arrives at by starting from intellectual modesty. And one must simply deny the human being the ability to develop if one does not want to admit at first that something like this is possible. The rest then depends only on whether one really tries. Everyone is free to try things out. Others prove that they are leading people to the microscope, and it is said that this is not based on blind faith, because everyone can see for themselves.

It is no different with spiritual science; it just has to demand different things. Everyone can see for themselves what spiritual science claims. But just as one must really look into the microscope in physical science, so in spiritual science one must actually go through that which the spiritual researcher shows must be developed if one wants to look into the spiritual worlds. Then one does not merely acquire a belief from the spiritual worlds, but one actually acquires real knowledge, an insight into the spiritual worlds. Then one beholds that which one can call the eternal aspect of human nature, for one does not just see that which is produced in life, which stands before our sensory eyes as a human body, but one sees the producing spiritual-soul aspect, that which forms this human body, but also that which, at the same time, takes care of the breakdown of this physical aspect in the moment when the physical is formed. Because, however, my dear audience, one also sees that! From such starting points, one actually penetrates certain secrets of our brain structure quite differently than with external anatomy or physiology.

Above all, through inner observation, one gets to know how thinking, how imagining, is connected with the structure of our brain, with our nervous system. Materialists believe that the ordinary growth process that otherwise builds our body also continues in the brain, and that such an organic process of building, which, for example, underlies our growth or our nutrition, also underlies our brain when we think. This can only be believed as long as one fantasizes about these things. This can no longer be the case when one looks at these things inwardly. Then you know that the brain must be well nourished. But why? Because it is constantly destroying itself. And it is this process of destruction, not the process of building, that is connected to what we call thinking and imagining. We could not think if the brain were constantly growing, constantly feeding and building.

What the building process is – you can observe it when you observe twilight or sleep states, where the growth processes become too strong. That which is growth, that which is building processes, leads to unconsciousness, not to conscious ideas. Conscious imagining occurs precisely in the breakdown of the brain, in the breakdown of the nerves. And that which is the building of the nerves is precisely the retroactive process. This in turn forms the nerves, it forms them out of the organic process. But if thought is to take place, if something of the soul is to develop in a person, then the brain must degrade. In a sense, the brain must first make room for the soul to unfold. If one understands this process, then one can never arrive at the view that the brain thinks. The brain only thinks to the extent that it destroys itself as a brain.

The brain thinks just as little as one can say – let me express myself with a comparison: someone walks along a muddy road, or a car drives along a muddy road, and the footsteps or wheel tracks that one steps or drives into the ground become visible. Now someone comes along and says: There are all kinds of shapes in the ground, so I have to assume that below the ground there are forces at work that shape forms, footsteps. Anyone looking for these forces in the ground will, of course, search in vain. They must assume that something completely different is involved, something that has nothing to do with the ground, except that the ground must be there, because otherwise one would sink into the abyss. The ground must be there, but it is only the foundation. However, what causes the forms in the ground is something that has nothing to do with the ground. In the same way, thinking and imagining have nothing to do with the brain other than the brain provides the physical substrate on which the soul-spiritual develops, making its impressions. No wonder when the physiologist or anatomist comes and says: Yes, everything that takes place in the soul can also be seen in the brain. You see it, but the soul is what does it in the first place, the soul is expressed there. And it needs the brain for nothing other than to provide a kind of resistance, just as I need the ground when I cross the street. This is expressed by a comparison.

But what can really be seen through spiritual science, as one sees, I would like to say the emergence of man out of the spirit through the developed ability to remember, I cannot go into it further now, as I said the methods are described in “How to Know Higher Worlds.” — one comes to say to oneself: Basically, one begins to die by being born, because this process of degradation is constantly there. And what happens at death is nothing more than that the body, which can no longer be created, is torn away from the spiritual soul. This spiritual-mental now seeks out other worlds. One learns to recognize the passing through of the spiritual-mental, of the eternal in human nature, through the fragile body, by watching the process of dying itself in thinking, I would say from hour to hour, by constantly dying in the small things, I would say, when we think. So everything that one finds in life appears in such a way that one sees it in its true form through spiritual science.

I must first describe [this] to you – my dear audience – in very elementary terms, because this is the only way we can communicate. In every science, one must start from the first principles. I would just like to mention in parenthesis that I have said that what is developed memory is a tableau, comparable to the mathematical tableau, that it calls up before our soul, but that this tableau introduces us to the [spiritual-soul life] from which we are formed.

The names are not important – my dear attendees – what you can perceive there must also have a name. In my books, I have called this the “Akasha Chronicle” because it actually has something to do with chronicling. Just as memory itself has something to do with chronicling, so that which leads us out of it has, like memory, only into ordinary life, into the life of the world. Therefore, I would say, if we simply call the spiritual 'ether' or 'akasha', we can speak of an 'ether chronicle' or an 'akasha chronicle'. These words do not have any kind of mystical meaning. Nor is there any kind of mystical meaning to these words, any more than there is any mystical meaning to the whole of geometry. It can certainly be compared to the totality of geometry, which, however, does not apply to time but to space. Therefore, geometry cannot be called a chronicle. But this can certainly be understood that way. The things meant here must not be taken out of context, but only considered in context. If you look at them in this way, you will find that they actually mean something quite different from what may appear to you if you tear them out of context. Nowhere is it a matter of nebulous mysticism, but everywhere of emerging from the sources of the soul's existence, which can be followed piece by piece, and in such a way that the individual pieces stand before the soul with mathematical clarity.

The second faculty of the soul – honored attendees – that needs to be cultivated so that one does not merely have images, because all that I have described to you so far are basically only images. One knows, as with memory images, that they are about life, but one does not have life. You know full well that you do not live in a fantastic world. You have imaginations, imaginations of reality, but you do not stand in this reality. In order to live in this reality, in order to have this direct experience of the spiritual-real, it is necessary to experience the power that is otherwise only bound to our human organization, which, by confronting us in life, always equips us with a good deal of egoism, so that we develop this ability further and further, so that we can indeed gradually come to look at things in such a way that we can completely forget ourselves, can completely immerse ourselves in each individual thing, and in each individual being. It is necessary to develop this ability more and more.

This training is based on a very simple thing: human attention, in that I take an interest and turn my attention to some thing or process. I can pay attention to what I am actually doing inwardly by turning my attention away from other things and turning it to a new being. I have to become aware of how this attention works. And by training this ability, which in turn takes years of training, I grasp inwardly, as it were, the capacity of attention. I transform it into the power to devote myself to a thing, to become completely absorbed in a thing or process. In short, what one otherwise experiences only as an abstract ability to pay attention can be increased to become devoted love.

By developing this love more and more, one comes close to what I described in my “Philosophy of Freedom” as early as 1893, showing that only the person who truly has this love can be free, whereby he also does not carry out his actions out of his capacity for desire, but out of loving immersion in the things of the world. He finds that something has to happen. He is completely indifferent to what his desire is. From objectivity, he realizes that something has to happen. This development of the ability to see that something has to happen leads, on the one hand, to real human freedom and, on the other hand, to the power of love.

And then, when you have developed this ability, my dear audience, you can not only receive such images that arise within and depict a reality, but you can also remove these images from your consciousness at will. Just as in physical matters one must have the ability to look at a thing and then look away, otherwise one would not have a healthy soul life, so one must develop the ability, when one has inner vision, to have the images and then not to have them. One must become completely inwardly master of having these images. And by being able to alternate between the things that live in the soul and the completely empty state of the soul, by learning this alternation in the soul, one also learns to have an image and then to let the image disappear in the soul. Then one lives on. The image is gone, but one has the experience of the inner reality of things. One experiences the spiritual. You experience it through the power you have acquired, through the development of love. Just as you learn the spiritual anew through the development of your ability to love, so you learn to experience the spiritual through the increase, through the ever-increasing increase of the power of love.

I know how much is opposed to the scientist when he is to regard the ability to love itself as a power of knowledge. The scientist demands that what is to apply objectively in the scientific should only be attainable to the exclusion of love. But in doing so, he reaches the limits of knowledge. These limits of knowledge arise from the fact that one does not enter into the inner workings of things with one's soul, but stops and fantasizes all kinds of things, all kinds of molecules and atoms. If you experience through the increased power of love what comes to you from the surface of things, and then you experience what you can have in images through the increased ability to remember, then you know where images come from in the [increased] depths of existence. For one can compare what one sees in the picture with that into which one then submerges with the experience. And one practices, so to speak, if I want to use these expressions so simply, being constantly in being, as one otherwise inhales and exhales. That is what really leads one into the spiritual world, what allows one to get to know what actually underlies the human being.

Now, my dear attendees, what develops in this way in man as certain abilities to look into the spiritual world can now be applied in every single science. It is not at all that what happens in the laboratory, in the observatory and so on, or in the clinic, is despised. But now one learns to look at it in such a way that one can observe every detail at the same time as that which reveals itself as spiritual. And one does not fantasize, as the German natural philosophers did, for example, but one researches just as objectively as one searches with one's eyes objectively, as one combines with the outer mind objectively — although one can certainly err. But in the inner vision, those things simply come before the soul's eye that otherwise cannot appear at all, just as little as what is in Goethe's book of poetry can appear before the soul of a five-year-old child. And so, in all the individual sciences, one arrives precisely at that which these individual sciences are currently lacking. This is not just something that can be spoken about only in abstract generalities. In this way, light can be brought into the science that is closest to human life, into medical science, for example. And we are now in the process of setting up such institutions in individual places, which deal with the science of therapy in a spiritual scientific sense. It is primarily a matter of deepening scientific life. That is what it is about in Dornach, not to meddle with the sphere of any religion, not to engage in anything sectarian, but to engage in serious science, as this science allows itself to be engaged with by deepened powers of cognition, which are just as deepened as I have stated.

I myself experienced that epoch, esteemed attendees, that epoch of science, in a formerly most important medical faculty, where the capacities were just piling up – Oppolzer, [Rokitansky] and so on. I myself experienced how that remarkable therapeutic direction emerged, which was then called medical nihilism. This medical nihilism no longer prevails to the same extent as it did when I was young – a long time ago – but what emerged back then as medical nihilism denied medicine at the time the ability to move from the pathological examination of the clinical picture to the healing process, to therapy. They did not want to find a bridge between pathology and real therapy. And this cannot be found if one proceeds with mere external natural science. One can explain this in a very popular way, why it cannot be found.

Is this not the case, the healthy human organism undergoes certain processes that we call natural processes. And we can say: Let us look at the healthy person in terms of his physical nature. We perceive natural processes. But is the sick person, what takes place in the illness, not just as much a natural process? Do we not have a natural process in the healthy and in the sick person? Do we have two natures? How does one natural process relate to the other? If we speak of causality in the one natural process, we must also speak of causality in the other.

Spiritual science shows us that whatever enters the world spiritually always gives rise to the opposite natural process. The natural process of human growth is initially a constructive one. The process that must occur for the spiritual to simply intervene is a destructive one. We do indeed get to know processes from different directions when we immerse ourselves in spiritual science. We learn to look inside this remarkable structure that is the human organism and we get to know that there are indeed two opposing processes. And we then learn to recognize the human being in his connection with the rest of nature, learn to recognize how the rest of nature works on the human being. And from all this, the spiritual view of the world then arises that there is a connection between certain healing processes or substances and what happens in the human being, who is connected to the whole world. One can say: one can indeed come to a real healing art through spiritual science. I am giving this as an example, I could just as easily have mentioned another science. That is what matters.

You learn to recognize, especially when you are immersed in this modern scientific life – and truly experienced, level-headed scientists already admit this today – that science today does not offer solutions to riddles, but on the contrary, piles up riddles more and more. The further you research with the microscope, you research all the more riddles in the small, but you research just as few real riddles with the telescope. These riddles can, however, be solved to a certain extent by calculation.

But it is necessary not to assume that we will find something known, but to be open to finding that unknown, as America was between Europe and India at that time, that unknown that the mind finds as its own essence when it reflects on itself. We apply the mind in the individual sciences. Even a materialist must do this. The spiritual researcher is only trying to understand himself. He applies the spirit, seeks to discover what this spirit is, and actually comes to realize that this spirit is not connected with the anabolic processes – with which it would have to be connected if the materialistic view were correct – but that the spirit is connected with the catabolic processes, that the spirit presents precisely that as fact, which directly runs counter to the material process, breaks it down, undermines it. These are the significant experiences that are made in spiritual science, for example.

This is how it is with spiritual science. The other science basically works on the human mind, only in such a way that the human being can develop what intelligence is. Now, many people are already saying, especially in the field of contemporary education, that what has emerged from more recent scientific life as school education actually trains the intellect too much and not the mind. It does not want to take hold of the will, not the whole person. But to ensure that this is the case, one does not just have to declaim that it should be so, that the mind should be formed again. Rather, just as the more recent period has ultimately formed the outer science, one also needs a spiritual science that does not just speak to the intellect, but that could take hold of the whole person.

This can also be seen from the fact that we have recently been able to introduce this spiritual science into existence as an element in individual areas. One of these attempts is our Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt, initially for the children of his factory. But since then it has already doubled in size! Pupils have flocked to this school from all walks of life and from all sides. This school is not a school of world view; it is only a slander when it is said that it is. It is not about grafting anthroposophical world view or some new religion into children. When this school was founded, I myself agreed to run the school. It was established from the very beginning that the religious education to be given to the children – to Catholic children by the Catholic priest and to Protestant children by the Protestant pastor – should be given by the children's respective religious teachers. We completely refrain from any kind of world view in this school. Only those children whose parents belong to no confession or the like, who therefore do not want to send their children to any religious education, should be free to attend religious education that we can provide ourselves. Otherwise, these children would have no religious education at all if it were not given to them. But those who want a particular religious education, based on the life they have grown up in, will receive such instruction from their religious teacher.

This should prove to you that we, while not standing on anthroposophical ground, do not want to found a new religion or somehow graft a world view onto people. Rather, what should guide us, for example, is this: Anyone who has a science like anthroposophical spiritual science has something that seizes the whole person, that makes him skillful, that above all makes his soul skillful, that makes him a judge of character, also a judge of children, a judge of the developing human being, the child. [And that is why we have brought it about in the Waldorf school that we only work through the method, through the didactics, through the art of education, which can be developed out of anthroposophy, in the way we teach, and that is what matters, not the inculcation of some religious creed that is somehow supposed to be new compared to the others. We take great care to ensure that the child is treated in the way that is appropriate to him or her, which is only possible if we really take into account the totality of the soul and spirit, and I would say every year, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, in its particular abilities.

Now, my dear attendees, in this school, precisely because the teachers are imbued with spiritual science and bring this atmosphere into the classroom, there is, I might say, an atmosphere of love. Of course, people may not take it particularly deeply when I say something like that. But every time I come to Stuttgart to audit this school, I ask the children in each class and in the assembly hall: Dear children, do you also love your teachers? You can tell by the way the children behave and the way their eyes light up whether they really mean it or not. And that is something that always gives one great joy, that something has happened after all, that such a didactics has been formed out of anthroposophy: when the children respond with their whole being, with a “yes” that comes from the whole soul, that has not been rehearsed.

Dear attendees! When we handed out the school reports after the first school year, there was nothing in them of the usual. Otherwise, they say: “satisfactory”, ‘almost satisfactory’, ‘less than satisfactory’, ‘almost satisfactory’ and so on. Rather, for each child, despite the fact that some classes are quite large, there was something in it that was or is entirely appropriate to the child's individuality, so that the children repeatedly pick up these reports and, I would like to say, repeatedly see themselves reflected in them. Again and again they read what the teacher gives them as a force of life, so a single saying or the like, not something out of a scheme that tends to be, I would say, “less satisfactory” and the like. It is, of course, a bit radically expressed, but it can be done if you enter the class with some knowledge of children, even in large classes, so that the individuality of the child comes into its own.

This is an example of how anthroposophy can become an integral part of life, that is, it can be applied in human life. And after all, schooling and teaching are a very important part of human life. [But now, this is only one part, the part that has been brought to us by the more intellectual education of recent times.

Let us look – esteemed attendees – at what has become great. Certainly, anyone who wants to deepen science into a spiritual science will not underestimate the great triumphs and the importance of modern science – on the contrary! In speaking to you here, I fully recognize the importance of modern science for our external lives. But on the other hand, they only educate the head, they only educate that which arises from the head in social life. And so, in modern times, we have developed what we know as the great, significant technology that surrounds us everywhere out of this scientific approach. But in this modern age, in which technology has developed to such an extent that it has become an external-mechanical technology in the entire world economy, in all world traffic, at the same time it has grown into all of modern life, what we call the social question.

It must be said that modern science has indeed come to terms with the external mechanism, with that which can be composed of external natural forces, that which can serve human life. But we see this in the chaos that has emerged to the present day, and which has led to millions of people being shot dead and beaten to cripples in recent years. We see that modern science, as soon as it wants to be active in social life in any way, fails. It can't help. It goes as far as the machine, as far as the mechanism, it can go that far with what it borrows from nature. But just as the machine has been introduced between the account book in the office and the cash book and what is produced in production, and an intimate connection has been formed, no such intimate connection has been formed in recent times between those who were leading personalities in the course of the last [decades] and those who are in the outer work. Man has found his way to the machine, but he has not found his way to the human being.

We will only find our way to the human being through a humanly deepened science that grasps the human being as deeply as the spiritual science meant here, because that will also be a life-oriented science for social life. [That which is based on it — as a conception, as a theoretical view —, only destroys the human organism, the transfer to the outer world, it becomes destruction.] Today you only need to see how people are creating something so devastating in Eastern Europe today, that it would almost have to lead to the downfall of civilization, if it lasts as it is in Russia. How these people, who are doing this, are acting in good faith and believe that in Marxism and the like they are only extending modern science to social life. But it becomes the death of social life. It must be a different science, a science that does not arise from the human mind alone, but from the human being as a whole. It is a science that does not arise merely from a contemplation of the physical world and from there forms its methods, but that is drawn from the human-spiritual being itself, as spiritual science is. If one studies this spiritual science, if one attempts to build up, as I have attempted — however contestable it may be in detail — in these two books, 'The Core Points of the Social Question' or 'In Implementation of the Threefold Social Organism', if one attempts to arrive at a social view from this spiritual science, then it is a thoroughly constructive one. This then proves itself in social thinking, which can truly lead the human being to the human being, as a life-giving treasure.

And so I could cite many examples to you — such as this in general, as well as the school system in particular — where this spiritual science proves to be a vital asset. It is absolutely necessary that, in order to cope in social life, we first and foremost deepen our understanding of the human being, help him to see the spiritual and soul life within him.

If we begin by characterizing spiritual science in these elementary terms, we have the goal towards which it strives. We can only assess its details if we enter into its interrelationships. I could go on talking for hours, but I just want to say one more thing today in conclusion. Just as it was thought centuries ago that Copernicanism, by coming into the world, would endanger religion, would endanger Christianity, so it is also believed today that spiritual science, as it is seeking to enter the world today through the Goetheanum in a more intensive way, would endanger religion, would endanger Christianity.

Dear attendees! When I am confronted with something like this, I always remember what a friend of mine did many years ago. I was very close friends with Professor Müllner, who at the time was a professor of Christian philosophy at the Vienna Faculty of Theology. When he took up his year as rector, he spoke about Galileo in his inaugural speech as rector of the university. And this Professor Müllner – he died a long time ago – spoke in such a way that his last spoken word was that he died as a loyal son of his church. And yet, what did he say when he gave his rectorate speech about Galileo? He said: Today, within Christianity, when we look at the things of this world with a truly open mind, we view Galileo's ideas differently than the Church did during Galileo's lifetime.

The Church today must realize that no new scientific discovery can in any way detract from the deep human forces of Christianity. On the contrary, the Church today must look at these things in such a way that it says to itself: Through every new scientific discovery, the glories of divine spiritual life become visible and evident to humanity only to a higher degree. This is what Professor Müllner said at the time – I cannot quote it to you in full today – this professor of Christian theology, the Catholic Christian at the Vienna Catholic Theological Faculty, who before his death spoke the word that he wanted to die as a loyal son of his church. It was still the pontificate of Leo XIII. Today, we look down on the grave of Galileo differently than his contemporaries in Rome at the time looked up at Galileo.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, when Professor Laurenz Müllner spoke in this way, he knew that he was using these words not to endanger Christianity, which he himself represented, but to create an even firmer foundation for Christianity from a scientific point of view. This is how a Christian priest spoke. I often have to remind myself of that. I also had many private conversations with him and with other theologians who were frequent visitors to his house.

Dear attendees! I will not talk about the relationship between anthroposophy and Christianity today, but I would like to say just one thing in conclusion: that one can follow the development of Christianity through philology, one can follow the development of Christianity through history. One can also follow the development of Christianity through anthroposophical spiritual science, and one comes thereby to certain truths about Christianity, which one can find only through this spiritual science. But the truths about Christianity that one comes across in this way are truly not suitable to endanger Christianity in any way. And anyone who believes that Christianity as such could be endangered by any new cognitive truths, whether in the physical or spiritual realm, I would like to believe that he does not have a high enough opinion of Christianity. The one who has a high opinion of Christianity and the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha, when he recognizes what Christianity is in the spiritual-scientific sense, says to himself: Christianity and the Mystery of Golgotha have given the development of the earth its true meaning.

I have often said that it is only a comparison, and that nothing is to be said about the inhabitants of any other worlds. If any inhabitant of Mars were to descend, he would see much of our world – it is my innermost conviction, which I have acquired precisely through spiritual science – much that would be incomprehensible to him. But if he were to see what has come down to us as Leonardo's painting 'The Last Supper' – Christ among his apostles – if he were to see only that which is there (he needs nothing more than this painting), then he would say to himself: 'I have come upon a strange plan. What is depicted by this image points to those deeds within earthly life that are not mere earthly facts, but are a fact of the whole world, and without which all life on earth would have no meaning; the meaning of the earth lies in this fact. This is something one learns to recognize more and more, precisely by immersing oneself spiritually in Christianity and in the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Truly, one must have too low an opinion of Christianity to believe that it could be endangered in any way by a new discovery. Truly – even if it is not written in the Bible – just as Christianity was not endangered by the discovery of America, so too neither can any physical or spiritual truth, be it the Galilean truth or the repeated lives on earth, which I have not spoken about today but But you can follow from the literature as being in the straight line starting from what I have spoken today, just as little can one endanger Christianity in any way if Christianity remains in its inner truth, and may millions and millions of physical or spiritual insights still go through the world. On the contrary, through all these realizations, the Christian truth is deepened and more accurately recognized, and more thoroughly introduced to the human souls, when these truths are really taken out of the Spirit of Truth itself.

But, my dear audience, the different times need such views on all the things of the world, arising out of their spiritual needs, as they arise out of the age. Therefore, I may tell it again and again: I once spoke on the subject of “Bible and Wisdom” in a southern German city that is no longer in southern Germany today. There were also two Catholic theologians at this lecture. It was precisely in this lecture not just something that they could somehow dispute. They came to me and said: “Well, what you said - we could indeed subscribe to it, but the way you say it, we cannot admit it. Because it is not for all people, it is for some prepared people. But we speak for all people.” At the time, I could only say: Reverend, it goes without saying that you think you speak for all people. That corresponds to the natural feeling that we must have as human beings. But through that which is spiritual science, one gradually works one's way through to a different point of view. One comes away from oneself. You no longer believe that you can shape things the way you want to shape them within your environment. You learn to look at what time demands, what objective facts demand. And now I ask you what the objective facts demand, how you treat it. It remains the case that you believe you speak for all people, but that does not decide anything. The only thing that matters is whether all people still go to your sermons. And you see, you cannot answer “yes” there. Among those who do not go to church, there are also those who seek the path elsewhere. I am not speaking to those who go to church with you, but to those who also want to find the path to Christianity and who do not go to you. This is clear from the facts. But the fact that we have religious education in the Waldorf School given to the children by the respective pastors under the given circumstances, and that we have set up religious education only for those who would otherwise have no religious education, proves that this is not something that detracts from religion. So we are not harming anyone [by doing what is desired under the circumstances, but on the contrary, we are imparting something to the 'dissident children' that can lead them to a genuine religious experience] while they would otherwise hear nothing of a religious nature in the best years of their development.

All this might lead one to point out that this Goetheanum and this spiritual science is not just some fantastic product of human willfulness, but something that as a scientific grasp of the spiritual in an age that would otherwise remain unbelieving, at least where science would have to remain at the mere external grasp of things, while people want to develop further. Because if the present chaos wants to bring civilization more and more into decadence, then out of the circumstances of the time itself that great teaching will come, which basically wants to be followed by this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. And the truth will prevail, no matter how many obstacles are put in its way. In the short term, the aims of spiritual science can be suppressed, perhaps even destroyed for a time, but the truth has paths that can be found through everything. And that these paths can be followed if the methods by which the spirit is seen are honestly and sincerely sought, one can decide for one's conviction in a certain way.

For anyone who really gets involved, not just with their heads but with all their senses, and who engages with everything human, with the individual human being, with the individual life, will always come to the point where they have to say to themselves: science must not just remain on the surface, it must also progress as science, as knowledge, to the spirit. Because

For an upward development, people need what is being sought there – they need the spirit! And without the spirit, humanity will not progress. Spiritual science does not pursue an abstract spirit with ideas and fantasies, but the living spirit, which is to enter into the souls in a living way. And let it be said once again: humanity, if it wants to progress, needs the spirit. Therefore, we must ask for the spirit.

Discussion and Closing Words

Ulrich [Dikenmann]: Dear speaker, dear attendees! Dr. Steiner has made an effort this evening to make anthroposophy more accessible to us and to inspire confidence in us. And we are very grateful for the additions that have been presented to us this evening compared to the lecture that would have been given eight days ago. I would now like to ask a question about what Dr. Steiner has presented and which perhaps can be touched on a little more from his side.

Dr. Steiner spoke of two different ways of attaining higher knowledge, of spiritual experiences, which perhaps many of us are only superficially familiar with. He spoke of a deepened ability to remember that yields results for spiritual science, and he spoke of love. I now see a gap in that there is something about these two methods that we should still be enlightened about before we can have deeper trust in the matter. As far as I remember from his books, it can be read there that before the goal in these spiritual results, light phenomena appear before the eye of those who deal with anthroposophical science – it could also have been color phenomena, I do not remember exactly – at a certain level of spiritual science. I would now be grateful if Dr. Steiner would tell us a little more about this.

Because, you see, dear attendees, when we or our younger friends turn to anthroposophy, we may have to allow ourselves to be guided by empirical, in-depth psychology. What else is the nature of spiritual science if someone, after a long period of self-reflection, begins to experience such light phenomena? Is this what he is experiencing, ecstasy, or is it something like a spiritual presentiment, which still lies in the realm in which we can examine scientifically, in which logic and understanding and reason are applied?

Secondly, we have learned from Dr. Steiner's remarks that those who aspire to the highest levels must surrender themselves to a spiritual leader to a great extent, that they cannot draw entirely from themselves. From my point of view as a Protestant theologian, this seems to me to be a somewhat serious matter. For, as is well known, there are always two dangers associated with excessive devotion to a personality. Either the person who surrenders too much to his leader becomes spiritually dependent and lethargic, and he is no longer sure what his own conviction is or what has been placed more in his soul, placed in his soul by suggestive means. And on the other hand, the person who enjoys the extensive trust of a second person is subject to a powerful temptation that only highly developed, highly spiritual personalities can resist: namely, the temptation to be pleased with the power he has gained over the other person, and then easily exert too much influence over him in all things. This is not meant to imply that I have any mistrust of the lecturer, who has spoken so excellently to us, in this regard. But it has been proven throughout world history, even if one only surveys it in a certain way, as I survey it, that there is a certain danger here, which we must be careful of and to which we must be attentive when we want to encourage one or the other of our acquaintances to take an interest in spiritual science. Incidentally, I am pleased to note that what Dr. Steiner said this evening about his religious views has been very beneficial for me personally.

Roman Boos: Dr. Steiner has the final word, if there are no further questions?

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees! Of course, I would have been very happy to take any questions. I am particularly pleased about the two questions that have been put to me today, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to address them to you this evening.

It is necessary that what lives in the soul when one has progressed to what I have characterized today as seeing, that if one wants to express it, it must be named in some way, and that one has very different words, a certain terminology. If you follow my writings, some of which have already appeared in very large print runs, you will see, if you follow the individual print runs, how I have endeavored from print run to print run – or at least always over several print runs – to formulate the sentences sentences in such a way that what needs to be said about such a subject, which, after all, is not easy to put into words, is said with a certain clarity and distinctness.

We must not forget that our language, especially as it has developed among civilized peoples today, is to a large extent already something extraordinarily conventional and that, above all, it has incorporated the meaning that has entered the world view through the materialism of the last few centuries. Therefore, today, when using words, it is extremely difficult to strip these words of their materialistic meaning and to give something that is meant spiritually the appropriate meaning. Nevertheless, I have tried again and again, and especially in the fundamental books you will find a struggle for expression. By this I do not mean to say that in the last editions this struggle has everywhere led to an ideal — of course not! But now, the special characteristic that I have given of what one sees, by using [to characterize the color perceptions] – isn't it true that I am saying that one is dealing with imaginations; these imaginations are completely different from what one can have in the sensory world. Now I would like to choose the following approach so that we can understand each other.

If you study Goethe's Theory of Colors – perhaps some of you, esteemed attendees, know that for forty years I have been endeavoring to present the significance of Goethe's Theory of Colors in relation to today's physics. Well, in Goethe's Theory of Colors you will find an extraordinarily significant chapter at the end about the sensual-moral effect of colors. This chapter will perhaps meet with the least opposition from physicists and, when read, it is an extraordinarily stimulating read. What is written here can also be found elsewhere; but so wonderfully beautifully compiled, it can actually only be found in Goethe.

What do we find there, in the characterization of external colors? We also find the emotional experience of color mentioned. We find the experience that one has, for example, with yellow, this peculiar aggressiveness of yellow, the excitement of yellow, similar to red. We then find the balancing of green, the devotion of violet. We have these soul experiences when we let the sensual colors affect us. If you ever visit Dornach, you will see that an attempt has been made there in the Goetheanum to paint entirely from color, to create the picture from the color. In particular, you will find this in the small dome, for example, where an attempt has been made to shape what then leads to the transformation of the picture entirely from the color experience.

Now, on the one hand we have the sensory experience of color, and on the other hand we have the inward spiritual experience, which, however, quite clearly belongs to the experience of color. If we are fully human, we cannot have the sensory experience of color without having the corresponding spiritual experience. This is what Goethe described in his theory of colors.

When one enters the spiritual world, one has experiences that are truly not ecstatic — just as little as the life in geometric representations is an ecstasy. If one were not fully aware that one is in one's psychological state exactly as one is when mathematically imagining, then one would not be on the right path. So, one experiences something that is completely in line with the pattern of mathematical experience in the soul, but one experiences a real spiritual world. And by experiencing this real spiritual world, one does not initially experience colors, but rather those experiences that we inwardly experience in the sensual colors. Of course, one must now have developed to the point where one pays attention to these experiences.

You see, a certain presence of mind is required for spiritual experience. So, one must have this inner experience, which is otherwise experienced with color. The best way to characterize this experience is to remember the color, to really have the color in front of you. Just as one has, let us say, the triangular experience by drawing the triangle inwardly, so one has that which one experiences inwardly best when it is before one, not by drawing a geometric figure, but by painting a colored picture. This colored image is then as adequate to the spiritual experience as, let us say, drawing a triangle with its 180° and angles is identical to the triangular experience, while you have to know that it is a kind of sensualization, then, if you express it in Goethean terms, it is also a supersensory-sensory representation of what is actually experienced.

This, of course, points to subtle experiences, so that one should not draw them out roughly, but one should really go into them. But then one will find that a real thing has indeed appeared by describing it in colors. I have tried to develop this very precisely in the last editions of my basic books. You can't help but describe what you experience in just such a way; otherwise you would become even more materialistic if you described it, and would describe it too symbolically.

But in this way, one describes by actually covering that which is an inner experience through the experience of color. One is always aware of this – that one proceeds in a certain way, as in the presentation of the mathematical – and there is nothing of ecstasy in any way.

I am extremely grateful to the previous speaker for touching on this question. Because I have had to experience it, that I have been told from many sides: what is experienced in the imaginations is repressed ideas, repressed nervous forces, which then come up and represent something fantastic, unhealthy. You see, if someone wanted to maintain such an assertion, at most the proof would have to be provided that the person who speaks of such things cannot, just as the other person who accuses him of such things, speak in a strictly scientific sense. If one has not lost one's scientific sense on the one hand, but is firmly grounded in the scientific sense, and then consistently goes out to something else, then such an accusation cannot be made.

Nor can the objection be raised that it is merely a matter of suggestion. I have already indicated today how it essentially belongs to the schooling of the spirit that one can, I might say, enter into all the special processes of the subconscious life of the soul, so that one can compensate for and exclude every source of error that presents itself. You will see, when you read my book 'How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds', how I have tried to describe all the precautionary measures that need to be taken into account.

Now, I have often been asked: How can one easily distinguish suggestions from non-suggestions, from the truth? For example, it can happen in life that someone only has to think of lemonade and they taste lemonade in their mouth. I readily admit this, since these things are well known. But—and this is addressed to those of you who are present—anyone who is an epistemologist knows that a real experience can only be determined through life. Only through life and the context of life can we determine whether anything we imagine corresponds to reality — but it is only from the context of life that we can be certain [of it]. It is the same in relation to the higher worlds; there too, we can only determine it from the context of the whole. If one wants to go from the suggestion of the taste of lemonade to the totality of the experience, then the comparison no longer applies. One must now say: It is nice to have the taste of lemonade in one's mouth through suggestion, but the question arises as to whether anyone has quenched their thirst with such an image of lemonade. You cannot claim that. There you have the transition to the totality of phenomena. And that is what must always be borne in mind: reality cannot be decided by remaining with the partial phenomenon, but the phenomena of life always have something that signifies their transition to totality.

I would like to draw attention to something that may seem rather remote, but which can be very usefully applied to the sensitization of the matter. You see, if you have a salt crystal, a salt cube, it is in a sense a closed reality. It can exist for a certain period of time, a very, very long time on earth, as a salt cube in front of you. Take a rosebud. A rosebud is not really a reality as we see it, because it can only be conceived as a reality in connection with the totality of the rose bush, the roots and so on. Realities have very different degrees, different meanings. If we do not go into this, we will not arrive at clear, luminous concepts.

And so it is also necessary, in the face of such descriptions as those given by the esteemed gentleman who spoke before me, to bear in mind that the totality of the experience is taken as a basis. Then one will already notice how such color appearances are meant. One does not lose the connection with ordinary consciousness at all, does not go over into foolishness, but the opposite is the case for the paths that are chosen to get into anthroposophy. This lies precisely on the opposite path to the pathological; they lead precisely away from the pathological, they make the human being inwardly consolidated. Therefore, they can not only make drawings, especially in mathematical forms, but also see certain drawings in colors, that is, have a supersensible experience. I don't know if that satisfies you.

Regarding the second question, I would like to say: You are absolutely right in both directions, but I must emphasize that wherever I have the opportunity to talk about these things, you will find that I myself have pointed out that these two dangers can indeed arise, but that they must also be recognized and avoided in genuine spiritual research. If you do not avoid them, you cannot achieve what spiritual research is supposed to achieve. They are avoided precisely when you are aware of them, when you know that such dangers can be present. And if you also have a sense of responsibility, you will certainly try to avoid them.

Regarding the so-called student, I have to say that in spiritual research, what can be described as the relationship between the student and the teacher is basically nothing more than the transfer, only to a different area, of the same relationship that also exists when someone learns something from someone else. It is true that the guidance for spiritual training reaches somewhat more intimately into human life, but, you see, there is a corrective, I would say. It is actually not at all correct that there are no dangers for the student in the outer life in current science.

Just think about how little students are actually immune from blind faith in authority, and especially from that which is initially there as a constraint but which, over the years, becomes something that is very strongly inculcated – [the compulsion to say what is] and so on. There are also dangers for the independent development of the student or listener, which can be described in the same way as those that are present in those who want to advance in spiritual science.

But in addition, there is a corrective, especially when one strikes more intimate chords of the human soul with spiritual science, I would like to say, by wanting to learn something. In this way, an extraordinary sensitivity for independence also develops, especially when one awakens the soul's abilities. And experience shows that such a sense of authority, as it sometimes exists in external science – such swearing by the words of the master, such going away with the notebook and swearing by what one has written in the notebook after hearing it – does not take place in a truly responsible handling of the method of spiritual training.

A sensitivity given by experience shows one – especially when one has to deal with something that deeply intervenes in the soul life of the human being – that the urge for freedom is thereby definitely increased. And in any case, in my experience, those who come into consideration as serious spiritual students soon even move on to accepting something not in good faith, but only after sometimes very extensive examination; so that one can say that it is precisely the sense of freedom that awakens to a particular degree.

Now, of course, there is the other side, where I absolutely have to agree with the esteemed previous speaker that there is a very real danger for the person who is to take on such a role – let us just say that they have to advise someone based on their own experience, because it is almost impossible to do otherwise – and say: you will be able to develop your memory or your love through this or that. Then a temptation can approach the teacher – we know that this temptation can approach. And if I may tell you my own conviction in this regard – my dear audience: when you are in the middle of what spiritual research is about, there is actually nothing more repugnant than what could somehow be called personal adoration or the like. Even though the people who want to slander you keep pointing to such stuff. That is not at all what it is really like; it is actually something that you fundamentally find very repulsive. If you are even a little advanced on the path – which spiritual science indicates – then the truth cannot escape you. The truth cannot escape one that to the same extent as one exercises an unauthorized power, one loses the ability to recognize. That is just the way it is, that is an objective fact, and one recognizes it when one walks the path in spiritual science, through direct experiential knowledge.

Isn't it true that the path to spiritual science is a subtle one, one that must be kept alive through constant inner experience of the soul? To the same extent that one now practices things that correspond to the capacity for desire, that correspond to vanity or the sense of power, to that same extent one obscures precisely those forces that want to spread. Just think, it takes an enormous amount of work to develop what I have called the ability to love. It is the greatest unkindness that one can fall into when one develops feelings of power. I don't know if I am being given a context from your side in this way, but it is true that the feeling of power actually obscures the real feeling of love.

And so there are opportunities everywhere to see clearly how to reject such temptations. And yet, although it is absolutely right that this temptation can approach me, I would say, countless times, the one who has some kind of guidance to give also knows that succumbing to it – this temptation – is what can bring him down the most. For it can only be explained by vanity, by a hunger for power. But these are things that lead away from the paths one must follow if one really wants to achieve something.

I do believe that the distinguished gentleman who spoke before me was also referring to these things in his remarks, based on his own profound experience. Such things have occurred, of course, and will continue to occur, naturally. But there is no reason for this – my dear attendees – to refrain from the path of development just because there are dangers lurking somewhere; rather, if there are dangers lurking somewhere, this can be a reason to avoid the dangers if one recognizes the necessity of the matter in a healthy way. Is that perhaps a sufficient answer to the question that has been asked? If it is not, then I would be happy to elaborate further.

Now, esteemed attendees, since no other questions have been asked, I have nothing special to add on this matter. I would just like to point out very briefly that the spiritual science as it is meant here does not want to be a religion.

The question has been raised: It may explain the position of anthroposophy in relation to denominations if you tell us what you teach children of non-denominational parents in religious education.

You see, my dear audience, my opinion is this – but in the sense that I have gained it entirely from spiritual science – that something as intimate as religious education can only be taught within the framework of that which fills one's soul completely. This refers to religious education for children of non-denominational parents or those who are expected to be regarded as non-denominational at school. In this intimate area, therefore, only that which one carries in one's soul, that one is completely filled with, can come into question. And that is what is taught. And what it is about is that the anthroposophical direction that I follow is, in the first place, actually a method, a path, a living life. And that is why it can have an effect on all the individual sciences, and why it can also have an effect on the art of education, and indeed on art itself, as the artistic conception of the Dornach building shows. But ultimately, what is being researched is the living spirit, and that can only lead to a deepening of religious life.

Now, we are of course dependent on imponderables to a great extent, and I prefer to make things clear by means of concrete details rather than speaking in abstract generalities. You see, we try to show the children the way to the Christ in such a way that this way leads out of the rest of human life. However much it is claimed by some denominational sides – or rather by representatives of certain sides – it is not true that anthroposophy wants anything other than to show the way to the Christ in this religious field in its own way, to those who need to find him in this way.

You can certainly be a follower of anthroposophy and want nothing more than a deepening of the sciences, biology, psychology and so on. You don't need to establish any kind of relationship between anthroposophy and religion. But there are a great many people here today who, on the basis of anthroposophy, of spiritual science, are seeking a religious deepening in the same way that people, on the basis of materialism, have sought a religious deepening, albeit perhaps an older religion, as, for example, David Friedrich Strauß, the author of 'Der alte und der neue Glaube' and the like. Not true, as at that time a number of such people tried and sought a kind of materialistic religion, so one finds a truly spiritual religion and also the way to Christ - among many others - on the way to spiritual science. In addition to medicine, psychology, philosophy, biology and so on, which one can deepen, one also acquires, I might say, a certain knowledge of those peculiar paths that must be followed.

Let us assume that we first need to teach children the concept of the immortality of the soul. We try to do this – as I said, I am talking about an example, it could easily be explained differently – but let us assume that we try to teach the child through an image. We point to the butterfly pupa. The butterfly emerges. We then try to show how the soul of a human being also leaves the body at death and enters a [different] world, albeit now in the invisible, and so on. You can think up something like that. But if you just make it up, you will notice – you need pedagogical experience to do so, but if you have it, you will notice: if you have just thought up this point of view – I am so clever and the child is so stupid, I have to bring it to the child, then in reality you are not teaching it to the child. You teach it to the brain, to word recognition, but not to the heart. You only teach the heart what you can believe in yourself; then you teach it, I might say with joy, if there really is something real in it, if you can say to yourself, 'Yes, I have a correspondence there; I believe in it.' That is precisely what is formed in our spiritual science, but not in a nebulous, hazy way. For that is something that is rejected by spiritual science, as it is meant here.

It is again a slander when we are accused of phantasms. What we seek is not an abstract spiritual reality, but a concrete spirituality is contained in the details. And so, for those who recognize the spirit in nature, this process of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis is the same at a lower level as what is death with the immortal soul of man at a higher level, a reality. It is not I who makes the picture, but the phenomena of the world themselves make the picture. And when I stand in them and judge the phenomena of the world in such a way that nature becomes, as it were, for me the living vision of what I can bring forth from the whole world as the understanding of the divine essence, then I am also able to teach it to the child. For then not only, I might say, the ordinary relations to the child are formed. There are imponderables, forces that work from person to person. And it is these imponderable forces that lie within, that make it possible to teach another person only that in which one can believe with all one's strength. And the basic truths that present themselves to us, the awareness of religious truths on the path that can be taken through spiritual science, that is what makes religious education possible, where it is necessary to give to the child.

We have put a great deal of effort into finding a method for teaching religion. And I have to say that it is actually something that works very well. And I have been able to emphasize again and again at the various school celebrations what seems to me to be a truth now, that in our Waldorf School the Christian spirit is not only present in the religion lessons, but it is there when you enter the school or leave class. It is present in everything, without one always saying “Lord, Lord” or constantly pointing to that which somehow is religiosity with words. That which is the religious spirit is something quite different, when the rest flows into objectivity.

That is what underlies it. And when I say that our paths lead to Christ, then perhaps despite all the hostility that comes from various sides, I may also recall a Bible verse that is truly important to me not only because it has been handed down, but because it is daily proving to be true and has certainly become a valuable Bible verse. This is the one that is put into the Savior's mouth:

I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Thus He is not only present during the time of His life on earth, but He is always present. And if one is willing, one can always experience what the living Christ wants among people. This living understanding of Christ is especially important – this ever-present Christ – which, of course, does not exclude the Mystery of Golgotha as an historical event from us. And in order to avoid misunderstandings, I emphasize that it is understood as a supersensible event and that it has even been possible to lead Protestant clergymen, who were dissatisfied with the existing presentation, which has become quite rationalistic – the journal literature already shows this today – back to a real, supersensible understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, precisely through anthroposophy.

All this shows you that our religious education is looking for a method that brings it into connection with all other aspects of the world, with all other human activity and with human life in general, and on the other hand, that the matter does not lead away from Christianity.

And you see, dear ladies and gentlemen, we do not force anyone from any religious community or any other community, but we have nevertheless managed to have Jewish children sitting in our Waldorf School who listen to the knowledge of Christianity with complete inner soul and with truly religious fervor, without this being anything extraordinary.

Education can be such that, for example, the following occurred with us at the Waldorf School, but it was not a merit of the Waldorf School, the boy had already done that before he came to the Waldorf School. A Jewish boy who was later sent to the Waldorf School received Jewish religious education before the school was established. When he came to our school and heard what goes on here, he compared it with the way religion is approached in his parents' home. And he simply ran away, just walked out the door and went into the other class where free Christian religious education was being taught, and stayed inside. So if the claim is that Christianity is not being cultivated, that is not true. Although we have to say: we are not a sect, we do not compete with any religious community; our sources lie first and foremost in science, as I have explained today. So it would be a completely unjustified accusation to claim that Christianity is not being cultivated.

And if you look at real life, you will see how far we have already been able to go in the most diverse fields using the anthroposophical method of understanding the world. It will become clear to you how unfounded what is already being said against anthroposophy in a somewhat indefinable way from some quarters is. But that is not what is worthy of discussion in the first place. Rather, it is important to know that this spiritual science does not want to remain in the sphere of mere theoretical development, in the sphere of mere theoretical knowledge, because that is ultimately something that alienates people from the world and keeps them far removed from it. Rather, it seeks to penetrate the sphere of the will, into all of human life, and is therefore far removed from any nebulous mysticism, any mysticism that seeks to withdraw from life.

There are, of course, people who, in complete good faith, believe that this world is too bad after all, that one must withdraw into another, mystical world. I have met many such people; they were quite good people, but they were not the kind of people that today's difficult times need. Today's world needs people who not only believe in the spirit in knowledge and abstract theories, but today's difficult times need people who absorb this spirit in such a way that they can carry it into matter and into life themselves.

Dear attendees! We have experienced it – and the deeper connections show it to a deeper understanding – these things have led us into disaster. We have experienced it that people were religious on the one hand according to their own view, and then they had nothing from religion in their external actions during the whole week, except that in the bookkeeping in the ledger it still says on the first page: “With God”. I don't know if that is true or not. But in any case, something has occurred that I would call a kind of double way of life: on the one hand, one can be a follower of any confession, and on the other hand, nothing can be brought into one's life from that confession. Likewise, there are already a great many scientists today who pursue their science in such a way that they handle it on the one hand, and then they grasp life quite differently on the other. They make two things out of these things that should actually be one. But we must come to a unified life, not just a conception of life, but a way of life.

That is what is striven for through anthroposophical spiritual science: not just to recognize the spirit in abstract, mystical contemplation and immersion, and believe that one has the spirit when one withdraws from the external life but to absorb the spirit into the soul in such a way that one can then carry it into matter, into external matter, and thus deepen the external life. The human being must not only work as a knower of the spiritual order of the world, but as a realizer of the spiritual order of the world. And that is the basis of the impulse of spiritual science:

is based: not just to recognize the spirit in abstract ideas and to be able to speak of it, but to take this spirit so fully within oneself that one is able not only to carry it in concepts, but to carry it in one's mind and will, so that one oneself belongs to those powers in the world that actualize the spirit, that one can become a servant for the realization of the spirit in the world order.

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees! First of all, allow me to express my heartfelt thanks to the Federation for Anthroposophical School of Spiritual Science for giving me the opportunity to speak about the relationship between certain scientific peculiarities of the present day and anthroposophy in an introductory lecture. Furthermore, I must ask you today to bear in mind that there is a certain difficulty in such a first, orienting lecture. This is because, of course, much of what needs to be said about a comprehensive topic can only be hinted at and therefore, necessarily, only suggestions can be made that will require further elaboration later on and that, by their very nature, must leave out some of the questions that inevitably arise.

But there are also certain difficulties in a factual sense with today's topic. The first is that in the broadest circles today, especially when the topic is discussed – the relationship between science and anthroposophy in any respect – a widespread prejudice immediately arises, namely that the anthroposophy meant here wants to take up an opposing position to science – to the kind of science that has developed in the course of human history in recent centuries, and which reached its zenith in the last third of the 19th century, at least in terms of its way of thinking and methodology. But it is not the case that there is such an oppositional position, because this anthroposophy, as I mean it here, is precisely concerned with bringing to bear the best fundamental principles of the scientific will of modern times. And it endeavors to further develop precisely that human outlook and scientific human attitude that is needed in order to truly validate the recognition of conventional science.

And in this further development, one finds that precisely from the secure foundations of the scientific way of thinking, if these are only correctly understood and pursued not only in their logical but also in their living consequences, then the path is also found to those supersensible regions of world existence with which the human being must feel connected precisely in their eternal foundations. In a certain respect, simply by continuing the fundamental principles of science, the path to the supersensible realms through anthroposophy is to be found.

Of course, when I speak to you about the relationship between anthroposophy and science, I will speak in such a way that you will not deviate from what you are accustomed to recognize as scientific conscientiousness and thinking. But I will not have to speak about individual fields, but rather, to a certain extent, about the entire structure of the scientific edifice of the present day. And since I have to assume that among you, dear fellow students, there are members of the most diverse fields of science, I will naturally not be able to do justice to the individual needs, and some things will have to be said in a way that is not meant to be abstract, but which is looking in an abstract way, so that perhaps the individual will have to draw the consequences from what I have to say for the individual fields. Agnosticism is a word that is not often used today, but it denotes something that is indeed related to the foundations of our scientific way of thinking. This agnosticism was established, I would say, as a justifiable scientific way of thinking, or perhaps better said, a philosophical way of thinking, by personalities such as Herbert Spencer. It was he who preferred to use this term, and if we want to find a definition of agnosticism, we will have to look for it in his work. But as a basis, as a fundamental note of scientific thought, agnosticism exists in the broadest fields of knowledge in the present day. If we are to say in the most abstract terms what is meant by agnosticism, we could say something like the following: we recognize the scientific methods that have emerged as certain in recent centuries, we use them to pursue appropriate science, as we must pursue it today in certain fields - through observation, through experiment, and through the process of thinking about both experiment and observation.

By pursuing science in this way – and I am well aware that this is absolutely justified for certain fields today – one comes to say to oneself: Of course, with this science one achieves a great deal in terms of knowledge of the laws that underlie the world. And then efforts are made to extend these laws, which have been assimilated, to man himself, in order to gain that which everyone who has healthy thinking within him ultimately wants to gain through knowledge: an insight into man's place in the universe, into man's destiny in the universe.

When one pursues science in this way, one comes, in the course of science itself, to say: Yes, these laws can be found, but these laws actually only refer to the sum of external phenomena as they are given to the senses or, if they are not given to the senses, as they can be inferred on the basis of the material that results from sensory observation. But what is discovered in this way about nature and man can never extend to those regions that are regarded in older forms of human knowledge as the supersensible foundation of the world, with which the deepest nature of man, his eternal nature, if it may be called that, must still have a certain connection.

Thus, it is precisely through the scientific approach that one comes to an acknowledgment of the scientifically unknowable - one comes to certain limits of scientific research. At most, one comes to say to oneself: the human soul, the inner spiritual being of man, must be connected with something that cannot be attained by this science alone. What is connected with it in this way cannot be investigated scientifically; it belongs to the realm of the unknowable. Here we are not faced with Gnosticism, but with an agnosticism, and in this respect contemporary spiritual life, precisely because of its scientific nature, has placed itself in a certain opposition to what still existed at the time when Gnosticism was the attitude of knowledge and was called Gnosis.

Now, what is advocated here as Anthroposophy is not, as some believe, a revival of the old Gnosticism, which cannot be resurrected. That was born out of the thinking of its time, out of the whole science of its time, so to speak. Today we are in an age in which, if we want to found a science on supersensible foundations, we have to take into account what has been brought forth in human development through the work of such minds as Copernicus, Galileo and many others whom I will not name now. And in saying this, one implicitly declares that it is impossible to take the standpoint of Gnosticism, which of course had nothing of modern science. But it may be pointed out that this Gnostic point of view was in a certain respect the opposite of what is often regarded today as the basic note of science. This Gnostic point of view was that it is very well possible for man to penetrate to the supersensible regions and to find there that which, though not religion, can be the basis of knowledge for religious life as well, if he turns to his inner powers of knowledge not applied in ordinary life.

Now, we will most easily come to an understanding of what I actually have to say today in this introductory lecture if I first remind you of something well known that can point to the transformation that the human cognitive process has undergone in the course of human development.

You all know, of course, what a transformation philosophy has undergone in terms of external scientific life. It encompasses – even in this day and age – the full range of scientific knowledge. As a human activity, philosophy was simply something that, as the name itself suggests, has a certain right to exist. Philosophy was something that did not merely flow from the human intellect, from observation and experiment, although philosophy also extended to the results that intellect, observation and even primitive experiment could arrive at. Philosophy was really that which emerged from the whole human being to a much greater extent than our present-day science, and again in a justified way. Philosophy emerged from a certain relationship of the human being's mind and feelings to the world, and in the age that also gave the name to philosophy, there was no doubt that the human being can also arrive at a certain objectivity in knowledge when he seeks his knowledge not only through experiment, observation and intellect, but when he applies other forces - forces that can be expressed with the same word that we use to describe the “loving” of something - when he therefore makes use of these forces.

And philosophy in the age of the Greeks also included everything that we today summarize in the knowledge of nature. Over the course of the centuries, philosophical endeavor has developed into what we know today as knowledge of nature. In recent times, however, this knowledge of nature has undergone an enormous transformation – a transformation that has made it the basis for practical life in the field of technology to the extent that we experience it in our lives today. If we take an unprejudiced survey of the scientific life of the present day, we cannot but say that what science has done especially well in recent times is to provide a basis for practical life in the field of technology. Our natural science has finally become what corresponds to a word of Kant - I quote Kant when he has said something that I can acknowledge, although I admit that I am an opponent of Kant in many fields. Kant said that there is only as much real science in science as there is mathematics in it. In scientific practice, especially in natural scientific practice, this has been more and more recognized.

Today we do natural science while being aware that we connect what we explore in space and time through observation and experiment with what mathematics reveals to us through pure inner vision. And it is precisely because of this that we feel scientifically certain that we are able to interweave something that is so very much human inner knowledge, human inner experience, as is mathematical, with what observation and experiment give us. By encompassing that which comes to us from outside through the mathematical certainty given to us in pure inner experience, we feel that we are connected to this outside in the process of knowledge in a way that is enough for us to experience scientific certainty. And so we have come more and more to see the exactness of the scientific in precisely the scientific prerequisites, to mathematically justify what we do in scientific work.

Why do we do this? My dear fellow students, why we do it is actually already contained in what I have just said. It lies in the fact that, by doing mathematics, we are merely active within our own mental experience, that we remain entirely within ourselves. I believe that those who have devoted themselves specifically to mathematical studies will agree with me when I say: in terms of inner experience, the mathematical, the process of mathematization, is something that, for those who do it out of inner ability and I would say, can do it out of inner enthusiasm, can give much more satisfaction than any other kind of knowledge of the external world, simply because, step by step, one is directly connected with the scientific result. And when you are then able to connect what is coming from outside with what you know in its entirety, whose entire structure you have created yourself, then you feel something in what is scientifically derived from the interweaving of external data and mathematical work that can be seen as based on a secure foundation. Therefore, because our science allows us to connect the external with an inner experience through mathematics, we recognize this as scientific in the Kantian sense, insofar as mathematics is in it.

Now, however, this simultaneously opens the way for a very specific conception of the scientific world view, and this conception of the scientific world view is precisely what anthroposophical research pursues in its consequences. For what does it actually mean that we have come to such a view of our scientific knowledge? It means that we want to develop our thinking inwardly and, by developing it inwardly, arrive at a certainty and then use it to follow external phenomena, to follow external facts in a lawful way. This principle is now applied to anthroposophy in the appropriate way, in that it is applied to what I would call pure phenomenalism in relation to certain areas of external natural science, in relation to mechanics, physics, chemistry, in relation to everything that does not immediately reach up to life. In the most extreme sense, we hold fast to this phenomenalism for the domains that lie above the inanimate. But we shall see in what way it must be supplemented there by something essentially different.

By visualizing the mathematical relationship to the external world, one gradually comes to realize that in inorganic sciences, thinking can only have a serving character at first, that nowhere are we entitled to bring anything of our own thoughts into the world if we want to have pure science. But this leads to what is called phenomenalism, and which, though it may be criticized in many details, has, in its purest form, been followed by Goethe.

What is this phenomenalism? It consists in regarding phenomena purely, whether through observation or through experiment, just as they present themselves to the senses, and in using thinking only to see the phenomena in a certain context, to line up the phenomena so that the phenomena explain themselves. But in so doing, everything is initially excluded from pure natural science that regards hypotheses not merely as auxiliary constructions, but as if they could provide something about reality. If one stops at pure phenomenalism, then one is indeed justified in assuming an atomistic structure from observation and experiment – be it in the material world or in the world of forces – but this tendency towards an atomistic structure can only be accepted to the extent that one can pursue it phenomenologically, that one can describe it on the basis of phenomena.

The scientific world view that constructs an atomism that postulates something actual behind the phenomena that can be perceived with the senses, but that cannot fall into the world of phenomena itself, sins against this principle.

But anthroposophy draws the final conclusion, to which everything in modern natural science actually tends. Even in this modern natural science, we have recently come to a high degree of development of this phenomenalism, which is still little admitted in theory but is applied in practice, by simply not concerning ourselves with the hypothetical atomic worlds and the like and remaining within the phenomena. But if we stop at the phenomena, we arrive at a very definite conclusion. We arrive at the conclusion that we really come to agnosticism. If we merely string together phenomena by thinking, if we bring order into phenomena, we never come to man himself through this ordering, through this tracing of laws. And that is the peculiar thing, that we must simply admit to ourselves: If you draw the final, fully justified conclusion of modern science, if you go as far as pure phenomenalism, if you put unjustified hypotheses of thought behind the veil of the sensory world, you cannot help but arrive at agnosticism. But this agnosticism is something quite different for knowledge than what humanity has actually hoped for and sought through knowledge within its course of development, within its history.

I do not wish to lead you into remote supersensible regions, although I will also hint at this, but I would like to point out something that should show how knowledge has nevertheless been understood as something quite different, for example in ancient times, from what knowledge can become today if we conscientiously build on our scientific foundations. And here I may again point to that Greek period in which all the sciences were still united within philosophy. I may point out that each of us has the deepest reverence for Greek art, to take just one example, for example for what lives in Greek tragedy.

Now, with regard to Greek tragedy, the catharsis that occurs in it has been spoken of as the most important component of it - the crisis, the decisive element that lives in tragedy. And an important question, which at the same time is a question that can lead us deep into the essence of the process of knowledge, arises when we tie in with what the Greek experienced in tragedy. If we define catharsis in such abstract terms, then it is said, following Aristotle, that tragedy should evoke fear and compassion in the spectator, so that the human soul, by evoking such or similar passions in it, is cleansed of this kind of passion. Now, however, it can be seen – I can only mention this here, the evidence for it can certainly also be found through ordinary science – from everything that is present in Greek tragedy, that thinking about this catharsis, about this artistic crisis, was very closely connected in the Greek mind, for example, with medical thinking.

What was present in the human soul through the effect of tragedy was thought of only as a healing process for something pathological in man, which was elevated into the scenic. From this artistic point of view, one can see how the Greeks understood therapy, the healing process. He understood it to mean that he assumed that something pathological was forming in the diseased organism. What is forming there - I must, of course, speak in very abstract terms in an introductory lecture - the organism takes up its fight against that. The human organism overcomes the disease within itself by overcoming the disease process through excretion. This is how one thought in the field of pathological therapy. Exactly the same, only raised to a higher level, was the thinking in relation to the artistic process. It was simply thought that what tragedy does is a kind of healing process for the soul. Just as the remnants of a cold come out of the organism, so the soul, through the contemplation of tragedy, should develop fear and compassion, then take up the fight against these products of elimination and experience the healing process in their suppression.

However, one can only understand the fundamentals of this way of thinking if one knows that even in Greek culture – in this Greek culture, which was healthy in some respects – there was the view that if a person merely abandons himself to his nature with regard to his psychological development, it will always lead to a kind of illness, and that the spiritual life in man must be a continuous process of recovery. Anyone who is more familiar with Greek culture in this respect will not hesitate for a moment to admit that the Greeks conceived of their highest spiritual life in such a way that they said to themselves: This is a remedy against the constant tendency of the soul to wither away; it is a way of counteracting death. For the Greeks, the spiritual life was a revival of the soul in the direction of its essence. The Greeks did not see only abstract knowledge in their science; they saw in their science something that stimulated a healing process in them. And that was also the special way of thinking, with a somewhat different coloring, in those world views that are based more on Judaism, where there is talk of the Fall of Man, of original sin. The Greeks also had this view - only in a different way - that it is necessary for the human soul to devote itself to an ongoing process of healing in life. Within this Greek spiritual life, it was generally the case that man did not juxtapose the activities to which he devoted himself and the ways of thinking that he held. They were rather combined in him, and so, for example, the art of healing was just an art to him - only an art that remained within nature. And the Greeks, who were eminently artistic people, did not regard art as something that could be profaned or dragged down into a lower realm when compared to that which is a healing process for the human being.

And so we see how, in those older times, knowledge was not actually separated from all of human nature, how it encompassed all human activity. Just as philosophy encompasses knowledge of nature and everything that should now arise from science, by developing it further and further, it also encompasses the artistic life. And finally, religious life was seen as the comprehensive, great process of recovery of humanity, so that, in understanding knowledge in the old way, we must actually say: there knowledge is understood as something that comes from the whole human being. Thought was already there, but humanity could not stop at this phase of the development of knowledge. What was necessarily connected with this phase of the development of knowledge? This can be seen quite clearly if one, equipped with today's scientific spirit, delves a little into some work, let us say in the 13th or 14th century, that was considered scientific in the natural sciences, for example. If you want to understand such a work, you not only have to familiarize yourself with the terminology, but you also have to immerse yourself in the whole spirit.

I do not hesitate to say that if you are steeped in today's scientific spirit and have not first done intimate, honest historical studies, you will inevitably misunderstand a scientific work from a period such as the 13th and 14th centuries AD, for the simple reason that even in those days – and the further back we go in human development, the more this is the case – man not only brought mathematics into the external world, but also a whole wealth of inner experiences in which he believed just as we believe in our mathematics. Thus we address nature quite differently today when we chemists speak of sulfur, phosphorus or salt than when people of that time spoke of sulfur or salt. If we apply today's concepts, we do not in the least touch the meaning that was then in a book, even one meant to be scientific, because at that time more and something other than the mathematical or the similar to mathematics was carried into the results of observation of the external world. Man brought a whole wealth of inner experience – qualitatively and not merely quantitatively – into the outside world.

And just as we express a scientific result with a mathematical formula, just as we seemingly connect subject with object, so in those days subject was connected with object even more, but the subject was filled with a wealth that we no longer have any idea of today and that we dare not allow ourselves to carry back into nature in the same way. Man at that time saw much in the external world that he himself put into it, just as we today put mathematics into nature. He did not think about nature in the same way as we do today, but he projected a great deal into it. In doing so, however, he also projected the moral into nature. Man projected the moral into nature in such a way that in four millennia the moral laws arose in the same way as the laws of nature arose in his knowledge. Man, who projected into nature what in ancient times was thought of as salt, sulphur, phosphorus, etc., was also allowed to project into nature what he experienced as moral impulses, because inwardly he was not doing anything different.

Now, however, we have rightly separated from such a view of the external world, through which we carry all that has been suggested into it. We only carry the mathematical into the external world, and our science therefore becomes a very good basis for technical practice. But by only bringing the mathematical into the external world, we no longer have the right to transfer the moral into objectivity through our science. And we must of necessity – precisely when we are very scientific in the sense that has emerged in recent centuries – fall prey to a moral agnosticism, because we have no other choice than to see only the subjective in moral principles, to see something that we cannot claim comes from nature in the same objective way as the course of a natural process itself.

And so we are obliged to ask ourselves: How do we found moral science and with it the basis of all spiritual science, including all social science? How do we found moral science in an age in which we must justifiably recognize phenomenalism for external nature? That was the big question for me at the time I wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom.” I stood on the ground - completely on the ground! on the ground of modern natural science, yes, on the ground of a phenomenalism regarding what can be fathomed by the process of knowledge from the external world of the senses. But then, if one follows the consequences with all honesty to the end, one must say: If morality is to be justified objectively, then another knowledge must be able to stand alongside this knowledge, which leads to phenomenalism and thus to agnosticism - a knowledge that does not thinking to devise hypothetical worlds behind the phenomena of the senses, but a knowledge must be established that can grasp the spiritual directly in intuition, after it - except for the mathematical - is no longer carried out into the world in the old way. It is precisely agnosticism that, on the one hand, compels us to fully recognize it in its own field, but at the same time also compels us to rouse our minds to activity in order to grasp a spiritual world from which we can, in the first instance, if we do not want to remain merely in the subjective, find moral principles through objective spiritual observation.

My Philosophy of Freedom has been called, with some justification, ethical individualism, but that only captures one side of it. We must, of course, arrive at ethical individualism because what is now seen as a moral principle must be seen by each individual in freedom. But just as in the inner, active process of the mind, mathematics is worked out in pure knowledge and yet proves to be well-founded within objectivity, so too can that which is the content of moral impulses be grasped in pure spiritual insight - not merely in faith, but in pure spiritual insight. And that is why one is compelled, as I was in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” to say: Moral science must be based on moral intuition. And I said at the time that we can only arrive at a real moral view in the modern style if we realize that Just as we extract individual natural phenomena from the whole of nature, we must extract the moral principles, which are only intuitively grasped spiritually but nevertheless objectively grasped quite independently of us, from a contemplated spiritual world, from a supersensible spiritual world.

I spoke first of moral intuition. This brings the process of knowledge into a certain line. Through the process of knowledge — especially if it is to remain genuinely scientific — the soul is driven to muster its innermost powers and to push this mustering so far that the intuition of a spiritual world really becomes possible. Now the question arises: Is only that which can be grasped as moral impulses to be seen in the spiritual world, or is perhaps that which leads us to our moral intuitions merely one area among many? The answer to this, however, arises when one grasps what has been experienced inwardly in the soul as moral intuitions and then continues this in an appropriate way.

Exactly the same thing that the soul experiences when it rises to the purely spiritual grasp of the moral – it has only become necessary in modern times through natural science – exactly the same thing that is lived through there can now also be lived through for further areas. Thus it may be said that anyone who has once practiced self-observation of this inner experience that leads to moral intuition can indeed develop this inner experience more and more. And the exercises presented in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” serve to develop this inner experience. And these exercises then lead to the fact that one does not stop at thinking and forming hypotheses with it, but that one regards this thinking in its liveliness and develops it further - to what I will now explain in the second part of my lecture and what can be called an exact looking at the supersensible world. What is meant is not the lost mystical vision of earlier times, but an exact vision of the supersensible world, in accordance with science, which can be called exact clairvoyance. And in this way we gradually arrive at those forms of knowledge which I characterized only recently here in a public lecture: imagination, inspiration and the higher intuition — forms of knowledge that illuminate the inner human being.

If we now ask ourselves how we can still have an objectively based moral science and thus also a social science, precisely when we are firmly grounded in natural science, then in these introductory words I wanted to show you first of all how, by honestly place oneself on the ground of today's science, but still wants to turn to life - to life as it simply must be for the person who is to achieve an inner wholeness - how one is thereby rubbed into spiritual research. This now differs from ordinary research in that ordinary research simply makes use of those soul powers that are already there, in order then to spread over the wide field of observation and experiment. In contrast to this, anthroposophical research first turns to the human being so that he may develop higher soul forces, which, when they are precisely developed, lead to a higher vision, which in the supersensible provides the complement to what we find in the sensual through our exact scientific methods.

How this exact higher vision is developed, how one can now penetrate from the sensual into the supersensible outside the moral realm, that will be the subject of my discussions after the break.

Short break

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! The first step in attaining supersensible knowledge is achieved through what we may call meditation, combined with a certain concentration of our thinking. In my last public lecture here in Leipzig, I described the essential point of this from one perspective. Today I would like to characterize it from a different perspective, one that also leads us to a scientific understanding of the world. The essence of this meditation, combined with concentration of thought, consists precisely in the fact that the human being does not remain, for example, with that inner handling of thinking that has been formed once through inheritance, through ordinary education and so on, but that at a certain point in his mature life he regards this thinking, which he has acquired, only as a starting point for further inner development.

Now you know that there are mystical natures in the present day who speak somewhat contemptuously of thinking and who resort to all kinds of other powers of cognition that are more tinged with the subconscious in order to gain a kind of view of the world that is supposed to encompass what ordinary thinking cannot grasp. This dream-like, fantastic immersion in an inner soul life, which crosses over into the pathological realm, has nothing to do with what is meant by anthroposophy. It moves in precisely the opposite direction: every single step that is taken to further develop thinking, to reeducate it to a higher ability, can be pursued with such an inner free and deliberate vividness that can otherwise only be applied to the inner experiences of the soul, which we develop through such a deliberate cognitive activity as that practiced by mathematicians.

Thus one can say: precisely that for which modern man has been educated through his scientific education – mathematical thinking – is taken as a model, not only for seeking out some external connections, but for developing a higher thinking process itself. What mathematics undertakes in the horizontal plane, if I may express myself figuratively, is undertaken in the vertical plane, I would say, by carrying out an inner soul activity, a soul exercise itself, in such a way that you give an account of yourself inwardly with every single step, just as you give an account of yourself with mathematical steps, by placing a certain content of ideas at the center of your consciousness when you control your thoughts, which should simply be a content of thoughts. It does not depend on the content; it depends on what you do with it. You should not suggest something to yourself in any way. Of all these more unconscious soul activities, anthroposophical practice is the opposite.

But if you further develop what you have already acquired as a certain form of thinking by resting with all your soul activity on a manageable content, and if you this resting on a certain soul activity, this attentiveness to this soul activity with the exclusion of everything else that can otherwise penetrate into the soul, is undertaken again and again, the thinking process becomes stronger. And only then do you notice what was, so to speak, the good side of materialism, of the materialistic world view. Because you now realize that all the thinking that you do in ordinary life, especially the thinking that continues in memory, leads us to the fact that what we have experienced in thought can later be brought up again through memory. One notices that all this can only be accomplished by man between birth and death by using his body as a basis - I do not want to say as an instrument, but as a basis. And it is precisely by developing thinking through inner development that we realize that ordinary thinking is entirely bound to the human body and its organs, and that the process of memory in particular cannot be explained without recourse to a more subtle physiology. Only now do we realize that thinking is freeing itself from the body, becoming ever freer and freer from the body.

Only now do we ascend from thinking that takes place with the help of the body to thinking that takes place in the inner processes of the soul; only now do we notice that we are gradually moving into such inner experience, which does not occur, but - I would like to say - is preparing itself. When we pass from the waking state of ordinary consciousness into the state of sleep, our organism simply becomes such that it no longer performs those functions that live out in imagining and in the perceiving associated with imagining.

But because in our ordinary life we are only able to think with the help of our body, thinking ceases the moment it can no longer be done with the help of the body – that is when we fall asleep. The last remnants remain in the pictorial thinking of dreaming, but if one again and again and again pushes thinking further and further through an inner, an exact inner exercise - that is why I speak of exact clairvoyance in contrast to dark, mystical clairvoyance -, through an exact exercise, one learns to recognize the possibility of thinking that is independent of the body. It is precisely because of this that the anthroposophical researcher can point to his developed thinking with such inner certainty, because he knows - better even than the materialist - the dependence of ordinary thinking on the bodily organization, and because he experiences how, in meditation, in practice, the actual soul is lifted out of its bondage to the body. One learns to think free of the body, one learns to step out of the body with one's I-being, one gets to know the body as an object, whereas before it was thoroughly connected with the subjectivity.

This is precisely what is difficult for contemporary education to recognize, because on the one hand, through anthroposophical knowledge, the bondage of the imagination to bodily functions has been understood in modern science, and this is actually becoming more and more apparent through anthroposophical knowledge. But we must be clear about the fact that, despite this insight, we cannot stop at this thinking, but that this thinking can be detached from the body by strengthening it inwardly through meditation. But then this thinking is transformed.

At first, when this body-free thinking flashes, when the experience flashes: you are now in a soul activity that you carry out as if you had simply withdrawn from your body - when this inner experience flashes, then the thinking becomes inwardly more intense. It acquires the same inner satiety that one otherwise has only when perceiving a sensual object. Thinking acquires pictorial quality. Thinking remains in the sphere of composure, just like any other thinking that is bound to the body, but in the body-free state it now acquires pictorial quality. One thinks in images. And this thinking in images was also present in its beginning in what Goethe had developed in his morphology. That is why he claims that he can see his ideas with his eyes. Of course, he did not mean the physical eyes, but what arose in him, so to speak, from an elementary natural process, but which can also be developed through meditation. By this he meant that he saw with the “spiritual” eye what was just as pictorial as otherwise only the physical perceptions, but which was thoroughly mental in its inner quality. I say “thought-like,” not thought, because it is a thought that has been further developed, a metamorphosed thought - it is thought-like.

In this way, however, one rises to the realization of what one is as a human being in one's life on earth - at least initially to the moment in which one is currently living. In ordinary consciousness, we have before us the present moment with all the experiences that are in the environment. Even in ordinary science, we have before us what comes as a supplement to this - there are the thoughts that arise in our minds, which we connect with the experiences of the present moment. This body-free, pictorial thinking, to which we rise and of which I have just spoken and which I call imaginative thinking - not because it is an imagination, but because it proceeds in images and not in abstractions - this thinking encompasses our past life on earth as a unity, as in a single tableau that stands before us. And we now recognize that in us, alongside the spatial organism, there lives a temporal organism - an organism in which the before and after stand in just as organic a connection as the side by side in the outer, physical spatial organism that we carry on us. This organism is recognized as a supersensible organism - in my books I have called it the “etheric body”; one can also call it the life body.

What it comprises is not at all identical with the unwarranted assumption of a “vital force” by an earlier science, which arrived at this vital force only by hypothetical means, whereas this life body comes to the developed imaginative thinking as a real intuition. In this way, one arrives at the fact that what is past for ordinary consciousness in the inner being of man - as something that I experienced ten years ago, for example, and that now emerges in my memory - that this does not now appear as something past, but one experiences it as something directly present, one looks at it with the intensity with which one looks at something present. But as a result, what would otherwise have been lost in the passage of time is suddenly revealed to you in its entirety; your whole life is a single image, one whose individual parts belong together. And one realizes that in reality the past is a present thing, that it only appears as past because we, with our knowledge attuned to present observation, have it only as a memory at this moment. But in objectivity it is an immediate present, a reality.

Thus one comes to the recognition of what is the first supersensible in man. But it also leads to the recognition of something that is present in the entire living world, which inorganic science cannot provide up to the level of chemistry: we come to the insight that is the further development of Goethean morphology; we come to the insight that the individual plant form is only a particular manifestation of that form, which also exists in other plants; we come to what Goethe calls the primordial plant, which is not a cell, but a concretely formed, supersensible form that can be grasped only by imaginative cognition, but which can live in every single plant form — can live in a changed, metamorphosed way. We come to an appreciation of what we find in the vegetable world when we want to understand it fully. And we must realize that if we do not develop this imaginative knowledge, which shows a supersensible, dynamic element in everything vegetable, we learn to recognize only the mechanical, physical, chemical processes that take place in the plant form.

It is to the credit of modern natural science, insofar as it is botany, that it has carefully studied what takes place in the plant form, or rather, in the part of space enclosed by the plant form, what takes place in the mechanical, physical, and chemical processes. These processes are no different from those that are also out there, but they are grasped by something that cannot be grasped by the same methods as the physical and chemical ones. They are grasped by that which lives as a real supersensible and can only be recognized in imagination – in that imagination in which we also find ourselves at the same time as human totality in our experience since birth as if standing before us in a single moment.

We learn, on the one hand, to recognize why we, especially when we apply the modern, exact scientific methods as they have developed, must come to a certain agnosticism with regard to the understanding of the vegetable. And so we can see why there must be a certain field of agnosticism; and so we can also see how anthroposophy adds precisely that which must remain unknown to this agnosticism. We see how anthroposophy leads beyond agnosticism while allowing it full validity in its own realm. That, ladies and gentlemen, is one thing.

The other thing, however, is that at this stage we are acquiring a more detailed understanding of the interaction between the human being and the external world. Physics, mechanics, chemistry are rightly being developed in the present day in such a way that we carry as little of the human as possible into this external world, in that we say: only that has objectivity in which we contain all subjectivity. - Certainly, anthroposophy will not fight the justification of this method in a certain field, but will recognize it. But when we use what we also recognize in the imagination to grasp and behold what lives in the vegetable kingdom, we attain on the one hand an intimate knowledge of our own supersensible being — at least as it is between birth and death — but we also thereby gain a vision of the fluctuating, metamorphosing processes in the world of living forms. In this way we connect ourselves as human beings with the outer world, initially at a first level, in imagination. We incorporate the human element into our world view.

The next level of supersensible knowledge is inspiration. It is attained by developing more and more, I would say, the opposite pole of meditation and concentration. Anyone who has acquired a certain practice in meditation and concentration knows that when you energize thinking, you also get the inner inclination to dwell on what arises as a part of the soul as energized thinking. One must exert oneself more when leaving these energized imaginative thoughts than when leaving any other thought. But if one can now really throw these energized thoughts out of consciousness again - this whole imaginative world that one has first appropriated -, if one can empty consciousness, not cannot be emptied from the ordinary point of view, but can be emptied after one has first inwardly strengthened it, then this emptiness of consciousness becomes something quite different from what the emptiness of consciousness is in ordinary life. There the emptiness of consciousness is sleeping.

The emptiness of consciousness, however, which occurs after one has first strengthened this consciousness, is very soon filled by the phenomena of an environment that is now completely different from all that one has previously known. Now one gets to know a world to which our ordinary ideas of space and time can no longer be applied. Now we get to know a world that is a real external world of soul and spirit. It is just as concrete as our real world of the senses. But it can only flow into us if we have emptied our consciousness at a higher level. After one has first come to imagination, by concentrating on a spiritual content and now being able to perceive outside one's body because one has activity within oneself - not the passivity that is present in ordinary consciousness - and by having gone through the appropriate preparations, the spiritual outer world now penetrates through the developed activity of the freed consciousness, just as the appearances of the world of colors or the world of sounds otherwise penetrate through the senses.

On the one hand, through this spiritual outer world, we arrive at an understanding of what we were as human beings before we descended from a spiritual and soul world into the physical world, before we united with what had been prepared in the mother's womb through conception as the physical human germ. One gains an insight into what first lived in a spiritual-soul world and then united with the physical human being. So one gets to know that which, between birth and death, is basically quite ineffective, which is, so to speak, excluded from our sensory perception, but which was effective in us and which worked in its purity before we descended into a physical body. That is one thing: we gain a deeper knowledge of human nature by ascending to this second stage of supersensible vision, which is developed just as precisely as the other, the imaginative stage. And this knowledge, through which a spiritual world flows into us, just as pure air flows from outside into our lungs and is then further processed, this knowledge, which we process in the subconscious for ordinary consciousness, but in the subconscious for the developed consciousness, fully consciously, I have allowed myself to call this influx “inspirative knowledge”.

This is the second step. Through it, we first come to recognize our eternal as pre-existing. But with this we also have the possibility to penetrate into what now not only lives in the external world, but what lives and feels, what thus lives out in the living formation of the inner life in such a way that this inner life becomes present to itself in feeling. Only through this do we learn to recognize what lives around us as animalistic. We supplement our knowledge with what we can never attain through an ordinary view, as we have developed it in physics and chemistry. We come to look at what lives in the sentient being as a higher, supersensible reality. We now learn through observation, not through philosophical hypotheses in the modern sense, to actually follow a new, higher world: the world of the spiritual and soul in the sentient physical. But in doing so, we move a step further away from agnosticism. This must exist if we only follow the chemical processes in the sentient living. We must follow these, and it is the great merit of modern natural science that these can be followed, but with that, this natural science must become agnostic. This must find its completion in the fact that precisely now, in free spirituality, one experiences through inspiration that which must be added in order to arrive at the full reality of sentient life. But in this way one achieves something else, of which I would like to give you an example. In this way one comes to recognize that the process that takes place in the human being, for example - it is similar for the animal - that this process is not only an ascending one, but at the same time also a descending one. Only now are we really learning to look at ourselves properly from within; we learn, by ascending to this inspired realization, to know more precisely what is actually going on in our ordinary consciousness. Above all, one learns to recognize that it is not a process of building up, but of breaking down, that our nervous life is essentially a life of breakdown. If our nerves could not be broken down - and of course rebuilt from time to time - we could not develop ordinary thinking. Vital life, when it appears in abundance, is basically a numbing of thought, as it occurs in every sleep. The kind of life that is interspersed with feeling and thinking must, at the same time, carry within it a process of decomposition, I would say a differential dying process.

This process of disintegration is first encountered in healthy life, that is, in the life in which it occurs in order for human thinking in the ordinary sense of the word to come about at all. Once one has acquired an understanding of the nature of these processes, one also becomes familiar with the abnormal occurrence of these processes. There are simply certain organs or organ systems in the human organism in which parallel processes to ordinary thinking occur. But if the catabolic processes, which are otherwise the physical basis of thinking, extend to organs to which they are not otherwise assigned, so to speak, through an internal infection – the word is not quite used in the actual sense – then disease states arise in these organs.

It is absolutely necessary that we develop pathology in such a way that we can also find the processes that we recognize in physiology in pathology. However, this is only possible if we can see the essence of these processes in our human organization; it is similar in the animal organization, but still somewhat different - I say this again so that I am not misunderstood. By observing the processes in our human organism in such a way that we recognize one polarity as an organization that is designed for breakdown and the other polarity as one that cannot be affected by this breakdown in a healthy state, we learn to see through these two aspects in inspired knowledge.

If we learn to see through this and can we then connect this seeing through of our own organism with an inspired recognition of the outer world, of the processes in the plant kingdom, if we learn to see through this mineral kingdom and also the animal kingdom through inspired knowledge, then we learn to recognize a relationship between human inner processes and the outer world that is even more intimate than that which already existed at the earlier stage of human history. I have shown how, at this earlier stage, man felt related to external nature by seeing in all that appears in the most diverse metamorphoses in the vegetable world something that he found in the soul, in his own life between birth and death.

But if, through inspired knowledge, he now learns to see that which he was in his pre-existent life, then at the same time he sees through that in the outer realm which not only lives in feeling, but which has a certain relation, a certain connection, to that which lives in the human organization, which is oriented towards feeling, towards thinking. And one learns to recognize the connections between the processes outside and the processes inside, and also the connections with the life of feeling. One learns to recognize what is brought forth in man when the organs are seized by the breakdown, which actually should not be seized by it, because the breakdown in this sense must only be the basis for the thinking and feeling process. When, as it were, the organic activity for thinking and feeling seizes members of the human organism that should not be seized, then what we have to grasp in pathology arises. But when we grasp the outer world with the same kind of knowledge, then we find what must be grasped by therapy. Then we find the corresponding process of polar counteraction, which - I would express it this way - normal internal breakdown. In short, through an inner vision we find the connection between pathology and therapy, between the disease process and the remedy. In this way we go beyond medical agnosticism – not by denying present-day medicine but by recognizing what it can be – and at the same time we find the way to add to it what it cannot find by itself.

If anyone now believes that anthroposophy wants to develop some kind of dilettantism in the most diverse fields of science, then I have to say: that is not the case! It consciously wants to be the continuation of what it fully recognizes as the result of today's science, but it wants to supplement it with higher methods of knowledge. She wants to go beyond the deficiencies of mere trial and error therapy, which basically everyone who is also active in practice has already sensed, to a therapy gained from observation that has an inner, organic connection with pathology, which is, so to speak, only the other side of pathology. If one succeeds in finding pathology simply as a continuation of physiology in the way described, then one also succeeds – by getting to know the relationship between man and his natural environment – in extending pathology into therapy in a completely rational way, so that in the future these two need not stand side by side as they do today in a more agnostic science.

These are only suggestions that I would like to make in the sense that they could show a little – I know how incomplete one has to be in such an orienting lecture – how far it is from anthroposophy to ant opposition to recognized science, but rather that it is precisely important for it to draw the final consequence from the agnostic form of science and thereby arrive at the view of what must be added to this science. This is already being sensed, and basically there are many, especially members of the younger generation, who are learning to feel that science as it exists now is not enough, who feel: we need something else, because it is not enough for us. Precisely when we are otherwise honest about it, then we have to come to something else through it. And it is precisely for those who get to know science not just as an answer but, in a higher sense, as a question that anthroposophy wants to be there — not to drive them into dilettantism, but to progress in exactly the right, exact way from science to what science itself demands if it is pursued consistently.

But then there is a third higher stage of knowledge. This is attained when we extend the exercises to include exercises of the will. Through the will, we initially accomplish mainly what a person can do in the external world. But when we apply the same energy of the will to our own inner processes, then a third stage of supersensible knowledge arises on the basis of imagination and inspiration. If we are completely honest with ourselves, we will have to admit at every moment of our lives: We are something completely different today than we were ten or twenty years ago. The content of our soul has changed, but in changing it, we were actually quite passively surrendered to the outside world. It is precisely in relation to our inner transformation that a certain passivity reigns in us.

But if we take this transformation into our own hands, if we bring ourselves to radically change what is habitual in us, for example, in a certain relationship - where a change seems possible - if we behave inwardly towards ourselves in such a way that we make ourselves into a different person in a certain direction through our own will, then we have to actively intensify our inner experience over years, often decades, because such exercises of will take time. You make up your mind: you will develop a certain quality or the form of a quality in yourself. After months you notice how little you succeed in doing this, in this way, what otherwise the body makes out of you. But if you make more and more effort, then you not only see your inner, supersensible human being, but you also manage to make this inner human being, so to speak, completely transparent. A sense organ such as our eye would not be able to serve us as a visual organ if it did not selflessly - if I may use the term - withdraw its own substantiality. As a result, it is transparent, physically transparent. Thus, through exercises of will, we become, so to speak, inwardly transparent to the soul.

I have only hinted at a few things here. You will find a very detailed account in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” We really do enter a state in which we see the world without ourselves being an obstacle to fully penetrating into the supersensible. For, in fact, we are the obstacle to entering fully into the supersensible world because, in our ordinary consciousness, we always live in our body. The body only imparts to us what is earthly, not what is soul-spiritual. We now look, by being able to disregard our body, into a stage of the spiritual world through which that appears to us before the spiritual gaze, which becomes of our soul, when it has once passed through the gate of death. Just as we get to know our pre-existent life through the other way I described earlier, so now we get to know our life in the state after death. Once we have learned to see the organism no longer, we now learn, as it figuratively presents itself to us, the process by which we find ourselves when we discard this physical organism altogether and enter the spiritual-soul world with our spiritual-soul organism. The demise of our physical existence, the awakening of a spiritual-soul existence: this is what we experience in the third stage of supersensible knowledge, in the stage that I have called higher intuitive knowledge.

By having this experience, by being able to place ourselves in a spiritual world without being biased by our subjectivity, we are able to recognize this spiritual world in its full inwardness. In inspiration, it is still as it flows into us; but now, in higher intuition, we get to know it in its full inwardness. And now let us look back at what first presented itself to us as a necessity: moral intuition. This moral intuition is the only one for ordinary consciousness that arises out of the spiritual world during proper self-contemplation of pure thinking - I have presented this in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. But if we now go through imagination and inspiration, we do exercises that teach us to completely detach ourselves from ourselves, to develop the highest activity of the spiritual and soul, and yet not to be subjective, but to be objective, by living in objectivity itself. Only when we have achieved this standing in objectivity is it possible to do spiritual science.

Only then is it possible to see what is already living as spiritual in the physical world; only then does one gain a real understanding of history. History as a series of external facts is only the preparation. What lives as spiritual driving forces and driving entities in the historical can only be seen through intuitive knowledge. And it is only at this level of intuitive knowledge that we truly see what our own ego is. At first, our own ego appears to us as something we cannot see through. Just as a dark space within a brightness appears to us in such a way that we see the brightness from the darkness with our eyes, so we look back at our soul, see its thoughts, feel further inner processes, live in our will impulses. But the actual I-being is, so to speak, like a dark space within it. This is now being illuminated. We are getting to know our eternal being. But with that, we are only getting to know the human being in such a way that we can also fully understand him as a social being. Now we are at the point where the complement to social agnosticism occurs.

This is where things start to get really serious. What is social agnosticism? It arises from the fact that we apply the observation that we have learned to apply correctly to external, natural phenomena, and that we now also want to apply this trained observation to social phenomena. This is where the various compromise theories in social science and sociology come from – in fact, all the theories about the conception of social life that we have seen arise. This is where the approach to the conception of social life that starts from the natural sciences comes from, but which must therefore disregard everything cognizable, everything that is alienated from thought and only present in the life of instincts. The extreme case of this occurred in Marxism, which regards everything that is spiritual as an ideology and only wants to see the impulses of social life realized if these impulses develop out of the instinctive, which belongs to agnosticism. Class consciousness is actually nothing more than the sum of all that is not rooted in a knowledge of man, but that comes from the instincts - only it must be recognized by those who develop such instincts in certain life circumstances.

If you look at our social life with an unbiased eye, you will find that we have come to agnosticism precisely in the social sphere. However grotesque and paradoxical it may still appear to modern man, in this field of spiritual science we can only go beyond this kind of knowledge, insofar as it is agnostic, if we rise to truly intuitive knowledge and thus to the experience of the human being. We humans today actually pass each other by. We judge each other in the most superficial way. Social demands arise as we develop precisely the old social instincts most strongly. But an inner, social soul mood will only come about if the intuitions from a spiritual world permeate us with life. In the age of agnosticism, we have necessarily come to see everything spiritual more or less only in ideas. However, ideas, insofar as they are in ordinary consciousness, are not alive. Today's philosophers speak to us of logical ideas, of aesthetic ideas, of ethical ideas. We can observe them all, we can experience them all inwardly and theoretically, but they have no impulsive power for life. The ideas only become a reality of life when they are wrung out in intuitive experience of the spiritual. We cannot achieve social redemption and liberation, nor can we imbue our lives with a religiosity that is appropriate for us, if we do not come to an intuitive, vitalized grasp of the spiritual.

This life-filled comprehension of the spiritual will differ significantly from what we call spiritual life today. Today, we actually call the ideational life spiritual life; in other words, life in abstract ideas that are not impulses. But what intuition provides us with will give us as humanity a living spirit that lives with us. We have only thoughts, and because they are only thoughts, we have lost the spirit altogether. We have thoughts as abstractions. We must regain the life of thoughts. But the life of thought is the spirit that lives among us - and not the spirit that we merely know. We will only develop a social life if, in turn, spirit lives in us, if we do not try to shape society out of the spiritless - out of what lives in social agnosticism - but if we shape it out of that attitude that understands through intuition to achieve the living spirit.

We may look back today on earlier ages - certainly, we have overcome them, and especially those of us who stand on anthroposophical ground are least likely to wish them back in their old form. But what these earlier ages had, despite all the mistakes we can easily criticize today, is that in certain epochs they brought the living spirit - not just the spirit of thought - among people. This allowed the existing basis of knowledge to expand to include artistic perception of the world, religious penetration of the innermost self, and social organization of the world. We will only achieve a new social organization of the world, a new religious life, and new artistic works on the basis of knowledge, on which they have always fundamentally stood, when we in turn gain a living knowledge, so that not only the thoughts of the spirit, but the spirit itself lives in humanity. It is this living spirit that Anthroposophy seeks. Anthroposophy does not want to be a theory or a theoretical world view; Anthroposophy wants to be that which can stir the spirit in its liveliness in the life of the human being, that which can permeate the human being not only with knowledge of the spirit, but with the spirit itself.

In this way we shall go beyond the age that has brought phenomenalism to its highest flowering. Of course, one can only wish that it will continue to flourish in this way, one can only wish that the scientific way of thinking will continue to flourish in the conscientiousness in which it has become established. But the life of the spirit must not be allowed to exist merely by continuing to live in the old traditions. Fundamentally, all spiritual experiences are built on traditions, on what earlier humanity has achieved in the way of spirit.

In principle, our art today is also built on traditions, on the basis of what an earlier humanity has achieved. Today, we cannot arrive at new architectural styles unless we reshape consciousness itself, because otherwise we will continue to build in Renaissance, Gothic, and antique styles. We will not arrive at creative production. We will arrive at creative production when we first inwardly vitalize knowledge itself, so that we do not merely shape concepts but inner life, which fills us and can form the bridge between what we grasp in thought and what we must create in full life.

This, dear attendees, dear fellow students, is what anthroposophy seeks to achieve. It seeks to bring life into the human soul, into the human spirit, not by opposing what it recognizes as fully justified in the modern scientific spirit, as it is often said to do. It seeks to carry this spirit of science further, so that it can penetrate from the external, material and naturalistic into the spiritual and soul realms. And anyone who can see through people's needs in this way today is convinced that in many people today there is already an inner, unconscious urge for such a continuation of the spirit of science in the present day. Anthroposophy seeks only to consciously shape what lives in many as a dark urge. And only those who get to know it in its true light, not in the distortions that are sometimes created of it today, will see it in its true light and in its relationship to science.

Pronunciation

Walter Birkigt, Chairman: I would like to thank Dr. Steiner for the lecture he has given here, and I would now like to point out that the discussion is about to begin. Please submit requests and questions in writing.

Dr. Dobrina: Dear attendees! After such a powerful picture of the present and past intellectual history of humanity has been presented, it is not easy to give a sharp summary in a few words. But I think that before proceeding to a critique, one must first appreciate the depth of the whole presentation. One must appreciate and admit that a synthesis is sought between natural science with its exact trains of thought and spiritual science with its partly antiquated forms.

In the last few centuries, natural science has indeed managed to rise to the throne and even to push philosophy down from the throne as antiquated. Now, however, those who cannot be satisfied with the philosophy that has been overthrown and deified are again looking for an impetus to bring philosophy back to the old podium on which it stood in Greece. And I believe that anthroposophy, as developed for us by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, is an attempt to shape the synthesis in such a way that, although it only recognizes natural science in the preliminary stages and makes every effort not to object to its exactness, it then goes beyond it to penetrate into the supersensible realm. However, the step into the supersensible world seems to me to be based on very weak foundations, especially since Dr. Rudolf Steiner works with concepts such as preexistence. Those who have more time could ask more pointed questions about what he means by this preexistence or what he has to say about the “post-mortem” life, about life after death.

Applause.

In any case, I believe that from this point of view we can and must immediately enter into a sharp discussion with him, and it will probably show that basically the whole conceptualization of Dr. Rudolf Steiner breaks down into two quite separate areas. On the one hand, he makes an effort to plunge into therapy and to consider Greek thinking from the point of view of therapeutic analysis, while on the other hand he works with concepts that come from the old tools of theosophy and are very reminiscent of antiquated forms of spiritual life.

Applause

For this reason, I would like to say very briefly that the whole picture that Dr. Rudolf Steiner has developed here, as well as in the previous public lecture, seems to me to be quite inadequate and that on this basis one can in fact arrive at no criticism of modern life, nor of modern economic struggles, nor of the position that is taken today against the spiritual powers that have fallen into decline.

Applause.

Perhaps Dr. Rudolf Steiner would be kind enough to

respond to this shortly.

Walter Birkigt: Does the assembly understand the statement as a question, that Dr. Steiner should respond immediately? I would therefore ask Dr. Steiner to respond.

Applause.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, dear attendees, I said in my lecture that it should be an orienting one. And I said that an orienting lecture faces the difficulty of being able to only hint at certain things that would require further elaboration, so that a whole flood of unsatisfactory things naturally arise in the soul of the listener, which of course cannot be cleared away in the first lecture either. The point of the comments – I cannot say objections – made by the esteemed previous speaker is that he found that I had used words that he considers old terms.

Now, my dear audience, we can put all our words – even the most ordinary ones – into this category. We must, after all, use words when we want to express ourselves. If you were to try to see what is already available today in contemporary literature, which often seems outrageous to me – I mean outrageous in terms of its abundance – if you were to read everything that I myself have written, for example, ...

Heiterkeit

... when faced with this abundance, it is quite natural that in a first, introductory lecture, only some aspects can be touched upon. So let us take a closer look at what the esteemed previous speaker has just said. He said that pre-existence reminds him of old concepts. But now, he is only reminded of old terms because I have used words that were there before. Of course, when I say that by elevating imaginative knowledge, which I have characterized, to inspired knowledge, which I have also characterized, I arrive at the concept of preexistence. If I merely describe how one comes to the vision of the pre-existent life, then it does not depend on the term “preexistence,” but only on the fact that I describe how a precise practice takes place to arrive at an insight into what was there in the human being before this human being — if I may put it this way — united with a physical body, with what was being prepared in the mother's body through the conception. So, I only used the word pre-existence to point to something that can only be seen when supersensible knowledge has been attained in the way I have described. In Gnosticism one finds a certain attitude towards knowledge. As such, Gnosticism has nothing to do with the aims of modern anthroposophy, but this attitude towards knowledge, as it was present in ancient Gnosticism and which aims at recognizing the supersensible, is reviving in our age - in the post-Galilean, post-Copernican age - but in a different form.

And now I will describe to you in more detail what should follow – I will describe it in a few sentences. You see, if we look from a knowledge that is sought on the basis of the methods I have spoken of, if we look from this kind of knowledge to an older one that is very different from it, we come to an oriental form of knowledge that could in fact be called “theosophical”. Only after this had developed in older times could a philosophy arise out of a theosophy, and only then could anthroposophy arise out of a philosophy. Of course, if you take the concepts in such a way that you only hold them in their abstractness, not in what matters, then you will mix everything up, and the new will only appear to you as a rehash of the old. This theosophy was achieved by completely different methods of knowledge than those I have described.

What were the essentials of this method of knowledge? I do not mean everything, but just a certain phase of it. For example, the ancient Indian yoga process, which should truly not be experienced as a warm-up in anthroposophy. We can see this from the fact that what I am describing initially seems very similar to this yoga process, doesn't it? But if you don't put it there yourself, you won't find that what I am describing is similar to the yoga process. This consisted in the fact that at a stage of human development in which the whole human life was less differentiated than it is today, it was felt that the rhythmic breathing process was connected with the thinking process. Today we look at the matter physiologically. Today we know: When we breathe, when we inhale, we simultaneously press the respiratory force through the spinal canal into the brain. In the brain, the breathing process continues in a metamorphosed way, so that, physiologically speaking, we have a synthesis of the breathing process and the thinking process.

Yoga is based on this process, transforming ordinary breathing into a differently regulated breathing. Through the modified breathing process – that is, through a more physical process – thinking was transformed. It was made into what a certain view in the old, instinctive sense yielded. Today, we live in a differentiated human organization; today we have to go straight to the thought process, but today we also arrive at something completely different as a result. So when you go into the specifics, you will be able to clearly define each individual phase of cognition as it has occurred in succession in human development. And then you will no longer think that what is now available in the form of anthroposophy, as a suitable way of acquiring higher knowledge in the present day, can somehow be lumped together with what was available in older times. Of course, we cannot discuss what I have not talked about at all on the basis of what I have told you in an introductory lecture. I would now, of course, have to continue with what pre-existent life is like. I could say nothing else in my introductory lecture except that the realization of pre-existent life is attained through the processes described, which are indeed different from anything that has ever emerged in history as inner development.

And now I would really like to ask what justification there is for criticism when I use the word pre-existence in the sense in which everyone can understand it. It means nothing other than what it says through the wording. If I understand existence as that which is experienced through the senses, and then speak of pre-existence, then it is simply existence in the spiritual and soul life before sensual existence. This does not point to some old theosophy, but a word is used that would have to be further explained if one goes beyond an orienting lecture. You will find that if you take what may be called Theosophy and what I have described in my book, which I have also entitled “Theosophy” - if you take that, then it leads back to its beginnings in ancient forms - just as our chemistry leads back to alchemy.

But what I have described today as a process of knowledge is not at all similar to any process of knowledge in ancient times. It is therefore quite impossible to make what will follow from my lecture today and what has not yet been said the subject of a discussion by saying: Yes, preexistence, that leads back to old tools. If you have followed it, it does not lead back to old tools, but it does continue certain attitudes of knowledge that were present at the time when the old tools were needed, and which today only exist in their remnants and project into our present as beliefs, whereas in the past they were reached in processes of knowledge. Now, through processes of knowledge that are organized in the same way as our scientific knowledge, we must again come to insights that can fill the whole human being, not just the intellectually oriented one.

Dear attendees, if you want to criticize something, you have to criticize what has been said directly, not what could not be discussed in the lecture and of which you then say that it is not justified or the like. How can something that is just a simple description not be justified? I have done nothing but describe, and that is precisely what I do in the introductory lectures. Only someone who knew what happens when one really does these things could say that something is not explained. If one really does these things, that is, if one no longer merely speaks about them from the outside, then one will see that they are much more deeply grounded than any mathematical science, for they go much more closely to the soul than mathematical processes do. And so such a criticism is an extraordinarily superficial one. And the fact that anthroposophy is always understood only in this external way makes its appearance so extraordinarily difficult. In no other science is one required to give everything when a lecture is given. Only in anthroposophy is one required to give everything in a lecture. I have said from the beginning that I cannot do that.

Applause

But it is not a matter of my describing what is available as old tools of the trade, for example how gnosis has come to such knowledge in inner soul processes or how, for example, the oriental yoga school comes to knowledge. If one knows these tools, if one does not just talk about them, ...

Applause

... then people will no longer claim that anthroposophy reminds them of the old days. This is only maintained as long as one allows reminiscences to come in the form of abstract concepts that arise only from the fact that they are not compared with the concrete, with the real. Of course, I could go on for a very long time, but this may suffice as an answer.

Lively applause

Mr. H. Schmidt: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to criticize something, or rather put a question mark over it: Dr. Steiner said this evening that every scientific world view is dualistic in the sense that it must add to what is immediate and certain something uncertain. It is clear that in anthroposophy this other is the supersensible world. But the scientific value of a philosophy is shown to us in how far it succeeds in presenting the inner relationship between the supersensible and the sensible - I say “scientific” value on purpose, not cultural or psychological. Platonism, for example, which in this respect has not so often succeeded in constructing the relationship between idea and reality, had an enormous cultural significance.

Now, in anthroposophy, Dr. Steiner attempts to describe the relationship between the supersensible and the sensible, that is, he attempts to prove the necessary transition from the immediate sensory world to the supersensible world, or - seen subjectively - from empirical and rational knowledge, from scientific knowledge, to what I would call super-scientific knowledge. He used anthroposophy for this. I am only relying on Dr. Steiner's lecture, and more specifically on the first part – frankly, I didn't have enough strength for the second.

Applause

Anthroposophy is based on the analogy of mathematics. Dr. Steiner explained how we project mathematics into nature. This has already been established in Greek science, and in fact the ideal of mathematical science is at least to mathematize nature, as they said in ancient times. But in what sense can we even talk about this? That is precisely the problem.

Dr. Steiner explained with what affect, with what passion, with what sympathy the individual mathematician imposes his ideas of conceptual things in empirical reality. But what are the structures that the mathematician deals with? They are not his representations at all. The circle, for example, that a mathematician draws on the blackboard to demonstrate his geometric theorems is not his representation. He has nothing to do with the circle as a human being – rather, he has nothing to do with it as a mathematician, but he does have something to do with it as a human being, in that he uses his two eyes to perceive the circle. Restlessness

The concept of a circle, which the mathematician does deal with, cannot be represented in reality at all; it is never perceived by the senses. The concept of a circle is much more general.

Now anthroposophy needs something personally real that it wants to project into nature. The general, which I have in my mathematical head, so to speak, does not exist in reality. If the supersensible world is to be founded on the sensory world in such a way that conclusions can be drawn from the subject to the object, then this can never be done by projecting subjective ideas into nature in the manner of mathematics. In my opinion, the analogy of mathematics is not appropriate for this, because mathematics deals with conceptual things that never occur as such in reality. In my opinion, this is an objection to anthroposophy in general. On the other hand, today's lecture emphasizes the reality of supersensible things.

So, what matters to me: I cannot see how mathematics is supposed to serve here to explain the bridge from the sensory to the supersensible. The main value of the lecture now obviously lay in the fact that personal experience, personal excitement, the totality of personal experience, is to be active in thinking. But that must immediately raise a concern for everyone. The personal, the individual, is precisely what is unnecessary. Yes, anyone can tell me: “That is your imagination, that is your idea, I have nothing to do with it.” In my opinion, this is an objection to anthroposophy in general.

Applause

Then, what Dr. Steiner was particularly concerned about, in the inner participation that his lecture had at this point and that was actually moving for the opponent: the starting point for higher knowledge for Dr. Steiner is moral intuition. Anthroposophy requires a supersensible to derive moral principles from it, and it gains this derivation by looking at the supersensible. To be honest, that doesn't make any sense to me at all. Let's assume that there is a supersensible faculty of knowledge, or rather, such faculties of knowledge that we ordinary mortals do not yet have, and that it would also be possible to actually see the supersensible with this higher faculty of knowledge - the supersensible as an existing thing: how can I see from that what I should do? We can never deduce what we should do from what is. We can never build a bridge from the sphere of being to the sphere of ought.

Walter Birkigt: Since there are no further requests for the floor for the time being, I would like to ask Dr. Steiner to respond. Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees, I would like to say the following first: The very nature of the remarks I made this evening prevented me from speaking of analogy where I spoke of mathematics, and I ask you to reflect carefully on the fact that I did not use the word analogy. This is no accident, but a thoroughly conscious decision. I could not use the word 'analogy' because there was no question of an analogy with mathematics, but mathematical thinking was used to arrive at a characteristic of the inner experience of certainty. And by trying to explain how one can arrive at an inner experience of certainty in mathematics, I wanted to show how one can acquire this same degree of certainty in a completely different field, where one tries to arrive at certainty in the same way. It is therefore not about an analogy with mathematics, but about citing two real experiences of the soul that are to be compared with each other in no other way than by pointing to the attainment of inner certainty. Dear attendees, what the previous speaker said is not a reference to my lecture, because then he could not have used the word analogy. I avoided it because it does not belong.

Furthermore, it was said that I spoke of the passion of the individual mathematician. I could not do that either, because I simply referred to the nature of mathematical experience as it is known to those who are initiated into and trained in mathematics. How anyone can even think of speaking of some kind of personal involvement in mathematics is beyond me. On the other hand, I would like to make the following comment: It sounds very nice to say that the inner concept of the circle has absolutely nothing to do with the circle that I draw on the blackboard. I am not going to claim that it has anything to do with it, because it would never occur to me to say that the inner concept of the circle is made of chalk. I don't think that's a very profound truth that is being expressed.

But when we pass from abstract thinking to thinking in terms of reality, we must say the following. Let us take something that we construct mathematically within ourselves, for example, the sentence: If we draw a diameter in a circle and from one end of the diameter a line to any point on the circumference and from this point a further line to the other end of the diameter, then this angle is always a right angle. I do not need to draw this on the board at all. What I recognize there, namely that in a circle every angle through the diameter with the vertex on the periphery is a right angle, that is a purely internal experience. I have no need to use the circle here on the board.

Interjection: That is not true! Only when you have also looked at it, can you construct it afterwards!

But there is no doubt that what I draw on the board is only an external aid.

For anyone who can think mathematically, it is out of the question that they cannot also construct such mathematical truths purely through inner experience, even if they are the most complicated mathematical truths. There is no question of that. Even if I had to draw them with chalk, that would still have no significance for the simple reason that what constitutes the substantial validity of the proposition is to be illustrated in the drawing, but does not have to be concluded in it. If I use the drawing on the board to visualize that the angle is a right angle, then this visualization does not establish anything specific for the inner validity of the sentence. And that is what ultimately matters. There can be absolutely no question of my first needing the drawing on the board. But even if I needed it, that would be completely irrelevant to what I have said about the nature of mathematization – not about solving individual problems, but about mathematization in general. What is important here lies in a completely different area than what has been mentioned here, because when we look at mathematization, we are simply led to say that we experience inner truths.

I did not say that we already experience realities in mathematics. Therefore, it is completely irrelevant to object that mathematics as such does not contain any reality. But in the formal it contains truths, and these can also be experienced. The way in which one comes to truth and knowledge is important, even if these do not initially have any reality within mathematics itself. But when this mathematical experience is transferred to a completely different area, namely to the area where the exactness of mathematics is applied to the real life of the soul, the character of exactness, which is initially experienced in the mathematical-formal, is carried into the real. And only through this am I entitled to carry over into reality what applies to mathematics as merely formal.

I have first shown how to arrive from within at truths which we — of course only in an external way — apparently transfer as unrealities to observation, to experiment, or with which experiment is interwoven. And then I also showed how this formal character is transformed into a real one. But then, what is apparently so plausible still does not apply: what is mathematical only lives in me; the concept only lives in me, it does not live outside in reality. What has been mathematically explored and mathematically worked out would have nothing to do with reality as such. Well, does the concept of a circle really only live in me?

Imagine – I don't draw a circle on the board, but I have my two fingers here. I hold a string with them and make the object move in a circular motion, so that this lead ball moves in a circle. The laws that I now recognize for the movement by mathematically recognizing them – do they have nothing to do with reality? I proceed continually in such a way that I determine behavior in the real precisely through mathematics. I proceed in such a way when I go from induction to deduction that I bring in what I have first determined by induction and then process it further with mathematics. If I introduce the end term of an empirical induction into a mathematical formula and then simply continue calculating, then I am counting on the fact that what I develop mathematically through deduction corresponds to reality. It is only through this that the mathematical is fruitful for reality, not through such philosophical arguments as have been presented.

Let us look at the fruitfulness of the mathematical for reality. One can see the fruitfulness simply when, for example, someone says: I see the irregularities that exist in relation to what has been calculated, and therefore I use other variables in the calculation. And so he initially comes to assume a reality by purely mathematical means; reality arises afterwards – it is there. Thus I have, by continuing my empirical path purely through mathematics, also shown the applicability of the inner experience to the outer world. At least I expect it. And if one could not expect that the real event, which one has followed in sensory-descriptive reality to a certain point, continues in the calculation, then what I just meant would not be possible at all: that one feels satisfied in mathematics. The point is to take the concepts seriously, as they have been dealt with.

Now to what I said about moral intuition. You may remember that I said in my lecture that the intuition that I established as the third stage of supersensible knowledge occurs last. But moral intuition also occurs for ordinary consciousness. It is the only one that initially arises for a consciousness that has advanced to our level from the supersensible world. Moral intuition is simply an intuition projected down from a higher level to our level of knowledge. I illustrated this clearly in the lecture. That is why I spoke of this moral intuition first, not afterwards. I have described it as the starting point. One learns to recognize it; and when one has grasped it correctly, then one has a certain subjective precondition for also understanding what comes afterwards. For in experiencing moral intuition, one experiences something that, when compared with what is otherwise real, has a different kind of reality, and that is the reality of ought. If you go into what I have said, then the difference between being and ought is explained simply by the fact that moral intuition projects into our ordinary sphere of consciousness, while the other intuition is not a projection, but must first be attained. It was not at all implied that moral intuition is only a special case for the process of knowledge of general intuition, but it is simply the first case where something occurs to us intuitively in our ordinary consciousness, in today's state of consciousness.

So, it is important to understand exactly the concepts that are developed here for anthroposophy. I wanted to give suggestions. I fully understand that objections are possible because, of course, one cannot explain everything in such detail, and so I assume that there are still many doubts and so on in the souls of those present. But imagine how long my lecture would have been if I had already dispelled in the lecture all the doubts that I am now trying to dispel in my answer. That is what one has to reckon with in a first exploratory lecture, not only in anthroposophy but in all fields. That is what it was about today. I did not want to give anything conclusive, and I must say that some people do not want to go into anthroposophy at all. But I have found that the best recognizers of what anthroposophy is were often not those who fell for it right from the start, but that the best workers in anthroposophy became those who had gone through bitter doubts.

Therefore, please do not take what I said with a certain sharpness in the reply as if it were meant with hatred. Rather, I am basically pleased about everything that is objected to, because it is only by overcoming these obstacles of objection that one actually enters into anthroposophy. And I have always had more satisfaction from those who have come to anthroposophy via the reefs of rejection and doubt than from those who have entered with full sails at the first attempt.

Lively applause.

Mr. Wilhelm: I do not wish to criticize, but only to ask a question to which I would find Dr. Steiner's answer very interesting. Dr. Steiner replied to the criticism of the first speaker, who compared Theosophy with Anthroposophy, by saying that the method of knowledge of Anthroposophy is quite different from that of Theosophy, especially the old one, and that in the whole history of Theosophy there is no trace, not a single reference, to the method of knowledge presented by Dr. Steiner this evening. I would just like to ask whether Dr. Steiner is familiar with the passages in 'The Green Face' – a book that has a very strong Theosophical slant and where this method of knowledge actually forms the basis of the whole work. I would be very interested to hear Dr. Steiner's position on this.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! I would first like to point out that it would be possible, if there were indeed echoes in the “Green Face”, which appeared a few years ago, of what I have said this evening, to be fundamentally traced back to anthroposophy. Shout: Never!

I only said in general that it would not contradict itself, but since someone here shouted “Never!”, I completely agree with that, because I find nothing anthroposophical in “The Green Face”, but I find that what is said about anthroposophy in “The Green Face” is based on methods of knowledge that I would not want to have anything to do with. That is what I have to say about it.

In the course of our winter talks on spiritual science, we have already dealt with some unpopular and only tolerated issues. However, one can say that no issue is less popular and tolerated than the object of our today's consideration: the initiation.

If one speaks of the spiritual, higher worlds, the thought will also appear of course: how does the human being come to the knowledge of these higher worlds? The today's consideration on initiation can only give a preliminary answer—only all talks of this winter can give a complete answer. We must assume two principles of any spiritual science that we have already touched in the first talk. The first principle is the knowledge that there is another or even a number of other supersensible worlds behind the sense-perceptible one. The second knowledge is that to the human being these supersensible worlds can become accessible gradually, so that he can recognise them by his own development.

Of course, with it, spiritual science causes the opposition of all those people who speak about such matters and say, “we” or “one” cannot recognise. With it from the start, the speaker concerned who wants to make himself the standard measure of any human knowledge postulates a kind of knowledge monopoly, of infallibility.

Spiritual science stands exactly on the opposite point of view. It has the point of view that the human being has abilities and cognitive forces that are embryonic in him and can be developed higher and higher. One has to admit that it is quite right if anybody says, he cannot recognise certain higher worlds. However, at the same time, one has to say that these higher worlds are not to be penetrated just only with those cognitive forces that he means, and that logically nobody has a right to say: my cognitive forces are the absolute only ones; what I recognise signifies the limit of any possible knowledge.—For one rejects the human ability of development with it, denies from the start that the human being can ascend to higher and higher stages. However, it is the basic conviction of any human being who looks impartially at the world, and especially within our German education, it is easy to acknowledge this principle.

Goethe repeatedly pronounced and emphasised in the most various, wonderful sentences what founds a way of thinking leading to initiation. I would like to place some words of Goethe's deep-thought fragment The Secrets (The Mysteries) at the head of our considerations today. He points there to the inner human force that strives on and on and higher and higher, indeed, that is hindered by that what surrounds us at every moment what is forced upon us from the outside, from the sensuous as the inhibiting force. However, the inner force has still a means to come to the inner, to the world knowledge.

Goethe says in this poem The Secrets (The Mysteries) in which he speaks of a special initiation of the Rosicrucians and indicates the principle of initiation with the profound words:

For any force rushes forward into the vastness
To live and to work here and there;
However, the stream of the world hinders
And constrains us from any side and tears us off;
In this inner storm and outer quarrel
The mind hears a hardly understood word:
From the force that binds all creatures
That man is delivered who masters himself.

It completely complies with Goethe's way of thinking to search this force of the human being that can be developed to higher cognitive forces, to look for means and ways to an objective knowledge and wisdom beholding into the inside, into the spiritual of the things. It complies with his way of thinking if we eavesdrop on him where he expresses his level of knowledge most intimately. There we find many tips, which pronounce this clearly.

At the beginning of his Theory of Colours, Goethe says that the eye is created “by the light for the light.” The time has not yet come to understand this work of Goethe; perhaps, in some time if the perspectives prevail which I have mentioned in my talk The Natural Sciences Facing a Crucial Decision. He says, it was an indifferent, not photosensitive organ. The light caused the organ to see the light, to perceive the illumined objects. One has to think in the sense of Goethe what I have said in the sense of spiritual science: the human being had no eyes in primeval times, which could perceive light; the eyes arose from quite different organs. Which force accomplished this change? The light! It conjured up the eye that had become photosensitive. At the same time, Goethe indicates that there are other, unknown and misjudged abilities in the human being which—if they are developed—just open a new world as the eye opens the world of light and colours if it is elicited. In no other sense, we speak in spiritual science of the higher, extrasensory worlds.

Exactly in the sense of the dictum of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great thinker, we speak of such extrasensory perception. Fichte says, if a sighted man goes among blind people and tells them about light and colours, they regard him probably as a daydreamer. Also is that what he, Fichte, had to say to his listeners in those days only for an organ which has to originate only, and this—only on a higher stage—can be compared to the organ of the blind-born who has recognised the world only touching before the operation and sees it lighting up in colours and light afterward. Thus, it is also possible to elicit abilities by the development of forces slumbering in the human being to perceive new forces and objects in the surroundings that one can only perceive with spiritual abilities. In this logical sense, one speaks in spiritual science of higher worlds.

He who doubts the higher worlds is on the same level of the power of judgement as someone who is born blind and says, there is no world of light and colours because I do not see them. Nobody can really assess the possibility. However, someone can decide on the reality who knows it. Not anybody has to decide on a matter who knows nothing about it, but only someone who knows something of it. Indeed, only the principle of experience has to decide on initiation.

However, is it unnecessary to talk about these matters? No, it is necessary; for in which sense does anybody talk who informs about such higher worlds? He talks about them because he knows that merely by these communications, merely by this report the abilities and forces slumbering in all human beings can be woken up to penetrate to these worlds. Someone who is reluctant to receive information about these worlds resembles someone who was once reluctant to take part in the development of the eyes with which the human being can see the sun. He could also have said, why shall I develop anything, so that I can recognise the sun and the light? He did not know the sun and the light before. Only by a foreign power approaching us, the inner disposition can develop in the human being. Only if we can open the soul freely to the communications about the higher worlds, we get the first impulse to develop the higher forces which make us sighted, initiated finally.

One spoke of the principle of initiation at all times of the human development. Only the relation to the public working was different from that in our age. If we go back to the ancient Indian, Chaldean, Babylonian, Egyptian, or Greek-Roman culture-epochs, if we go up then to the Middle Ages, to the 16th, 17th centuries and our time, initiates and disciples of the initiates always existed. However, one did not speak about that publicly. What meant to be initiated? One differentiates an initiate, a clairvoyant, and somebody who applies the higher forces in the service of the physical world.

However, we do not want to get involved in these finer differences. Somebody is a clairvoyant who is able to behold into the extrasensory worlds to whom the worlds that are concealed to the usual human being are obvious, discernible worlds. Why was the introduction to such higher worlds pursued, so to speak, secretly? Why did one not speak of it publicly in former times? We speak of the dangers of initiation next time. I would like today to draw your attention only to the fact that on the border between the sensuous-visible world and the invisible-extrasensory world, indeed, a certain danger lies in wait for the human being, and that someone who wants to become an initiate has to overcome this danger at first. It consists in the fact that it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish illusion from reality, dreams from reality, vision from the real view at the border of the physical and the supraphysical worlds. In this area, it is very easy to confuse own fantastic things of the soul with the objective reality. One needs different qualities that are explained in the following: keeping cool, retaining certainty of the soul, courage, perseverance and energy at the border. If the human being lost the clearness about that which is appearance and what is reality at this border, he would have lost his mind, then he would be a fool instead of an initiate.

Nowadays an immense greed, a true fury exists with most people indeed, if they hear of such matters to behold something of the higher worlds. However, with most human beings the perseverance and the will and above all the strength to overcome everything that must remove the indicated dangers do not exist. Hence, at all times it was necessary that one examined the people whom one admitted to initiation concerning their intellect, their spiritual and moral abilities and their feelings. Only those who could stand the test before the pervasive view of the initiate could be admitted to initiation. There were such persons who were able because of their living conditions to submit to that, which enabled them to distinguish appearance and truth, vision and reality on the border between the physical and the spiritual worlds.

The question may now arise: why are those not quiet also today who know something about these matters after one could be quiet so long? Why does one not carry out the principle of the strict seclusion also today concerning the introduction to the higher worlds? Why is it broken? This has good reasons. Humanity advances. It is different in the different epochs of its development. History is also much more different in its organisation and developmental stages than the nonprofessional believes it. Someone who does not know the matters imagines that the human beings are the same today as they were centuries ago. Those who studied history and anthropology also have the same idea tacitly. The human beings of different centuries differ really very much who are apparently the same to the external anatomy and physiology. The differences are not obvious at first sight, and the external anatomy and physiology know nothing at all about them. Humanity progresses, and the human mind and the human soul have advanced so far that one needs the knowledge of the world secrets, the views, concepts, and ideas that lead us into the depth of the things, which were always preserved in the so-called secret schools to the general welfare and progress of humanity.

I present the further details in the following talks. We need only to point to the immense difference that took place in humanity in the course of a few centuries. We need only to mention one thing that deeply intervened in the human development: the art of printing.

Imagine once how the human beings lived concerning their soul, their spiritual education before the invention of the art of printing, how the communication was between those who knew something, and those who wanted to learn something, before there were books. Compare how today the communications of science and scholarship penetrate to any soul by thousands and thousands means, by popular writings and newspaper articles. If you go on imagining, you can get the idea that today it looks different in the souls, and you do not think that the sensations, thoughts, and impulses in the souls have no influence on life as a whole. Someone who believes that everything obvious is an imprint of the spiritual says to himself that the human beings have other physical and social needs today than in past times. Once it was possible that single persons knew something of certain events, of truth and wisdom. Today, however, the principle of initiation must be made accessible to everybody. Because of a duty towards humanity the strict secrecy and seclusion of former times was broken through. That is why today not only about that is spoken which is to be said about the higher worlds from the viewpoint of the spiritual research, but one also speaks in a certain way at least in the elements how the human being ascends even to these worlds, how he can accomplish the first steps of initiation. However, from the start one has to call attention to the fact that nobody should believe that the principle of initiation is to be taken easily and less seriously because the first steps of initiation are accessible to everybody today. Everybody can accomplish these first steps in every situation, as you will hear. Then higher and higher stages begin up to that of an initiate in the true sense of the word.

I have to characterise this concept first. What is an initiate? If I assume that there are higher and higher worlds behind our sensuous world, an initiate would be someone who has an insight into these higher worlds. The training for the initiation gives the human being the means and instructions how he can develop his spiritual eyes and ears to be able to behold into this spiritual world as he looks with his physical organs at the physical world.

Strictly speaking, all that is only a preparation for the real initiation. He who becomes a pupil of initiation receives certain instructions from his teacher how he can develop the abilities slumbering in him. All that aims to a point that leads him into a preliminary depth of the world to the highest degree, to a centre from which the rays of world creation and world principles go out. Such a thing does exist. This secret would be pronounceable even in words and, nevertheless, it is not pronounced. Allow me this indication from the start, because even if it sounds apparently mysterious, someone who thinks a little bit about it will find that even the kind in which such a thing is pronounced is very significant for the sensation that one should appropriate to understand the principle of initiation.

One prepares the pupil for the acceptance of the world secret that would be pronounceable if one is allowed to pronounce it. The initiate is somebody who knows a certain secret that is significant to the highest degree, for the life of the human beings. A secret, because if it were pronounced in the everyday life it would appear mad, brainless, paradoxical. Now, this would still be the less. However, there are other reasons why, nevertheless, someone who could pronounce the secret is not allowed to pronounce it. The reason is so deep that the secret that finishes certain stages of initiation cannot be wrested from anybody who knows it even not if one tormented and tortured him. He can never wrest this secret from himself. For this secret is not informed in words from human being to human being. The essentials consist of the fact that one brings the pupil to the point where he gets around by the imparted development of his own abilities and forces to solving the riddle by himself which is behind the matter, so that, so to speak, the pupil faces the teacher with that luminous eye which announces: I have found it!

Training means leading to finding oneself. A big part of that what the human being has to gain for the penetration into the higher worlds lies just in that big and immense sensation of the soul when it awakes and feels as newborn, after it was led to the higher capabilities and stages of development. One can compare that feeling on a lower level with that of a blind-born who could only touch the things up to now, and to whom after the operation light, colours, and forms appear from the darkness. Only if this relationship exists between teacher and pupil, the relationship is a healthy one. It is built on the highest that there can be between human being and human being: on freedom. That relationship must be there in which nothing at all of an unjustified influence from the teacher is there, because everything that should be developed is got out from the pupil himself.

After we have characterised the mood that should control the principle of initiation, we want to go somewhat more precisely into the development of the abilities slumbering in the human being. We start from the obvious matters and advance to the more distant ones. Three abilities are already there for the usual observation: thinking, feeling and willing, thought, feeling and will. This is the level of the average human being. All three abilities are developable. At first the thinking: it cannot lead the human being beyond the physical world, even if it is developed ever so subtle, ever so intimate. However, the thinking is still the first stage of development if it is a matter of getting beyond the physical world. We shall solve this ostensible contradiction, however, straight away. I have to speak immediately of those principles of initiation which were usual in the course of the last centuries in the secret schools and which are informed initially today to the public by those who know something of them.

First, the pupil has to develop the thinking free from sensuousness. What does one call thinking free from sensuousness? If the human being looks at the world around himself by his senses, he creates mental pictures and ideas of the world. These mental pictures and ideas make the world comprehensible to him. However, all that is no thinking free from sensuousness. The modern science, because of a certain inner weakness, often does not want to accept another thinking. Nevertheless, another thinking has its origin solely in the human inside, in the human soul. The modern human being only knows very little of the big extent of this thinking that is free from sensuousness and if anybody hears anything of it, he rejects it, and does not want to accept it.

The human being cannot only have thoughts referring to the sense-perceptible world; he can also have thoughts that arise from an inner power that the senses can never stimulate. Even philosophers do not see that today. I can produce evidence. Mathematics, geometry, can deliver it. Nobody can outdoors see a real cycle; nobody can outdoors see the principle that two times two are four.

However, one can get out by inner meditation without counting beans that two times two are four, or one can construct the circle by inner view, so that the circle line is always equidistant to the centre. What did the great Plato write above his school? He wrote that nobody could be accepted without knowledge of geometry. That does not mean that he had to know the entire geometry, but that he had a suitable sense for it. If we reproduced the external circle in concepts only, we would never be able to form a true circle. However, we can form a circle and its principles in our mind that way. Thus, we must work out the circle from own mind. This is thinking free from sensuousness. Mathematics is not popular, and, nevertheless, it is the only thinking free from sensuousness that is done in our schools. However, most people laugh at someone if he says that there are still other concepts that one can find wholly spiritually, as those of space and number and figures. One ignores and despises the philosophers and thinkers who asserted that the human being is able to put up a building of ideas that harmonises with the world.

Someone who has put up such ideas free from sensuousness within our German education and culture for other fields than geometry is Goethe again. It is a wonderful great achievement of the spiritual life of humanity what Goethe performed with the type of the plants, with the archetypical plant, and the type of the animal, the archetypical animal. What sort of thoughts are these? Goethe himself tries to make clear them his way. Many people wrote about that. However, the most is nonsense because most people are not able to understand how a spiritually constructed circle whose principles we can see relates to the circle drawn on the board which is nothing but a number of little chalk particles. However, Goethe's archetypical plant relates to the external sense-perceptible plant. Outdoors are the different plants—Goethe thought—, the one looks this way, the other that way. However, an inner spiritual strength lives in us with which we are able to find the concept of the archetypical plant out of inner production. The botanists thought that Goethe meant an imperfect plant. This is nonsense! He meant the spiritually beheld plant! I tried in one of my books to reconstruct this archetypical plant, as one also constructs the circle in mind. Goethe's archetypical plant contains possible plants if one is able to conjure up all possibilities out of it. His archetypical animal contains all possible animals. Goethe created a spiritual biology there. It enables us to create in spirit what cannot appear to our senses. However, there we start from a profound, significant spiritual fact. Goethe started from this fact, from which he got what he found as archetypical plant. This was no mere idea to him, but it was the creating force in all plants. The archetypical animal was the creative in any animal to him.

I have often cited a famous conversation about the plants that immediately at the beginning of their acquaintance Goethe and Schiller had with each other. They came from a talk of the society of naturalists in Jena. Schiller said that it is unsatisfactory to look at the creatures in such a way that one cannot see their coherence. Goethe answered that there could be also another method where one can see the common, the spiritual tie, which holds everything together. Goethe describes the conversation to us, and that he took his pencil then and drew the picture of the archetypical plant with some characteristic lines.

There Schiller, the speculative poet, said, this is no fact; this is an idea, no reality. Goethe answered, if this is an idea I see the ideas outdoors with my eyes. In the plant is the force creating life. Because of the deep view that the Goethean mind had of such a being it was possible that in his mind that was awoken which creates in all animals and plants. A mysterious tie exists between the human inside and that which is spread out in the animal and plant realms. If the human being conjures up the archetypical plant in himself, he conjures up that form after which the plants have been created. We regard ourselves in this way as spiritual participants in the productions of nature. Goethe as it were immerses in the things and conjures up in his mind the spirit living in the things. Goethe presents this to the human being.

One can try the same in higher fields. A German philosopher did it, not sufficiently but fundamentally and profoundly, but one did not understand him. If an anecdote were true, it would prove this fact in its depth. For Hegel (Georg Friedrich Wilhelm H., 1770–1831) should have said: “Only one understood me, and also he misunderstood me.” Hegel tried to create concepts free from sensuousness of the surroundings and history of the human beings. His Philosophy of History has now appeared in Reclam's Universal Library in which he gives a great survey of the whole world history. Many things in it are not right, unfortunately. Many things are as one-sided as just only Hegel could be one-sided, so that the book can serve only as suggestion. However, it may serve to find the principle. Hegel cared about thinking free from sensuousness, so that he lets everything appear in its own spirit, which is the same spirit that led humanity. He, who wants to do this, needs a more intimate knowledge of the human spirit and that of the peoples than Hegel could possess. Hence, everything seems abstract, grey, and logical in the bad sense; however, the things are ingenious and stimulating. One has to say, what is wrong there can be even more useful to humanity than many right but trivial things.

Just as one can think in mathematics free from sensuousness and create as one can do it also in history, my The Philosophy of Freedom should give a picture of the inner development of the human being with his entire cognitive faculties as one can grasp this from the thinking free from sensuousness. This is a book like an organism where a sentence follows the other, a book of a thinking that moves in itself and is self-contained. I wanted to show in it how the human being who wants to go from sensuousness to the extrasensory has to cultivate his thinking.

However, there are easier means, namely those about which spiritual science informs. What we can read in the spiritual-scientific books about the different human members, about reincarnation and karma, the life after death, the development of the human races and cultures and about what we shall still speak you cannot see with senses, but it is something that you can understand if you generally get involved with human understanding. Spiritual science gives the human beings a thinking free from sensuousness as it was given in the secret schools once, and as the human being must have it, before he is able to behold into the spiritual worlds. Clairvoyance and initiation are necessary for that. However, he who has got the possibility to inform in a certain way can form a bridge. Then everybody can convince himself by enclosing logical thinking and a healthy power of judgement that the things are right. Clairvoyance is necessary to find the higher profundities, only a healthy mind and logic to understand them.

Indeed, today many people are possessed by a more or less materialistic thinking or by that arrogance of infallibility that is due to the positivistic science. This is a real pipe dream. If the people only know that they live, strictly speaking, under suggestions, that they do not know what is real and what is not real! Indeed, they do not want to acknowledge the infallibility of the pope; however, they regard themselves as infallible. That who stands on the viewpoint of science is the most intolerable one. He regards the spiritual scientist as a fool and himself as an infallible man! One can inform about the world that is not accessible to the senses only with a thinking free from sensuousness. Hence, the first training is the training of thinking which only makes it possible to develop the thinking and to lead to a real beholding into the spiritual worlds.

The second is the development of feeling. Nobody should train the feeling, before he has not brought the thinking free from sensuousness to a certain level. That who knows how it looks in these higher worlds tells you: if you ascend to the higher worlds, you come to the astral world and then to the spiritual or devachanic one. The impressions are completely different there than the human being can imagine who knows the physical world only. Even if all experiences are different, one thing remains: the logic, the healthy thinking. The human being who appropriates the healthy thinking who is a reasonable person firmly standing on his legs cannot go astray if he ascends to the worlds that offer many surprises. That who develops this self-assured thinking working from the origin of the soul has a sure leader also beyond that border where one can hard distinguish between the physical and the supraphysical.

With healthy thinking one gets over the abyss which opens there. If anyone lives without healthy thinking and says, you give me thoughts only; however, a divine power lives in me, why should I not be able to ascend to the higher worlds?—Then I can only answer: those who speak in such a way have no idea of the conditions of the higher worlds where the outer world does not correct us where we must have the leader in ourselves if we should not go astray.

The development of the feeling happens with the help of Imagination at the school of those to be initiated. The pupil creates a figurative notion of the world at first; then he has to carry out his world consideration rather quietly under the Goethean saying: “All that is transitory is only a symbol.” I would like to give you an example that I have given several times how one leads someone who aims at a spiritual development into the depths of the things, how one teaches the development of the feeling by Imagination (anthroposophic concepts of initiation are capitalised). If you want to understand the development of the beings and stop at the thinking, you never can go fairly beyond this sensory world. You can appropriate the most different concepts how subordinated beings develop higher and higher up to the human being, you can take even the spiritual-scientific evolutionary theory how the logos poured forth and formed more and more complex forms and worlds: plants, animals, human beings, how all differentiations formed, evolutions and involutions and so on. These are teachings that you find in theosophical books, nice and interesting concepts. However, you cannot come into the higher worlds this way. You can thereby form ideas, which are analogies of higher worlds, but you never can come with them into these worlds. You need Imagination. This is not anything that one imagines.

It is something that is produced with a productive power and amounts to nothing more than concepts only, so that these concepts, like Goethe's archetypical plant and archetypical animal, correspond to the outer realities; but pictures are formed corresponding to the spirit that creates behind these things. I would like to explain in the form of a dialog what one said always in such secret schools to the pupils. I say this to you to make clear the principle, the method of initiation. What I speak in a few words takes a long period of training. The dialog that I describe never did take place, but that what it shows has always taken place in any spiritual school. One says to the pupil, look at the plant, which points with its root to the earth, which lets grow its stalk, its leaves, and blossoms upwards, and compare it to the human being. You would compare wrongly if you wanted to compare the head to the blossom and the foot to the root.—I would like to remark that also that who founded the newer natural sciences so greatly gets to this view. He compares the root to the head of the human being and regards the plant as the reverse human being and the human being as the reverse plant.—The root is the head that the plant sticks toward the centre of the earth, just as the human being sticks his head that he holds in the opposite direction toward the sun or the heavenly forces. The plant turns its reproductive organ, the blossom, virginally to the sunbeam that one called the “holy lance of love” in the medieval secret schools. The human being is the exact opposite. He sticks his organs of conceptions toward the centre of the earth, the head toward the space. In between, one says to the pupil, is the animal who does half a turn, so that the spine is horizontal. Look at plant, animal, and human being and you understand the dictum of Plato that the world soul is crucified on the cross of the world. Plato understands plant, animal, and human being by the world. The plant stands vertically, the human being reversely to it so that he looks with the head at the free world ether, and the crossbar is the animal. This is the prototype of the cross, as one knew it in ancient times and in all secret schools.

Then one says the following to the pupil: imagine the plant and its pure, chaste substance. The human being is on a higher level than the plant. The plant resembles the sleeping human being. It has physical body and etheric body as the sleeping human being has physical body and etheric body. The human being is, actually, beyond the physical and etheric body. That what thinks in him and feels desire and pain has been cut off in the sleeping state. The plant has a consciousness that we know as sleep consciousness.

What does the development from the horizontal line up to the entire turn mean? It means that be the human being has attained his present bright day consciousness. With the transition from the animals, the human being has become a being with bright day consciousness. He had to lose something else for it. Look at the plant: a body of desires, an astral body does penetrate it. The plant has physical body and etheric body. The human being must go through the animal and integrate instincts, desires, and passions. He has higher risen integrating the astral body into the plant body.

Now spiritual science puts a great Imagination before him. This spiritual science shows how he can gradually develop the strength that leads him back again to the purification of his desire nature that leads him up to that point where he lives again in the pure, chaste body on higher developmental stages while retaining his current state of consciousness. There he has overcome what he had necessarily to absorb in himself with the transition to the higher stages. What the teacher put before the pupil was a future ideal: you will have the plant nature again! One gave him the means to attain it. One said to him, the entire humanity comes again to this stage once when the human beings have developed the purely spiritual strength. Then he is no longer tied to the desire nature, he no longer sticks his organs of conception toward the spiritual sunbeam. In the initiatory training, one calls this organ the Holy Grail, which then the human being has attained, and which is a spiritual organ.

Imagine the difference between the dry abstractions that one puts in mathematics or in idealistic writings before you and this idea where we go up through the animal state to the human being and again up to other future stages of humanity. If we visualise that, we accompany this Imagination with our sensations and feelings if we are generally able not only to think the spirit but also to feel it. We shall see this development not only in spirit, but we shall feel it. The evolution in the universe appears immense and big to us if we visualise it that way, not in abstractions. The whole universe with all world riddles was presented to the pupils. They claim not only his thinking, but also his feeling and sensing. It was to him, as if his whole soul went out and lived in everything that was round him. As with the Goethean archetype something is created in us that lives in all plants and animals, it is also, if the developed feeling rises from us, as if we felt the world soul which flows as power through all beings.

Thus, everything came to life that was around the pupil, it became Imagination. Where he went through woods and meadows, everywhere the pictures worked in his soul. This loosened the inner power in him and he looked behind the beings and behind the things gradually. If one tells this in such a way, it seems almost unbelievable. If the pupil was introduced under the guidance of the teacher in the Imaginative of the world, he was guided not only to the thinking, but also to the feeling and the impulses that have gushed out from the soul of the world creator. He was introduced in an essential world. Then the development continues from the feeling to the willing.

As well as the feeling develops by pictures, the will develops by the occult letters. This will is the deepest of the concealed power. This will becomes something like a skeleton that the human being squeezes out by the will into the outer world. If you remember the pictures of the Munich congress, of the columns and seals, they are there to train the will. In the portfolio, which we edited as Pictures of Occult Seals and Columns, they are reproduced. I want to discuss the principle of these occult seals and columns once and give their meaning for the initiation. Any seal explains what you can find in the Apocalypse or The Revelation of John. In this portfolio, you find signs. Any sign has an immense, stimulating effect on the human being.

You find a human figure on the first seal. The feet are like from liquid brass, a fiery sword goes out from the mouth. I do not want to describe the remainder. He who becomes engrossed in this seal sees that just this seal gives him something marvellous in particular by this contrast. We shall hear in the last talk of this winter on Sun, Moon and Stars that we are led back by spiritual science also to states of the earth where the earth was in a fiery-liquid state and that—in contrast to the materialistic science—the human being already existed. Spiritual science can make the objection to itself that the human being could not live in a fiery-liquid state. At that time, the human being was formed from fiery liquid mass. This beginning of the earth is shown in the fiery-liquid metal feet. A later future state is shown with the fiery sword that comes out of the mouth, and appears in all myths again. I can only indicate what it concerns here. You will see how spiritual science is connected deeply with the innermost essence of the world.

How does the mediation happen, if I speak to you? What I speak are my thoughts at first. These accept tones that make the air vibrate. The air is thereby set in motion in this hall. The oscillations of the air come to your ear, come to your soul, and impart themselves to your soul. My words live here in the room in certain forms of oscillation. If you could see them, you would see particular oscillations if I pronounce the word “soul.” As well as the human being is able today to form the air and make arise that what lives in his soul in the oscillating air, he will also be able to form organs. There are organs in the human being, which are at the beginning, and other organs are at the end of their development. The larynx and the heart are at the beginning of development. I know that I assert something scandalous for the positive science, because one regards these two organs as mechanical apparatuses, the heart like a pump. However, just the theories of the heart and the blood circulation will experience reorganisations in the not too distant future. One will find that the circulation of the blood is due to something quite different from the heart, and that the heart moves only by the blood circulation. If the human being feels abashed, he blushes. This is an influence of the blood. The heart will be in future a voluntary muscle, and it prepares itself to become one.

Here something is given that will almost coin the future of the human being externally-physically. The heart is a crux to the usual anatomy and physics. It has the configuration of a voluntary muscle, while it is no voluntary muscle today. A voluntary muscle has striated muscle fibers. The heart has such striated fibers, although it is not voluntary even today. However, it is on the way of becoming a voluntary muscle.

The larynx will also have another function. It will be the reproductive organ of the human being. The larynx that produces words of the soul will undertake the reproduction. The fire principle is the speech, and the fire principle of the speech will be a creative principle; hence, the sword in the mouth. This fiery sword is intimately related to the world forces. If the human being becomes engrossed in its picture, this strengthens his willpower. One can say that only that way. He who does it experiences it. Then he anticipates, thinks, and feels not only, but he penetrates with his willpower into the things. This is the way through the occult writing. One can state quite concretely, in which way one should develop thinking, feeling, and willing. If one has woken the forces slumbering in the human being, thinking, feeling, and willing become particular organs, which one calls spiritual eyes. From them the spiritual eyes originate which show the world of the flooding spiritual light and its colours and the spiritual forces behind our physical world. The trained willpower becomes the spiritual ears of which also Goethe speaks who was deeply initiated into these matters:

In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres
the sun still sings its glorious song,
and it completes with tread of thunder
the journey it has been assigned.

Goethe remains in the right picture. If one is introduced in the higher spiritual world, one is introduced by the ear. If one comes in the spiritual realm, it is immediately said: “In these sounds the new day is already born for spiritual ears.” Those who believe to understand Goethe but say, this is nonsense, and need an explanation of it, which one cannot expect the poet to accept, one has to answer: no, one cannot expect that Goethe wrote nonsense: “the sun still sings ...” is nonsense only if one applies it to the physical world.

Thus, we have seen that the principle of initiation is based on the fact that one gets out particular forces slumbering in the human being, so that these forces guide the human beings into the spiritual world surrounding him. What gets out these forces of the human being? We have to explain the matter completely in the sense of Goethe. Once there was a sense organ, an indifferent organ in his sensuous body, which was flooded from light. The light made it the eye, so that the human being could see the colours and forms round himself with the eyes. The eye originated that way. Unknown and unrecognised organs which one does not want to recognise slumber in the human being. In addition, other worlds are round us, except the world of light and colours. As well as with the blind human being the eye was woken for seeing, the spiritual ears and eyes are trained with the clairvoyance and clairaudience, so that the human being can behold into the surrounding spiritual world.

The human being has gained self-consciousness. He has become in such a way that he can relate everything to himself. However, because he develops the spiritual eyes and ears following the principle of initiation he immerses again in the outer world. He finds his higher self in this world. We are not allowed to say that we find the divine and spiritual in ourselves. This is a wrong expression. Recognise yourself! Is an old saying. However, one has to understand it in such a way as Adam recognised his woman. He fertilised her. Thus, that applies also to the organs. Fertilise yourself, be fertilised by the world.—Thus, the human being should develop the forces slumbering in him. It is true what Goethe says:

Unless the eye were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own strength were in us,
How could delight us the divine?

Indeed, the sun force is in us, and the eye does not create the divine being, does not create the sun, but it sees it, after it has been created.

We can develop higher forces and penetrate deeper and deeper into the world this way. Then the outer world does no longer appear to us as something that restrains and restricts us, but as that which brings true and spiritual reality. Harmony is created between the human being and the world. Thereby we overcome the lower self that looks out into the sensuous world. We attain the higher ego of the human being that is spread out in the whole universe. Goethe means this indicating the principle of initiation in his poem The Secrets (The Mysteries) with the words with which we want to close. They show how the human being flows out by self-conquest and into the feeling permeating the world, into the spiritual of the world, into the will of the cosmic spirits pulsating through the world:

For any force rushes forward into the vastness
To live and to work here and there;
However, the stream of the world hinders
And constrains us from any side and tears us off;
In this inner storm and outer quarrel
The mind hears a hardly understood word:
From the force that binds all creatures
That man is delivered who masters himself.

There are riddles of the world in which somebody takes an interest who wants to deeper penetrate into the structure and texture of our existence. Such riddles of the world are, for example, these: where from do materials and forces come, where from does life come into the world? Where from the purposiveness of nature, where from consciousness? How have we to assess the question of the origin of language, how the question of the riddle of the free will? These questions force themselves to somebody who wants to deeper penetrate into the understanding of existence indeed, questions which are not far from an advanced, educated intelligence. But before these questions there are more obvious, big human questions which have no theoretical, no scientific value at first, but which force themselves, which allow us to look up from the works and efforts of life at that which we want to call the imperishable compared to the transient. These questions are connected with that which meets us wherever we go, with that which must face us everywhere in the world as a riddle. These are questions on whose reply not only the satisfaction of our theoretical or scientific interest depends, but it also depends on them whether we have strength, courage and assurance in life, whether we have hope for a prosperous future of the human race and the single human being.

Such vital matters face us if we turn our look at the immediate existence of the human being, if we see how one is equipped at his birth with a low ability and strength and is inclined by these dispositions and talents. With it, we can foresee how he is condemned to a wretched, miserable existence that he has to carry on between birth and death. He may be born into a family so that he seems to be condemned to misery already without any guilt due to the circumstances and facts. The other is born into a family which makes sure from the start that he has a happy existence full of joy; he has talents and abilities so that we can say, he accomplishes something great and significant in his life. All that and other things embrace the big and immediate riddles, if we consider life, as it faces us, impartially. The great worldviews and their preachers always tried hard to solve these riddles of existence. However, in every new time the riddles of existence need a new solution. Not as if the old truth is no longer true, it does not concern this, but the fact that thinking and feeling of the human beings change, that the feeling of the soul changes more than one assumes usually, that one does not put other questions, but that one puts the old questions differently. The theosophical or spiritual-scientific approach to life, spreading out for thirty years in educated cultures, tries to solve the riddles of existence in such a way that the modern human being can be satisfied with such a solution.

There are two spiritual-scientific concepts that should form the object of our issue today and give answer to the raised questions: the idea of reincarnation or of the repeated earth lives, and the idea of karma or the big principle of existence. The spiritual-scientific worldview wants to answer the riddles of existence with these both ideas as the physical researcher answers his questions from knowledge, not from mere belief. What the spiritual-scientific worldview wants to give has the same character as what the remaining research wants to offer. The only difference may be that for the understanding of the scientific truth preconditions are necessary. A certain scientific basis also belongs almost to the complete popular scientific representation. However, the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview is understandable for every human being. It satisfies every human being, from the simple, naive mind which is only able to follow the questions and answers with sensation and feeling up to the most sophisticated sage who approaches these matters with the biggest doubt at first and who—if he only has the patience and perseverance to come to grips with these matters—finds his satisfaction. They all find not only satisfaction, not only that releasing feeling which approaches us in the soul if we have longed a long time for getting an answer to any question—who knows this feeling knows something about the intimate happiness of the soul—, but also concerning the vital matter it gives something quite different. There does not come into consideration what satisfies our thirst for knowledge, but something that gives us the assurance of life, something that should not give an answer only for single but for all soul forces.

Because we deal with so important and basic questions today, let me say first, in which sense the spiritual-scientific answers are to be understood based on life. One often counters the spiritual scientist, out of an entire misunderstanding: bring forward proof of that which you state there if we should believe you what you say about higher, spiritual worlds and about matters that are inaccessible to the usual senses of experience at first.—The spiritual scientist can appropriately answer only: nobody needs to believe me, from nobody I ask more than trust in my assertions, because there cannot be such proofs of the spiritual-scientific truth as one normally demands them. Who demands them does not understand the character and the sense of the spiritual-scientific truth.

Life delivers the proofs of the spiritual-scientific truth and life delivers them if not only we look with the senses here within that which our own eyes, ears, and our sense of touch teach us, but life in its entirety up to the highest spiritual parts of life. If anybody comes and says: I do not believe what you tell there, because this may be anything that you have devised, this may be fantasies—, and one can answer: well, believe it, believe that the spiritual scientists are the biggest swindlers of the world. However, something else is between belief and disbelief. This is an impartial listening.—Take a drastic proof. Take a map of Asia Minor. A man says, this is no map of Asia Minor, you have thought up this.—One can only answer to him: well, never mind, but remember what I have shown to you on this map, take note of it, and memorise it. If you come to Asia Minor once, you see that it is right.—The same applies to the spiritual-scientific teachings. No one needs to believe them. If only we want to observe carefully and impartially, there are enough proofs of it in life, also for that life when we have passed the gate of death, when we are on the other side.

One has to answer the old questions in a new way. Still in the 17th century, it was not only a superstition of the big mass, but also a common conviction of all learnt people who believed to understand something of natural sciences that not only quite low animals, but also even earthworms can grow out of ordinary river mud. One thought this generally. One did not have the conviction that an earthworm must come from an earthworm, but one believed that it originated from mud. The Italian scientist Redi (Francesco R., 1626-1697) put up the sentence: life comes only from life. Never comes life from lifelessness. The earthworm originates not from the mud, but by a reproduction of an earthworm.—So young is this conviction! Thus, the human race advances concerning truth. Everybody would be regarded as a fool today who believed that earthworms could grow out of mud. What Redi expressed at that time—who escaped the destiny of Giordano Bruno by the skin of his teeth—, applies to the spiritual-scientific worldview today. As well as it was contrary to the ways of thinking at that time to admit that life must come from life, the teaching of reincarnation is contrary to the present ways of thinking.

Some run literally wild by the spiritual-scientific truth as in those days the human beings ran wild if anybody stated that the earthworms do not grow out of mud. In the same sense, like that which I have stated now the spiritual-scientific worldview says, spirit and soul come only from spirit and soul. If folly does not win over reason, there is no doubt that in two centuries exactly just as the scientific truth, the spiritual-scientific worldview will have seized all circles.

What does it mean that spirit and soul come only from spirit and soul? Spirit and soul face us if we consider the destiny of the human being how it depends on external facts, on dispositions and abilities, on the overall character. Only someone who is not able to observe the fine, intimate peculiarities of a human soul in its becoming, who only has a sense of the coarse physical can deny that we see something growing up in the child that can be explained just as little from a non-mental, a non-spiritual as the earthworm from mud. Schiller's nose, Schiller's red hair and some other of his physiognomy are indeed explicable by bodily inheritance, exactly as the carbon particles and the oxygen particles in the earthworm come from other carbon particles and oxygen particles of the surroundings.

The lifeless parts of the earthworm come from the lifeless parts of the surrounding nature and the physical parts of our body come from the physical surroundings. However, we can explain Schiller's abilities and talents from the surroundings just as little as the earthworms from the mud. Nevertheless, it does not depend on Schiller. He is given only as a radical example. It applies to every human being, also to the simplest, that he develops gradually from the type. It is impossible to derive the individual from the physical inheritance. One can see that easily. Try to understand once how Goethe's saying applies here,: “Nature, mysterious in day's clear light, lets none remove her veil, and what she won't discover to your understanding you can't extort it with levers and with screws” (Faust I). This is nothing for pliers and microscope. Have a look at the child how it faces you in the first months and years. On its face expresses itself what it has from father, mother, and ancestors. The general-human expresses itself, the type, the character of the clan, of the family. We often say, the mild trait of the child comes from the father, from the mother, from uncle or aunt.

However, when we see the child growing up, a strange change takes place that is visible to a subtler sense. What we can perceive as the confluence of father, mother, grandmother et cetera like an imprint changes and takes shape from its inner being. What lives in the core one cannot derive from father and mother expresses itself gradually in the traits. The more something individual is in the soul that is above the type, the more the soul creates in the body from inside and transforms it. How could one explain the face of a great thinker, of a great world benefactor by inheritance who works from his inside and enriches the world with anything new? From the face, you can see how the human being outgrows the mere type. In every human being, just a spiritual essence reveals itself, which is not born out of physical inheritance, but is born into it. If you cannot lead back this spiritual core to father and mother, to the ancestors, we must be able to lead it back to something spiritual. Soul and spirit come from the soul and spirit. There is only the idea of development, the idea of repeated incarnations. The being that impresses its traits to the child already existed, was already repeatedly in a body. There you find an explanation of soul and spirit just as you find an explanation of the earthworm if you say, the earthworm has originated from an earthworm and not from mud or sand. Once there was something imperfect, however, we cannot go into it in this talk.

How does spiritual science explain the perfect and the imperfect in the mental-spiritual realm? As well as the small plasmodium originated, according to Haeckel from simple living conditions, and as the following animal formed bit by bit by the development of the external physical figure, we can say about a perfect soul that it gradually formed from an imperfect soul which became more perfect bit by bit. The imperfect savage with his childish soul has preserved that figure of our soul through which we had to go to raise ourselves to the spiritual figure of our soul. On the other hand, compare the soul of an average European with the soul of a human being as Darwin still met one. The soul of a modern human being has concepts of good and bad, of right and wrong, of false and true.

Darwin wanted once to make clear to a savage who was still a cannibal: you are not allowed to eat a human being, because it is bad.—The savage looked at him peculiarly and said, why? Where from can you know this without having eaten him? If we have eaten him, we know whether he was good or bad.—Thus, you have an imperfect soul that develops more and more completely. Our soul comes into the world not as a baby, but this soul has developed in imperfect incarnations first where it had understood nothing of good and bad but the pleasant and the disagreeable to the palate and the like. It developed through such stages and advanced to our level through many incarnations. We carry our soul in ourselves with the abilities and forces, which we have, with the destiny, which it experiences. We see more precisely if we come again in another incarnation on earth; we appear more perfect on earth, until that stage is attained on which we are able to ascend to a higher and more divine existence of which we do not need to speak today. There are indeed still other explanations of existence than the teaching of reincarnation, but this can solely solve the riddles of human existence.

A core of existence faces us in that human being about whom we say that he goes through many lives, through repeated lives. The materialistically minded says to us that mind and soul are only attachments to the body, developed only from the body; the thoughts and language are only higher forms of that which we meet also in the physical-animal realm. The materialist brings us to mind that our most elated moral ideals, our holiest religious feelings are nothing but the results of our physical organization. On the contrary, the spiritual-scientific worldview shows us that everything that rests in our souls is our everlasting essence, which formed its body step-by-step. The physical-bodily comes from the spiritual-mental: this is the teaching of the spiritual-scientific worldview, which becomes clearer and clearer, the more you immerse yourselves in it. It is a teaching that is not based on blind faith, although—if one wants to show it popularly in one short hour—one can outline it only briefly and cannot introduce in it extensively. However, it is a teaching that is founded as certainly and firmly like any scientific teaching. It works with the same methods, only in the spiritual realm, as the sensuous science in the physical realm.

Spiritual science speaks of the fact that the human being consists of a higher and a lower nature, and that his lower nature—when he walks through the gate of death—is given back to those elements, which it belonged to. The body is handed over to the earth; other parts are handed over to other elements. However, an everlasting essence is in the human being that always takes on a new human figure and form like the lily as a species always takes on new forms, while it goes repeatedly through the grain to come to a new life.

This teaching of reincarnation of the being, which shows us the development in the spiritual realm as the higher counter-image of the development in the sensory realm, leads us to see those finer, more intimate things in the human being. We speak of the fact that this essence of the human being contains a triple basic being, that it is of triple nature. We speak of the fact that something exists in the deepest inside of the human beings that is quite undeveloped with the normally educated people, exists only embryonic. We call this innermost essence of the human being atman or spirit man. With the most human beings, it is not even visible by vision.

The second member of this spiritual essence of the human being is the buddhi. In English, we would call it life spirit. This second element in the human soul is something that is expressed with the most developed human beings, with the leaders of humanity in a certain way. We can describe this life spirit in a certain way. This buddhi of the highest glory and sublimity inhabited the old religious founders, Hermes, Buddha, Zarathustra and—in the extreme—Christ Jesus. If I make clear what this buddhi signifies in the spiritual realm, I can do it only by a symbol. One must behold the spiritual either, or one has to sum up the everlasting in a symbol, like Goethe does who says: “All that is transitory, is only a symbol.” I would like to give such a symbol of buddhi. If you imagine the usual productive strength in the usual sensuous life, combined with love, but not with receptive love, but with devoted love: this is buddhi. There is in nature no other symbol than the hen, which sits on the egg, conjuring up a new life with its own warmth, sacrificing its own existence in love for the new life. Now imagine this transferred to the spiritual, imagine an individuality who produces the big, propelling forces, the spiritual impulse in the human nature for the further development in such a way as I have just described, then you have it.

The element of Christian feeling and sensation had been a basic strength since two millennia. It flowed as blessing through the Western hearts and fulfilled them with bliss. Did Christ not generate it and did it not exist in Christ? Was it not brought into this world with the highest glory, showing that spiritually, which lives in the sensuous, the devoted love which creates—which does not create a human being, but spiritual love which brings forth the universal wisdom, for centuries? Imagine this element in the human nature, and then we have what we call Christ in the Christian mysticism, Chrestós in the Greek mysticism, buddhi in the Eastern mysticism, the life spirit in its highest potentiality. Everybody who feels something of that which it means to produce spiritually what is incorporated as a force in the human development, everybody who feels something of it has a feeling of spiritual, bright clearness like that which expresses itself here below by a symbol, the true blissful sensation with which the chicken sits on the egg. This is buddhi. It exists in every single human being to a certain extent, at least as disposition.

The third soul force is that by which we understand the world. It would be brainless in the highest degree to believe that one could get water out of a vessel if no water is in it. However, such brainless people are those who say that they can get the wisdom of the world if it is not there. The astronomer tries to calculate and to understand the wisdom in the universe. The world is to be understood only by wisdom. Would it not be the biggest folly to want to take wisdom from the universe unless wisdom were in it? If not wisdom were given, we could never get wisdom there. The universe is created by the same wisdom by which we want to understand it. This is the third element that flows through the whole world. This is the manas. In English, it is translated best of all saying: wisdom is born out of the world, our spirit self is this third element. If you take these three things: atman, buddhi, manas, and then you have the deepest essence of the human being. Then you have what walks from incarnation to incarnation what is imperfectly formed with the savage where this triad also exists on a low level, up to where we see it with the modern human being, up to the great leader of humanity. The human being walks from incarnation to incarnation, from the cultured man up to the spiritually not only ideal, but also holy leader of humanity, up to Francis of Assisi, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) or others. The student can completely get to know the passage through the repeated earth-lives by the way the human beings stand side by side in this development.

What I have stated expresses itself in the whole human being to somebody who sees more intimately. I have said, this essence of the human being exists only as disposition with the normally educated person. It becomes perfect. However, what we form from our essence today formed and created us from the outset. Thus, we see this tripartite being, this essence working in the human being unconsciously at first and then consciously. Just now I have only mentioned an example how the inner being expresses itself in the physiognomy of the thinker. Not only in the steady physiognomy, but also in the gesture and in the mobility of the traits the essence expresses itself. They are accordingly formed bit by bit, depending on the essence growing out with the child. Spiritual research, occultism gives you the coherence of this tripartite being of the human being and that, which is expressed externally in his body, in his instrument. The so-called occultist says, with the man the spirit self-expresses itself in the traits at first. Buddhi develops in his organ of speech, lives in his voice, preparing future levels. The third force, atman, lives in man's gesture, in the movement of his hands. I said, in the organ of speech and in the voice the second member, buddhi, or Christ, lives as you have seen just now. The Christian mysticism expressed this the deepest in John's Gospel where you read: “In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God's presence, and what God was, the Word was.” John directly calls the speech Christ. In the female nature, it is somewhat different. Of course, I would like to say nothing against the absolute gender equality practiced in theosophy. Atman, buddhi, manas are the same with the man and with the woman. They have nothing to do with the gender, however, with the external figure. With the woman manas comes into its own in the speech, buddhi in the gesture of the hands, and atman appears in the whole body. These are the so-called occult differences between the male and the female figures, not between the essence of man and woman.

What is now this idea of reincarnation compared with the principle of karma? Karma comes from or is connected at least with the Sanskrit word karnoti that means acting, doing, and working. It is exactly the same stem like in Latin “creare,” create. Creare, do and create is the same. Karma and creating is the same, expressed only in two different languages. Now we want to realise what one calls karma. Karma is called, in English expressed, activity, becoming, and action. With a simple example, let me make clear what one calls karma. Imagine, you work on anything from morning to night. Then you go to bed, sleep the whole night through, and get up in the morning again. If now you say to yourself, what I have worked yesterday does not concern me, I start afresh today, and then you are brainless, are you not? Nevertheless, the only possibility is that you take up in the morning again, what you have left in the evening, saying to yourself, this is my work and where I have stopped yesterday, I must resume today. What does that mean? That only means that my destiny of today is determined by my work of yesterday. Yesterday I have created my destiny of today. With it the whole concept of karma is given. Every being makes his future destiny.

Take another example. Once animals walked into dark caves. Something peculiar occurs to these animals. They lose their sight. The food juices move to other parts of the body that they need them more than the eyesight. The result is that the faculty of seeing withdraws, the animals become blind. What do we have before ourselves if we see these animals producing blind generations repeatedly? There we must say, in the blindness of the animals we have the effect of the fact that the animals have moved into dark caves. By which have these animals created their present figure? By their preceding action. Nothing else is karma, as if one prepares his future destiny by his work in the past. Cause and effect are always connected. If the human being goes through a life on earth between birth and death, he commits a number of actions. He goes in the interim through death and new birth and enters a new life then. It is as well as if we wake up and take up again what we have left in the evening. What we have sowed in the past life on earth, we harvest this as a fruit in the new life on earth. If we he have made a bad, disgusting destiny in the past life, the effect of our own actions faces us in the new earth-life.

If we have caused anything bad to a person, he appears to us in the new life again and causes something bad to us as compensation. If a person faces me and commits anything bad to me, I can suppose that I had already been together with him in a previous earth-life and caused that which he now does. Thus, the destiny of the single human being becomes more transparent and explicable with the help of the big principle of karma, and the biggest riddle of life, which meets us at every turn, receives light and solution. Now I get an explanation why one is born in the deepest need and misery and why such a disgusting destiny affects him apparently undeservedly. It is the same as if someone has not done his work properly. He is condemned by the bad preparation of yesterday to do bad work again today. Thus, the same applies if I say that anybody who lives in need and misery now himself caused it in a previous life. I also know that nothing remains without effect. That has its effect in the coming life, which I do well or wrongly. The effect in the world is connected with the cause, the observation of the stars and the sun teaches that. The same applies also to the astral and spiritual worlds. What we do now is compensated in a later life. The biblical saying is right: “God is not to be fooled, everyone reaps what he sowed” (Galatians 6:7).—

Paul as an initiate knew why he especially pronounced such words. This is the big world principle that leads the human destiny. Now I know very well that it is also necessary to get an idea how this principle works, and about which I would still like to say some words. Who has heard some of my talks, already knows what I want to indicate herewith. If we look at the human being with spiritual sense, he does not face us as this physical body, but we know that this physical body is only one part of the big being, that behind him something is that Paul calls the spiritual body and that the spiritual scientist calls the etheric body. The etheric body is like a portrayal of the physical body, or better vice versa, the physical body is a portrayal of the etheric body. This is the second member of the human being, the etheric body. The third member is the astral body, that which the human being bears in himself as joy and sorrow, instincts, desires, passions, everything that faces us if a human being faces us that we do not see or perceive, however, with sensuous-physical means. What do we see if a human being stands in front of us? We see the skin, its colour and so on.

The anatomist can look with physical means still at bones, at muscles, nerves et cetera, but the desire and pain, instincts, and passions that are also in the same room are not sense-perceptible. One calls this the astral body and in it only the spiritual being of the human being exists which we call our ego, the bearer of our self-consciousness. While we have this, we become on our part again the bearers of atman, buddhi, manas, of that which I have described as spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man.

The animal already has the astral body. It has desire, joy, and pain. What exists, however, in the highest configuration with the leaders of humanity and exists as disposition with all human beings is the everlasting essence of the human being who advances from incarnation to incarnation. If now the human being dies, what remains there and what passes? The physical body, what one sees with eyes and can feel with hands is handed over to the earth. The etheric body is merged in the general life ether, namely not long after we have gone through death. The third member is the astral body on which the human being has already worked. Take such a soul that lives in the civilised human being, there you have the inner essence and the sum of his desires and passions. With the savage, on the first stage of incarnation, atman, buddhi, manas have worked a little on the instincts. Hence, they are still animal. What does the spiritual essence do? It works perpetually, while it improves the animal passions. The civilised human being differs from the savage because his astral body is no longer animal. Then the human being dies and goes to the astral and spiritual worlds.

One sees there what was still in him as desire from the first-time incarnation. If the human being enters incarnation for the first time, the animal passions are not purified. He eats his fellow men et cetera. Then the results appear. He starts roughly understanding something. We suppose the radical case that he says to himself if I can eat the other, he also can eat me. He understands that he can be also eaten up. The consequence becomes clear to him at the last minute, and there the first moral consciousness dawns on him. Then he purifies his desire by the judgement that he has formed, and this judgment comes from his spiritual essence. His judgment appears with the second incarnation as disposition. He has become somewhat nobler. He is now purifying his passions and desires more and more. He enhances them from incarnation to incarnation. That really happens if the human being dies. The physical body is delivered to the earth; the etheric body is merged in the life ether. What happens now with the human being, what takes place now?

Not only the ability to look clairvoyantly at the world but already the intellect could teach somebody who thinks deeper what must happen. The human being is disembodied, he has no physical body. What has he done, however, throughout his whole life? He has the conveniences of food by the sense of taste throughout the whole life.

This convenience of food, the taste of the dishes, the palatal pleasure is mental. The palate itself is physical. If the human being did not have the physical, he could not get the mental pleasure. If he had no physical ear, he could not hear, had he no physical eye, he could not see. We perceive everything that we perceive with the physical senses at first. The modern human being can perceive nothing without his physical senses. He is used to them. He is used to satisfying such wishes that can be satisfied by the sense organs. The habit to have wishes, to have pleasures, remains, the means by which he can satisfy them disappear; tongue, eyes and ears disappear. He does no longer have them. Now he misses them after death. He is still thirsting for the pleasure, which can only be satisfied by the sense organ. The result is that the human being comes to a state of consciousness after death, which consists in breaking the habit of being satisfied only by the sense organs. The soul must stop asking for sensuous satisfaction, has to purify itself beyond that which satisfied it on earth and can be satisfied only by sensuous, physical means. That is kamaloka in the theosophical worldview. We know it as the purgatory. One can compare that not improperly, which the human being experiences there, to a feeling of burning thirst, to a kind of burning privation. This is the state after death. The suitable means is not there sensuous-physical after death; the organ is not there by which the thirsting soul can be satisfied. If a soul has finished this connection with the physical in the course of years in the kamaloka, it lives in the spiritual world, to which it belongs as soul. It takes that along into the spiritual world. The spiritual-scientific worldview calls this spiritual world devachan or spirit land. What does the soul take along?

The purified desires and passions are now spiritualised. If the human being was incarnated on earth, he takes what he has gained to the devachan and processes it there for a new earth-life. A strength of life has to emerge from his experience. It is not enough that the human being experiences anything. Consider the difference between the experience and strength of life exactly. If an undeveloped soul finds out by consequence that it is impossible to eat his fellow man without putting himself in danger and damaging himself, if this faces the soul as experience, then it is this experience that must be transformed into strength, so that an inner voice exists: you are not allowed to eat a human being.

This becomes will, the voice of conscience, which becomes more and more perfect, the more embodiments we have experienced. Experience changes into will, in the voice of conscience in the course of our incarnations. You know now what the human being does in the devachan. In the kamaloka, he purifies himself, in the devachan; he transforms the experiences, which he had, to strength for the next earth-life to appear as a powerful, inner, individual nature. Hence, you can perceive it if an undeveloped soul appears in the savage; you can perceive this in his gestures and traits, in the movements of his hands as something typical. The more incarnations we have lived through, the more our individual comes out. What is elaborated? The experiences of his former incarnations which become his character.

You can raise another question: why does the human being not remember his former incarnations?—This question has little sense if it is put in such a way. You immediately realise this. It is in such a way, as if anybody comes and says: the human beings are called human beings, and a four-year-old child stands before us which is innumerate—, and now he says: this child is innumerate, however, it is a human being, so the human beings are innumerate.—However, this is a question of development. Every human being arrives at that level once where some advanced persons have already arrived who can remember their former earth-lives. If he cannot remember, it is because he must acquire this ability to himself first, as the child acquires the ability of reading, calculating, and writing. The human being is not allowed to let destiny pass himself in dullness if he wants to achieve the point of view by these experiences to remember his former earth-lives. How does this recollection of the former earth-lives appear?

This life is bound to the fact that the human being has developed as much as possible of his inner spiritual essence. The more free and independent from sensuousness the human being has become in this life, the more he lives in the soul, the less he is dependent on the pleasures provided by the senses, the more he approaches the state where he recognises himself in the former states. However, how should such a human being remember former earth-lives? Examine only once what normally fulfils a usual human being. Only that which the sensuous view offers! Of course, this disappears, because a recollection of former earth-lives is not possible. Not before the human being leads a life in his divine self, he remembers in the same extent what he has experienced in his former incarnations, and those who become engrossed in the spiritual life are certainly reincarnated with a recollection of the spiritual life.

Another objection is normally done against the teaching of karma. One says, well, it is the old principle of fate. Now one says, the human being has prepared everything for himself in his former earth-life. Destiny and character are thereby determined irreversibly. There is no longer freedom nor free will. There we are subject to fate.—If anybody said so, this would be as clever, as if anybody wanted to say: here I have a cashbook. On the left, I have all debits, on the right all credits. If I add both sides, a certain number results. If I subtract both figures, the profit or the loss arises as a result. If I add this on one side again, we have a balance.—Indeed, this is also with a life balance. The good actions are on one side, the bad and foolish actions on the other. There is also a life account with the life balance as there are accounts and balances in the accounting. Imagine now a businessman who said, my annual accounts are done, I am no longer allowed to register anything, I am no longer allowed to bargain, because everything that I am still allowed to do is predetermined by the previous registrations.

The same would be if the human being said, I am no longer allowed to commit new actions. The registrations and the balancing do not forbid him this. Just as little as the accountancy forbids the businessman to do new deals, just as little the karma forbids him good or bad actions. At every moment, we can register new posts; at every moment, we can increase the debit side and the credit side. Some people also say, if I help anyone who is in need and misery, I intervene in his karma. However, I am not allowed to do this.—This is not true. You can help the person to register new and good posts in his karma and to transform his life account to a favourable one. What you register as laziness, neglect, and fatalism is not connected so positively with the principle of karma. However, something else is connected with it.

If you see a chemist going to his laboratory, he will maybe go in with the idea: if I bring together sulphur, oxygen, and hydrogen in a certain way, sulfuric acid originates according to an irrevocable principle. Nothing is to be argued against this principle. However, the chemist can also omit to carry out the mixture, he can do it or not. The principle does not impair his free will at all. Nevertheless, the principle gives him the certainty that that really happens which shall happen. You cannot get carbonic acid one time and sulfuric acid the other time from the same mixture. The principle allows us to build on a certain effect. That also applies to karma. The principle of karma can keep us from no action, but there is the certainty that a right and fair balance must take place in life that every good action must have its good effect and every clever action its corresponding effect. The fact that everything happens according to a spiritual principle gives us the certainty. It shows us that nothing is accidental that we do but that everything we do is done in such a way that we can build on a right world connection.

Thus, this principle of karma is not only a scientific principle, not something that satisfies the theoretical interest only, but something that contains the solution of the riddle of life, the riddle of the world. It gives strength and certainty in life, it works in such a way that we know that everything in this life is connected according to a principle that is recognised more and more that we interpret unconsciously at first and then more and more consciously. Not only is the urge for knowledge satisfied with the spiritual-scientific worldview. Something else is given, namely strength, courage, and certainty. Not only one tells something of our determination to us, but at the same time we get the possibility to live according to our determination, to live in such a way that we advance to a more and more perfect existence. The solution of the riddle of life is not dogmatic and doctrinal, but full of life and mind-impregnated because of the facts of the principles of karma and reincarnation.

All those who looked deeper in nature, in the nature of the spiritual life found more or less this principle of karma and reincarnation. Giordano Bruno was a supporter of the principle, and when from a dullness a new intellectual culture emerged, Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729-1781, writer, philosopher, dramaturg) concluded his wisdom in the teaching of reincarnation. I know that many people do not want to criticise Lessing. However, if one likes to praise him, they will not go along. It is strange towards a great man that one only accepts from him what suits one. This also applies to Giordano Bruno and Goethe with whom one regards these ideas as senility or the like. We see that also our German theosophy is deeply penetrated by this view. Only today, only since some decades it is possible again to inform in public about this view. For the centuries of the new development, this was not possible because the human culture had another task as I have already explained.

The teachings of karma and reincarnation appeared in the dawn, and also these great spirits were only able to announce them figuratively, symbolically, they understood them full of life. Where life could become explicable to them in its deepest depths, they often pointed with big life humour to this truth, to this everlasting principle of reincarnation that determines what we now experience between birth and death. Goethe pointed to it when he wanted to explain his deep soul friendship to Mrs. von Stein saying, “Oh you were my sister or my woman in past times.” However, Goethe also expresses the principle of karma like other great spirits. He expresses the fact that we enter the world according to our disposition following the principle of cause and effect like everything in the world in the nice words:

As on the day that lent you to the world
The sun stood to greet the planets,
You instantly thrived and continued to do so
In accordance with the law by which you made your appearance.
Thus, you must be, you cannot escape yourself,
Thus, sibyls and prophets have already spoken,
And no passage of time nor any can break into bits
A moulded form that develops as it lives.

(From: Primal Words. Orphic. Daimon)

However, he said the deepest what he had to say figuratively, among other things, in the beautiful poem where he compares the human soul with the water and the human destiny with the wind. He compares with that which flows along from embodiment to embodiment in the life stream; and the destiny is the wind, which lets the soul surge up and down in perpetual waves. As every following wave is dependent in its figure on the preceding one, the soul is depending on its previous figure, and as well as the wind becomes always new, in the life account of the human being always something new is registered. “Soul of man, how you resemble water! Destiny of man, how you resemble the wind!” he says at the end of the poem where he downright shows the reincarnation in the earth-life. “The soul of man resembles water, it comes from heaven, it rises to heaven, and it must descend back to earth, in eternal alternation.” Goethe shows the soul that way. It comes from the spiritual world, descends to the earth, goes back to heaven and comes again in a new incarnation

The soul of man
resembles water:
it comes from heaven,
it rises to heaven,
and it must descend
back to earth,
in eternal alternation.

The pure jet
streams from the lofty,
steep rock wall,
then falls as charming droplets
in cloudy waves
on the smooth rock,
and, gently received,
it bubbles with a veil of mist
and a quiet murmur
down to the depths.

If cliffs loom up
to meet its plunge,
it foams indignantly,
in stages,
into the abyss.

In its flat bed
it moves quietly down the meadowy valley
and in the smooth lake
all the heavenly bodies
cool their faces.

Wind is the wave's
amorous lover
wind stirs foaming waves
up from the very bottom

Soul of man,
how you resemble water!
Destiny of man,
how you resemble the wind!

This congress has been announced as a Congress on the philosophy of life, and no doubt you will take it as such. Anyone who wishes to talk about philosophical questions today, however, cannot ignore natural science, and in particular the philosophical consequences that natural science has brought with it. Indeed, for centuries—since the fifteenth or sixteenth century, we may say—science has increasingly come to dominate human thinking in the civilized world.

Now it would take a great many words to survey the triumphs of science in the field of human knowledge, and the transformation of our whole life brought about by the achievements of scientific research. And it would be merely a repetition of what you all know already. Philosophically speaking, what is interesting about science is something quite different. I mean the function it long ago assumed of educating the civilized world. And it is precisely in discussing this educational rôle in the development of modern man that we come up against two paradoxes, as I should like to call them. Let me begin with these paradoxes.

The first thing that has followed from the scientific method of research is a transformation of human thinking. Any impartial observer of earlier philosophical trends must conclude that, because of the conditions which then determined man's development, thinking inevitably added something subjective to what was given by experiment and the observation of nature. We need only recall those now outmoded branches of knowledge, astrology and alchemy, to perceive how nature was approached in former times—how human thinking as a matter of course added to what was there something that it wished to express, or at any rate did not suppress.

In face of the scientific attitude of recent times, this has ceased. Today, we are virtually obliged simply to accept the data given us by observation and experiment, and to work them up into natural laws, as they are called. Admittedly, to do so we make use of thought; but we make use of it only as a means of arranging phenomena so that through their own existence they manifest to us their inner connection, their conformity to law. And we make it our duty not to add any of our own thought to our observation of the world. We see this, indeed, as an ideal of the scientific attitude—and rightly so.

Under these conditions, what has become of human thinking? It has actually become the servant, the mere tool of research. Thought as such has really nothing to contribute when it comes to investigating the conformity to law of external phenomena.

Here, then, is one of my paradoxes: that thought as a human experience is excluded from the relationship that man enters into with the world. It has become a purely formal aid for comprehending realities. Within science, it is no longer something self-manifesting.

The significance of this for man's inner life is extraordinarily great. It means that we must look upon thinking as something which must retire in wisdom and modesty when we are contemplating the outside world, and which represents a kind of private current within the life of the soul.

And it is precisely when we now ask ourselves: How, in turn, can science approach thinking? that we come up against the paradox, and find ourselves saying: If thinking has to confine itself to the working-up of natural processes and can intervene only formally, in clarification, combination and organization, it cannot also fall within the natural processes themselves. It thus becomes paradoxical to raise the question (which is certainly justified from the scientific point of view): How can we, from the standpoint of scientific law, understand thinking as a manifestation of the human organism? And to this, if we stand impartially and seriously within the life of science, we can only reply today: To the extent that thinking has had to withdraw from the natural processes, contemplation of them can go on trying to encompass thinking, but it cannot succeed. Since it is methodologically excluded, thinking is also really excluded from the natural processes. It is condemned to be a mere semblance, not a reality.

Not many people today, I believe, are fully conscious of the force of this paradox; yet in the depths of their subconscious there exists in countless numbers of people today an awareness of it. Only as thinking beings can we regard ourselves as human; it is in thinking that we find our human dignity—and yet this, which really makes us into human beings, accompanies us through the world as something whose reality we cannot at present acknowledge, as a semblance. In pointing to what is noblest in our human nature, we feel ourselves to be in an area of non-reality.

This is something that burdens the soul of anyone who has become seriously involved with the research methods both of the inorganic sciences and of biology, and who wishes to draw the consequences of these methods, rather than of any individual results, for a philosophy of life.

Here, we may say, is something that can lead to bitter doubts in the human soul. Doubts arise first in the intellect, it is true; but they flow down into the feelings. Anyone who is able to look at human nature more deeply and without prejudice—in the way I shall be demonstrating in detail in the lectures that follow—knows how the state of the spirit, if it endures long enough, exerts an influence right down to the physical state of the person, and how from this physical state, or disposition, the mood of life wells up in turn. Whether the doubt is driven down into our feelings or not determines whether we stride courageously through life, so that we can stand upright ourselves and have a healthy influence among our fellow-men, or whether we wander through life disgruntled and downcast—useless to ourselves and useless to our fellow-men. I do not say—and the lectures which follow will show that I do not need to say—that what I have just been discussing must always lead to doubt; but it can easily do so, unless science is extended in the directions I shall be describing.

The splendid achievements of science vis-ä-vis the outside world make extraordinary demands on man's soul if, as from the philosophical standpoint here expounded he certainly must do, he adopts a positive attitude to science. They demand that he should be capable of meeting doubt with something stronger and more powerful than would otherwise be needed.

Whilst in this respect science would appear to lead to something negative for the life of the soul, yet—and this brings me to my second paradox—on the other hand it has resulted in something extremely positive. Here, I express once more a paradox that struck me particularly when, more than twenty years ago now, I worked out my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and attempted, whilst maintaining a truly scientific outlook on life, to fathom the nature of human freedom.¹

For, with its conformity to law, science does easily lead, in theory, to a denial of human freedom. In this respect, however, science develops theories that are just the opposite of its practical effect. When we go further and further into the semblance nature of thinking and, by actually pursuing the scientific attitude—not scientific theories—arrive at a right inward experience of that nature, then we conclude: if it is only a semblance and not a reality, then the process of thought does not, like a natural force, have a compelling effect. I may thus compare it—and this is more than a mere comparison—to a combination of mirror-images. Images before me cannot compel me. Existent forces can compel me, whether they are thought of as existing outside me or inside me; images cannot compel me. If, therefore, I am able to conceive my moral impulses within that pure thinking which science itself fosters in us by its methods; if I can so shape moral impulses within me that my attitude to their shaping is that to which science educates me, then in these moral impulses conceived by pure thinking I have, not compelling forces, but forces and semblances that I myself am free to accept or not. That is to say: however much science, from its very premises, is bound, and with some justification, to deny freedom, yet in educating him to semblance thinking it educates the man of our culture to freedom.

These are the two poles, the one relating to the life of thought and the other to the life of the will, with which the human soul is confronted by present-day scientific opinions. In distinguishing them, however, we indicate at the same time how the scientific view of life points beyond itself. It must take up some attitude towards human thinlting; yet it excludes that thinking. By so doing, it suggests a method of research that can be fully justified in the eyes of science and yet lead to a comprehensible experience of thinking. It suggests, on the other hand, that because it cannot itself arrive theoretically at freedom, the scientific attitude must be extended into a different region, precisely in order to attain the sphere of freedom.

What I am presenting as a necessity deriving from science itself—an extension into a region that science, at least as understood today, cannot reach—is attempted by the philosophy of life I am here advocating. Today, of course, since it stands at the beginning of its development, it can achieve this extension only imperfectly. Yet the attempt must be made, because more and more people in the civilized world today are being affected by the problems of thinking and freedom that I have described. It is no longer possible for us today to believe that only those in some way involved with science are faced with demands and questions and riddles of this kind. Even the remotest villages, to which no scientific results of any consequence penetrate, are nevertheless brought by their education to the kind of thinking that science demands; and this brings with it, though quite unconsciously as yet, uncertainty about human freedom. It is therefore not only scientific questions that are involved here, but quite clearly general human ones.

What it comes to is this: taking our stand on the ground of scientific education, can we penetrate further along the path of knowledge than does present-day science?

The attempt to do so can be made, and made in such a way that the methods used can be justified to the strictest scientist, and made by paths that have been laid down in complete accordance with the scientific attitude and with scientific conscientiousness. I should like now, at the start of my lectures, to go on to speak of these paths.

Yet, although many souls already unconsciously long for it, the present-day path of knowledge is still not easy to explain conceptually. In order that we may be able to understand one another this evening, therefore, I should like to introduce, simply as aids to understanding, descriptions of older paths that mankind has followed in order to arrive at knowledge lying beyond the ordinary region science deals with today.

Much of what, it is believed today, should just remain an article of faith and is accepted as ancient and honourable tradition, leads the psychologically perceptive observer of history back into age-old epochs of humanity. There, it turns out that these matters of faith were sought after, as matters of knowledge suited to their time, by certain individuals through the cultivation of their own souls and the development of hidden spiritual powers, and that they thus genuinely constituted matters of knowledge. People today no longer realize how much of what has emerged historically in man's development was once actually discovered—but discovered by earlier paths of knowledge.

When I describe these paths, I do so, of course, with the aid of methods I shall outline later; so that in many cases those who form their picture of the earlier epochs of mankind only from outward historical documents, and not from spiritual documents, may take exception to my description. Anyone who examines impartially even the outward historical documents, and who then compares them with what I shall have to say, will nevertheless find no real contradiction. And secondly, I want to emphasize that I am not describing these older paths of knowledge in order to advocate them today. They suited earlier epochs, and nowadays can even be harmful to man if, under a misapprehension, he applies them to himself. It is simply so that we shall understand each other about present-day ways of knowledge that I shall choose two earlier ways, describe them, and thus make clear the paths man has to walk today, if he wishes to go beyond the sphere of scientific knowledge as it is now understood.

As I have said, I could select others from the wealth of earlier ways of knowledge; but I am selecting only two. First, then, we have a way which in its pure form was followed by individuals in ancient times in the East—the way of yoga.

Yoga has passed through many phases, and the aspect to which I shall attach the greatest value today is precisely one that has come down to later epochs in a thoroughly decadent and harmful state. What I shall be describing, the historian will thus be forced, when considering later epochs, to present as something actually harmful to mankind. But in successive epochs human nature has experienced the most varied developments. Something quite different suited human nature in ancient epochs and in later ones. What could, in earlier times, be a genuine means of cognition was later perhaps used only to titillate man's itch for power over his fellow-men. This was certainly not true of the earliest periods, the ones whose practice of yoga I am describing.

What did it comprise, the way of yoga, which was followed in very ancient times in the Orient by individuals who were scholars, to use the modern term, in the higher sphere? It comprised among other things a particular kind of breathing exercise. (I am singling out this one from the wealth of exercises that the yoga pupil or the yoga scholar, the yogi, had to undertake.) When nowadays we examine our breathing, we find that it is a process which for the most part operates unconsciously in the healthy human organism. There must be something abnormal about the man who is aware of his breathing. The more naturally the process of breathing functions, the better it is for ordinary consciousness and for ordinary life. For the duration of his exercises, however, when he wished to develop cognitive powers that are merely dormant in ordinary consciousness, the yogi transformed the process of respiration. He did so by employing a length of time for inhaling, for holding the breath and for exhaling, different from that used in ordinary, natural breathing. He did this so as to make conscious the process of respiration. Ordinary respiration does not become conscious. The transformed respiratory rhythm, with its timing determined by human volition, is entirely conscious. But what is the result? Well, we have only to express ourselves in physiological terms to realize what the yogi achieved by making conscious his respiration. When we breathe in, the respiratory impulse enters our organism; but it also goes via the spinal cord into the brain. There, the rhythm of the respiratory current combines with those processes that are the physical carriers of mental activity, the nerve and sense processes. Actually, in our ordinary life, we never have nerve and sense processes alone; they are always permeated by our respiratory rhythm. A connection, interaction, harmonization of the nerve and sense processes and of respiration always occurs when we allow our minds to function. By transmitting his altered respiratory rhythm into the nerve and sense process in a fully conscious way, the yogi also made a conscious connection between the respiratory rhythm and the thought rhythm, logical rhythm or rather logical combination and analysis of thoughts. In this way he altered his whole mental activity. In what direction did he alter it? Precisely because his breathing became fully conscious, his thoughts permeated his organism in the same way as did the respiratory current itself. We could say that the yogi set his thoughts moving on the respiratory currents and, in the inner rhythm of his being, experienced the union of thought and breath. In this way, the yoga scholar raised himself above the mass of his fellow-men and was able to proclaim to them knowledge they could not gain for themselves.

In order to understand what was really happening here, we must look for a moment at the particular way in which knowledge earlier affected the ordinary, popular consciousness of the masses.

Nowadays, when we look out at the world, we attach the greatest value to seeing pure colours; to hearing pure sounds, when we hear sounds; and similarly to obtaining a certain purity in the other perceptions—such purity, that is, as the sensory process can afford. This was not true for the consciousness of men in older civilizations. Not that, as a certain brand of scholarship often mistakenly believes, people in earlier times projected all sorts of imaginings on to nature: the imagination was not all that unusually active. Because of man's constitution at that time, however, it was quite natural for older civilizations not to see only pure colours, pure sounds, pure qualities in the other senses, but at the same time to perceive in them all something spiritual. Thus, in sun and moon, in stars, in wind and weather, in spring and stream, in the creatures of nature's various realms, they saw something spiritual where we today see pure colours and hear pure sounds, the connection between which we only later seek to understand with the aid of purified thinking. And there was a further consequence of this for earlier humanity: that no such strong and inwardly fortified self-consciousness as we have today existed then. Besides perceiving something spiritual in everything about him, man perceived himself as a part of this whole environment; he did not separate himself from it as an independent self. To draw an analogy, I might say: If my hand were conscious, what would it think about itself? It would conclude that it was not an independent entity, but made sense only within my organism. In some such way as this, earlier man was unable to regard himself as an independent entity, but felt himself rather a part of nature's whole, which in turn he had to see as permeated by the spiritual.

The yogi raised himself above this view, which implied the dependence of the human self. By uniting his thought-process with the process of respiration that fills all man's inner substance, he arrived at a comprehension of the human self, the human I. The awareness of personal individuality, implanted in us today by our inherited qualities and, if we are adults, by our education, had in those earlier times to be attained, indirectly, through exercises. The consequence was that the yogi obtained from the experience of self something quite different from what we do. It is one thing to accept something as a natural experience, as the sense of self is for us, and quite another to attain to it by the paths that were followed in early Eastern civilization. They lived with what moves and swells and acts in the universe; whereas today, when we experience all this from a certain elevation, we no longer know anything of the universe directly. The human self, therefore, the true nature of the human soul manifested itself to the yogi through his exercise. And we may say: since what could be discovered in this way passed over as revelation into the general cultural consciousness, it became the subject-matter of extremely important early products of the mind.

Once again, let me mention one of many. Here we have an illumination from the ancient Orient, the magnificent song Bhagavad-Gita. In the Gita we have the experience of self-awareness; it describes wonderfully, out of the deepest human lyricism, how, when by experiencing he recognizes it and by recognizing he experiences it, this self leads man to a sympathy with all things, and how it manifests to him his own humanity and his relationship with a higher world, with a spiritual and super-sensible world. In ever new and marvellous notes, the Gita depicts this awareness of the self in its devotion to the universal. To the impartial observer of history, who can immerse himself in these earlier times, it is clear that the splendid notes of the Gita have arisen from what could be experienced through these exercises in cognition.

This way of attaining knowledge was the appropriate one for an earlier epoch of civilization in the Orient. At that time, it was generally accepted that one had to retire into solitude and a hermit's life if one sought connection with super-sensible worlds. And anyone who carried out such exercises did condemn himself to solitude and the life of the hermit; for they bring a man into a certain state of sensibility and make him over-sensitive towards the robust external world. He must retire from life. In earlier times it was just such solitary figures who were trusted by their fellow-men. What they had to say was accepted as knowledge. Nowadays, this no longer suits our civilization. People today rightly demand that anyone they are to trust as a source of knowledge should stand in the midst of life, that he should be able to hold his own with the robustness of life, with human labour and human activity as the demands of the time shape them. The men of today just do not feel themselves linked, as the men of earlier epochs did, to anyone who has to withdraw from life.

If you reflect carefully on this, you will conclude: present-day ways of knowledge must be different. We shall be speaking of these in a little while. But before doing so, and again simply by way of explanation and not with any idea of recommending it, I want to describe the principles underlying a way that was also appropriate to earlier times—the way of asceticism.

The way of asceticism involved subduing and damping down bodily processes and needs, so that the human body no longer functioned in its normal robust fashion. Bodily functions were also subdued by putting the external physical organism into painful situations. All this gave to those who followed this ascetic path certain human experiences which did indeed bring knowledge. I do not, of course, mean that it is right to inhibit the healthy human organism in which we are born into this life on earth, where our aim is to enable this organism to be effective in ordinary life. The healthy organism is unquestionably the appropriate one for external sensuous nature, which is after all the basis of human life between birth and death. Yet it remains true that the early ascetics, who had damped down this organism, did in fact gain pure experience of their spirituality, and knew their souls to inhabit a spiritual world. What makes our physical and sensuous organism suited for the life between birth and death is precisely the fact that, as the ascetics' experiences were able to show, it hides from us the spiritual world. It was, quite simply, the experience of the early ascetics that by damping down the bodily functions one could consciously enter the spiritual worlds. That again is no way for the present. Anyone who inhibits his body in this way makes himself unfit for life among his fellow-men, and makes himself unfit vis-à-vis himself as well. Life today demands men who do not withdraw, who maintain their health and indeed restore it if it is impaired, but not men who withdraw from life. Such men could inspire no confidence, in view of the attitude of our age. Although the path of asceticism certainly did lead to knowledge in earlier times, it cannot be a path for today.

Yet what both the way of yoga and the ascetic way yielded in knowledge of the sensible world is preserved in ancient and, I would say, sacred traditions, and is accepted by mankind today as satisfying certain needs of the soul. Only people are not interested to know that the articles of faith thus accepted were in fact discovered by a genuine way of knowledge, if one no longer suited to our age.

Today's way of knowledge must be entirely different. We have seen how the one way, yoga, tried to arrive at thinking indirectly, through breathing, in order to experience this thinking in a way in which it is not perceived in ordinary life. For the reason already given, we cannot make this detour via breathing. We must therefore try to achieve a transformation of thinking by other means, so that through this transformed thinking we can reach knowledge that will be a kind of extension of natural knowledge. If we understand ourselves correctly, therefore, we shall start today, not by manipulating thinking indirectly via breathing, but by manipulating it directly and by doing certain exercises through which we make thinking more forceful and energetic than it is in ordinary consciousness.

In ordinary consciousness, we indulge in rather passive thinking, which adheres to the course of external events. To follow a new super-sensible way of knowledge, we place certain readily comprehended concepts at the centre of our consciousness. We remain within the thought itself. I am aware that many people believe that what I am now going to describe is present already in the later way of yoga, for example in that of Patanjali. But as practised today, it certainly does not form a part of Eastern spirit-training—for, even if a man carried out the yoga exercises nowadays, they would have a different effect, because of the change in the human organism, from the effect they had on the people of earlier epochs.

Today, then, we go straight to thinking, by cultivating meditation, by concentrating on certain subjects of thought for longish periods. We perform, in the realm of the soul, something comparable to building up a muscle. If we use a muscle over and over again in continuous exertion, whatever the goal and purpose, the muscle must develop. We can do the same with thinking. Instead of always submitting, in our thinking, to the course of external events, we bring into the centre of our consciousness, with a great effort of will, clear-cut concepts which we have formed ourselves or have been given by someone expert in the field, and in which no associations can persist of which we are not conscious; we shut out all other consciousness, and concentrate only on this one subject. In the words Goethe uses in Faust, I might say: Yes, it is easy—that is, it appears so—yet the easy is difficult. One person takes weeks, another months, to achieve it. When consciousness does learn to rest and rest continually upon the same content, in such a way that the content itself becomes a matter of complete indifference, and we devote all our attention and all our inward experience to the building up and spiritual energization of mental activity, then at last we achieve the opposite process to what the yogi went through. That is, we tear our thinking away from the process of respiration.

Today, this still seems to people something absurd, something fantastic. Yet just as the yogi pushed his thinking into his body, to link it with the rhythm of his breath and in this way experience his own self, his inner spirituality, so too we release thinking from the remnant of respiration that survives unconsciously in all our ordinary thinking. You will find the systematic exercises described in greater detail in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, or in another one, Outline of Occult Science, or again in Riddles of the Soul and other books of mine. By these means, one gradually succeeds not only in separating the thought sequence from the respiration process, but also in making it quite free of corporeality. Only then does one see what a great service the so-called materialistic, or rather mechanistic, outlook on life has rendered to mankind. It has made us aware that ordinary thinking is founded on bodily processes. From this can stem the incentive to seek a kind of thinking no longer founded on bodily processes. But this can only be found by building up ordinary thinking in the way described. By doing so, we arrive at a thinking set free from the body, a thinking that consists of purely psychic processes. In this way, we come to know what once had a semblance nature in us—as images only to begin with, but images that show us life independent of our corporeality.

This is the first step towards a way of knowledge suited to modern man. It brings us, however, to an experience that is hidden from ordinary consciousness. Just as the Indian yogi linked himself in his thinking with the internal rhythm of respiration, and so also with his spiritual self which lives in the respiratory rhythm, just as he moved inwards, so we go outwards. By tearing our logical thinking away from the organism to which it is actually connected, we penetrate with it into the external rhythm of the world, and discover for the first time that such a rhythm exists. Just as the yogi made conscious the inner rhythm of his body, so we become conscious of an external world rhythm. If I may express myself metaphorically: in ordinary consciousness, what we do is to combine our thoughts logically and thus make use of thinking to know the external sensuous world. Now, however, we allow thinking to enter a kind of musical region, but one that is undoubtedly a region of knowledge; we perceive a spiritual rhythm underlying all things; we penetrate into the world by beginning to perceive it in the spirit. From abstract, dead thinking, from mere semblance thinking, our thinking becomes a vitalized thinking. This is the significant transition that can be made from abstract and merely logical thinking to a vital thinking which we clearly feel is capable of shaping a reality, just as we recognize our process of growth as a living reality.

With this vital thinking, however, we can now penetrate deeper into nature than with ordinary thinking. In what way? Let me illustrate this from present-day life, although the example is a much-disputed one. Nowadays, we may direct our abstract mental activity, by observation and experiment, on to a higher animal, for instance. With this thinking, we create for ourselves an internal image of how the organs of the animal are arranged: the skeleton, musculature, etc., and how the vital processes flow into one another. We make a mental image of the animal. Then, with the same thinking, we pass to man, and once again make a mental image of him—the configuration of his skeleton, his musculature, the interaction of his vital processes, etc., etc. We can then make an external comparison between the two images obtained. If we tend towards a Darwinian approach, we shall regard man as being descended from animals through an actual physical process; if we are more spiritually and idealistically inclined, we imagine the relationship differently. We will not go into that now. The important point is that there is something we cannot do: because our thinking is dead and abstract, we are not in a position—once we have formed a mental image of the animal—out of the inner life of thinking itself to pass over from that into the image of man. Instead, we have first to extract our ideas, or mental images, from the sensory realities, and then to compare these ideas with one another. When, on the other hand, we have advanced to vital thinking, we do indeed form a mental image still, but now it is a living mental image, of the skeleton, the musculature, and the interaction of vital processes in the animal. Because our thought has now become a vital one, we can pursue it inwardly as a living structure and pass over in the thought itself to the image of man. I might say: the thought of the animal grows into the thought of the man. How this works I can only suggest by means of an example.

Faced with the needle of a magnet, we know that there is only one position in which it remains at rest, and that is when its axis coincides with the North-South direction of the earth's magnetism. This direction is exceptional; to all other directions the needle is indifferent. Everything in this example becomes for vital thinking an experience about total space. For vital thinking, space is no longer an aimless juxtaposition, as it is for dead and abstract thinking. Space is internally differentiated, and we learn the significance of the fact that in animals the spine is essentially horizontal. Where this is not the case, we can demonstrate from a more profound conformity to law that the abnormality is particularly significant; but essentially an animal's spine lies in the horizontal plane—we may say, parallel to the surface of the earth. Now it is not immaterial whether the spinal cord runs in this direction or in the vertical direction to which man raises himself in the course of his life. In vital thinking, accordingly, we come to know that, if we wanted to set upright the line of the animal, that is to orientate it differently in the universe, we should have to transform all its other organs. Thought becomes vital simply through the rotation of ninety degrees from the vertical to the horizontal orientation. We pass over in this way, by an inward impulse, from the animal to the human shape.

Thereby, we enter into the rhythm of natural process and so reach the spiritual foundation of nature. We attain, in our vital thought, something with which we can penetrate into the growth and progress of the external world. We reach once more the secrets of existence, from which we departed in the course of human development with the unfolding of ego-consciousness, the feeling of self.

Now you can all raise a weighty objection here. You can say, for example: there have indeed been individuals with this kind of thinking, ostensibly vital; but the present time, with its insistence on serious research, has rightly turned away from “vital thinking” as it was expounded, for instance, by the philosopher Schelling or the natural philosopher Oken. I myself agree entirely with those who raise this kind of objection; there is something quite fantastic, something that leaves reality behind and breathes no actuality, about the way in which mental images gained from external processes and substances are inwardly vitalized by Oken and Schelling and then applied to other natural facts and creatures, in order to see “in the manner of nature.” So long as our vital thinking does not pass on to a mode of knowledge other than this we cannot, even with its aid, reach any assurance of reality. Only by adding exercises of will to the exercises of thought do we secure in vital thoughts a guarantee of spiritual reality.

Exercises of the will can be characterized as follows.

Let us be quite honest with ourselves. In ordinary life, if we think back ten or twenty years, we have to conclude: in the actual content of the life of our soul, we have in many ways become different people; but we have done so by submitting more or less passively, as children to heredity, environment and education, and in later life to life itself. Anyone who wishes to attain knowledge of spiritual reality must take in hand, if I may use this somewhat coarse expression, by an inner education and discipline of the will, what is usually experienced rather passively. Here again you will find the relevant exercises, which are intimate exercises of the soul, described in the books I have named. Today, I can only indicate briefly what is involved.

At present, we have certain habits that perhaps we did not have ten years ago, since life has only recently imposed them on us. Similarly, we can decide to adopt these or those qualities of character. The best thing is to assume qualities of character for whose shaping you have to work on yourself for years on end, so that you must direct attention over and over again to that strengthening and fortifying of the will which is connected with such self-discipline. If you take in hand the development of your will like this, so that you in part make of yourself what the world would otherwise make of you as a person, then the vital thoughts into which you have found your way by meditation and concentration take on a quite special aspect for your experience. That is, increasingly they become painful experiences, inward experiences through suffering, of the things of the spirit. And in the last analysis nobody can attain to higher knowledge who has not passed through these experiences of suffering and pain. We must pass through and conquer these experiences, so that we incorporate and go beyond them, gaining an attitude of indifference to them once more.

What is going on here can be represented as follows: take the human eye (what I am saying here could be expounded scientifically in every detail, but I have time only for a general outline): as light and colours affect it, changes occur in its physical interior. Earlier mankind undoubtedly perceived these as suffering and mild pain; and if we were not so robust and did not remain indifferent to them because of our make-up, we could not help also experiencing the changes in eye and ear as mild pain. All sensory perception is ultimately grounded on pain and suffering.

In thus permeating the entire life of our soul painfully and in suffering with vital thought, we do not permeate the body with pain and suffering as does the ascetic; we keep it healthy to suit the demands of ordinary life; but we inwardly and intimately experience pain and sorrow in the soul. Anyone who has gone some way towards higher knowledge will always tell you: The pleasure and joy that life has brought me I gratefully accept from fate; but I owe my knowledge to my pain and suffering.

In this way, life itself prepares the seeker after knowledge for the fact that part of the path he travels involves the conquest of suffering and pain. For if we overcome this suffering and pain, we make our entire psychic being into a “sense-organ,” or rather a spirit-organ, just as through our ordinary senses we look into and listen to the physical world. I do not need to discuss epistemological considerations today. I am naturally familiar with the objection that the external mode of knowledge must first also be investigated; but that does not concern us today. What I want to say is simply this: that, in the same sense in which in ordinary life we find the external physical world authenticated by our sensory perceptions, we find, after the soul's suffering has been conquered, the spiritual world authenticated by the soul-organ or spirit-organ which as a complete spiritual being we have become.

Let us call this way of looking “modern exact clairvoyance,” by contrast with all earlier nebulous clairvoyant arts, which belong to the past. With it, we can also penetrate into the eternal substance of man. We can penetrate with exactitude into the meaning of human immortality. But consideration of this must be reserved for tomorrow's lecture, where I shall be speaking about the special relationship of this philosophy of life to the problems of man's psyche. Today, I wished to show how, in contrast to earlier ways of knowledge, man can attain a modern super-sensible way of knowledge. The yogi sought to move into the human substance and reach the self; we seek to move out to the rhythm of the world. The ancient ascetic depressed the body in order to ex-press spiritual experience and allow it to exist independently. The modern way of knowledge does not incline to asceticism; it avoids all arts of castigation and addresses itself intimately to the very life of the soul. Both the modern ways, therefore, place man entirely inside life. Whereas the ways of asceticism and yoga drew men away from life.

I have tried today to describe to you a way that can be followed by developing powers of knowledge, now sleeping in the soul, in a more spiritual sense than they were formerly developed.

By doing this, however (I should like to suggest in conclusion), we also reach deeper into the essence of nature. The philosophy of life of which I speak stands in no sort of opposition to the science of today. On the contrary, it takes precisely the genuine mood of enquiry which is there in scientific research and, through its exercises, develops this as a separate human faculty. Science today seeks exactness and feels particularly satisfied if it can achieve it by the application of mathematics to natural processes. Why is this? It is because the perceptions with which external nature provides us, through the senses, for observation and experiment are wholly outside us. We permeate them with something we develop solely in our innermost human entity—with mathematical knowledge. And Kant's saying is often quoted and even more often practised by scientific thinkers: In all true knowledge there is only so much science as there is mathematics. This is exaggerated if we are thinking of ordinary mathematics. And yet, when we apply these to lifeless natural phenomena, and nowadays even regard it as an ideal, for instance, to be able to count the chromosomes in the blastoderm, we reveal how satisfied we are if we can permeate with mathematics what otherwise stands outside us. Why? Because mathematics is experienced inside us with immediate certainty: we often have to represent this experience to ourselves by means of diagrams, but the diagrams are not essential to the certainty, the truth. Things mathematical are seen and discovered within us, and what we find within us we connect with what we see outside. In this way we feel satisfied.

Anyone who perceives this process of cognition in its entirety must conclude: things can satisfy man as knowledge and lead to a science only if they rest on something he can really experience and observe through his inner powers. With the aid of mathematics, we can penetrate into the facts and structures of the inanimate world; but we cannot move more than a little way at most, and that somewhat primitively, into the organic world. We need a way of looking as exact as that of mathematics with which to penetrate into the higher processes of the outside world. Even one of the outstanding representatives of the school of Haeckel has expressly admitted that we must advance to an entirely different type of research and observation if we wish to move up from the inorganic into the organic realm of nature. For the inorganic, we have mathematics, geometry; for the organic, the living, we have nothing as yet that corresponds to a triangle, a circle, or an ellipse. By vital thinking we shall achieve them: not with the ordinary mathematics of numbers and figures, but with a higher mathesis, a qualitative approach working creatively, one which—and here I must say something which many people will find abominable—which touches the realm of the aesthetic.

By penetrating with mathematics of this kind into worlds that we cannot otherwise penetrate, we extend the scientific attitude upwards into the biological sphere. And we may be sure that eventually the epoch will come when people will say: earlier times rightly emphasized that the amount of science extracted from inorganic nature is proportional to the amount of quantitative mathematics, in the broadest sense, that can be applied to it; the amount of science extracted from the vital processes is proportional to the extent to which we can probe them with a living thought structure and an exact clairvoyance.

People will not believe how close this modern kind of clairvoyance is, in reality, to the mathematical outlook. Eventually, when it is realized how, from the spirit of modern knowledge of nature, knowledge of spirit can be gained, this spiritual science will be found to be justified precisely from the standpoint of our modern knowledge of nature. It has no wish to run counter to the important and imposing results of natural science. It seeks to attempt something different: we can look with our external senses at the physical form of someone standing before us—his gestures, his play of feature, the individual expression of his eyes—and yet perceive merely externals, unless we look through all this to something spiritual in him, by which alone the whole man stands before us. In the same way, unless we travel the ways of the spirit, we look with science only at the external physiognomy of the world, its gestures and its mask. Only when we penetrate beyond the outward physiognomy that natural phenomena present to us, beyond the mask and gestures, into the spiritual region of the world, do we recognize something to which we are ourselves related, something of the eternal in the world.

That is the aim of the spiritual science whose methods I have sought to describe to you today by way of introduction. It does not wish to oppose triumphant modern science, but to accept it fully in its importance and substance, just as we accept fully the external man. But just as we look through the external man at the soul, so it seeks to penetrate through natural laws, not in a lay and dilettante fashion, but with a serious approach, to the spiritual element underlying the world. And so this spiritual science seeks not to create any kind of opposition to natural science, but to be its soul and spirit.

• 1. The German title of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is Die Philosophie der Freiheit.

My dear Friends,

Yesterday we touched upon one part or aspect of the Mysterium Magnum, and some of you will perhaps have felt a certain difficulty in approaching it from the standpoint that we were obliged to take in order to make the matter clear in detail. But the world is complicated,—let us admit that, once for all! And if we really have the desire to rise to the knowledge of higher truths, there is nothing for it but we must be ready to put up with some difficulties on the way.

Let us once more gather up for our consideration what we have to understand by the Mysterium Magnum. We saw on the one hand how it reveals man in his three members—or rather, reveals him as composed of three men each having seven members—so that we can distinguish an upper man, a middle man and a lower man. As we go through the world and have our experiences, these three men seem to be closely and intimately united; everyday consciousness does not distinguish one from another. That was one aspect of the Mystery. The other consists in this,—that the moment man lifts himself out of his ordinary Earth consciousness and attains a consciousness of a higher kind, he is at once faced with the event that I have described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, where I said how man must then expect his consciousness to be torn into three, his whole being to be rent asunder, so that he is divided into a thinking man, a feeling man and a willing man. Split up, as it were, into these three soul beings,—that is how man feels when he sets out on the path to a higher consciousness. We have thus on the one hand the three times seven-membered man, and on the other hand, as soon as we take a step beyond ordinary consciousness, we have at once a division of this consciousness into three, which means that every aspirant after occultism who becomes clairvoyant must, as you will know from the book; already quoted, strive with all his might to hold together the three members of his consciousness, that he may not fall to pieces in his inner life of soul. It were indeed a tragic destiny for his inner being if that were to happen. Whilst in ordinary life we are continually tempted to bring together the whole nature of man—which is threefold—into a unity and see it as a single and whole human form, for our inner life of soul on the other hand, the moment we step beyond ordinary consciousness, we are immediately made aware that we are in reality a threefold being, and are in imminent danger of being torn into three in our inner life of soul.

We shall best understand how matters really are in this connection if we take our start once again in quite an elementary way from certain facts of everyday life which manifest themselves in full clarity to the occult pupil, but are not at all generally observed. For it is indeed so that already in ordinary life the three soul powers of man—or rather, the several qualities of consciousness that correspond to them and that we are quite accustomed to distinguish one from another—do themselves direct our attention to what we learned to understand yesterday as the three-membered human being.

Look at man as he stands before you in everyday life! What has to take place in him for everyday consciousness to come about? For everyday consciousness to be there—the consciousness that you carry round with you as thinking Earth man—impressions from without must work upon your senses. The senses, in so far as they give us information of Earth life, are principally situated in the head, and the content of consciousness is in the main derived from these senses. Of the three men whom we learned to recognise yesterday in the human being, it is especially the head man, the upper man, that receives the daytime impressions,—the impressions of ordinary consciousness. They make themselves felt inasmuch as man is able to bring to meet them the instrument of his brain, indeed of his whole head.

A little reflection will quickly show you that man as Earth man cannot possibly be a head man alone. We saw yesterday that for occult consideration man falls into three parts, quite distinct from one another; and for man to stand before us as Earth man, the head must obviously be maintained in life by substances and forces which are continually being sent up into it from the second (middle) man. By means of the circulation of the blood, nourishment must flow for the sustenance of the brain. Then the brain is able to meet the external sense impressions in such a way that by means of the instrument of the brain thoughts and ideas arise in man as a result of these sense impressions. Man experiences in ordinary consciousness what arises in this way through the instrumentality of the brain. You know also that this ordinary consciousness ceases when man is asleep; the external sense impressions are not there any more, they have no longer any influence upon him. When man is asleep and the external sense impressions no longer work upon the brain that is sustained by the middle man, naturally the influences that work from the middle man upon the upper man, from the second man upon the first—influences, that is, upon the brain—still go on. For in this middle man breathing is maintained, even during sleep, and the other activities of the middle man continue. Blood is carried up into the brain when man is asleep as well as when he is awake,—though with a difference; for the way in which the instrument of everyday consciousness is sustained by the middle man is not quite the same in waking and in sleep. The difference finds expression in the fact that during sleep the number of breaths we take is considerably less in proportion than when we are awake, and the quantity of carbonic acid gas in our breath is reduced by about one fourth; the manner and method of nourishment also changes during sleep. When, under certain circumstances, the process of nourishment does continue to work in the same way during sleep, it can have very bad results. This is well known from the fact that after an excellent meal one does not generally sleep well; the brain is disturbed in its rest if a heavy meal is taken immediately before going to sleep. There is, therefore, a difference between the conditions of sleep and waking even in the way the middle man works up into the upper man.

Can we see, in ordinary Earth man, any result of this difference? The fact that man shuts himself off from the external world, and that only inside his body—wholly within what we have described as the form or figure of man—an influence is exerted by the forces of the middle man in the direction of the upper man, has the result that ordinary daytime consciousness is extinguished; so that, although during sleep man still has his brain, he does not perceive the influences that are at work from the middle man upon this brain. The influences go on just the same, but they are only present to what we generally term dream consciousness.

This dream consciousness is very complicated. You will, however, have no difficulty in recognising that a particular class of dreams is wholly connected with what takes place in the middle man, and owes its origin to the fact that the brain is able not only to perceive the external world when the sense impressions work upon it, but able also in some way to perceive influences proceeding from the middle man, beholding them in the form of dream pictures that make use of all kinds of symbols. If something is wrong with the heart, it can easily happen that one dreams of it in the symbol of a burning hot fire. If all is not in order in the intestines it may happen that one dreams of snakes. The character and condition of man's inside will often determine the dream, which can then be an indication of what is going on there. Whoever will take the trouble to observe this remarkable connection and study it with the help of external science, will come to the conclusion that irregularities in the middle man are perceived symbolically in dream pictures.

There are also, as you will know, people who have much more far-reaching experiences with dreams of this kind, people who are able to perceive in definite symbolic pictures the oncoming of certain illnesses. A clear connection can frequently be traced in such cases between dream pictures of a symbolic character recurring with absolute regularity and a disease of the lungs or heart or stomach which makes its appearance later.

As it is possible very often to establish, by means of accurate examination on awaking, that when one has dreamed of a burning stove one's heart is beating more quickly than usual, similarly it is possible for diseases of the lung or disorders of the stomach—in fact, for all manner of illnesses that have not yet shown themselves outwardly—to announce their approach symbolically in dream pictures. The human brain, or rather the human soul, is not sensitive only to external impressions that are communicated through the senses but also to the bodily inside,—with this difference, that in the latter case it does not receive correct and true ideas but builds up for itself imaginary and symbolical ideas of what is going forward in the middle man.

The explanation that has been given enables us to recognise the fact that in dreaming man perceives himself. We can truly say: In my dreams I behold myself. We are not, however, aware of this during the dream. We perceive our heart, but we do not know that it is our heart we perceive. We perceive instead a burning hot fire,—that is to say, an object outside ourselves. Something that is inside us is projected outwards and stands there, outside, for our perception. In dream consciousness, therefore, man has to do with the interior of his own body; this means that in dream consciousness he is divided, he is rent asunder. As you know, in the ordinary run of everyday life, we concern ourselves as a rule only with waking and sleeping.

Now, it is not only conditions of the middle man that are perceived in dreams, but also conditions of the upper man, the head man. There are, to begin with, the dreams that owe their origin to some disorder in the head itself. Through what is perceived as a disorder in the head, the brain—or I, should rather say the soul—perceives itself by means of the instrument of the brain. The upper man perceives himself. Such dreams are always extraordinarily characteristic. You have a dream and wake up with a pain in your head; the dream is in this case a symbolical and fanciful reflection of the headache. As a rule such dreams will take the form that they lead you out into vast distances, or you find yourself in a great vault or cave. Especially characteristic of these headache dreams is the experience of an immense vault above one. Something is creeping or crawling in the roof of the cave, or perhaps spiders' webs or some dirt or dust is clinging to it. Or you may dream you are in a great arched palace! In such cases you perceive yourself as upper man,—but again you transpose what you perceive into the world outside you. You go out of yourself and place outside you what is in you, in your head. So here once more we have a kind of division of the human being; he is, as it were, split asunder, he loses himself, extinguishes himself.

The conditions I have been describing are dream conditions, and they show us quite clearly that in dream consciousness man falls asunder; his ego consciousness, his unity of consciousness, does not remain intact, and his dream is in reality always a reflection, a symbolical reflection of what is going on inside his bodily nature.

For the disciple of occultism it is by no means merely a question of passing from ordinary waking consciousness to dream consciousness—there would be nothing unusual in that, No, he must make the transition to a totally different condition of consciousness. By practising the exercises outlined in earlier lectures of this course—through suppression, that is, of the intellect, the will and the memory—he has to get free of himself and attain to a completely new consciousness.

Although, as I have said, this new consciousness is not a dream consciousness, yet if one has no knowledge of clairvoyant consciousness, dream consciousness can help one to come to a fairly good understanding of it. For we can approach it in the following manner. Suppose we ask ourselves: What is it within him that man perceives in dream? then we must answer: Whatever is painful or out of order. A moment's reflection will show us that ordinary normal conditions are not perceived by dream consciousness, If a man is perfectly healthy in his upper and middle man, if everything is in order there, then he sleeps a normal healthy sleep; one cannot in ordinary circumstances—observe, I say advisedly, in ordinary circumstances—expect that his peaceful sleep will be forcibly interrupted with dreams. Now the path that has to be taken by clairvoyant consciousness is one that leads through stages and conditions that are similar to those of dream consciousness. Only, these stages are attained instead by occult training, and it is actually the case that in clairvoyance man does not merely come to a knowledge of the ordinary external painful conditions of his inside, but succeeds in perceiving also its normal conditions, which usually disappear from our consciousness in peaceful sleep. The pupil in clairvoyance comes to a knowledge of these conditions. In other words, he learns to know his brain, his head man, by learning to perceive it inwardly. Similarly, he comes to know his middle man. In the same way as in certain dreams man perceives when asleep his head and middle man, so has the pupil in clairvoyance to attain in the course of his training to a knowledge of his middle and upper man.

Let us now give our special attention to this middle man. If you consider a little, you will have to acknowledge that you find nothing in the middle man that can be immediately and specifically referred to the external world. In the head we have the eyes and the other sense organs that are in direct connection with the external world. Through the sense of touch the middle man has of course the possibility of coming into connection with the external world, for the sense of touch is, as we know, extended over the whole skin. The perception of the external world by the middle man is nevertheless slight and insignificant in comparison with the knowledge of the external world that we acquire through the head man. Even the perception the middle man receives of warmth affects in the main only his own inner experience, his inner sense of well-being. The middle man seems therefore to be a self-enclosed entity, with inner processes that are of very great importance for himself but have little bearing on his relationship to the outside world.

If, however, we go on to enquire whether this inner man has not perhaps some connection with the outside world that is not so obvious to ordinary consciousness, we shall discover that this inner, middle man has, after all, a connection of no little importance with the outside world. Everything depends on the fact that the middle man is adapted to Earth conditions. He has to breathe the air of the Earth, he needs for his nourishment the substances that are produced on the Earth. From this point of view the middle man and the Earth belong together. Were the substances that are necessary to maintain his life not present in his Earthly surroundings, then this middle man could not be as he is. So you see, we are obliged to look upon the middle man as part and parcel of what Earth existence gives to us, we must reckon him as belonging definitely to our existence here on Earth.

Nor is this all. For it is not a question only of what the Earth can give to man. The Earth could be there for a long time, and yet no middle man come into being! If the Sun did not come to the help of the Earth and cause to flourish and ripen upon it what the middle man needs, then the middle man could not exist. This middle man takes the substances he requires for nourishment, and these substances—apart from the air which is of course essential for his sustenance in life, all these substances that nourish him are dependent on the working of the Sun upon the Earth. Whatever man receives into himself as nourishment is produced by the Sun in man's Earthly environment. This means, in effect, that when we study the middle man we have to take account not only of a direct influence of the Earth upon man but also of an indirect influence of the Sun. Were it not for the physical sunlight that illumines the Earth, the middle man would not exist. All that is to be found in the middle man has come into him through the influence of the light of the Sun upon the Earth.

This remarkable fact—that the middle man is a product of the light of the Sun—comes to expression in the following way. When the pupil in occultism becomes clairvoyant, when he develops, that is, a clairvoyant consciousness, then, whereas in dreams pictures arise which are the expression of some disorder in man's inner organs, in the case of clairvoyant consciousness the pictures the pupil receives express what the Sun is doing in the middle man, they show the regular normal activity of the Sun in the middle man. When the pupil becomes clairvoyant and a perception arises in him of his own inner being in its healthy normal state, then he has before him the flowing light; all around him he sees the flowing light. As the dreamer is surrounded by pictures of disorders in his inner man, so is the aspirant after occultism surrounded by phenomena of flowing light. He has, to begin with, this perception of the activity of the Sun in his own inner being.

Compare for a moment ordinary external consciousness with this special consciousness that arises in the clairvoyant. When man, as upper man, directs his gaze to some object of Earth, he looks at it—it is, as you know, generally speaking, the sense of sight that predominates in perception—by means of the sunlight that is thrown back from the external Earth. External, everyday consciousness perceives what the external sunlight does to the things of the Earth; But now it is what the sunlight does to him, what it does in making possible his own middle man, how it penetrates the middle man with its activity,—this it is that reveals itself to man as flowing light when he becomes a pupil of occultism. He beholds the Sun in himself, in the very same way that he sees the Sun outside him from the time when the day begins for as long as it lasts And as he sees objects around him through the fact that sunlight is thrown back from them, so now he sees, when he has reached a certain stage of clairvoyance, something that is of the nature of Sun reflected back from his own inner being. It is the form of the middle man that shows itself thus illuminated. That is, then, one experience.

If you were to go back into olden times and study what was done and experienced in the ancient Mystery Schools, you would find that the aspirant after occultism learned to perceive the Sun in its reflection in his own middle man,—learned, that is, to perceive the workings of the Sun that continue even when man is asleep, and that escape him during waking consciousness because his attention is entirely claimed by the external consciousness. Man as a Sun being,—that was what the pupil came to perceive at a particular stage of initiation in the Mysteries. He learned to recognise the Sun being in himself, in his very own being, he learned how the Sun works not only outwardly in the objects, in the reflected light, but works also within the bodily form of man.

But now the pupil, who is beginning to be clairvoyant, has to learn something else. He has to discover something that is comparable with the dreams of the brain, those dreams that reflect back disordered conditions of the brain, where, as I told you, in typical cases man always perceives symbols, imagining, for example, that he is in a cave or a palace, having over him a great vaulted roof into which he is gazing. When the pupil in occultism is led on to perceive not only the conditions of his middle man but also the conditions of his upper man (in so far as the latter has form and figure), the conditions of the interior of the head man, then he never has the same experience as he has in his perception of the middle man. Instead he has now before him—I am simply relating the facts—what appears like a perfectly well-ordered and regular extension of the dream that is connected with excitement or irritation of the brain. Only, it is experienced in full consciousness. What man perceives when he has closed all his sense organs and has no external perception, when he directs all his attention in clairvoyant consciousness upon himself inwardly—upon the upper man, the brain man—is in very fact the starry heavens. He beholds the great vault of heaven with the stars.

It was a great moment in the life of the pupil, especially in the more ancient Mysteries—we shall hear later to what extent it underwent change in the later Mysteries—it was a great moment when the pupil perceived his own inner being, in so far as this inner being comes to expression in the human form. When he saw the upper man, it was as though he saw the heavens with all the shining stars; he looked out into the wide world—in spite of the fact that he had no physical senses open. The picture of the starry heavens stood before him. And then came the greatest moment of all when this pupil of occultism observed not what is, so to speak, on the upper surface of his head, but when he looked down from the upper man, from the head, to the middle man, when he perceived, without opening any of his senses, the lower surface of his brain and from it saw the middle man irradiated with light. Himself in total darkness (for his senses were closed, and to outward appearance he was like a man who is asleep), he perceived, looking downwards inwardly, the Sun in the night, in the midst of the dark surface of the heavens. This is what was called in the ancient Mysteries “Seeing the Sun at Midnight,”—seeing, that is, the flowing sunlight within the stars, whose influence in relation to the Sun seems so small. These experiences were important milestones in the life of every aspirant after occultism.

Having come so far, the pupil was then able to apprehend a truth of great significance, He could say: “In the same way as I perceive through the medium of myself, by beholding my middle man, the flowing sunlight, the true and real working of the Sun, so now can I perceive through the medium of the upper man the heavenly spaces with their stars. That I can see the stars, that all is not wrapped in darkness, is due to the fact that the brain is adapted to the stars, as the middle man is adapted to the Sun.” Thus did the pupil come to the knowledge that even as the middle man is sustained by the Sun, even as its whole being depends on the Sun and belongs to the Sun, so does the upper man, the brain man, belong to the whole world and its stars.

When the pupil had had this experience, then he could go to those who possessed only a day consciousness but who, nevertheless, felt an impulse—springing from a deep inner need, from a longing of their soul—to find relationship with a consciousness that should reach out beyond Earth man. In other words, the pupil in occultism could go to men who were religiously inclined, who were able in some way to feel their connection with the great world, and say to them: “Man as he stands on Earth, is not merely a being belonging to this Earth, he is a being that belongs in part, namely in breast and trunk, to the Sun,—and belongs also, as head man, to the whole of cosmic space.” This was what the pupil could tell the religious man, imparting it to him as information; and in the religious man it turned into prayer, into worship.

The disciples of occultism came in this way among men as founders of religion, and according as was the relation of the people to whom they came to the one or other part of man's nature, so they were able to speak more of the one or the other. To people who were more particularly disposed to experience a certain happiness in the sense of well-being in the inner man—people, that is, who were inclined to make their whole mood in life depend on the bodily well-being of the middle man—to such the pupils in occultism could come as founders of religion and say: “Your sense of well-being depends on the Sun.” These people then became, through the influence of the pupils in occultism, followers of a Sun religion. You may be quite sure that all over the Earth, wherever lived people of the kind I have described, for whom it mattered above all that they should have their attention drawn to the source of their sense of well-being, there a Sun worship arose.

To think that men just happened to become Sun worshippers without any deeper reason for it is a mere flight of imagination on the part of all obstinately materialistic science. When the scholar:, of our time speak of how this or that section of mankind came to be Sun worshippers, they are really only demonstrating their own powers of imagination and fantasy. The materialists of today are quite mistaken when they accuse theosophists of an inclination to be fantastic, implying that they themselves are the true realists. Taken as a whole, materialism is certainly not lacking in a tendency to be fantastic, as we can see in this case when it sets out to explain how certain peoples became Sun worshippers. For it builds up an imaginary picture and comes to the conclusion that through the working of certain external conditions or circumstances the people, moved by some unaccountable impulse, hit upon the idea of worshipping the Sun; whereas the truth of the matter is that the initiates, the aspirants after occultism, knew in the case of certain peoples:—We have here a people who manifest especially the virtue of courage, a people in whom one can see a striking development of the middle man; we must teach this people how in the super-sensible one can behold the fact that this middle-man is a product of the working of the Sun. And the initiates in occultism then led such people, in whom the middle man was of greatest importance, away from the mere sense of well-being, the mere living within themselves, to prayer and worship, teaching them to look up in religious devotion to the Being who was the source of this middle man. Thus did they guide these people to a worship of the Sun.

This one example can serve to show the tendency there is in materialism to build up fantastic theories. Other striking examples could be brought forward. We have, for instance, had perforce to read—for they have been thrust under our very eyes—all manner of descriptions of our Munich Building.¹ Through an indiscretion it came about that the project found its way into the newspapers, and the materialistic man of today has formed his own idea of what the Building is and what its purpose. A profusion of fantastic information has been spread abroad, quite enough to demonstrate that fantasy is a quality of present-day thinking. When it is a matter of speaking or writing about things of which he knows absolutely nothing, the man of today does not hesitate to have recourse to the wildest fancies in order to construct an explanation. This is so in ordinary everyday life, and it is so too in the realm of science. The majority of the explanations put forward by the scholars of today are sheer fantasy; and the attempt to describe or account for Sun worship is certainly no exception.

Other peoples on the Earth had less inclination to develop the middle man and were more disposed to think, to have ideas,—that is, to develop the upper man; and to them another kind of appeal had to be made. The occultists who went forth into the world as founders of religion turned the attention of these peoples to seek the source of the instrument whereby they were able to produce thoughts, to live in thoughts and in ideas. The occultists said to them: “If you want to have knowledge of the source of your life of thought, then—since you are not able to gaze into the super-sensible worlds of the heavens (of course the initiates did not say this, I am adding it)—you will have an external reflection of this source if you remain awake during the night and look up in prayer to the star-strewn heavens.”

A genuine Star worship—a worship, one can also say, of the Night, for the truth was often clothed in such a way that instead of speaking of the starry heavens the night was substituted—such a Star or Night Worship prevailed among peoples who were more given to thought. Peoples of ancient times who were fond of thinking and pondering and delving deep into things,—for them religions were founded that pointed them to the source of the instrument of their thinking, the source, that is, of their upper man. And many of the names borne by the most ancient Gods of certain peoples have to be rendered in modern languages by the word “Night.” The Night was the object of worship, the Night in all the mystery of her appearance as the Mother of the Stars, who brings them forth that they may shine in the heavens. For the initiates in occultism knew that the instrument of the brain is really and truly a product of the Star-strewn Night.

Similarly, we will often find that the people who were Sun worshippers were not only guided to look to the Sun; but as man was led from the Stars to the Mother Night and many old-time words for the ancient Gods are to be interpreted as meaning Night, so in the case of the Sun man's attention was drawn to the fact that the Sun gave rise to the Day, that the Sun made Day. In consequence, many words used for Sun worship among peoples who specifically worshipped the Sun as the highest divine Power, are to be translated with the word “Day.”

Speaking generally, we can say that where peoples felt themselves strong and courageous and ready for war, we find them to be in the main Sun worshippers or Day worshippers, because their initiates directed them to the Sun, to the Day, for their object of worship. The more thoughtful and enquiring peoples on the other hand are Night or Star worshippers, because they have been guided that way by their initiates.

We come, finally, to still another kind of people. For there are peoples who do not experience in so characteristic a manner the sharp division between Day consciousness and Night consciousness. When we go back into olden times, we find many peoples who had preserved middle or in-between conditions of consciousness, who did not merely alternate in their life between Day and Night, between consciousness and unconsciousness, but who had an old clairvoyant consciousness which came about through the merging of Day with Night consciousness into a kind of semi-consciousness. We find therefore this third condition of consciousness.

These people also divined through their condition of consciousness a connection between man and something outside the Earth. How was it they came to have such a feeling? To answer this question we must realise that they were possessed of a peculiar faculty or quality in the very form of their bodily nature. They were, as we have said, endowed,—as in olden times almost all men were endowed, the world over—with an ancient clairvoyance, and they had the peculiar faculty of being able to perceive in certain conditions of consciousness their “symmetry” man,—not, however, as symmetry man, but they could perceive this middle man in its working upon the upper man.

If you want to form a picture of what took place in such a person, then you must imagine a picture of the middle man in the brain. In ordinary normal life on Earth, the sense impressions from without work upon the brain and the brain throws back pictures; it places, that is, its own being in the way and holds up the pictures that come from outside. Our idea of the world comes about in this way as a reflected picture thrown back by the brain. For that is what all ideas of the outside world really are,—pictures thrown back, reflected by the brain. When you look at the world, then the outer impressions pass through the eye up to a certain place in the brain and are there caught. That an idea can come into being is due to the fact that the impressions are caught up at a certain point, not allowed to pass through—not, at all events, in their entirety—but reflected back. And when a man becomes clairvoyant, it is no longer external objects alone that make impressions on the brain, impressions are made from the middle man, which can then be reflected back by the brain.

What I have just now described—the impressions made by the middle man upon the brain and the reflection by the latter of these impressions—is still very far from the process I described as taking place in the true aspirant after occultism. The latter has direct and immediate perception of his middle man, he does not merely perceive it through the brain. He looks into himself and sees there what belongs to the Sun, sees too in his brain what belongs to the Stars. The clairvoyant state, on the other hand, of which we are now speaking, where the processes inside man, the Sun nature in the middle man, are reflected by the brain—even as the outer impressions that come through the senses are reflected by the brain,—is characteristic of the old clairvoyance of men in ancient time. For them, perception took place by way of the middle man. They did not, to begin with, perceive external things at all. They perceived only the Sun-like that was present in themselves and they perceived it in reflection, for it was held up by the brain and they perceived it as an idea of the Sun nature within them.

There have been peoples of this character, who in certain naturally clairvoyant states caught hold, as it were, with their brain of the Sun nature within them and made of the perception an idea. How did it then appear to them? It was projected outwards, but was not perceived like the ideas to which we are accustomed, and which have their source in the world outside; it appeared like inner Sunlight,—yet as coming from without. And when investigation was made into the source of the appearance, when the aspirants after occultism set out to learn how it was that they found themselves in such conditions, then they were made clearly aware of the Sun nature that is in the middle man. Man has this Sun-like element in him, because he is himself a Sun being. That which manifests in the instrument of the brain is connected with the fact that man is a Star being, that he is in very truth formed and shaped from out of the whole of Cosmic space. What he now perceives, however, has relation to the fact that the Earth has revolving around it the Moon, and that the Moon in her revolution round the Earth has a powerful influence on the being of man.

In those olden times man was so constituted that the Moon had a particularly strong influence on his brain. The consequence was that the ancient clairvoyance was very dependent on the phases of the Moon, and showed itself for the most part in connections that found expression in the phases of the Moon. For a space of fourteen days clairvoyance increased, and then for fourteen days it decreased again. Its influence was thus greatest in the middle of such a Moon period. There were times when men knew: We are Sun beings. They knew it because they could perceive the Sun through the inner idea formed in the brain. But this came about through the influence of the Moon. The old clairvoyance often worked in the way I indicated. Man gave himself up throughout the whole twenty-eight days to the waxing and waning of the Moon. There were days when the influence of the Moon was particularly strong and when in consequence clairvoyance was present in everyone; inner clairvoyant consciousness made itself felt in all men. When initiates in occultism came to people of this kind with the mission of determining for them the character of their religion, then for the same reason that other peoples were made Sun (or Day) worshippers and Star (or Night) worshippers, the initiates made this third kind of people Moon worshippers. Hence the worship of the Moon, that is to be found among many ancient peoples.

Moses learned to know this Moon worship in its original form from the Egyptian initiates, and was himself one of the greatest of those who made Moon worship into the religion of a people. For Moses made it the religion of the ancient Hebrew people. The Jahve worship of the ancient Hebrew people is a highly spiritualised Moon worship. And it enabled the Hebrew people to retain into later times the consciousness that man is connected with what is outside and beyond the Earth, that his being is not confined to the Earth.

Now it was so with the Moon worshippers of very olden times, as it was also with the Sun and Star worshippers, that there was very little knowledge among the people themselves of how Stars, Sun and Moon appeared to the clairvoyant—spiritualised, that is, and not at all as objects that are seen with external organs. The people of olden times would not have understood if they had been told: “Pray to what is the source and origin of your middle man, but do not imagine it like the picture of the Sun that can be perceived with the senses; think of it as something super-sensible that is behind the Sun.” Just as little would the Star worshippers have understood if they had been told that the organ of their thinking had its origin in the far Cosmic spaces, but that they were not to imagine that this meant, in the picture of the starry heavens as it can be perceived with the outer eye, they were to think rather of the invisible that is behind the starry heavens, the multitude of spiritual Beings that are in the Stars. This was known to the initiates, but it could not be said to the Sun and Star worshippers. Similarly it would have been of no use at all to say to the Moon peoples: “Imagine to yourselves an invisible Being who has as it were his outer body in the Moon.” It was, however, possible to say something else, and this is what Moses did say to the Hebrew people. It could not have been said to the more ancient Moon worshippers but only to the ancient Hebrew people. For Moses did not direct his people to the visible Moon, but to the Being in whom lay the origin of the ancient clairvoyance of all peoples. This clairvoyance had been given to man,—as a kind of compensation, when he was placed into the condition of having to alternate with his consciousness between day and night; and it brought him a knowledge of the world, that resembled what comes to expression in the reflected rays of the Sun. The reflection of the Sun could only be something external for man, could only give him an Earth consciousness—a day consciousness, and a night consciousness that at most was aware only of the external visible world of stars—and so a clairvoyance was given to the man of ancient times as a compensation; it was given him through the possibility of alternation in this day and night consciousness,—an old clairvoyance that is derived from the spiritual Being of the Moon and has also relation, locally, with the Moon.

When in the course of evolution the time came for this clairvoyant consciousness gradually to grow dim and fade away, a more spiritual substitute was created for the ancient Hebrew folk in the invisible Moon Being Jahve or Jehovah of whom Moses taught, and who, he said, must never be confused with anything that can be seen outwardly nor with any picture that is made of Him for outward vision. Therefore did Moses categorically forbid the Hebrew people to regard any picture in the outside world as a picture of Jahve; he forbade them any picture or image whatsoever that might represent something which is not a product of the outside world, forbade them also to make any picture taken from the outside world, of the invisible, super-sensible God.

The Jahve religion is thus seen to stand in a remarkable relation to a Moon religion that was given by the old clairvoyance in the very earliest days of mankind. For the sake of those to whom it is of interest, we may here mention that it was H. P. Blavatsky who, on absolutely authentic grounds, pointed out that the Jahve religion was in a certain respect a kind of revival of the old Moon religion. H. P. Blavatsky, however, did not come so far in her research as we are able to do today, consequently the connection that has here been set forth was not fully clear to her. The knowledge that the Jahve religion is a Moon religion rather suggested to H. P. Blavatsky that this old Jahve religion was a little less worthy on that account. This is, however, not the case at all. When one knows that the Jahve religion of the ancient Hebrew people has its origin in the old clairvoyance and preserves, so to speak, the memory of the old clairvoyance, then one is able to perceive and appreciate the sacredness and depth of this Jahve religion.

Our study has brought us to an understanding of certain important experiences of the aspirants after occultism, who in a higher consciousness are able to learn by real experience that man belongs in his being to the entire world, perceiving how the middle man is in reality a Sun man, and the upper man a Star man. And we have also seen what occultism is able to recognise in the external religions, namely, that they were in great measure given to mankind as very ancient religions and even as ancient theosophies. For when the man of olden times developed a need for worship and prayer, in that moment something of the old clairvoyance began to stir within him, so that he had no need merely to believe what the old initiates told him but was able to comprehend it even though he could not actually see it. The ancient religions are thus to a great extent theosophies. And the theosophical teachings that were given by the occultists were determined according to the section of the earth which that particular people was destined to inhabit.

As you will have seen, we have for the moment had to leave out the lower man,—the third seven-membered man. We shall return to it, and we shall find in what a remarkable manner the “Great Mystery” was brought before the pupil, and how the pupil undergoes still further development by means of the initiation which alone can lead to an understanding of the true nature of man.

• 1. It was at first intended to erect a Building for Anthroposophy in Munich. The project had, however, to be abandoned in 1914. (Note by Translator.)

Yesterday we looked at Jesus of Nazareth's life from when he was about twelve until the end of his twenty-first year. From what I was able to relate, you will certainly have the feeling that some very important things for Jesus of Nazareth's soul occurred during that period of time, most important also for the evolution of humanity. For you will certainly realize from the fundamental experience obtained from spiritual scientific studies that everything having to do with human evolution is interconnected, and that an event of such importance which happens in a human soul and is related to human history cannot be without importance for the whole of human evolution. We recognize just what the event of Golgotha means from the most varied viewpoints. In this lecture cycle we are attempting to obtain this knowledge through a consideration of Christ Jesus' life. Therefore we shall now again look at the same characteristic point in time we considered yesterday. What must have lived in Jesus of Nazareth's soul after all the important events that happened to him up until he was twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old, and which I described yesterday?

One can have a feeling for what lived in his soul from hearing about a scene that took place during his late twenties. The scene was of a conversation which Jesus had with his mother, with that person who had been his mother for many years through the consolidation of both families. An intimate and excellent understanding existed with her, a much better understanding than existed with the other family members who lived in the house; that is, he could get along well with them, but they didn't really understand him. Previously he spoke with his mother about many of the impressions which had developed in his soul.

But at the time in question a most meaningful talk took place between them, one which allows us to see deeply into his soul. He had become wiser over time as a result of the events already described, to the extent that an infinite wisdom was expressed in his face. But he also felt sadness, which is often the case, though to a lesser degree. Wisdom had the effect of causing him to be quite sad when he observed his human surroundings. Adding to this was the fact that whenever he had a minute to himself he thought back to how in his twelfth year a tremendous revolution took place in his soul—when Zarathustra's soul [ego] entered into his soul. When at first Zarathustra's soul entered into his soul he felt only the great richness of the former. At the end of his twenties he didn't yet know that he was the reincarnated Zarathustra; but he did know that a great change had taken place in his soul during his twelfth year. And now he often had the feeling: Oh, how different everything was before that change during my twelfth year! He thought about how infinitely warm his heart felt then. As a boy he had been detached from the world, but had the liveliest feelings for the speech of nature, for what was wonderful in nature. But he had little disposition for worldly learning. He showed little interest in school work.

It would be completely mistaken to assume that the boy Jesus was gifted in any usual way before his twelfth year. He was kind-hearted, had a deep understanding of what is human, great capacity for feeling—an angelic, gentle being. Now it seemed as if all that had been eradicated from his soul when he was twelve years of age. And now he thought and felt about how previously he had been united with all the deeper universal spirits, how his soul had been open to the depths of infinite space. And how since his twelfth year he had suddenly become adept at Hebrew erudition, which had sprung from within him. He thought about how on his travels he encountered the pagan cults and the wisdom and religiosity of Paganism streamed through his soul. He remembered that between his eighteenth and twenty-fourth years he had been in contact with the activities and achievements of common humanity. He then entered the Essene community at approximately twenty-four years of age, where he learned an occult teaching and knew the people who dedicated themselves to that occult teaching. He thought often of those things. But he also knew that he had only learned what humanity had accumulated in wisdom since antiquity—treasures of human wisdom, culture and moral achievements. He often thought back on how, before that twelfth year, he felt united with the divine primeval ground of being and everything seemed spontaneous, welling up from his warm, expansive, loving heart and closely uniting him with the other strengths of the human soul.

These were the feelings which brought about a very special talk between him and the mother. His mother loved him terribly and often spoke with him about all the beautiful and great things which had become apparent in him since his twelfth year. At first he never spoke to her about the inner conflict which he experienced, so that she saw only the good and the beautiful. Therefore what he told her in this conversation, which was a kind of general confession, was all new to her, but she accepted it with a warm and gentle heart. She understood how he felt, that he was nostalgic for what he had before that twelfth year. So she tried to console him by speaking about the things which had become so beautiful and splendid about him since then. She reminded him of the renewal of the great teachings and wise sayings and treasures of the Jewish laws, which had come about through him. His heart was heavy when he heard his mother speak so enthusiastically about what he considered superseded. He said: That may well be, but whether all the wonderful old treasures of Judaism are renewed through me or some other, what does it mean for humanity? What has happened is essentially meaningless. Of course if the people had ears still capable of listening to the old prophets, then such a renewal of the prophets' wisdom would be of use to them. But even if Elias were to come – Jesus of Nazareth said – and wanted to announce to our humanity the wonders he experienced in the expanses of heaven, the people are not there who have ears to hear Elias's wisdom, or the older prophets, even Abraham and Moses. All that those prophets announced is impossible to announce today. The words would blow away in the wind. Everything I thought to have received is worthless today.

He told how a great teacher had recently been more or less ignored. For although he had not the stature of the old prophets he was, nevertheless, a profound and important teacher – the good, old Hillel. Jesus well knew what Hillel meant for many within Judaism, even during Herod's rule, when it was hard to gain respect. And he knew what profound words Hillel had spoken. It was said of him: The Torah had died among the Jews, but Hillel revived it. He renewed the original Jewish wisdom, for those who understood him. Hillel was a wandering teacher of wisdom; he wandered among the Jewish people like a kind of new Messiah. Meekness was his main characteristic. The people praised him highly. I can only mention a few examples of how Jesus spoke to his mother about Hillel in order to indicate how he felt about him. He described Hillel as having a mild, gentle character and who accomplished great things through gentleness and love.

One meaningful story has been preserved which shows how Hillel was a patient man who was open to everyone. Two people bet on the possibility of angering Hillel, for it was well known that Hillel was never angry. One of them said: I will do all possible to anger him – in order to win the bet. At a time when Hillel was most occupied (he was preparing for the Sabbath) the man who made the wager knocked at his door and said in a less than polite way – and Hillel was the head of the highest priestly authority, one accustomed to being addressed with respect – the man called out: Hillel, come out, come out right now!

Hillel threw something on and patiently went out.

The man said sharply: I have something to ask you.

Hillel said, My dear man, what is your question?

My question is, Why do the Babylonians have such narrow heads?

Hillel answered most gently, Well, my dear, the Babylonians have such narrow heads because their midwives are so clumsy.

The man left. But after a few minutes he returned and rudely called Hillel out again: Hillel, come out, I have a question for you!

Hillel put his cloak on, went out and said: Well, my dear man, what is your question?

I want to ask you why the Arabs have such small eyes.

Hillel answered gently: Because the desert is so large, it makes the eyes small, the eyes become small observing the vast desert.

The man who had made the bet was becoming anxious now. Hillel went back to his work.

After a few minutes the man came again and called out rudely: Hillel, come out, I have a question to ask you.

Hillel threw on his cloak, went out and gently said: What do you wish to ask me?

I want to ask you why the Egyptians have such flat feet.

Because the area where they live is so marshy, Hillel said and went back inside.

A few minutes later the man came again and told Hillel that he had something else to ask – that he had made a bet that he could anger him, but he knew not how to do it. Hillel said gently: My dear man, it is better that you lose your bet than that Hillel is angered.

That legend is told in order to show Hillel's patience, even with those who antagonize him. Such a man is, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother, in many respects like a prophet of old. And don't we know many of Hillel's sayings that sound reminiscent of the prophets of old? He repeated several of Hillel's beautiful sayings, and then said: You see, dear mother, that Hillel is considered to be an old prophet who has come again. It occurs to me that what I know does not come from Judaism alone.

Now Hillel was born in Babylon and only occupied with Judaism later. But he descended from David, was related to the house of David from ancient times, as was Jesus. And Jesus said: If I could also speak as a son of David, as Hillel does, the people don't exist who could hear me; such words are no longer relevant. In ancient times yes, but not now. To speak thus now is useless and of no worth.

Then he summarized his position to his mother. These prophesies of ancient Judaism are no longer appropriate because the ancient Jews are no longer here. They must be seen as worthless now. Strangely enough his mother listened to him when he spoke about the worthlessness of what she considered to be most holy. But she loved him deeply and felt only her infinite love. So something of a profound intuitive understanding of what he meant reached her. He went on to tell her about his wanderings to the pagan places of worship and what he experienced there. He remembered falling unconscious on the pagan altar and hearing the transformed Bath-Kol. And then a renewal of the old Zarathustra teaching flashed before his mind. He didn't yet know for sure that he carried the Zarathustra soul within him, but the Zarathustra teaching and wisdom, the Zarathustra impulse arose within him during that talk with his mother. Together with his mother he experienced that great Zarathustra impulse. All the beautiful and great of the ancient Sun-Teaching arose in his soul. And he remembered the Bath-Kol words, which I recited yesterday, and he recited them to his mother:

AUM, Amen!
Evil rules,
Witness of the severing I,
Selfhood's guilt by others owed,
Now lived in daily bread,
In which heaven's will be not done,
For man deserted your kingdom,
And forgot your names,
You fathers in the heavens.

All the greatness of the Mithras worship lived in his soul with those words, rising up as from an inner genius. He spoke with his mother about the greatness and glory of paganism and about what lived in the ancient mysteries of the various peoples, much of which converged in the Mystery cults of Asia Minor and Southern Europe. But he also carried in his soul the feeling that this cult had gradually changed and had come under demonic power, which he had himself experienced when he was around twenty-four years of age. It also seemed to him that the old Zarathustra teaching was no longer appropriate for the people.

The second important thing he said was: If all the Mysteries were united and contained everything which was once great – the people are not there to hear it. It is all useless. And if I were to go around announcing the transformed Bath-Kol, if I were to declare the secret of why people can no longer live in their physical bodies together with the Mysteries – the people are not there today who would understand. Nowadays it would be demonic. People can no longer hear what was once announced and heard.

Jesus of Nazareth knew that what he had heard as the transformed voice of Bath-Kol was an ancient holy teaching, an all-powerful prayer wherever the Mysteries were celebrated; it had been forgotten, but had come to him when he fell down on the pagan altar. He also saw, however – and he expressed it clearly in that discussion – that today it is impossible to make all that understood. Then he spoke of what he had learned in the Essene circles. He described the beauty, the greatness and the glory of the Essene teachings and remembered the Essenes' gentleness.

Then he spoke of the third important thing, which had come to him during his visionary talk with the Buddha: Not all people can be Essenes. Hillel was right when he said: Don't separate yourself from society, but live and work within it. For what am I if I am alone? That's what the Essenes do though; they separate themselves from the people, who are then necessarily unhappy. Then he told his mother about his experience after an intimate conversation with the Essenes. As he was at the gate leaving, he saw Lucifer and Ahriman running off.

Since that moment, my dear mother, I knew that the Essenes protect themselves by means of their way of life and their occult teachings to the extent that Lucifer and Ahriman must flee from their gates. But they send Lucifer and Ahriman to others in order to be happy themselves. Those words greatly impressed the loving mother, and she felt herself transformed, and as one with him. And Jesus of Nazareth felt as though everything which burdened him had been lifted from him by this conversation. He saw it and his mother saw it. The more he spoke, the more she heard, the more she knew of all the wisdom that had lived in him since his twelfth year. He also transplanted all his experiences into her own heart.

He was also transformed by that talk, so much so that his stepbrothers and other relatives thought he had lost his mind. What a pity, they said, he knew so much; he was always very quiet, and now he has lost his mind. They considered him lost. In fact he did walk around the house dream-like for days on end. The Zarathustra-I was preparing to abandon that Jesus of Nazareth body. And his last resolve was to leave the house almost mechanically and go to John the Baptist, whom he already knew.

And then the event took place which I have often described: the baptism in the Jordan by John. During that talk with his mother, the I of Zarathustra withdrew. He was again what he was at twelve years of age, only grown up. And the Christ-Being descended into that body at the baptism in the Jordan. And at the same moment as this baptism in the Jordan took place, the mother experienced the end of her transformation. She felt – at the time she was forty-five, forty-six years old -, she felt herself imbued with the soul of the woman who was Jesus' mother until he was twelve when he received the Zarathustra-I; and who had later died. The other mother's spirit had descended upon the mother with whom Jesus had the conversation. And she felt like that young mother who had given birth to the Luke-Jesus.

Imagine what a hugely important event that was! Let us try to feel it, but also let us feel that now a special being lived on the earth: the Christ-Being in a human body, a Being who had not yet lived in a human body, who heretofore had only been in spiritual regions, who previously had not lived on earth, who knew the spiritual worlds, but not the earth! That Being only knew of the earth what was stored in the three bodies – physical body, etheric and astral bodies – of Jesus of Nazareth. It descended into those three bodies, as they had become under the influence of the thirty years of life which I have already described. Therefore the Christ-Being was unbiased in respect to his first earthly experiences.

This Christ-Being was led at first into solitude. This is also indicated in the Akasha Record and the Fifth Gospel. Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body the Christ-Being now dwelled, gave up everything which had tied him to the world. The Christ-Being had come to the earth. At first he was drawn to what was impressed most strongly in the astral body, like a remaining memory. Yes, he thought, that is the body which experienced Ahriman and Lucifer fleeing and realized that the striving Essenes pushed Ahriman and Lucifer off onto other people. He felt himself drawn to Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is against them that humanity must fight. Therefore the Christ-Being, who had never existed in a human body, departed into solitude to do battle with Ahriman and Lucifer.

I believe that the scene I am about to describe is essentially correct. But it is very difficult to observe such things in the Akasha Record. Therefore I would like to explicitly state that one or another detail may eventually be modified, but that the essential is there. The temptation scene appears in several Gospels, which describe it from different sides. I have often emphasized this. I have taken pains to investigate this temptation scene and would like to relate how it really was.

At first the Christ-Being in Jesus of Nazareth's body encountered Lucifer in solitude – how Lucifer works on people when they overestimate themselves, have too little humility and self-knowledge. Take advantage of man's false pride and self-importance: that is what Lucifer wants to do! Lucifer approached Christ Jesus and said more or less the words which also appear in the other Gospels: Look at me! The other kingdoms in which man dwells, founded by the old gods and spirits – they are old. I want to found a new kingdom; I will give you everything that is beautiful and glorious in the old kingdoms if you will enter into my new kingdom. But you must separate yourself from the old and recognize me! And Lucifer showed him all the beauty of the Luciferic world, all that would attract a human soul that had even a trace of pride. But the Christ-Being came from the spiritual world. He knew who Lucifer is and how the soul must act not to be tempted on earth by him. He knew nothing of Luciferic temptation; he knew though how to serve the gods and was strong enough to reject Lucifer. So Lucifer attacked a second time, but he came with Ahriman as support and they both spoke to Christ. One tried to goad his pride: Lucifer. The other spoke to his fear: Ahriman.

The first said to him: Through my spirituality, through what I can give you, you will not need what you now need because you have entered into a human body as Christ. That body subjugates you, so you must obey the law of gravity. I can throw you down and the human body prevents you from overcoming the law of gravity. If you obey me I will annul the effects of the fall and nothing will happen to you. Ahriman said: I will protect you from fear, throw yourself down! They both closed in on him, but as they balanced the scales, so to speak, by their insistence, he was able to resist them. He found the strength which man needs to find on earth to raise himself above Lucifer and Ahriman.

Then Ahriman said: Lucifer, you are of no use to me, you have not increased my power, only diminished it. So Ahriman sent Lucifer away and carried out the last attack as Ahriman alone and said the words which resonate in the Gospel of Matthew: Turn minerals into bread! Turn stones to bread if you claim to have divine powers. And the Christ-Being said: Men do not live by bread alone, but by the spiritual which comes from the spiritual world. The Christ-Being knew that well, for he had recently descended from the spiritual world. Ahriman replied: You may be right. But that you are right and insofar as you are right does not stop me from stopping you in a certain way. You only know what the spirit does which descends from the heights. You were not yet in the human world. Below, in the human world, there are completely different people; they truly need to turn stones to bread, they cannot nourish themselves by the spirit alone. That was the moment when Ahriman told Christ what one could know on the earth; which, however, the god who had just stepped upon the earth for the first time could not yet know. He did not know that it was necessary below to turn the mineral, metal to money, to bread. So Ahriman said that the people below are forced to nourish themselves with money. That was where Ahriman still had power. And, said Ahriman, I will use this power!

This is the correct description of the temptation story. The questions weren't definitively answered – Luficer's questions perhaps, but not Ahriman's. Something more was required for that.

As Christ Jesus left the solitude of the wilderness he felt himself released from all he had experienced and learned from his twelfth year on; he felt the Christ-spirit to be more connected with what had lived in him before his twelfth year. In fact he felt no longer connected with what was old and arid in humanity. He was even indifferent to the language spoken around him and he was silent at first. He walked around Nazareth and farther a field, visited many of the places he knew as Jesus of Nazareth, and there something extremely peculiar happened. Please note that I am telling the story from the Fifth Gospel, and it would make no sense to look for contradictions with the other four gospels. I am relating what the Fifth Gospel says.

Silently, like having nothing to do with the surroundings, Christ Jesus went at first from inn to inn, working with the common people. Ahriman's saying about bread had left a deep impression on him. Everywhere he found the people who knew him from before, and these were the people to whom Ahriman had to gain access because they needed to turn stones to bread, or what is the same – turn money, metal to bread. He had no need to associate with those who observed Hillel's – or others' – moral teachings. But he did associate with those whom the other gospels call tax collectors and sinners, for they were the ones most inclined to turn stones into bread. He spent much time with them.

But here is the strange thing that happened: Many of them already knew him from the time before his thirtieth birthday, when he had been with them as Jesus of Nazareth. They knew his mild, kind and wise nature and he was well loved in every house and inn. That love remained. They often spoke of the dear Jesus of Nazareth who had come to those houses and those places. And the following happened—as though an effect of cosmic law. (I am relating scenes which often repeat themselves, which clairvoyant research can often confirm.) There were families for whom Jesus of Nazareth had worked, who sat together after work, when the sun had gone down, and liked to talk about the dear fellow who had been with them as Jesus of Nazareth. They spoke of his love and gentleness and about the warm feelings that streamed through their souls when he lived under their roofs. In some of these houses where they sat and talked about Jesus of Nazareth for hours on end, an image of Jesus of Nazareth would appear as a vision shared by the whole family. Yes, he visited them in the spirit; or also, they created his spiritual image. You can imagine what it meant for such a family when he appeared to them in a vision, and what it meant to them when he now returned after the baptism in the Jordan and they recognized him, except that his eyes were more brilliant. They saw the transfigured face which had once looked upon them so kindly, this whole man whom they had seen sitting with them in the spirit. We can well imagine how the people in such families felt and what the sinners and tax collectors experienced who, because of their karma, were surrounded by all the demons of those times.

Now Jesus' transformed nature became evident, especially in such people. Previously they had felt his love, warmth and gentleness, but now a magical power emanated from him. While previously they had felt merely comforted, now they felt themselves healed. They went to their neighbors who were also depressed and brought them to him. And thus it happened that Christ Jesus, after he had defeated Lucifer and had only been stung by Ahriman, was able to accomplish what is described in the Bible as driving out demons.

Many of the demons he had seen as he lay like dead upon the sacrificial altar went out of the people when he stood before them as Christ Jesus. The demons saw their enemy. As he wandered through the land he often had to think about how he had lain upon the altar where instead of gods there were demons and where he couldn't perform the rite. He also had to think about Bath-Kol, who had revealed the old mystery prayer to him, which I told you about. He concentrated especially on the center line of that prayer: “Now lived in daily bread”. The people who were around him now had to turn stones into bread. And many among them had to live from bread alone. And the words from that ancient pagan prayer – “now lived in daily bread” – sank deeply into his soul. He felt the whole incorporation of man in the physical world. He felt that because of this necessity for bread in human evolution the names of the Fathers in heaven, that is the names of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, had been forgotten. And he felt that no humans existed who could still hear the voices of the old prophets. He now knew that living in daily bread is what had separated men from heaven and what must lead them to egotism and into Ahriman's clutches.

As he wandered with such thoughts through the land, it turned out that those who most strongly felt how Jesus of Nazareth had been transformed became his disciples and followed him. From various stops on his way he would select one or another of them, those who felt that impulse most strongly. Soon there was a large number of such disciples. These people had a completely new basic outlook, who because of him were different from those whom he described to his mother as not being able to hear the old prophesies. And then the god's mission on earth struck him: I am not here to tell men how the gods brought the spirit down to earth, but how mankind can find the way from the earth up to the spirit.

And then the voice of Bath-Kol came to him and he knew that the ancient formulas and prayers must be renewed; he knew that man must seek the way to the spiritual word from below. He inverted the last line of the prayer to make it appropriate for the people of those new times and because it was not to refer to the many spirits hierarchical beings, but only to one spiritual being:

“Our father who art in heaven.”

And the second line, which he had heard as the next to last line: “And forgot your names” – he inverted to accord with the needs of the times:

“Hallowed by thy name.”

And the third line, which was: “For man deserted your [plural] kingdom,” he inverted to: “Thy kingdom come,”

And the line: “In which heaven's will be not done,” he inverted so people could now understand it, for the old version was incomprehensible; he inverted it, for a complete inversion of the way to the spiritual world was to take place: “Thy will be done in heaven as it is on earth.”

And the mystery of bread, the mystery of the incarnation in the physical body, the mystery of all that had been revealed to him by Ahriman's sting – he transformed these things in such a way that man could feel that the physical world also comes from the spiritual world, although it is not directly apparent. So he changed the line about daily bread into a request: “Give us this day our daily bread”. And the words: “Selfhood's guilt by others owed” he changed to: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The second line of the old mystery prayer – “witness of the severing I” he changed to: “but deliver us”, and the first line: “Evil rules” he made “from evil. Amen”.

Thus the prayer which Christianity learned to know as the “Our Father” was transformed through the inversion of the voice of Bath-Kol, which Jesus heard when he fell upon the altar, to what Christ Jesus taught as the new mystery prayer, the new Our Father. The Sermon on the Mount and other things Jesus taught his disciples came into being in a similar way.

Christ Jesus had a remarkable effect on his disciples. Please bear in mind that I am merely relating what is written in the Fifth Gospel. As he made his way through the land his effect on his surroundings was remarkable. It is true that he was together with his disciples but, because he was the Christ-Being, it was as though he was not only present in his own body. One or another of the disciples would sometimes feel as though he were also acting in them, in their own souls. They felt that the Christ-Being was in them and began to say things which in reality only Christ Jesus himself could say. So the group traveled around and spoke to other people but it wasn't always Christ Jesus who spoke, but one of the disciples, for he shared everything with the disciples, also his wisdom.

I must admit that I was astonished when I realized that the conversation with the Sadducee, as related in the Gospel of Mark, was not spoken by Christ Jesus from Jesus' body, but by one of the disciples. It often happened that when Christ Jesus left the group he was with it anyway. Either he walked with them spiritually or he appeared to them in his ether-body. His ether-body was among them, walked around the country with them, and it was not always possible to determine whether his physical body was actually there, or if it was his ether-body.

That was the manner of the interaction with the disciples and the people when Jesus of Nazareth became the Christ-Jesus. He, though, experienced this time as I have already mentioned. At first the Christ-Being was relatively independent of Jesus of Nazareth's body, but had to gradually become more and more similar to it. And the longer he lived the more he was bound to Jesus of Nazareth's body, and a profound pain came over him in the last year due to being bound to the ailing body of Jesus of Nazareth. But he continued to wander about the land with a large group of disciples. One spoke here, another there, and one could think that it was always Christ Jesus – for Christ spoke through them all.

It was once possible to listen in to a conversation among scribes. They said: In order to frighten the people it would be possible to kill any one of them; but it could be the wrong one, because they all talk alike. That wouldn't help us, because then the real Christ Jesus could still be there. Only the disciples can identify him. They would certainly not tell their enemies which is the right one. But Ahriman had become strong enough in respect to the question which remained, which Christ couldn't resolve in the spiritual world, but only on earth. He would have to experience the most terrible deed – what it means to turn stones to bread. For this Ahriman made use of Judas of Iscariot. There was no spiritual means available to identify who among men who revered him was actually the Christ. For where the spirit worked he was not identifiable. Only when an individual – Judas – used means which were unknown to Christ, could he be recognized. He could not be recognized except when someone in the service of Ahriman would betray him for money alone. In this way Christ Jesus was bound to Judas, something which befell him during the temptation event, which is understandable in a god: He didn't know that it was only correct in heaven that one does not need stones for bread. The betrayal took place because Ahriman had retained his sting. Therefore Christ had to come under the power of the lord of death, insofar as Ahriman is the lord of death. That is the connection between the story of the temptation and the mystery of Golgotha with Judas' betrayal.

There is much more to be said from the Fifth Gospel than what I have said here. But during the course of human evolution surely the other parts of the Fifth Gospel will be revealed. I have attempted to give you an indication by telling you more in the way of how it is. At the end of these lectures, it has occurred to me once more what I said at the end of the first lecture – that the needs of the times make it necessary to speak about this Fifth Gospel now. And I would like to urge my dear friends to treat what has been said about the Fifth Gospel in the appropriate way.

You see, we already have enough enemies and they act in a quite peculiar way. I don't wish to speak of this now, perhaps you already know about it from reading the “Newssheet”. You also know the strange fact that there are people who have been saying for a long time now that what I teach is infected with all kinds of dogmatic Christianity, even with Jesuitism. Especially certain followers of the so-called Adyar-Theosophy talk in the worst way about this supposed Jesuitism, as well as many more hateful, unscrupulous things. And a certain source claiming outrage at the narrow-mindedness and perversity of our teaching, then completely falsified it. A man from America learned our teaching over a period of many months, wrote it down, brought it to America in a watered down version and then published a Rosicrucian Theosophy, which he copied from us. [The reference is to Max Heindel – ed.]He says that he learned a lot from us, but that he was then called by the masters and learned more from them. He was silent about the fact that he took the more profound things from my unpublished lecture cycles. One could accept that such a thing could happen in America One could, like Hillel, remain meekly silent – even when it spreads to Europe. Those who are most enraged at us here make a translation and in the translation say: Although there is also a Rosicrucian world view in Europe, it is narrow-minded and Jesuitical, and it can only thrive in the pure air of California.

Well, that's enough! That is our enemies' method. We can look at these things not only calmly, but also with compassion – but we may not close our eyes to them. When such things happen, then care must be taken by those who for years indulged such people who acted without scruples. I would really prefer not to speak about such things, were it not necessary in the service of truth. One must see everything with clarity.

When one the one hand these things are spread around, it does not protect us from others who may find such things unpleasant in a somewhat more honest way. I won't annoy you with all the silly junk written by both sides. All this peculiar literature by Freimark, Schalk, Maack, etc. would not be worthy of note because of its inferiority. But there are people who simply cannot stomach something like the Fifth Gospel. And perhaps no hate was as honest as that which arose when something about the mystery of the two Jesus children was first made public.

Real anthroposophists will treat this Fifth Gospel, which is given in good faith, correctly. Take it with you, discuss it in the branches, but tell the people how it must be treated. Make sure that it is not cast irreverently to people who might ridicule it.

We stand against our times with clairvoyant investigation, so necessary for the times, and above all against academe. We are aware of this. Those who were together with us at the laying of the foundation stone of our building know how necessary is the spreading of a spiritual teaching with strict observance of truth. We tried to be conscious of how distant our present culture is from this search for truth. One can well say that the cry for the spirit is heard through our times, but that people are too proud or limited to want to know anything about the true spirit. The amount of truthfulness necessary in order to witness the spirit must first be acquired. For this amount of truthfulness is lacking in today's educated milieu and, what is worse, this lack is not recognized. Treat what you have heard here about the Fifth Gospel so that it is treated reverently in the branches. We do not emphasize this due to egotism, but for a completely different reason, because the spirit of truth must live in us and the spirit must stand truthfully before us.

People talk today about the spirit, but have no idea of the spirit even when they do. There is a man who has won great respect because he talks so much about the spirit – Rudolf Eucken. He talks a lot about the spirit, but when you read his books – try it sometime – he always writes: The spirit exists, one must experience it, be together with it, sense it,—and so on. All through these books endlessly repeated: spirit, spirit, spirit! They talk about the spirit in this way because they are too lazy or arrogant to go to the source of the spirit. And such people are greatly respected nowadays. It is difficult today to be convincing about what is brought in such a concrete way from the spiritual world, such as the description of the Fifth Gospel. Seriousness and truthfulness are requisites for that. In one of Eucken's latest books, “Can We Still be Christians?”, he goes on and on about soul and spirit, spirit and soul, like a tapeworm, and many such volumes are written, for that is how one gains great respect and fame – when one claims to know something about the spirit, for people don't notice when reading the amount of untruthfulness involved. On one page we read: Humanity is beyond believing in demons; no one can be expected to believe in them. But in another place in the same book we find the peculiar sentence: “Contact of the divine with the human creates demonic powers.” The same man speaks seriously here of demons. Isn't that the deepest inner untruthfulness? But I don't see that many of our contemporaries notice this untruthfulness.

We stand at a point today when the truth about the spirit is in opposition to our times. We must always remember this in order to be clear about what we must do in our hearts if we wish to participate in announcing the spirit, the new life of the spirit which is so necessary for humanity. How can one hope to be well received in leading the human soul to the Christ-Being through spiritual teaching when the clever philosophers and theologians say that there was a Christianity before Christ! They show that the rituals and similar legends existed previously in the Orient. The clever theologians explain to all and sundry that Christianity is nothing more that a continuation of what previously existed. And such literature is greatly esteemed by our contemporaries, who don't realize what is happening.

When one speaks of the Christ-Being as spiritually descended, and then finds the Christ-being worshiped in the same ritual form as the pagan gods were worshiped, and when that is used to deny the Christ-Being, which is the case, it is using the following logic: Someone stays at an inn and leaves his clothes there. It is obvious from the clothes that they belong to him. Afterwards a person such as Schiller or Goethe due to some circumstance puts the clothes on and comes out with the clothes belonging to the other person. Then someone goes around saying asking what kind of special person is that. I have examined the clothes, they belong to so-an-do, and he is not at all special. Because the Christ-Being to some extent uses the clothes of the old rituals, the clever people come and fail to realize that the Christ-Being only puts them on as a garment and what is now in the old rituals is the Christ-Being.

And take the sum of scientific monistic considerations, libraries full – they are evidence of the Christ-Being's clothes, and they are even true! The hounds of cultural evolution are held in high regard and their science is accepted. We must paint this picture in our minds if we want to absorb what is meant with this Fifth Gospel, not only in understanding but also in feeling. What is meant is that we must assert our truth correctly in these new times as a new annunciation, and realize how impossible it is to make it comprehensible to the old times. Therefore Gospel words may be spoken now as we take leave of each other: We will not get far in spiritual development with the way people think today. Therefore this thinking must be changed and put in a different direction. And those whose nature is one of compromise, who have no desire for a clear picture of what is there now and what must come, will be of little use in what is spiritually necessary in the service of humanity.

I was obliged to speak of this Fifth Gospel, which is sacred to me. And I take leave of your hearts and souls with the wish that the bond which has arisen between us through other things may be strengthened through this spiritual investigation of the Fifth Gospel, which is especially dear to me. And perhaps this can release a warm feeling in your hearts and souls: When we are separated in distance and time we want nevertheless to be together, feel together what we are to develop in our souls and to what we are duty bound by the spirit in our times.

Hopefully what we strive for will be accomplished in every soul. I think this is the best farewell greeting I can give at the end of this lecture cycle.

Our first thoughts must once again be directed to the guardian spirits who are guiding those who are at the front where the events of our day are taking place. We address ourselves to the spirits protecting those who are with us in this movement but are now out there, and have to stand up with their life and the whole of their physical being in response to what the time is asking of them. And in a wider sense we are also turning towards the spirits who protect all who have to offer life and limb out there in the field, even though they are not part of our community.

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who have already gone through the gate of death we say:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard in the spheres.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

May the spirit we are seeking in our movement, the spirit we have been seeking in coming together through the years, rule over you and spread his wings over you, so that you shall be able to complete your task according to your karma. Dear friends, I do not know how many of our friends were able to sense that it is much harder than usual to speak in public lecturers in the present day, lecturers like those given yesterday and the day before¹⁵—especially in public lectures of the type given yesterday. The reason is that the things which have to be said may only too easily be subject to misunderstanding. It is particularly when we are within our movement with heart and mind that we need to let a thought I also made reference to the last time I was able to speak to you here, enter more and more profoundly into our souls. It is the thought that, fundamentally speaking, external life—life on the physical plane as man normally encounters it, not in its reality—is Maya, a kind of ghostly dream, and that the truth, the reality, lies only behind this. It must be clear to us that this truth of the Maya cannot be grasped by theories only, nor indeed just with the intellect. It has to be grasped with all the powers of our soul, the whole of our soul-life and, above all, also the impulses of our heart and feelings. Our intellect is focused on things physical and finds it impossible to grasp that this world that surrounds us is not to be regarded as the true, real world. And our feelings, our will impulses, find this truth even more difficult to grasp. Entering into the life of spiritual science we not only have to learn to think differently but also to feel differently and go down to the wellsprings of our will activity in a different way.

It is difficult to find adequate expression for these things, for no words exist for what pertains to the spiritual world. It is therefore only too easy for the things I said yesterday to be taken to show a certain bias, a certain sympathy or antipathy, in the characterization of one folk soul or another in these days when human thoughts and feelings are so strongly tinged with the sympathies and antipathies that arise out of the mood of the time. And yet, when spiritual science is spoken of in the right frame of mind, it will have to be believed that things like the characterization of folk souls in fact cannot be presented in sympathy or antipathy in the usual sense, even if it is necessary to characterize them sharply. If they were presented in sympathy or antipathy they could not be true, they would have to be untrue, a lie. Why is this so?

It is very easy to think that someone developing his soul life in a certain way to attain to perception of the spiritual worlds, to an objective view of these spiritual worlds, might dry up in his inner feelings and will impulses. That definitely is not possible, however. It would be quite impossible for someone to attain to an objective vision of the spiritual world if he first allowed himself to dry up in the sphere of his living will and feelings, dry up in the inner fire of the impulses that are normally arising in the world of human feelings, sentiments and paSsions. On the contrary all the inner feelings there are, all the inner will activity, must be firmly taken hold of, must become as fiery as possible. But they need to be transformed in the soul. They cannot remain the way they are in ordinary life. They need to be transformed to such effect that through this life of feeling and will impulses the person achieves something of a new synthesis in the sphere of his will and feelings. It is exactly in this way that something must evolve which we may call the inner eye, the inner ear. It is impossible to become inwardly dried up when seeking the spiritual world. Yet once that world is perceived, once it has been reached after all the inner struggles, all inner victories, then it does present itself in such a way that, for example, it may still evoke sympathy and antipathy in us, but that any characterization given of it has as little in it of budding sympathy and antipathy as you would find of budding sympathy in a rose you arc looking at. We are able to experience sympathy with it and antipathy, but it is there before our eyes as an objective presence and if we wish to grasp its nature we are merely able to characterize. For a person who is forced, as it were, to characterize the spiritual world, it is in every single case an impossibility to speak in either sympathy or antipathy.

Yesterday the attempt was made to characterize the Italian, the French, the British and the German folk souls. There will, of course, have been some people in the audience who felt that what was presented was not objective characterization but sympathy and antipathy. Yet if sympathy and antipathy were to come to expression the characterization itself would have to be a lying one, it could never be reliable.

You will be able to understand this very well in this individual instance if I tell you the following. You all know that man is not merely the entity that stands before us when we look at him with our everyday eyes. There he is living in his physical body by his very nature, there he looks at us, as it were, through his physical body. Yet he has another reality, one he is not conscious of in ordinary life on earth for reasons you are aware of. This reality essentially lies within his ego and astral body, and he lives and passes through it quite independent of his physical and etheric body between going to sleep and waking up. A spiritual scientist obtains the results of his researches by illuminating for himself what normally remains unconscious between going to sleep and waking up. This gives him inner experiences of things that normally remain hidden behind the outer impressions of the world, the ghostly dreams of the world.

One thing I said in yesterday's lecture was that the folk spirit, the folk soul, lives specifically in the etheric body of man, and we are within this body from the moment we wake until we go to sleep. On waking we become immersed in the folk soul as we enter into the body. When asleep we are not in the folk soul—only between the moments of waking and going to sleep.

The question is: If the spiritual scientist brings inner life and light particularly into the aspects that are not within the physical body, what is the situation with regard to his life in the folk soul when separate from the body? There the folk soul has a divisive effect. The spiritual scientist cannot live within the folk soul when consciously going through the things man goes through in his sleep. The peculiar thing is that at any time, at any particular moment, a certain number of folk souls may be said to be reigning. The way these folk souls behave toward one another actually makes up the whole earth life of mankind, in so far as it is on the physical plane. Entering into the physical body we also enter into our folk soul. Coming out of the physical body, and having conscious experience outside it, we also enter into the folk-soul element—this is one of many experiences one has—but not into our own folk soul. We enter into the other folk souls and never our own, that is the one we live in during the day in our physical bodies. Accept the full weight of these words. On going to sleep we do not enter into one particular folk soul but into the concerted action, the dance as it were, of the other folk souls. The one soul which does not contribute to the dance is the one we enter into on returning to the physical body. In doing his researches, the spiritual scientist actually joins those other folk souls—which are acting in concert and with them lives through the same things we normally experience on the physical plane in relation to our own folk soul, the soul belonging to the nation within which we ordinarily find ourselves.

Let me ask you then: If a spiritual scientist really knows of life not only in his own folk soul but also in those other folk souls, if he has to go through this, would he then have any real reason to describe his own folk soul with a different kind of objectivity than other folk souls? He does not. Here the potential is given to rise above the prejudices of sympathies and antipathies and be objective. Of course it is not only the spiritual scientist who goes through this—and he does it consciously—but all human beings go through it. Between going to sleep and waking up every human soul lives in the sphere where all folk souls act in concert, except for the one his soul lives in when awake in the daytime.

This is something spiritual science offers so that the horizon of our feelings and sentiments can be truly widened. We often say that spiritual science is able to provide for genuine love, with no distinction of race, nation, class and so forth, because of the nature of the insights it makes possible. This statement is so profound that anyone who clearly sees himself as a human being in that part of himself that is of the spirit simply cannot shut himself away in hatred and antipathy from that which is humanity. He will have to say to himself that it is really senseless not to love. Yet in order to be able to say ‘It is really senseless not love’ spiritual science simply must come to us as something we live, not something we merely know. That is also why we pursue spiritual science not merely as knowledge but in such a way that in living together for years in our branches it truly becomes one with us, a spiritual nourishment that we take in and digest.

I have said that between going to sleep and waking man usually lives in the interplay of folk souls other than the one which is his own folk soul at the time. That is the usual way. There is a way, however, of living one-sidedly, as it were, in just one particular folk soul. There is a way in which one is forced, in this state between going to sleep and waking, to live not within the whole interplay of those other folk souls, within their dance as it were. Instead one is more or less under a spell to live together with one or several folk souls that are taken out of the total concord of all folk souls. There is such a way. It consists in our feeling a particular hatred for one or several folk souls or nations. This hatred we produce lends the special power that forces us in our sleep state to live with the folk soul we hate most or even hate altogether. There is no better way of preparing ourselves for entering completely into one particular folk soul when in the unconscious state between going to sleep and waking, and having to live with it the way we live with the folk soul we know when in our physical bodies, than to hate it—but to hate it sincerely, at the level of our feelings, not merely persuading ourselves that we hate it.

When such things are said we become aware how the reality of Maya has to be taken with profound seriousness. It is not only that our intellect, being what it is, does not want to see that things are different in their depths than in the outer ghostly dream they present, but our feelings, our will, also rise in protest against something which holds true for the spiritual world. If we consider such truths as the one of having to live in other folk souls, and particularly in the one we hate, we have to say to ourselves that the vast majority of people reject spiritual truth not only because it is not accessible to the intellect but also because they simply do not want it, because it upsets them also in the sentiments they ordinarily live with on earth. As soon as one enters more deeply and seriously into the realities of the spiritual world, they are not the least bit comfortable; they are not in the least the kind of thing man really likes when he desires to live on the physical plane only. They are uncomfortable. They shake us up and shake us through and the more profound they are the more they demand of us, really at every single moment, that we must be different from the way we usually are on the physical plane. As a living inner entity it demands something different from us than we are on the physical plane, and that is usually one of the reasons why people reject spiritual reality. We cannot do other than see ourselves linked, not with just one part of the world or of mankind but linked with the whole world and the whole of mankind.

Fundamentally speaking, our physical existence is merely the swing of the pendulum to one side. The swing of the pendulum in the other direction is in many respects the opposite, only we do not know of it in our ordinary life. It can be said that things are getting serious as soon as we consider the deeper truths of spiritual life. These deeper truths can become infinitely important in pointing the way for what human evolution, progress for mankind, demands of us at this very time. Let us take a particular example from spiritual science that can be of special importance for the present time.

Things being the way I have just described to you—so that in entering into physical body and ether body we join in experience what is normally called the folk spirit, the folk soul—you will easily understand how sharing in the experience of the fate of the individual folk spirit is one of the things we will gradually shed after death. Many things have been spoken of that man will shed after death; and one of these things is the link with the folk spirit. The folk spirit is active in the progress of earth evolution, it is active in the way mankind develops on earth from generation to generation. After death, between death and rebirth, we have to come free of the folk spirit in the same way we also grow out of other things. This at the same time lends significance to the hero's death, on the field of battle for instance, a significance that is felt. Any who feel it in the right way—and those going through such a death in the right frame of mind surely will feel this—will know that this death is a death of love. It is not suffered for personal reasons, not for the things one can keep with one for. the whole period between death and rebirth—it is suffered for the folk soul, in that this physical and ether body is given up selflessly. It is impossible to think of death in battle without knowing that it is filled through and through with genuine and most heartfelt love, with men being upheld by something that contributes to the future good of mankind. That is what is so great, so utterly tremendous in this death on the field of battle, if it is experienced in the right frame of mind. For it is impossible to conceive of it except in conjunction with love.

The association with our particular folk spirit has to be cast off between death and rebirth. It has to fall away from us. We have to reach a region where we do not live with the individual folk spirit as such. We shall not, however, be able to enter immediately into other folk spirits. That only happens between going to sleep and waking up. We have to free ourselves altogether of everything that is wholly of the earth, and enter into a life that is separate from anything to do with the evolution of mankind on earth. We must also free ourselves of everything that links us to folk spirits. And this again is something that widens and enlarges the horizons of our feeling life, if we make it something we know, for it lets us look towards the other element, an element we seek that is not around us when we live on the horizon of physical existence.

As you were able to see from the characterization of individual folk spirits given yesterday, it is so that in conscious awareness one of them may be more inclined towards the individual personality of man, to what man is as an individual personality, whilst another is less inclined that way. I have compared it with the way one person looks more into his inner life whilst another lives more in the life of the outer world. One particular folk spirit is more concerned with individual human personalities, another less so. As we belong to one folk spirit or another, this determines the way we relate to what the folk spirit is doing in our ether body, what is in preparation there. As a result there are certain differences in the casting-off process after death, in the gradual emergence out of what the folk spirit has made of us.

Let us take the French folk spirit, for example. It is a folk spirit whose Inspirations are connected with a highly developed culture, a culture that can only be seen as arising because this folk spirit is looking back to ancient Greek civilization. I have discussed this already. This folk spirit now works on the people belonging to that particular nation in such a way—and that is the very nature of the folk spirits that go hand in hand with highly developed civilizations—that deep impressions are made on the human ether body, that the signature of the folk spirit leaves a sharp imprint on the ether body. This has to do with something I pointed out yesterday, that the Frenchman becomes attached to the image he has created of himself. The consequence of the sharp impressions left on the ether body by the folk spirit is that when the soul leaves the body when death occurs, sharply distinct features are left in their ether body and also in the astral body of man. It is particularly if one belongs to a nation such as the French that the soul emerges from physical life with an astral body bearing distinct features. The consequence is that it takes a lot to cast off all that is left of the folk spirit after death.

If we compare the shedding of the essential folk spirit as it occurs in a member of the French nation with the same process for a soul that has been under the influence of the Russian folk soul, for example, we get really the opposite effect in the latter case. The Russian folk soul is young, as it were, and as yet concerns itself less with the individual human beings put in its care. Because of this, individual people passing through the gate of death bear little of the stamp of the Russian folk soul in the ether and astral bodies. Looking at the overall situation in the spiritual world we find, in looking at the souls that have passed through the gate of death, that we encounter sharply defined ether bodies and also sharply defined astral bodies in the souls of the French people whilst Russian souls show little of the imprint of the folk spirit on their ether and astral bodies. Because of this the different souls can be used for different purposes by the guiding spirits that have the task of furthering the evolution of mankind.

We are now in an age that truly cannot progress unless a certain sum of spiritual truth reveals itself to mankind. That has been discussed on many occasions, even to the point that it has been said that by a certain time-span in the present century the revelation of Christ will be made to man in the spiritual world. But we can take it in such a way that we say: A spiritual element has to come into the world. This spiritual element entering into human evolution is first of all the fruit of a struggle won by the spirits in the supersensible sphere. Higher spirits, spirits belonging to higher hierarchies, are fighting in this supersensible sphere to enable the spiritual stream to enter into human evolution. In this struggle they also bring into play forces deriving from human beings who have passed through the gate of death. In the life between death and rebirth man is always participating in the work that brings about what happens in the world. Being individual in his constitution he will also contribute in quite a different way, depending on whether he comes from a French body, for example, or a Russian one. That is why the spirits of the different higher hierarchies are able to use these souls in different ways.

The future development of mankind does, however, depend on a tremendous struggle taking place in the spiritual world at this moment. A struggle in the spiritual world does have a different meaning from one in the physical world. A struggle in the spiritual world means working together to give form and function to something fruitful. It is a struggle necessary for human evolution; in short it is a struggle that gets somewhere. It is being fought by certain spirits belonging to the higher hierarchies. They are fighting it by making use of certain young souls coming from the area of Eastern European civilization and certain souls coming from the Western European civilizations. It is a struggle that will go on for a long time yet, a struggle between Russian souls that have gone through the gate of death and French souls that have gone through death; a war waged by spiritual Russia against spiritual France. It is a terrible war if we use the words belonging to the physical plane. Looking into the spiritual world today one sees this struggle between spiritual Russia and spiritual France, and the spiritual world is full of it. It is a distressing struggle.

And now, in the light of this, let us look at what is happening on on the physical plane. An alliance is made. That is the mirror-image of the struggle in the spiritual world. Now this is the kind of problem one has to cope with in spiritual science. Please do not think that it is possible simply to generalize and say: ‘It is easy to arrive at spiritual truths by always thinking the opposite of what is happening on the physical plane’. If that were made the rule we would get the most silly and erroneous results. For it may hold true in five out of a hundred cases, but not in the other ninety-five. All spiritual truths are individual and have to be considered individually! They cannot be determined by mere dialectics. But the truth I have spoken of is one of those that make a particular impact today, for it can make us aware once again how very different the world looks when we see behind the veil of Maya and how the external doings of man may present the opposite of the true reality, of the spiritual.

If we take this point of view it is inevitable that our feelings must change in the contemplation of external happenings. We come to understand that proper discernment must first be used with regard to external events if the truth is to be seen. A cloud formation may look undefined when seen from a distance and quite different from near by. And that is also true for things that happen on the national scale. And right in the middle, I would say, between the warring parties in East and West, lies the German area in the spirit, and this exists for the purpose of mediating between the two sides, truly to mediate between the two, and also does this. And whilst in the spirit there is mediation between the two sides we see them hitting out from both directions and in both directions in the physical world.

In a sense the events we are now experiencing have to do with the deepest impulse in present-day human evolution. I have often said: Why do we actually pursue anthroposophy? We pursue it because it is a cosmic mission, a work the spiritual world demands of man. A number of Imaginations have to be conveyed to mankind; within the near future men will have to take in a number of spiritual truths. That is part of the plan, I would say, for human evolution. Against it there is the objection, the very real objection, the opposing view, that men have to mature gradually and that this takes a long time. But the Imaginations want to come in now into human evolution. Something has to enter into human evolution that lies a bit above the physical plane, I would say, something higher. Men are still rejecting it today, rejecting it as comprehensively as possible. As a result the counter-image appears. And the counter-image of Imaginations are passions, are emotional outbreaks arising from the depths of human nature, from a point as far below the physical plane as the Imagination are above it. When we see human beings face one another in hatred today, in genuine untruthfulness—what is this hatred, this untruthfulness? They are the mirror-images of the Imaginations that want to burgeon forth and are now emerging in this form because men resist them. An element present at a certain height above the physical plane emerges as a product of transformation, as something that lies at the same distance below the physical plane; it has to work itself out. Again it is possible to find the reason for these disagreeable events in the general karma of mankind.

Why does it have to be now, in our present age, that men receive a certain sum of spiritual truths? The question can be answered as follows.

Two things are possible. One is that a person has a certain feeling for spiritual truths and does not meet them with deaf ears, but rather takes them into his heart and his soul. That he becomes an anthroposophist, as it were, the way it is possible now to become an anthroposophist. Or it may happen that a person rejects spiritual truths, that he will say perhaps that all this is foolish, stupid nonsense; that it all comes out of the heads of a few foolish dreamers who would do better to take up something else.

When a person passes through the gate of death he does of course enter into the spiritual world. If someone were to say: ‘Do we only enter into the spiritual world if we acquire knowledge of that world in the time between birth and death?’ we might perhaps say to him: ‘Of course, a person who knows nothing of the spiritual world will also enter into it.’ But what it the difference between these two types of people? The difference is considerable. I am now always speaking only of our own time, for spiritual truths are individual. And if someone were to say in relation to what I described earlier: 'I assume Imaginations unable to come through will therefore always be transformed into a war of malice, like the one we have now?’ that would be the wrong view. At other times they may behave quite differently. Spiritual truths are always individual and what I am going to say now represents a truth that is individual to our time.

A person going through the gate of death without having made use of the opportunity to take in spiritual elements that exist in our time hands over his soul to the higher worlds on passing through the gate of death in almost the same state he received it when he went through birth to enter into physical existence. The higher worlds receive nothing from him but what they have given him on his incarnation. On the other hand, a person may make his own here on earth what it is possible to obtain from the spiritual world, not by mere faith, but by entering into the spiritual worlds in a living way. On his death he will not hand over his soul to the spiritual worlds the way he received it at birth. He will also hand over to the supersensible beings the concepts, ideas and feelings he has achieved here. These belong not only to him, they belong also to the supersensible beings. Any who do not bring these with them will, of course, also live into the spiritual world but make no contribution to human progress, and if people had always lived like that, or done so from a certain point of time, mankind would have remained as it was. There is progress, further development, and souls will always find something new on entering the earth in a new incarnation because they find opportunity to take in the particular mission of an age. In the final instance, a decision always has to be made as to whether we relate to the spiritual world or not. For instance, someone might say: ‘What do I care about the progress of mankind! What does the evolution of the earth matter to me? Let the earth come to a stop! I shall go on regardless.’ That is how a person may speak who has no real love, no interest in earthly progress. Any, however, who bear within them the love for human progress as their highest responsibility will be unable to choose that road. There is also freedom in this sphere. And souls will come to anthroposophy only through freedom and love for man's true progress and man's true good. So it is not possible either to become an anthroposophist out of mere egotism; in becoming one we contribute something to the progress which one otherwise withdraws from. One is active in love therefore—not merely for oneself but for something else.

This is something I hope will always shine through in all our discussions of the spiritual knowledge we are seeking: that this spiritual science is a living, active force. I am not talking about visions; I am talking of this science. Vision merely yields the results. I am speaking of the results coming alive in man. Spiritual science is something alive, something active, that takes up its abode in our souls, that is working and active in our souls.

I have often used the comparison that merely to speak of love—considering particularly the talking that goes on in the theosophical movement—is like standing in front of a stove and preaching that it shall grow hot, this being its duty as a stove. Even the best of sermons concerning its responsibilities as a stove will not make it grow hot. It will grow hot, however, if we put some wood in it and put a match to it. Basically that is how it is with all preaching of human love, and such preaching will prove hardly more successful when directed at men than a sermon directed at the stove, telling it to grow hot. Such preaching has been done at all times and the results can be seen. But anything that is not mere knowledge of the spiritual world, not mere idea, mere word, but is instead something alive, something active in the word, that is the wood we give to our soul, and it will burn if it is rightly taken in by the soul. This can be learned particularly from conflicts like the present one. There knowledge is set aflame, knowledge becomes love, for man is transformed by the spiritual life he has recognized in his depths, in his foundations. This profound transformation is indeed most uncomfortable for him; he rejects spiritual truth and would rather remain in Maya.

Basically, that is also the next reason for the often-heard statement that spiritual truths should not be offered too freely to the public. After all, these are not truths that act as neutrally as physics or chemistry when they are spoken, but truths towards which the human soul cannot maintain a wholly neutral attitude, having to either reject them or take them in. To take them in, however, the soul has to change in a certain way from what it is in ordinary physical life. So it is true that the world does get somewhat stirred up, excited, when the deeper spiritual truths are presented. Yet our age is ordained not to shrink from such excitement and really to go through this excitement. This will be the only way of preparing the ground for a new spiritual life, a spiritual life we must live towards, for we are now indeed at its starting point. And the signs of the times indicate that it is necessary to understand certain things. We may find many of the things that are happening in the outside world particularly in these days incomprehensible and senseless. Just try and take a number of things together. It is my task here, as it were, to speak to you in more intimate fashion than is possible in a public lecture. I have the task of formulating the things I said in my public lectures that were in the context of current events in such a way that they become effective truth; to formulate them in such a way that the words are the right ones for this our time. If you try and take a number of things together, you will see that one particular aim has been present all the time: to call forth ideas that are a little more the right ones, sentiments and feelings that are more the right ones, with regard also to current events, than those that come so easily and are so widespread.

Try, for instance, to hold on to the fact that in my first public lecture I endeavoured to show how the German people at heart really had a very strong inclination towards peace, towards peaceful progress, and how it really is quite accurate to say: the German people as such did not want the war. Though if we listen to our left and to our right we find they all say, they all stress: ‘We did not want the war!’ The French did not want the war. The English did not want the war. They had to go to war for 'moral reasons'. But those moral reasons were produced in just eighteen hours! They all stress they did not want the war. Let us hold fast to that—there is a lot of truth in it, a great deal of truth—and consider what I did when I said: the German people did not want the war. I did not follow this with the conclusion: this means the other side did want it. Instead, I said quite expressly in that first lecture that at most we could raise a question, the question as to who could have prevented the war. And there I pointed to the Russian East, for they could have prevented the war.

I have drawn special attention to the fact that the right answer depends on the right question being asked. If someone insists he did not want the war this does not necessarily mean the other person did want it. It is possible that both did not want it and yet it came about. Leaving aside the peculiar situation of Russia, we are basically able to say that the war really had not been wanted or intended—what we call ‘intend’ on the physical plane. This war arose with elemental necessity out of opposing forces; quite incomprehensibly out of forces in elemental opposition. Basically, it has never before happened in world history that an event popped up as though out of a box within such a few days. This has shown that whatever takes place in external events arises from spiritual contexts and presents itself as something physical.

From this point of view the events of today may serve as a lesson, to show mankind that we will never get the right answer by asking: ‘Did he do it?’ or ‘Did another do it?’ Instead you have to accept the premise that something else has been involved as well; you will have to make the effort and go somewhat deeper. Only then will we learn to speak of events in the right way.

There is yet another reason why it will be necessary to go to the effort of taking a deeper view of things. We are now experiencing how the world appears divided against itself. People are not yet able to do other than always blame another person. The time will come when the deeper truths relating to karma will have entered into the hearts and minds of men. Then this way of blaming the other for whatever has to be lived through will no longer exist. Then people will know that every nation is, in its karma, living through the things it has to live through for its own sake. A nation will be aware of the necessity to gain strength in battle—not because of another but for its own sake—to progress; the other is in a certain way only the agent. This will focus attention on the karma of folk souls. And seen from a higher point of view, the statement: ‘I am standing here and the other is standing there. It is his fault. He is responsible for my having to go through these events, these struggles. It is his doing’ is like a man of fifty looking at a child. The child is young, he is old; when the child did not yet exist he was not yet old, and as the child grows he is getting old. It is then as though he were to say: ‘It is the child's fault that I am getting old; for if the child were not to grow and get older I also would not get old!’ But the child can merely make him aware of getting old.

This is what we must take note of. Every nation has to experience whatever it does experience out of its karma, even the most serious of events. Do not say that such a truth, when it enters into the hearts and minds of men, will be something comfortless that enters into their hearts and minds. Instead, it will lead to a heroic view of life, a courageous view of life, a view of life that encompasses evolution. Once men are able to hold such a view of life it will appear to them as a waste of energy always to seek the fault in another and always to carry on to the usual conclusion. They will call upon the energies that can help them onward. They will learn to identify with their destiny in every sphere. We have seen, in my public lecture, that this destiny, generally seen as something external, can only be properly grasped when we surrender to this destiny. And it is the same with the karma of a nation. When love comes to earth then this attitude will arise among men.

Again, as on former occasions, I would appeal to you, dear friends, who have dedicated yourselves to a spiritual movement, to consider that in future it will be necessary to fill the mental horizon we live in not merely with the kind of thoughts that existed before, but to fill it with new thoughts. These, however, can only be thoughts arising from the spiritual world. It will not be immaterial whether or not a number of people send up thoughts into the spiritual world like those deriving from such considerations as have been presented today. In deciding to meditate on these truths you will help the events that are to happen in the future to happen in the right way, for the good of man. You are anything but inactive with regard to human progress if you meditate on the thoughts the present time calls for in order that man may truly progress. Let us hope that a good many of us succeed in doing spiritual work side by side with the work that is done with blood and death; spiritual work which consists in filling the World with the right thoughts, with thoughts that relate to the mission of age. We shall then be able to feel that these are the true thoughts of love. Looking for a quotation, many people have been reaching for the popular volume by Buechmann these days to find the right phrase and quoted the words of old Heraclitus, according to which war is the ‘father of all things’.¹⁶ Heraclitus was right in saying this and those who quote him are also right. Yet a father on his own cannot produce a child. The child has to have a mother. As war is the father, so anything achieved in peace-filled work is the mother. Unless the father is to remain sterile, there has to be a mother. And she in turn will have to come from the hearts and minds of those who understand the mission of our time in the spirit and know how to come to love out of understanding.

That is what I want to put into your souls in today's gathering, so that in keeping with the demands made in the present day our spiritual science shall not serve merely to satisfy our curiosity or thirst fa: knowledge but give us the right living energies, energies that we develop to make them a true comfort in the sorrows our time is bringing. True comfort does not result in weakness but leads to strength, courage to be active—spiritually active or physically active, but in any case active. Over and over again we have to remember how important it is in our time for a number of people to feel the free impulse to enter more deeply into the spirit. For this in itself means that progress is made not by the individual but by the whole of mankind.

And in this attitude of mind let us in conclusion return once more to the thoughts we are sending forth, in the way I have indicated, to those who are at the front.

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 15. Lectures given on 26 November 1914 (‘Die Menschenseele in Leben und Tod’) and 27 November 1914 (‘Die Seelen der Volker’) both in Aus schicksaltragender Zeit (GA 64). The Human Soul in Life and Death (tr. V. Compton-Burnett, C. Davy, D.S. Osmond and K. Wegener) London, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1935 and The Soul of the People (tr. not mentioned) London, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1934.
• 16. Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BC), Greek philosopher of Ephesus: Fragment B53 in H. Diels Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Vol. I.

I must ask my audience to be considerate with me to-day, because I have only just arrived after a very tiring journey and shall probably not feel able to speak to you adequately until tomorrow.

I want this first lecture to be a kind of introduction to the series I am to deliver here. I had not really intended to speak during the Conference, because I think the stimulus given by anthroposophical research to medicine and to scientific thought ought to be worked out by those who are specialists in the various domains. Indeed, all that comes from anthroposophical investigation in regard to medicine and, for instance, physiology, can be nothing more than a stimulus which must then be worked out empirically. Only on the basis of this empirical study can there arise valid and convincing judgments of the matters in question—and this is the kind of judgment that is needed in the domain of therapy.

These lectures, however, are given at the request of doctors who are working with us and I shall try to deal with just those points where Anthroposophy can throw light into the realm of medicine. I shall endeavour to show, first of all, that an understanding of the human being in health and disease can be enriched and deepened through anthroposophical conceptions.

By way of introduction, I may perhaps be permitted to speak of the sense in which the anthroposophical mode of thought should be understood to-day, in our own age. People so readily confuse what is here called Anthroposophy with older traditional ideas. I have no wish to waste words about the value of these old conceptions, or to criticise them in any way. But it must be emphasised that the conceptions put forward by me are founded on a basis quite different from that of the various mystical, theosophical and so-called gnostic ideas which have arisen traditionally in the course of human history. In order to make myself clear, I need mention only the main points of difference between the conceptions which will be put forward here and those of earlier times. Those earlier conceptions arose in human thought at a time when there was no science in our sense; mine have been developed in an age when science has not only come into being but has reached a certain—albeit provisional—perfection. This must always be remembered if we would understand the meaning and significance of our studies, for it applies to all that may be said and discovered by Anthroposophy in regard to the different domains of human knowledge and capacity.

You all know—there is no need to enlarge upon it—that in those earlier times man had a real but non-scientific conception of the super-sensible world. Medicine, too, was permeated with conceptions of the human being that did not originate, as is the case to-day, from empirical research. We need go back only to the age shortly before that of Galen, and, if we are open-minded enough, we shall everywhere find traces of spiritual conceptions of the being of man on which medical thought, too, was based. Permeating these conceptions of the form of man, of his organs and organic functions, were thoughts of the Supersensible. According to the modern empirical way of thinking, there are no grounds for connecting anything super-sensible with the nature and constitution of man, but in those older conceptions the super-sensible was as much a part of man as colours, forms and inorganic forces now seem to us part and parcel of the objects in the outer world.

Only prejudice will speak of those earlier ages in the development of medicine as if its ideas were merely childish, compared with those that have been evolved to-day. Nothing could be more inadequate than what history has to tell in this connection, and anyone who has the slightest understanding of the historical evolution of mankind, who does not take the point of view that perfection has been reached and that everything earlier is mere foolishness, will realise that even now we have arrived only at relative perfection and that there is no need to look back upon what went before with a supercilious eye. Indeed, this is patent when we consider the results that were achieved. On the other hand, a man concerned with any branch of knowledge to-day must never overlook all that science has accomplished for humanity in this age. And when—to use the Goethean expression—a spiritual conception of the human being in sickness and health strives to express itself to-day, it must work with and not against modern scientific research.

After what I have said, you will not accuse me of any desire to rail against the concepts of modern science. Indeed, I must emphasise at the outset that such a thing is out of the question and for a very fundamental reason. When we consider the medical views that were held in an earlier period of civilisation, we find that although they were by no means so childish as many people imagine nowadays, they did lack what modern science has been able to give us, for the simple reason that man's faculty of cognition was not then adapted to the study of objects as we approach them with modern empirical thought, which is assisted, moreover, by all kinds of scientific instruments. The doctor, or I might just as well say the physiologist or biologist of olden times, had an entirely different outlook from the outlook of modern man. In the ages that really came to an end with Galen, medical consciousness had quite another orientation. What Galen saw in his four elements of the human organism, in the black and yellow gall, in the phlegm and in the blood, was utterly different from the modern conception.

When Galen describes all this and we understand the terminology—as a rule, of course, words handed down by tradition are not understood—we get the impression of something vague and nebulous. To Galen, it was a reality; in what he called phlegm he did not see the substance we call phlegm. To him, phlegm was not only a state of fluidity permeated with life, but a state of fluidity permeated with soul. This was as clear a perception to him as our perception of the red or blue colour of some object in front of us. But precisely because he was able to perceive something outside the range of modern scientific perception, Galen was not able to see many things that are brought to light to-day by our scientific consciousness. Suppose, for example, a man with not so very abnormal sight looks through spectacles, and by this means the contours of objects become more definite. As the result of modern empiricism, all that was once seen in a cloud, but none the less permeated by Spirit and soul, has disappeared and given place to the sharp contours of empirical observation. The sharp contours were not there in olden times. Healings were performed out of a kind of instinct which was bound up with a highly developed sensitiveness to one's fellow-men. A sort of participation in the patient's disease, which could even be painful, arose in the doctor of olden times, and on the basis of this he set about his cure.

Now for the reason that the advance to objective empiricism is rooted in the evolutionary process of man, we cannot merely brush it aside and return to the old. Only if we develop certain atavistic faculties shall we perceive Nature as the ancients perceived her, in all domains of knowledge, including that of medicine. When we pass out into modern culture, equipped with the kind of training given in our elementary schools—not to speak of higher education—it is simply impossible to see things as the ancients saw them. It is impossible, and moreover, if such a thing were to happen, a man would be regarded as being if not gravely, at any rate mildly pathological, not quite ‘normal’—and, indeed, not altogether unjustly. For there is something pathological to-day in all instinctive ‘clairvoyance,’ as it is called. Upon that point we must be quite clear. But what lies in our power is to work our way up to a perception of the spiritual by developing inner faculties otherwise latent in our being, just as in the course of generations the eye has worked itself up from indefinite vision to clear, concrete vision.

To-day, then, it is possible to develop faculties of spiritual perception. I have described this development in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It, and in other writings. When these faculties have developed in a man he perceives, to begin with, a world not previously visible to him, a world embracing a spiritual Cosmos as well as the Cosmos revealed to sense-perception to-day, including all the discoveries and calculations of astronomy. To the material Cosmos that is permeated with natural law, a spiritual Cosmos is added. And when we seek to discover what exists in this spiritual Cosmos, we also find man. We contact a spiritual universe, a universe permeated with soul, where man has his rightful place.

If we pursue ordinary science, we begin either with the simplest living being or with the simplest form of life—the cell—and then trace the simple on into the more complex, ascending thus from what most resembles purely physically organised substance to the highly intricate organism of man. If we seriously pursue Spiritual Science, we begin really at the other end. We descend from a comprehension of the spiritual in the universe, regarding this as complex, and the cell as the simplest thing in the organism. Viewed in the light of Spiritual Science, the universe is the summit of complexity, and just as we elaborate our own act of cognition in order, let us say, to pass from the cell to the human being, so do we progressively simplify what the Cosmos reveals and then come to man. We go an opposite way—that is to say, we begin at exactly the opposite starting-point—but when to-day we thus pursue Spiritual Science, we are not led all the way into the regions embraced by material empiricism. I lay great stress upon this point and hope there will be no misunderstanding. That is why I must ask you to-day to forgive certain pedantic ideas.

It is quite conceivable that someone might think it useless to adopt the methods of empirical thought in physiology or biology. What need is there for any specialised branch of science?—he might ask. One develops spiritual sight, looks into the spiritual world, arrives at a conception of man, of the being of man in health and disease, and then it is possible to found a kind of spiritualised medicine. As a matter of fact that is just the kind of thing many people do, but it leads nowhere. They abuse empirical medicine but they are, after all, abusing something which they do not understand in the very least. There can be no question of writing off empirical science as worthless and taking refuge in a spiritualised science brought down from the clouds. That is quite the wrong attitude to adopt.

Now it must be remembered that spiritual-scientific investigation does not lead to the same things that can be examined under the microscope. If anyone tries to pretend that with the methods of Spiritual Science he has found exactly the same things as he finds under a microscope, he may safely be summed up as a charlatan. The results of modern empirical investigation are there and must be reckoned with. Those who seriously pursue Spiritual Science must concern themselves with the phenomena of the world in the sense of ordinary empiricism. From Spiritual Science we discover certain guiding lines for empirical research, certain ruling principles, showing us, for instance, that what exists at some particular place in the organism, must also be studied in reference to its position.

Many people will say: ‘Yes, but a cell is a cell, and purely empirical observation must determine the distinguishing feature of this cell—whether it is a liver-cell or a brain-cell and so on.’ Now that is not correct. Suppose, for example, I walk past a Bank at 9 o'clock in the morning and see two men sitting there side by side. I look at them and form certain ideas about them. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon it happens that I again walk past the Bank. There are the two men, sitting just as before. The empirical state of affairs is exactly the same—allowing for very slight differences. But now, think of it: one of the men may have remained sitting there for the whole six hours. The other may have been sent out on quite a journey directly after I first passed the Bank, and may have only just returned. This changes the picture fundamentally and has nothing to do with what I actually perceive with my senses. So far as my senses are concerned, the same state of things presents itself at 9 o'clock in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but the objective fact must be judged from its connections, its attendant circumstances.

In this sense our conception of a liver-cell must differ essentially from our conception of a cell in the brain or the blood. For only if it were correct to say, for the sake of example, that the basis of everything is a primeval germ-cell which has been fertilised and that the whole organism can be explained by a process of simple fission and differentiation of this primeval germ-cell—only then could we proceed to treat a liver-cell exactly the same as a brain-cell in accordance with the purely empirical facts. Yes, but now suppose that this is by no means correct; that by virtue of its very position in the organism the relation of a liver-cell to forces outside man, outside the bounds of the skin, is not at all the same as the relation of a brain-cell to these forces. In that case it will not be correct to look on what is happening merely as a continuation of the process of fission and subsequent location in the body. We must rather assume that the relation of the brain-cell to the universe outside is quite different from that of the liver-cell.

Suppose a man looks at the needle of a compass, finds it pointing from South to North, from North to South, and then decides that the forces which set the needle in this direction lie in the needle itself. He would certainly not be considered a physicist to-day. A physicist brings the needle of the compass into connection with what is called terrestrial magnetism. No matter what theories may be evolved, it is simply impossible to attribute the direction of the needle to forces lying within the needle itself. It must be brought into relation with the universe.

In the study of organic life to-day, its relations to the universe are usually regarded as quite secondary. But suppose it were indeed true that merely on account of their different positions the liver and the brain are actually related quite differently to cosmic forces outside man. In that case we could never arrive at an explanation of the being of man by way of purely empirical thought. An explanation is possible only if we are able to say what part the whole universe plays in the moulding of the brain and again of the liver, in the same sense as the Earth plays its part in the direction taken by the needle in the compass.

Suppose we are tracing back the stream of heredity. We go to the forefathers, pass on to the present generation and then to the progeny, both in the case of animals and of human beings. We take account of what we find—as naturally we must—but we reckon merely with processes observed to lie immediately within the human being. It hardly ever occurs to us to ask whether under certain conditions it is possible for cosmic forces to work in the most varied ways upon the fertilised germ. Neither do we ask: Is it perhaps, impossible to explain the formation of the fertilised germ-cell if we remain within the confines of the human being himself? Must we not relate this germ-cell to the whole universe? In orthodox science to-day, the forces that work in from the Cosmos are secondary. To a certain limited extent they are taken into consideration, but they are always secondary. And now you may say: ‘Yes, but modern science leads us to a point where such questions no longer arise. It is antiquated to relate the human organs to the Cosmos!’ In the way in which this is often done, it is antiquated. The fact that as a rule such questions do not arise to-day is due entirely to our scientific education. Our education in science confines us to this purely objective and empirical mode of research, and we never come to the point of raising such questions as I have indicated by way of introduction. But the extent to which man is able to advance in knowledge and action in every sphere of life depends upon the raising of questions. If questions never arise, it means that a man is living in a kind of fog. He himself is dimming his free outlook upon reality, and it is only when things will no longer fit into his scheme of thought that he begins to realise the limitations of his conceptions.

Now I think that in the domain of modern medicine there may be a feeling that the processes taking place in the being of man are not wholly reconcilable with the simple, straightforward theories upon which most cures are based. There is a certain feeling that it must somehow be possible to approach the whole subject from another angle. And I think that what I shall have to say in this connection will mean something to those who are specialists in their particular branches of science, who have practical experience of the processes of health and disease and have realised that current conceptions and theories are too limited to grapple with the intricate organism of man.

Let us be quite honest with ourselves. During the nineteenth century a kind of axiom was put forward by nearly every branch of scientific thought. With a persistence that was enough to drive one to despair, it was constantly being said: ‘Explanations must be absolutely simple.’ And indeed they were! Yes, but if facts and processes are complicated it is prejudging the issue to say that the explanations must be simple. The thing is to accustom ourselves to deal with their complexities. Unspeakable harm has been done in the realms of science and art by the insistent demand for simplification. In all her manifestations, small and great, Nature is highly complicated, never simple. We can really grapple with Nature only if we realise from the outset that the most seemingly comprehensive ideas are related to the reality just as photographs of a tree, taken from one side only, are related to the tree. I can photograph the tree from every side and the photographs may be very different. The more photographs I have, the more nearly will my idea approximate to the reality of the tree.

The prevalent opinion to-day is this: such and such a theory is correct. Therefore some other theory—one with which we do not happen to agree—must be wrong. But that is just as if a man were to photograph a tree from one side only. He has his particular photograph. Somebody else takes a photograph from another side and says to the first man: ‘Your photograph is absolutely false; mine, and mine alone, represents the truth. In short, my particular view is correct.’ All controversies about materialism, idealism, realism and the like, have really taken this form. They are by no means dissimilar to the seemingly trivial example I have given. At the very outset of our studies I ask you not to take what I have to say as if it were meant to tend in the direction of materialism, idealism, or mysticism, but merely as an attempt to go straight for reality to the extent which the capacity of human thought permits. Materialistic conceptions often achieve great results when it is a question of mastering reality, but the spiritual aspect must be introduced as well. If it is impossible to keep the various aspects separate, our ideas will appear rather as if one took many different photographs all on the same plate. Indeed, many things are like this to-day. It is as if photographs from many different aspects had been taken on one plate.

Now when the forces lying latent in the soul of man are energised by the methods outlined in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, we rise above the ordinary condition of knowledge—to which the latest phase in biology pays special devotion—and reach what I have described as Imaginative Cognition. A still higher level is that of ‘Knowledge by Inspiration,’ and the highest—if I may use this expression—is that of true Intuition, Intuitive Knowledge. In Imaginative Knowledge one comes to pictures of reality, knowing very well that they are pictures, but also that they are pictures of reality, and not merely dream-pictures. The pictures arising in Imaginative Cognition are true pictures but not the reality itself. At the stage of Knowledge by Inspiration reality begins to stream into these pictures, something lives within them; they tell us more than the picture alone. They themselves bear witness to a spiritual reality. And in acts of Intuitive Knowledge we live within the spiritual reality itself.—These are the three stages described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.

Now these three modes of higher knowledge give us, to begin with, an understanding of spiritual worlds, of a spiritual universe and of man as a being of Spirit and soul; they do not, in the early stages, reveal to us the findings of empirical research in the realm, say of, biology. When Imagination, or Inspiration, or Intuition, is used for gaining understanding of the being of man, a different way is followed.

Take, for instance, the structure of the human brain. It does not perhaps strike physiologists and doctors as very extraordinary, but to those who call themselves psychologists it is remarkable in the extreme. Psychologists are a strange phenomenon in our civilisation because they have managed to develop a science without subject-matter—a psychology without a soul! Think for a moment of a psychologist who takes his start purely from empirical science. In recent times people have really been at a loss to know what to make of philosophy, because it has been impossible to know whether philosophers know anything or not. Scientists, however, are supposed to know something, and so certain scientists who dabble in philosophy have been given Chairs of Philosophy. Current opinion has been this: the scientists must have some knowledge, because although it is quite possible in philosophy to talk round and round a subject, it is not possible in science to talk hot air about something that has been observed under a microscope, through a telescope, or by means of Röntgen rays. All these things can be tested and proved, but in philosophy it is not so easy to prove whether or not a man is talking out of the clouds.

And now, think of how Theodor Ziehen speaks of the structure of the brain. In this connection I once had a very interesting experience, and perhaps I can make the point more concrete by telling you a certain anecdote. Many years ago I once attended a meeting where an eminent doctor was speaking about the structure of the brain. He analysed the structure of the brain in relation to the soul-life of man from a point of view which might justly be called materialistic. He was an out-and-out materialist, one who had analysed the structure of the brain quite well to the extent to which it has been investigated in our times, and he then proceeded to explain the life of soul in connection with the brain and its structure. The chairman of the meeting was a follower of Herbart, and he, therefore, was not concerned with analysing the structure of the brain but the life of conception and ideation, as Herbart, the philosopher, had once done. He—the chairman—then said the following: ‘Here we have something very remarkable. The physiologist or the doctor makes diagrams and figures of the structure of the brain. If I, as a Herbartian, make drawings of the complicated associations of ideas—I mean a picture of the ideas which associate and not of the nerve fibres connecting one nerve-cell with another—if I, as a genuine Herbartian who does not concern himself with the brain as a structure, make symbolic diagrams of what I conceive to be the process underlying the concatenation of ideas, my drawings look exactly the same as the physiologist's sketches of the structure of the brain!’

This comparison is not unjustified. Science has taught us more and more about the structure of the brain. It has been proved in ever greater measure that the physical structure of the brain does, indeed, correspond in a marvelous way with the organisation of our life of ideation. Everything in the life of ideation can be found again in the structure of the brain. It is as if Nature herself had intended to create in the brain a plastic image of man's life of ideation. Something of the kind strikes us forcibly when we read statements like those of Meynert—nowadays they are already considered rather out-of-date. Meynert was a materialist, but an excellent brain-physiologist and psychologist. What he, as a materialist, tells us is a wonderful contribution to what is discovered when the actual brain is left out of account and we deal only with the way in which ideas unite, separate, etc., and then draw figures and diagrams. In short, if anything could make a man a materialist it is the structure of the human brain. At all events this much must be admitted: If, indeed, the Spirit and soul exist, they have in the human brain so perfect an expression that one is almost tempted to ask why the Spirit and soul in themselves are necessary for the life of ideation, even if people still hanker after a soul that can at least think. The brain is such a true mirror-image of the Spirit and soul—why should the brain itself not be able to think?

All these things must of course be taken with reservations. To-day I only want to indicate the tenor of our studies as a whole. The human brain, especially when we begin to make detailed research, is well calculated to make us materialists. The mystery that really underlies all this clears up only when we reach the stage of Imaginative Knowledge, where pictures arise—pictures of the spiritual world not previously visible. The pictures actually remind us of the configurations in the human brain formed by the nerve-fibres and nerve-cells.

What, then, is this Imaginative Knowledge, which functions, of course, entirely in the super-sensible world? If I were to attempt to give you a concrete picture of what Imaginative Knowledge is, in the way that a mathematician uses figures to illustrate a mathematical problem, I should say the following: Imagine that a man, living in the world, knows more than sense-cognition can tell him because he can rise to a world of pictures which express a reality, just as the human brain expresses the life of soul. In the brain, Nature has given us as a real Imagination, an Imagination that is real in the concrete sense, something that is attained in Imaginative Knowledge at a higher level.

This, you see, leads us more deeply into the mysteries of the constitution of man. As we shall find later on, this marvelous structure of the human brain is not an isolated formation. Through Imagination we behold a super-sensible world, and it is as though a part of this world had become real in a lower world; in the human brain a world of Imagination lies there, in concrete fact, before us. I do not believe that anyone can speak adequately about the human brain unless he sees in its structure an Imaginative replica of the life of soul. It is just this that leads us into difficulties when we take our start from ordinary brain-physiology and try to pass to an understanding of the life of soul. If we confine ourselves to the brain itself, a life of soul over and above this does not seem to be necessary. The only persons with a right to speak of a life of soul over and above the brain are those who have a knowledge of it other than that which is acquired by customary methods. For when, in the act of spiritual knowledge, we come to know this life of soul, we realise that it has its complete reflection in the structure of the human brain, and that the brain, moreover, can do everything that the super-sensible organ of soul can do by way of conceptual activity. Down to its very functions the brain is a mirror-image. With brain-physiology, therefore, no one can prove or disprove materialism. It simply cannot be done. If man were merely a being of brain, he would never need to say to himself: ‘Over and above this brain of mine, I possess a soul.’

In contrast to this—and I shall now describe in an introductory way something that will be developed in the subsequent lectures—let us consider a different function of the human organism, not the life of ideation, but the process or function of breathing. Think of the breathing process and of what passes into consciousness with regard to it. When we say to ourselves: ‘I have an idea which reminds me of another idea I had three years ago and I link the one to the other’—we may well be able to make diagrams, especially if we take a series of ideas. Such diagrams will bear a great resemblance, for instance, to Meynert's sketches of the structure of the brain. Now this cannot be done when we try to find an expression in the organism of man of what is contained in the breathing-processes. We can find no adequate expression of the breathing process in the structures and formations of the physical organs. The breathing process is something for which there is no adequate expression in the human organism, in the same sense as the structure of the brain is an adequate expression for the life of ideation and perception.

In Imaginative Knowledge pictures arise before us, but if we rise to knowledge by Inspiration, reality streams through the pictures from behind, as it were. If, then, we rise to Inspiration and gaze into the super-sensible world in such a way that the Imaginations teem with spiritual reality, we suddenly find ourselves standing in a super-sensible process which has its complete analogy in the connection between the breathing process, the structure of lungs and arachnoidal cavity, central canal of the spinal cord and the continuous flow of the breath into the brain. In short, if we rise to Inspiration, we learn to understand the whole meaning of the breathing process, just as Imaginative Knowledge leads to an understanding of the structure of the brain. The brain is an Imagination made concrete; everything connected with the breathing process is an Inspiration made real, an Inspiration brought down into the world of sense. A man who strives to reach the stage of Knowledge by Inspiration enters a world of Spirit and soul, but this world lies there tangibly before him when he observes the whole breathing process and its significance in the human organism.

Imaginative Knowledge, then, is necessary to an understanding of the structure of the brain; Knowledge by Inspiration is necessary before we can understand the rhythm of breathing and everything connected with it. The relation of the breathing process to the Cosmos is quite different from that of the brain. The outer, plastic structure of the brain is so completely a mirror-image of the Spiritual that it is possible to understand this structure without penetrating very deeply into the super-sensible world. Indeed, we need only rise to Imagination, which lies quite near the boundaries of ordinary cognition. The breathing process cannot be understood by means of Imagination; here we must have Inspiration, we must rise higher in the super-sensible world.

To understand the metabolic process we must rise higher still. The metabolic process is really the most mysterious of all processes in the human being. The following lectures will show that we must think of the metabolic process quite differently from the way in which it is thought of in empirical physiology. The changes undergone by the substances as they pass from the tongue to the point where they bring about something in the brain cells, for instance, cannot, unfortunately, be followed by means of purely empirical research, but only by means of Intuition. Intuition leads us beyond the mere perception of the object into the very object itself. In the brain, the Spirit and soul create for themselves an actual mirror-image, but they remain, in essence, outside this image. As Spirit and soul they influence and pass into the breath-rhythm but constantly withdraw. In the metabolism, however, the Spirit and soul submerge themselves completely; as Spirit and soul they disappear in the actual process. They are not to be found—neither are they to be found by empirical research.

And now think of Theodor Ziehen's subtle descriptions of the structure of the human brain. It is, indeed, also possible to make symbolic pictures of the memory in such a way that the existence in the brain of physiological-anatomical mirror-images of the faculty of memory can be proved. But when Ziehen comes to the sentient processes, there is already a hitch, and that is why he does not speak of feelings as independent entities, but only of mental conceptions coloured with feeling. And of the will, modern physiologists have ceased to speak I Why? Very naturally they say nothing. Now when I want to raise my arm—that is to say, to accomplish an act of will—I have, first of all, the idea. Something then descends into the region that, according to current opinion, is wholly ‘unconscious.’ Everything that cannot be actually observed in the life of soul, but is none the less believed to be there, is thrown into the reservoir of the ‘unconscious.’ And then I observe how I move my hand. Between the intention and the accomplished fact lies the will, which plays right down into the material nature of the physical organism.

This process can be followed in detail by Intuitive Knowledge; the will passes down into the innermost being of the organism. The act of will enters right into the metabolism. There is no act of will performed by physical man which cannot be traced by Intuitive Knowledge to a corresponding metabolic process. Nor is there any process of will which does not find its expression in demolition, dissolution—call it what you will—within the metabolic processes. The will first demolishes what exists somewhere or other in the organism, in order that it may act. It is just as if I had to burn up something in my arm before being able to use this limb for the expression of my will. Something must first be done away with, as we shall see in the following lectures.

I know that this would be considered a fearful heresy in science to-day, but nevertheless it will reveal itself to us as a truth. Something that is of the nature of substance must be destroyed before the will can come into play. Spirit and soul must establish themselves where substance existed. Understanding of this belongs to the very essence of Intuitive Knowledge, and we shall never be able to explain the metabolic processes in the human being unless we investigate them by its means.

These three processes—the nerve-sensory process, the rhythmic processes (breathing and blood circulation) and the metabolic processes—include, fundamentally speaking, every function in the human organism. Man is really objective knowledge, knowledge made actual—no matter whether we merely observe him from outside or dissect him. Take the human head. We understand what is going on in the head when we realise that there is such a thing as Imaginative Knowledge; the processes in the rhythmic system become clear when we know of the existence of Knowledge by Inspiration; we understand the metabolic processes when we know of the existence of Intuition. Thus do the principles of reality interpenetrate in the being of man. Take, for example, the specific organs of the will—they can be understood only by an act of Intuitive Knowledge.

As long as we apply a rigidly objective mode of cognition to the being of man, we shall not realise that he is, in fact, not at all as he is usually supposed to be. Modern physiology knows, of course, that to a great extent the human being is a column of fluid. But now ask yourselves quite honestly whether physiology does in fact reckon with man as a column of fluid, or whether it does not proceed merely as if he were a being consisting of solid forms. You will probably have to admit that little account is taken of the fact that he is essentially a fluidic being and that the solids have merely been inserted into this fluid. But, as a matter of fact, man is also an airy, gaseous being, and a being of warmth as well. The solid part of man can well be understood by means of ordinary objective cognition. Just as in the laboratory I can become familiar with the nature of sulphide of mercury, so by chemical and physical investigation of the human organism I can acquaint myself with all that is solid. It is different with the fluids in the being of man. The fluids live in a state of perpetual integration and disintegration and cannot be observed in the same way as the stomach or heart are observed and then drawn. If I make drawings of these organs as if they were solid objects, a great deal can be said about them. But it is not the same if we take this watery being of man as something real. In the fluids something is always coming into being and disappearing again. It is as if we were to conceive of the heart as continually coming into being and disappearing—although the process there is not a very rapid one. The watery being of man must be approached with Imaginative Knowledge.

The importance of the organic functions in the human organism, and their connection with the circulation, are of course well known, but how these functions play into one another—that follows precisely the pattern of Inspiration. Only through Inspiration can the airy part of man be understood.

And now let us pass to the warmth in the human being. Try to realise that man is something very special by virtue of the fact that he is a being of warmth; that in the most various parts of his structure warmth and cold are found present in the most manifold ways. Before we can realise how the Ego lives in the warmth in man, we must ourselves live in the process. There must be an act of Intuitive Knowledge.

Before man can be known in his whole being—not as if he were simply a mass of solid organs with sharp contours—we must penetrate into the organism from many different angles. Just as we feel the need to exercise Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition as we pass from the brain to the other organic phenomena, so it is when we study the aggregate states of matter within him. The solid part of man, his solid bodily nature, hardly differs at all from the state in which substances exist outside the human organism. There is an essential difference in the case of the fluids and gases, and above all in the case of the warmth. This will have to be considered in the next lecture. But it is, indeed, a fact that only when our observation of man widens out in this way do we realise the full significance of the organs and systems of organs.

Empirical physiology hardly enables us to follow up the functions of the human organism further than the point where the chyle passes from the intestines into the lymphatic vessels. What follows is merely a matter of conjecture. All ideas about the subsequent processes in the substances we take in from the outside world, for instance the processes in the blood stream, are really nothing but fantasy on the part of modern physiology. The part played by the kidneys in the organism can be understood only if we observe the katabolic processes side by side with the anabolic processes, which today are almost invariably regarded as the only processes of significance. A long time ago I once said to a friend: ‘It is just as important to study those organs which are grouped around the germ of the human embryo, and which are later discarded, as to study the development of the germ itself from conception to birth.’ The picture is complete only when we observe the division of the cells and the structure arising from this, and also trace the katabolic processes which take their course side by side with the anabolic processes. For we not only have this katabolic process around us in the embryonic period; we bear it within us continually in later life. And we must know in the case of each single organ, to what extent it contains anabolic and to what extent katabolic processes. The latter are, as a general rule, bound up with an increase of consciousness. Clear consciousness is dependent on katabolic processes, on the demolition of matter.

The same must be said of the excretory processes. The kidneys are organs of excretion. But now the question arises: Although from the point of view of material empiricism the kidneys are primarily excretory organs, have they no other purpose in the constitution of man beyond this? Do they not, perhaps, play a more important part in building up the human being virtue of something other than their excretory functions? If we then follow the functions still further, passing from the kidneys to the liver, for example, we find this interesting phenomenon:—The kidneys secrete in the last resort, outwards; the liver, inwards. And the question arises: How is the relation of the kidney process to the liver process affected by the fact that the kidneys send their excretory products outwards and the liver inwards? Is the human being at one time communing, as it were, with the outer world and at another with himself?

Thus we are led gradually to penetrate the mysteries of the human organism, but we must bring to our aid matters that are approached in the ways of which I have to-day given only preliminary hints. I will proceed from this point in the following lectures, showing how these things lead to a true understanding of pathology and therapy, and how far they may become guiding principles in orthodox empirical research. No attack on this kind of research is implied. The only object is to show that guiding principles are necessary.

I am not out to attack scientific research or scientific medicine in any sense. My aim is to show that in this scientific medicine there is a mine of opportunity for a much wider knowledge than can be attained by modern methods, and above all by the current outlook on the world.~ We have no wish to scoff at the scientific mode of observation but on the contrary to give it a true foundation. When it is founded upon the Spirit, then, and only then, does it assume its full significance.

To-morrow I will speak further on this subject.